Kern

For our Lion Rampant Wars of the Roses campaign I wanted to add something new to surprise General B.

My force is loosely based on the Lancastrian army at Mortimer's Cross, so a unit of Kern felt like a reasonable addition. I had hoped to pick them up at Hammerhead, so I could check them out in the blister as sometimes Perry castings can be a bit ropy. But there were none to be had, so I took a chance and ordered them when I got home. The Perry's are always speedy and so I had them in my hands only a few days later and to my relief they were good quality castings. They did take a bit of cleaning up, because they always have lots of little "worms" on them but aside from that there were minimal mould lines and flash.

Then it was on to painting

There were some good videos on YouTube about the leine, the saffron yellow garment the Kern wore and suggestions that they could actually be a very vibrant yellow - so I went with four different yellow colours as base hues.

By the time you read this I'm hoping they'll have seen the table against General B. They'll be Fierce Foot in our Lion Rampant games.

Hopefully they don't suffer from new painted model syndrome!

Midgard: Picts v Late Romans

Matt and I got together for another Midgard game. James is keen to have people test scenarios for his forthcoming campaign pack so that's what we did. Matt commanded my Late Roman force and I finally put the Picts on the park - even though I've still not fettled flags for them.

The scenario begins with not one, but two challenges.

Both went the way you might expect with each of our level one champions being cut down.

My Picts are at the bottom of the picture.

The serried ranks of Romano British troops await.

I had plenty of skirmishers screening things.

As my heroes urged the excitable highlanders on.

Soon my general crashed home with his hearthguard.

This may have been a bit rash.

On my left flank more impetuous types raced home.

My light cavalry (which I was struggling to work out how to use) thumped in to some skirmishers.

The general was laying about him.

Despite lack of support he managed to push the foe back.

More Romans pushed up to further isolate my Chieftain.

The fight was thick in the centre.

On my right the Romans too were making progress.

As the leaders faced each other a challenge was thrown down, that saw them Pictish King killed.

Slowly the weight of Pictish numbers began to tell.

A brave Roman hero aced from the line to confront the onrushing foe.

Somehow the grind in the centre continued.

Finally the Pict horse raced home.

And despite mounting casualties the noose was tightening on the Romano British.

We called the game soon after this.

Two damaged Roman units were all that remained with a lot of Picts still alive.

Due to the scenario rules we both had plenty of reputation left. In fact it looked as if Matt could somehow finish the game with no models, but his Reputation still in double figures! This *may* be what James intended, but we're going to feed it back.

After a slow start as we tried to remember which rules we were using, we soon picked it all up again and Midgard gave us a grand game.

Great to finally get the Picts out for a game and I think I've managed to get the printer working again, so maybe flags will soon appear!

Goblin Fanatics

Apparently these are made of purest Winatite (the raw ingredient of WIN!) in the current meta if that's the sort of thing you think is important. And if you do, please don't ever ask me for a game.

Anyway I had some Fanatic models when they first ever came out in metal and I've always loved the idea of them and the models too. These are plastics and jolly nice they are too.

Regardless of how ace they're supposed to be in games of The Old World I confidently predict I'll continue to lose more games than I win, but at least I'll have some cool fungus crazed loonies in my army.

Warmaster Fences

Some more simple scenery to break up the table in games of Warmaster

A sight no farmer wants to wake up to

They're simple and cheap MDF sets from Pendraken/Red Vectors

Lord of the Rings Three Player Game

Time for another game with No Longer Young N and his dad.

A three player affair, I usually take an evil force in these games, but I wanted to get my Swan Knights of Dol Amroth on the board now I have a unit of five, and so I took a Gondorian force, with the Knights along to provide some muscle.

We placed one objective each plus another one at the centre of the board. Whoever held the most objectives when one of the three forces was eliminated would be the winner.

Gondor and her knightly allies were soon mixing it up with the men of Rohan.

The footsloggers lagged behind a bit.

Cirion led some men off to meet the Easterling threat.

The red riders were soon streaming onto the table.

It was all rather bloody on my end of the battlefield, with Madril taking an early tumble.

The Rohirim wasted no time in pushing up.

A lone Swan Knight thumped an Easterling to the floor (not actually Andruil - he was standing in for a dishorsed Easterling)

Cirion had become distracted from hie anti-Easterling mission and had rushed back to secure the centre.

Easterlings were now putting additional pressure on No Longer Young N's Rohan warriors.

Most of the SWan Knights had been killed but a couplestill charged about.

Gamling found himself running out of fellow warriors as the Easterlings closed in.

I had sent a lone Ranger to hunt down an Easterling archer.

Who was standing, exposed, on a balcony.

My men were struggling to bring down the Rohan hero, despite surrounding him.

The Easterlings were now amongst the Gondorians too and the men of Rohan were testing their courage.

The real Andruil was making his presence felt (by which I mean murdering everything he came in contact with).

My remaining knights tried to cut their way through to the objectives.

However Gamling was finally cut down and with that the game came to an end with the forces of darkness in control of the most objectives.

A great fun game and the forces (most of which these days have been painted by N) looked great. I was especially taken with the scenery too, which looked great.

Must play this system more often.