To The Strongest at Partizan

Simon Miller staged another of his impressive "To The Strongest" games.

Lots of lovely colourful Romans and Celts.

*edit* Just found two more "whole board" shots I somehow forgot to post

Early Church Finished

So finally, well over a year after first starting, my Early Church is finished.
Intended for games of Dux Bellorum, Dux  Britanniarum, Warhamer Ancient Battles and SAGA (when they get round to the supplement), mainly to be raided by hordes of hairy Anglo-Saxons - specifically Angles in my case.

It's intended to represent a Late Roman or Romano British or Sub Roman or whatever they're called these days church from somewhere small and on the very fringes of the Empire. Somewhere like Elmet. Given the absence of much evidence of churches of this period in Britain it's largely speculative (or made up if you prefer), but I did want it to have aisles up the side and a great big curvy apse. I love a big curvy apse.There aren't many images on the net to go on, but I took some inspiration from the drawings on the Early British Kingdoms site. As its intended for a backwater it is thatched rather than tiled and I imagine, beneath the render, that it's mostly wooden, which goes some way to explaining the lack of archaeological evidence for such a church. Conveniently.

 Look at the apse on that!

After the last stage I applied a wash of Gryphonne Sepia to all the walls before drybrushing back up with Wilkinson's Crushed Almond. The thatch was overbrushed with Khemri Brown then drybrushed with Bleached Bone. The wooden parts were Charadon Granite, overbrushed with Graveyard Earth then a few random daubs of various browns to give a wooden effect before a final wash of Devlan Mud. Finally the Chi-Rho was painted on freehand with Scab Red.

That's a Musketeer Late Roman for scale next to the model. You can see it's actually got a pretty small footprint, but I like my scenery that way and prefer it to be small but convey the idea of a church rather than be to scale and eat up huge chunks of the playing surface.

Overall I'm very pleased with it, and my regular opponent is very much looking forward to me trying to pillage it the next time we play Dux Britanniarum.

If you want to check back over the (lengthy) building progress here are the various stages
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Early Church WiP (4)

The Church has progressed.
I have added the side door (from Warbases) and then I “rendered” the walls with a mix of fine play sand, PVA and filler, watered down and painted on.
After a prolonged drying I undercoated the whole thing in grey primer. This was mainly because that was what I had to hand, but it may have been a tactical error as it showed through for some time, especially on the toweling on the roof.
Once the undercoat was dry I pulled out the trusty Wilkinson’s testers and gave the walls and thatch a good couple of coats:

Next stop, finishing. Possibly

Early Church WiP (3)

So last night I got out some toweling and a sharp knife and set to work thatching my church.
I did consider using pantiles for a more Roman look but decided against for two reasons. Firstly this is supposed to be a small rural church in an out of the way part of the country - prime raiding territory. So in my  mind its more likely to be rustic and basic and not tiled a la mode. Secondly (and probably more importantly thatching seemed like a far easier way of covering my apse (and I do like to cover my apse!) than using platicard pantiles.
So here are the results.
The basic technique is to cut inch wide strips of toweling (from a cheap ASDA face cloth), glue them down with PVA, then soak them in watered down PVA which you can then brush to flow in the correct direction and loosely resemble thatch.
The thatch probably needs some more PVA soaking in to it before its ready to paint - but it takes an age to dry so I'll probably give it another coat over the weekend.

What I'm really waiting on now is the side door, so John if you read this try and pop round soon with it.
Then I can render the walls and paint it.

Early Church WiP (2)

Many moons ago (last March) I started work on a Late Roman church for games of Age of Arthur and the like. Then I forgot about it.
However inspired by the fab work going on over at Mitch's Wargaming and Modelmaking I have dug out the slightly battered shell and done some more work.
Actually that's not entirely true I added the apse (I do love a big apse, fnarrr!) at some point last year.
However I was still stuck over what to do about windows until I assembled the Warbases models I picked up at Salute and discovered I had several small windows left over, together with a big door that would be just right for the front of the church. So I glued them all in place.
Then I saw what Mitch was up to and managed to get the roof on and take some photos.

So here we are - a little blurry and very much rough and ready:

As you can see I'm still waiting for a side door, but my chum picked a pack up from Partizan at the weekend. Next step is some towelling for the roof for a thatched effect. I did consider pan tiling but couldn't work out how on earth to get it to work on the curved roof of my enormous apse.

Age of Arthur WAB One Dayer Report (Part One)

Yesterday I ventured the short distance up the road to sunny Mansfield to Maelstrom's Eye of the Storm Venue to play Age of Arthur games all day.
This was a one day event Scrivs had organised. Technically I was supposed to be helping him, but he'd got it all so well under control that all I really ended up doing was baking a ginger cake for all the players to share. To make matters worse, the night before I threw a box of Scrivs' beautifully painted Saxons downstairs as I was retreiving them from the loft to hand back to him. It's bad enough dropping your own soldiers, but when the chipped and mangled models belong to someone else you don't half feel bad I can tell you. Sorry mate.

Anyway, grovelling apologies out of the way it was on to battle.
Scrivs has already posted an overview over on his blog, so I'll stick to my version of events. Fortunately I remembered to take a lot of pictures, so I won't be writing too much (as I'm sure my regular reader will be delighted to learn). The picture quality is a little variable as the Eye of the Storm, though great for gaming isn't always helpful to hamfisted buffoons using the digital equivalent of a Box Brownie.

The first game was doubles. I was paired with fellow Saxon Mike of Trouble at t'Mill blog. Facing us were some Romano British in the ownership of Andy of Andy's Wargaming blog and Geraint who as far as I know doeasn't have a blog.
Mike and Andy are clubmates and had apparently been engaged in the unseemly practice of practicing for the event earlier in the week, so I faced off against Andy while Mike lined up opposite Geraint.
The Romano armies looked particularly splendid - Andy's I'd played against once before at Hot Lead or Cold Steel or Warm Copper or something, but Geraint's red and white colour scheme looked great too. Real inspiration to crack on with mine. I've mentioned before that a significant chunk of enjoyment for me is setting up the models and then just looking at them and that was certainly true on this occasion. Playing the game's a bit incidental after that.
So here's some eye candy:

 Saxons (mine)

 Andy's Romans

 Geraint's Red and White Boys

The lines begin to close

The scenario was Cat Coit Cumquat or something from the AoA book. Essentially the Romano British had to smuggle as many units as possible off our table edge and we had to stop them. Being Saxons we only know one way to defend, and that's CHAAAARGE!. So we pushed forward, each leaving a small rearguard.

 Into the fray!

I made first contact and one of my units puiched their way through Andy's lines. However his general's unit managed to get the drop on my Gedrith, which is never a good plan.

 Geraint's men take the scenic route

 Stab, smash, hack slay!

 Oooer, where'd they come from?

Mikes men meet stiff resistance

Andy's reinforcements, in the shape of treacherous fellow Saxon's arrived at around this point and showed the milksop Romanos how it should be done by chasing off my Geoguth. Meanwhile our generals were locked in mortal (if slow) combat.

 The Kings duke it out

 Traitors! No you are! Your mum!

The grind continues 

Mysteriously the photo of my king dying at about this point was all a bit blurry. However it spread a fair bit of panic. Andy's bodyguard unit proceeded to steamroller over my next unit of Duguth and swept forward carrying aloft all the banners they'd knicked

 

At this point it all started to quiet down on our end of the table. Andy had already sneaked his unit of cavalry off the board edge, and some re-forming meant his bodyguard unit were home free too. The rest of his army was almost certainly too far from the edge to make it.

Don't let 'em get away fellas

Meanwhile over on the right...

 

 Saxons, ahem, tactically withdrawing

Hold, men, hold....

 

 Hardcore Saxon on Saxon action

 

 That'll smart!

Geraint had got lucky with his re-inforcements roll, bringing them on in our half of the table and marching them straight off, which meant they had three units home. Mike however was making it hard work for the Romanos to get more away. My reinforcements finally came into play with only a couple of turns remaining and on the far end of the board, so they could do little. True to form, I did however mange to almost get them killed on the last turn.

In the final analysis, the Romono British alliance had done just enough to claim a minor victory. Andy had nabbed the Arthurian Artefact from my Gedrith and the Saxon empire was due to shrink by a few acres.

 

Finally some raven's eye views of the final stages of the game:

 

 

It was a splendid game, my first of WAB since Cold Steel back in January. Andy was a top opponent as always as was Geraint, though he was mainly fighting my estimable ally Mike. Like all good WAB Dark Age battles it seemed to see-saw quite a bit with the result  in doubt right to the very end.

Anyway I'm off on holiday for a couple of days now, so the other two reports will have to wait. Sorry 'bout that.