Tuesday 31 October 2017

Sunday 29 October 2017

Footsore Late Roman Spearmen (4)

Some Paedos Pedyt.
16 down, just eight more to go and a couple of characters and the army is done.
Bar a few shields.


Thursday 26 October 2017

WAB Age of Arthur event

On Sunday November 12th top Peterborough chap Andy Hawes is staging a one day wargaming event using the venerable WAB 1.5 ruleset and the splendid Age of Arthur supplement.
16 of us have signed up to play already and there are still places left.
So if you fancy some convivial Dark Age gaming in a fun period using an excellent supplement then sign up.
Go on, it'll only cost you a tenner (and you'll get a discount from Footsore miniatures to boot).
Details over on Andy's Blog here.

And if the only thing stopping you going is an army, drop me a line via the comments below, I've got Saxons going spare...

Monday 9 October 2017

Congo - Under the Moon of Love in the Shoddy Wadi

Once more to The Ilko Gaming Hut for another venture into the Dark Heart of the Congo!
General Ballroom again played host and has a rather nice new desert mat to show off


The scenario was an adaptation of one which was supposed to feature a crocodile in a river. General B is crocodile-less and so converted things to have a wadi inhabited by a lion.
As the wadi was actually improvised from a road it was a bit of a ShoddyWadi. hence this post's title.

The object of the exercise was to grab some bags of diamonds and escape with them and avoid becoming lion food.

My tribesmen deploy

Accompanied by Diplomat (Siamese cat on shoulder not shown)

Elite Arab riflemen

Steve raced off to an early start and his tribesmen plunged into the Shoddy Wadi. I think it was Three Steps down. Or possibly back up.


Meanwhile my own tribal chappies raced forward to counter them.



Naturally some of the commotion alerted a lion


Roar!

But he proved more pussycat than jungle king and was soon converted into a handy rug or throw.


I seem to have stopped taking pictures around this point.

Truth to tell it was all over quite quickly I grabbed two treasures, Steve only one and as I got them both off the table before he could react it was a win (finally) for my proud and noble Slave Traders over the foul forces of Colonial Imperialism.

Saturday 7 October 2017

WAB: Irish against Saxons

Steve and I managed to squeeze in a weekend game for a change.
As the Peterborough event draws ever closer we agreed a game of WAB 1.5 was in order.
Steve's Irish are mostly complete - the Fianna need some fettling and his Welsh allies remain mournfully Mornfang Brown but other than that he's got 1500 points.
Predictably my Late Romans lag behind so instead I dug out the Saxons (with a unit of LR allies).

We debated playing one of 5the WAB scenarios, but as they required rivers and fiddling with army lists and time was pressing we just went with a pitched battle.

 The Gedrith arrive!

 The Irish battle line deploys

 Romans on a hill, Duguth on their flank

The battle began, as dark Age WAB games tend to do with a general rush forward

 Waaag...errr...sorry, wrong game

Apart from the Roman, who hid behind their big shields on a hill.

 Its-a nice-a ana safe up-a here

The Irish raiders too surged forward, with slingers to the fore


Due to woods and things my Gedrith were able to charge the Fianna. This did not go well for the Irish lads. The Gedrith hit very hard and I have several characters in the front rank. I also rolled well and Steve had a rare off day with the dice.
Newly Painted Army Syndrome I expect.

 Right then, lets be having you (and don't forget the buckler re-rolls!)

Elsewhere the Duguth crashed home as well


My Gedrith broke and ran down the Fianna and the Welsh spearmen were likewise driven off. The left flank was mine.
However things were a bit trickier in the centre and right...
A unit of Duguth had got themselves surrounded. And although the Irish Chieftain was unable to hit anything very much they were in trouble


On the hill the Romans saw a juicy flank charge and thundered home

Here-a we-a go-a!

The charge broke the Irish, but the pursuit fell short and the Irish rallied. 
Meanwhile the Duguth bounced off the Irish general but rallied themselves.


And were charged once more.

Hold lads, hoooold!

The Romans decided they'd had enough of charging and instead dropped anchor and formed shieldwall.

Come-a ana have-a a go-a!

Finally the Saxon general came to the rescue of the beleaguered Duguth.

In the flank!

Thye Irish general broke but an unwise pursuit by the Duguth crashed into a supporting unit of Ciethern

ooops!
Who duly went to work on the Duguth...

This could end badly...

The resultant break by the Duguth cause the general's unit to panic and flee. From a hugely dominant position my army was suddenly routing in all directions.

However, despite the general failing to rally the game ended with my Romans and one other unit unbroken which was just enough to pull back a victory!

A good fun see-saw game. Mostly I was in control but last turn panic nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

WAB still feels a bit clunky and fussy after a few years away. And I think I actually prefer some of how WAB2 worked over 1.5.

That said, we're having fun and it feels good to be playing "armies" again rather than the skirmish fair we've played recently

Friday 6 October 2017

Footsore Romano British Command

The command models for the second unit of Milites come from the Footsore Romano British command pack. Bill sculpted these to mix in with the late Romans to give a more distinctly RB feel.
Gives a bit of variety,which is nice.


This weekend is Paedo Pedyt weekend. Same models as in the previous units, but going for a less uniform feel - a mixture of brown sprays (and maybe the odd green spray) to start with. Then their shields will have Chi-Rho symbols, rather than the uniformity of the Milites. Hoping to create the look of some random militia dragged out onto the battlefield to defend their homes from hairy barbarian invaders.

Monday 2 October 2017

Sunday 1 October 2017

Orktober

Now usually at around this time of year my thoughts turn to all things green. By which I mean Orcs. Not zombies. Zomtober doesn't make sense and isn't a thing no matter how often you say it.
Orctober is however a perfectly adequate pun. As is Orktober. You see, it's only one letter different so sounds pretty similar - that's how puns work. Rather than two words jammed together to make a third word that sounds like no other word in the language.

Anyway.

This year however I'm up against it with just over a month to go until Peterborough and a big unit of Paedos Pedyt to get painted (and probably some characters too). However I don't want to abandon thoughts of greenskins entirely, so I think I'm going to have a bash at, umm bashing together a Weirdboy for my 40K Orks using the old bitzbox and some spare WFB Orcy bits.