Hardrada and some Romans

A few things I've finished off this week.
First up the Mighty Harald Hardrada, from the equally mighty Gripping Beast.

Very nice model, he'll look good leading my (at present almost entirely imaginary) Viking force in a Fulford scenario. Or, more realistically, a small SAGA warband.
He's also blooming massive. I know the Sagas say he was a big fella, but he's nearly a 40mm figure!
Fortunately I'm not intending to have him in a ranked up unit, so he's just fine for intimidating weedy Northumbrian Saxons.

Next up the long gestating Musketeer Late Romans. These are lovely figures and a pleasure to paint. I'm all excited now and would be starting to prep my next unit tonight if I hadn't just agreed to go up to Maelstrom to play SAGA with Scrivs.
First up the command group.

Now, demonstrating how hard I find it to take pictures of units, here's the unit shot.

(Not sure if the pictures are any different, but I had them both in the camera)


Miniatures by Musketeer, shield transfers by LBMS.
Guides to how I painted these can be found elsewhere on the blog: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

El Cid WAB Game

The Easter holidays and the absence of children (they're in France with their grandparents, not buried beneath the patio - at least that's what I told Social Services) means a surfeit of gaming and painting.
Some of the latter to show tomorrow, hopefully, but for now it's more pushing men around, rolling dice and cursing the gods of luck.

Once again we dug out the El Cid men and set to with my dour ascetic Almoravid warriors visiting jihad on their decadent co-religionists of Al-Andalus.
We'd not played for quite a while, so a pitched battle was in order, using the screen to give us hidden deployment. Very exciting I can tell you. We were using 2k point forces from the excellent El Cid supplement, not the rather bland Armies of Antiquity lists.

I took plenty of pictures and forgot most of the detail, so here we go:

 Berber cavalry screen Christian Mercenary knights

 The Andalusian battle line

 The core of the Almoravid line

 Mercenaries in the pay of Al-Andalus

 The peaceful Almoravid hamlet

 The battle lines close

 A clash of light horse

 Dirty slingers

 The Almoravid horse swoop down on Ibn Coldir's geese

 The flower of Christian chivalry find themselves in a spot of bother

 Still dirty, still slinging

 Hang on, we're supposed to do all the charging!

 Surrounded and shot up

 The Black Guard punch through, but begin to get surrounded

 Almoravids push home in the centre

 But on the flank the storm of pebbles and sharp sticks continues

 Fortunately these horse are actually fleeing

 And getting in the way of the ones that aren't

The decisive final combat

Once again WAB gave us a great see-saw game that was only decided at the end of turn eight.

At first it seemed all Andalus, especially when a great round of shooting wiped out five of my Mercenary knights before they had a chance to charge. However the knights did a good job for me, tying up significant cavalry, and stopping it from descending unhindered on my spear blocks - I'm just always a bit disappointed that they never get to charge headlong into the enemy,scattering poor peons underfoot like they do in the movies.

Howver, over in the centre my Black Guard, boosted by the Berber unit enthused by Imran the Imam managed to crush the Andalusian spear underfoot, setting off panic and clearing the way. Though even then I nearly managed to blow it in a final combat where I caused only a single casualty to four in return and only a flank charge and the fact I'd previously killed the ASB meant I won the fight.

Meanwhile on the far side my remaining spear unit suffered the death by a thousand cuts fate so familiar to anyone who has played a WAB Andalusian army, surrounded by fast moving skirmishers and unable to respond they did well to only panic towrd the end of the game, and they subsequently rallied before close of play.

Overall I think I sneaked a win based on captured flags and killing the Andalusian general, but it could have gone either way, and only a couple of luck charge arcs meant it wasn't the opposite result.

The secret I think with Almoravids is to keep advancing and not get disheartened at the rain of fire coming in. That said it's not a favourite style of play for me, so I'm thinking I'll try and finish a Christian list to use at the event in October. That way it'll be all about the charges, baby!

Warhammer Easter Big Game

Today I got together with a couple of chums to play a big game of Warhammer.
A complicated scenario in which I had two 1500 point armies, each split into two 500 and 1000 point parts. For the first part of the game my 1500 points of Dwarfs faced off against 2K points of Empire. After which 2000 points of Vampires arrived and my remaining forces, bolstered by my 1500 point Ogre force played a three way game against the newcomers and the forces of the Empire. Whichever army controlled the highest number of the seven towers on the board at the end of the game would be the winner.
With me so far?
Doesn't really matter TBH. We had a splendid day and I took lots of pictures.
So here they are

 Empire Knights Advance

 Spearmen, horde, characters aplenty

 Captasus, as I believe they are known (by eejits)

 This tower is ours

 Advance on the Dwarven gatehouse men

 Stab, smack, slash, grunt.

 The Dwarf General gets caught in the open

 The grind before the gate continues

 Squeeel, slam, squish!

Time to start singing the death songs!

At the end of the first seven turns my Dwarfs had been almost all wiped out, but they still held three towers. At this point our forces withdrew to their starting positions as night fell, and the hungry generals went off for a cob or two while the Vampires were unpacked.

Suitably refreshed and revitalised we redeployed, the Vampires arrived and we went at it again!

 The Empire Deploy

 Dis 'ere's our tower now

 Shamble, shamble, shamble

 The Gorger makes a surprise appearance, but the pistoliers are on to him!

 Keep right on shamblin'

 The "captasus" bites off more than he can chew

 Oooh, scary

 'ello. Munch, munch, munch

 More yum-yums

 Anybody home?

 Hur, hur! Boom!

 Let us in!!!

In the end a titanic struggle saw the Ogres, with pitifully few remaining Dwarf allies hold three towers and the perfidious Empire hold another three. The Vampires held the remaining tower and had plentiful forces left but poor dice rolls and slow marching meant they were left high and dry at the end of the game.

Ogre of the match for me was the Gorger, who despite taking a boatload of pistolier shots (I hate pistoliers) munched through a unit of spearmen, a unit of handgunners and nearly did the job on some archers too. I was so vexed by the pistoliers shooting him I wasted a cannon shot that could have been better spent elsewhere on taking them all out. Which may not have been tactical play of the highest order, but cheered me up no end.

Anyway, a great day of gaming. I think the scenario didn't help the Vampire player, but overall it was probably a fair result.

We were also using the latest Empire rules meaning we had the three newest armies for WFB an the table at the same time. There was some good natured moaning from the Empire player that it was all a bit weakened, but I think the general view was in the hands of three not terribly good players the books gave us a pretty balanced game.