Warhammer Campaign Empire Army (5)

A bit of work on the army for the campaign.
First up the General Abelard von Gesegnet himself.

Made from the parts on the command sprue from the 6th edition starter set. Foolishly in my youth I glued rider to horse which made this a bit of a fanny to paint.
I'm not 100% happy with the paint job or the model, so at some point in the future I may replace him, but he'll do for now. Except I may add some gloss varnish to the white parts of the armour, just to give a sheen.

Next up Blazin' Betty the venerable Great Cannon from the province of Ostland.

Simple black and white paint job made this pretty speedy.

Finally some WiP crewmen, actually for the mortar, but again in the Ostland colours.

Warhammer Campaign Empire versus Bretonnia

Thursday night saw my return t the North Notts Palais des Jeux after a considerable interlude.

Steve and Matt have pressed on with the campaign in my absence, but this was to be my first game.

Sadly I have wasted the intervening weeks and instead of getting my Empire force painted I have instead painted a Lion Rampant retinue and my usual random assortment of models from other periods and scales. And so it was that the force I threw down was a little unprepared, both in terms of my not having read the rules (no change there) but, far more unforgivably, many of the models were *gasp* unpainted. Sorry everyone, I've let you down, I've let the hobby down but most of all I've let myself down.

 The knights. Mostly painted.

 My battle line

 Beastly Bretonnians

The slightly whiter than they should be Wissenlanders

However we decided we'd play anyway.

We rolled up Dawn Attack, each staked a village and away we went.

Most of my troops ended up in the centre, which was a little cramped and the nearby altar of Khaine, making me frenzied, was a bit of a worry but nevertheless I trusted to Sigmar as the perfidious snail-munchers settled down for a short prayer.

 Four dead. And it only cost me a third of my army to do it.

 For the Lady!

We're finished. All of us.

The knights swang around the swamp to bear down on the Bretonnian lances and the handgunners pushed up to close the range. The winds of magic blew and the Bright Wizard gathered the power to himself. The first attempted spell was foiled by the Bretonnian magic user, but the second unleashed a powerful ball of flame, roasting four knights alive in their silvery armour. Unfortunately the wizard lost control of the magic flux and the resulting explosion wiped out ten of his spearmen companions. All of which was too much for the rest of the unit and they fled headlong from the field, taking the mortar crew with them.
Oh.

Let us, ow you say, chaurge!

The Bretonnian knights advanced and the archers closed the range. The Bretonnian mage unleashed the might of the Dwellers Below and several noble knights were dragged to their doom whilst the trebuchets and archers killed a few more. Things were not going well.

In my turn the knights moved close to the Bretonnian line whilst a volley from the handgunners killed a total of no Bretonnians whatsoever. The cannon pinged a couple, but then it was back to Steve.

The Bretonnian horse duly charged both my depleted knights and my cannon.
Once more the Dwellers were summoned from beneath the ground and this time they dragged away my general as well as all but three of the knight unit.
The resulting combat saw the demise of the cannon and the champion, the sole survivor of the knight unit, turn tail and flee.

 Like a spectral general. Which, ironically, he would be seconds later

 Easy viande for eurz!

The militia seized their chance and hurled themselves at the flank of the knight unit, however even frenzied their puny weapons were unable to penetrate the thick knightly armour, though their nerve held despite the casualties they took.

 I'm off!

'Ave it!

The handgunners fled from the other unit of knights, skillfully dancing across the swamp with no casualties. However this left them in range of both the trebuchet and the archers, and the sole survivor decided to live to fight another day. The combat once again turned against the militia (though at least they killed one knight) and they too duly fled and were run down.

Oh.

The field belonged to the Lady!

That was all a bit painful. A very unlucky miscast, combined with not really knowing the army at all made it all too easy for Steve.
But it was good fun as always and good to be back with Warhammer after a little lay off.
I'm now inspired to get more paint on the army before the next game.

You should now go and read my opponent's version of events here

Warhammer Campaign Empire Army (4)

The others have already told their tales, so here, ahead of the first game is the background to my Empire army.

Standing outside the thick oak door the quivering functionary could hear the roars of delight and hoots of pleasure from within. Gathering his courage he knocked loudly on the door.

“Sod off” came the reply, followed by a huge guffaw of laughter.

With a deep breath the nervous man pushed at the door and stuck his head into the room.

Then swiftly pulled it back as a half full chamber pot shattered against the jamb.

“I said SOD OFF! You punctilious little worm!” bellowed the occupant and object of the little man’s search.

“But my Lord” he wheedled, pushing the door open once more and sidling into the room “I have a message from Karl Franz”

“Who? You worthless little dung beetle!” roared the huge figure that stood, naked bar a blue and white jester’s hat, in the middle of a scene of chaos.

His eyes swiftly took in the room. Over in the corner he could make out the somnolent form of the Elector Count of Wissenland’s youngest son. Face down in a puddle of what he hoped was his own vomit. On the bed three ladies-in-waiting, all from the noblest houses in Talabecland lay semi-naked and entwined. A ruddy faced dwarf sprawled beneath a table from which poured the contents of a barrel of Bugman's Stoatfondler ale straight into his open mouth. The owner of the hat that currently perched on his Lord and Master’s head sat grinning in the corner, strumming tunelessly at a three stringed lute, and gave the secretary a wink. This scene of debauchery was capped by the diminutive and chubby figure gyrating on a table in the centre of the room, barely covering her modesty with a pair of canary yellow fans.

Tearing his eyes away from the Halfling burlesque dancer he spluttered to his Lord

“Karl Franz, sire!” and held out a scrap of parchment. “The Emperor”

“What does that joyless little toe-rag want of me?” demanded the noble Abelard von Gesegnet, his imposing appearance only slightly undermined by the jester’s hat 

“Run out of fawning nancy boys in the capital to do his bidding and needs a real man for the job, eh?”

“Something along those lines, sire.” muttered the secretary

“His imperial majesty” he went on in a louder voice, “finding himself under severe pressure is reduced to asking pretty much anyone he can to help out, my Lord. Apparently a Bretonnian Lady…”

“Typical of those snail munching fops to be led by a woman!”

“And an invading force of High Elves” he pressed on

“Ah, the skirt wearing pointy ears!” bellowed his lordship, causing the Dwarf to snort with laughter and then choke on his ale

“Quite sire. Anyway they’re fighting over something and it’s interfering with his majesty’s plans and he’d very much like you to gather an army and chase them both off.”

“Tell him to bugger off”

“He said that’s what you’d say sire, so I’ve been asked to point out that if you don’t do what he asks he’ll be forced to present evidence to your mother, the Dowager Countess von Gesegnet, that you are a dissolute drunkard and philanderer “

Abelard von Gesegnet went a very peculiar purple colour before hurling his still full mug of ale against the wall.

Reaching over to the diminutive fan dancer he grabbed a bright yellow feather and shoved it into the jester’s hat that still perched on his crown.

“I’ll show that jumped-up popinjay how a real man fights” yelled Von Gesegnet “assemble me an army. And you” he pointed to the halfling, “stay there, I‘ll be back soon for the rest of the dance!”

And with that he lurched out of the room calling loudly for his armour and horse to be made ready.

Warhammer Campaign Empire Army (3)

Yesterday I realised that I am due to play my first game in the campaign tonight.
And that a worryingly large portion of my putative army remained, at best, unpainted or, at worst, still on the sprue!
What followed was a frantic few hours of assembly and undercoating and at least a few colours added to save complete embarrassment a the game tonight.
Here's where I got to:

Wizard, spears,handgunners and a general.

I made a little more progress with the old plastic Bright Wizard:

Bright

I then got an email from Stephen pointing out that as we were now in February, my points allocation had gone up to 1200.
Bugger.
I may need to borrow some models...

Biel Tan Eldar

Son and heir has decided to join the wargames club at school. Which came as a surprise as I always thought his younger brother was the one with the genetic abnormality that predisposes one to toy soldiers.

Obviously they play 40K. Obviously he wants his own army (he's using my Orks at the moment) and obviously he's chosen Eldar. I say obviously because despite having a loft stuffed with assorted plastic, lead and resin products I have very little 40K, and only a tiny number of Eldar models.

So whilst I'm happy he's wargaming I am now worried about having to remortgage the house to buy his soldiers.

And I'm worried about having to play 40K which, as we all know, is a game for children, deviants and accountants.

However I dug out and handed over the few Eldar models I have and he's had a go at painting a couple (after a little explanation from me) and they look all right for a first attempt.

Eldarsmens

The weapons need to be finished, but apart from that I think they'll pass for table top standard amongst the rest of the year sevens. I do wish he'd chosen a slightly less challenging colour scheme for a first army though.

Anyway, you'll have to excuse me, I'm off down to the docks to see if I can sell my body* to buy an Eldar weapon platform.

*Five or six times

Empire Handgunners (3)

These are pretty much all over bar the basing.

Reasonably content with how they've turned out.
They are very easy to paint.
I'm not 100% convinced by the yellow feathers.
It was an attempt to tie them to the spearmen I painted last year, but I'm a bit worried that with the red and green it's all gone a bit Bob Marley.
That aside, I'm quite looking forward to bashing out the next six.

As Told in the Great Hall - a review

I bought this book a couple of months ago after seeing it mentioned on a blog somewhere.

Nice horse...

The book bills itself as "A Wargamer's Guide to Dark Age Britain. I was hoping for some scenarios and insight that would enable me to play a few interesting games with an authentic Dark Age flavour and maybe teach me a few new things about the period.

What the book actually is is a rule set for Dark Age games along with some questionable history and an awful lot of opinion without many supporting facts.

I suppose I should have been alerted by the cover, which features an image of a chalk white horse. A chalk horse almost certainly carved in the C17th rather than the Dark Ages.

So to start with the history. I’m no expert on the “Dark Ages” but what I do know is that hard and fast “facts” about the period are hard to come by, and much is based on constantly shifting interpretation and evolving research. You don’t get much of that from this book. What you do get are the authors opinions expressed as fact with very few supporting secondary sources. Frequently the “primary” sources for the period are cited – Bede, Gildas the Anglo Saxon chronicle and so on, without any reference to the partial, incomplete and undoubtedly biased opinions expressed by those authors, not to mention the fact that the first two were hardly “contemporary” with much of what they describe. The author seems on stronger ground as the period progresses, but even so his reliance on primary sources leads to some outlandish claims (especially regarding army sizes) in my view.

As an example the author states, apparently without irony, as fact that the Picts are a Scythian tribe (p77),  a theory so divorced from mainstream history that I’d never heard it before. A little Google research indicated this is based upon the writings of early mediaeval scholars, attempting to make use sense of a world they barely understood, where Scythians were shorthand for “others”. In the absence of anything other than fanciful speculation I think I’ll stick with the conventional view that Picts were aboriginal British inhabitants.

Equally incredibly the author states (p.67) that the indigenous inhabitants of Britain were descended from the inhabitants of Troy. This is a theory that cheerfully ignores the wealth of evidence of continuous inhabitation of these islands that predates the foundation of Troy by several millennia. There is no historical evidence for the mythical “Brutus” who allegedly led these exiles from Troy and the view of most mainstream historians are that these “facts” were given credence by mediaeval monarchs in a search for legitimacy and to establish English links with the classical period. Unfortunately this kind of thing rather makes me question the accuracy of much of the rest of what the books presents as historical fact.

I have to confess I haven’t read the rules in any great detail. I didn’t buy it as a rulebook (that’s not how it is billed/advertised) I already have several rulesets, and as this one takes as its starting point the venerable, impenetrable and no fun WRG 6^th edition rules – there’s little here to entice me. In addition, the author’s conviction that all armies of the period were essentially shieldwalls means you may find the rules unsuitable for the earlier period when less formal armies may have been the norm.

So, the rules are of no interest and the history is bunk, what of the scenarios? Well unfortunately these too are weak. They consist of a single simple line drawing of deployment and the historical (as the author interprets it) outcome of the battle and that’s it. I was hoping for suggestions of how to recreate elements of the battle on the tabletop, but no. Just line ‘em up and away you go (assuming you agree with the “shieldwall” type deployments).

Finally the whole sub-par package is wrapped up in some not very good writing. Lumpy, rambling sentences filled with sub clauses and repetition abound - the classic mistake that explaining something long-windedly automatically gives it weight and importance. To be fair the editor is as much at fault here as the writer who should have been helped to write in a more concise and engaging style. In addition the author is sometimes allowed to take flight into the realms of purple prose. I laughed out loud at the attempts to make spotting a newspaper clipping sound like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and as for this description of a river “The river here is mesmeric; she is a meandering beauty that flows as gentle as a silk scarf wrapped around the spurs of the mountains that she bisects, her pools are deep and the water clear…then she is a girl scurrying over the shingle of a broad ford…then she screams and cries with pain as she cuts her way through a gorge….” if there were a wargaming equivalent of the literary bad sex award this would be a shoo in.

All of this feels a bit unfair on the writer, who is clearly passionate about his period and merely wants to share that with readers. It seems to me that he’s rather been let down by his publishers and editors who could have helped shape this into something a bit better. Ultimately it feels to me like this really should have been a short series of articles in one of the wargames magazines, where Dan, Guy or Henry would have excised some of the poor writing, and probably insisted on a bit more evidence to back his claims. As it is, it’s an expensive (almost twenty quid) product I’m not able to recommend at all.

If you are looking for a genuinely scholarly attempt to understand some Dark Age battles and to steal some good ideas for gaming then I’d heartily recommend you spend your money instead on Peter Marren’s Battles of the Dark Ages.

Buy this, it's good

Remember, however, whichever one you buy, make sure the sellers are paying their taxes, even if it costs you a little more.