Sigmar's Blood (13) - The Midnight Hunt

At last, after several months of preparation and painting and a hiatus whilst we attempted to synchronise calendars (he was in Poland, Scandinavia and the US. I went to Swindon) it was finally time to play the first game(s) of the Sigmar's Blood Campaign.

This was the sight that greeted me when arriving at my Chum's gaff.
Splendid looking table with all the bits present and correct as shown in the campaign book (albeit in slightly different colours). Marvellous!

Behold the field of battle!

The buildings in particular looked lovely, some new GW verdigris paint really enhancing the copper roofs.

The Witchunter leads the Empire forward

Noble blackpowderists

The forces of evil...

And so after a prolonged Admiring Our Handiwork phase we decided we should probably actually play a game or something.

I won the roll-off for army choice and decided to go with the Empire.
I deployed the swordsmen just back from the deployment line with the cavalry poised to sweep out left and the handgunners ready to race toward the tower. Getting models into the tower gives a benefit later in the campaign and the hand gunners seemed the best chaps for that particular job.
The necromancer and his hideous minions assembled on the start line and we were off.
The forces of undeath (almost inevitably) won the roll-off for first turn, and not wanting to stare down the cannon barrel for any longer than necessary went first, trundling toward my lines.

The classic undead pincer

Foolishly I had deployed too far forward. The undead moved first and with the said of Vanhels they were almost on top of me before I'd taken a turn.
In an attempt to minimise the damage to my swordsmen I maneuvered the knights in front of the skeletons and backed the swordsmen up to try to prevent the Corpse cart rampaging home. Over on my right the handgunners sprinted toward the tower.
Taking careful aim with 'Owd Betty', the imperial cannon, I bounced a cannonball straight into the corpse cart. The steel ball caught the necromancer himself full in the face and killed him stone dead. Well that improved my odds a bit.

Crumbling begins in earnest

The dogs prepare to fly into the flank

Immediately the undead began to crumble including the newly arrived Dire wolves.
Despite the loss of their guiding power the undead shambled home and began to lay about the empire troops.
The ghoul champion launched himself at the Witchhunter and pulled him to the ground before the Empire hero could even swing. However the rest of the unit took a toll on the ghouls and the units stayed locked in combat. The skeletons meanwhile flailed uselessly at the heavily armoured knights and suffered at the hands of the Empire and their horses. As the combat ground on the wolves maneuvered to charge but the cannon and crumbling meant they were unable to swing the combat.
Meanwhile the hand gunners gained the tower and sent their message asking for help.

The knights wreak destruction on their bony foes

As the undead forces began to fade away the men of the Empire were able to crush the last resistance and claim the field as their own.

And so, with the first game over in under an hour we swapped sides and went at it again.

Come to us, dead dudes

I deployed the forces of undeath in similar fashion to the first game. I considered not using the Direwolf vanguard rule and using them to block the hand gunners from accessing the tower but in the end decided to leave them. The empire, learning from the first game deployed deeper.

Shamble, drool, creak

Once more with the pincer

I rushed the undead forces forward but the better positioning of the knights saw them able to charge into my ghouls. 'Owd Betty' spat her inevitable iron ball at the corpse cart but this time it struck the cart itself and regeneration saved any damage.

The ghouls take it hard in the front

Good, doggies, niiiice doggies...

The knights wreaked havoc on the ghouls, though a few fell in return. The skeletons charged the swordsmen on the hill and the Corpse Cart thundered into the knights battering the horsemen whilst the Direwolves positioned themselves between tower and hand gunners. In the combat the skeletons made little impact on the swordsmen and lost several of their own in return. The knights killed more ghouls but still more were pulled down.

A one sided grind

As the empire took their turn the handgunners blasted the dogs to ruin but it was in the combat phase that the damage  was done. Having already killed the ghoul champion the Preceptor of the knights challenged the necromancer and duly cut him down. Despite their ghouls pulling two more knights down  the inevitable crumbling began and the undead threat faded away...

So we played two good fun games with very similar results in a couple of hours.

We both felt this game favoured the empire, but then that's the nature of campaigns - not always a fair fight.
Really looking forward to the next game now, when it all jumps up a level with the arrival of a Von Carstein and an Arch Lector.
No game next week as my opponent is off to Las Vegas. And I'm back to Swindon.

Musketeer Miniatures Saxon Archers (3)

Almost finished now.
Just some basing material to add and base edges to paint.

Bang! (2)

A little more work on the explosions for the Keren game.
Bit more clump foliage applied with hot glue gun, then coated with cheap hairspray by way of a fixative.
Then sprayed with black, grey and finally white.
I think they look OK.

I think they may need a bit more spraying as you can see some green peeking through.
I'm not sure what colour explosions are never having been unfortunate enough to be close to a real one.
Part of me thinks they ought to contain the yellows of the earth that the game will be played over, and part of me thinks they'd be mainly black from the explosive used. This part of me also thinks that getting them to be yellowy ochrey in places might be a massive pain in the posterior.

I think I'll probably leave the decision (and any repainting) to Scrivs and James.

Now to make some big ones.

Bang!

As my contribution to the Keren game at Salute I'm going to make some explosions.
Hopefully some quite big ones.
I will be following the method outlined by the legendary Dave Andrews in WI a year or two ago. A plan only slightly flawed by having thrown the magazine away a few months ago as part of a tidy up.
Still I can remember the gist of it - base, cocktail sticks,hot glue gun, bushes. What can possibly go wrong?

So here are two "proof of concept" attempts.
The first resembling nothing so much as a furry, deformed Dalek.

The second starting to look a bit more like it.

Obviously they need the glue strands tidying up and spraying a different colour "explosions aren't green dad" as my oh so wise eight year old informed me.
Howerver i think I might be able to pull a few of these off.
And hopefully a few really big ones the size of CDs...

Musketeer Miniatures Saxon Archers (2)

Some more work on these fellas.
I do love Bill's sculpts, they're just so easy to paint.
Base coats, wash and re-highlight with basecoat in the main, though the leather has had a coat of Citadel Chestnut ink, which seems to have gone on a bit thick this time.

I've stuck to a limited palette of greens browns and off whites.
Bit more work to do, but confident they'll be ready for the big day on Sunday

Musketeer Miniatures Saxon Archers (1)

So having mildly (and inadvertently) besmirched the Musketeer Saxon archers in a previous post I thought I'd actually show how they go together.
And the answer is, really well.

Cleaning up was simple - very little flash and minimal mold lines - a few minutes with file and knife soon got rid of everything

The hands are separate and gripping the bows, this means they can be cast separately from the bodies, allowing for better casting, and with bows and hands as a single piece thus avoiding the "claw grip effect that you sometimes get with separate bows. My worry was that the hands would then be very likely to detach from the bodies. however as you can hopefully see the hand casting comes complete with a built in pin to enable secure location, rather than the weak "pimple and dimple" design that some other figures have in these instances.

Of course the vagaries of the casting process mean you can't have deep drilled out holes in the arm to receive the pin, but there is a locating mark on the wrist and a minute or so with a pin vice soon has a hole prepared. Then simply glue and slot home.

Next step was to glue them on to GW slottbases.
Were I starting this army now I'd probably use either Renedra plastic bases  or Warbases MDF ones, but when I began I worked for GW, so I lived in land where such bases grew on trees and we could all indulge in freebasing.

After that I apply a modicum of filler mixed with a little sand. Again if I were starting now I'd probably just use sand, but some of the early historicals I began with had quite thick bases and the filler helped blend them in a little. The bases on these are nice and thin so it's not really necessary.

Next step in prep is to apply a little PVA glue in patches and then sand over the PVA, just to break up the texture.

Finally I sprayed them all with Plastikote Chocolate Brown spray and neglected to take any pictures.
They were then packed in my bag and taken to Swindon - you can see a blurry image of how I started on them here.

WAB Age of Arthur Battle Report

The Saxons and their Romano British paymasters assemble

With Scrivs' Age of Arthur event less than two weeks away my chum and I convened for a game of WAB by way of warm-up/attempt to remember the rules.
As we'd neither of us played WAB for around six months, nor AoA for even longer (or ever in my opponent's case) we went with a simple 1600pt pitched battle affair.

My army included a unit of Gedrith, two units of Duguth, a smaller unit of Geoguth and an allied unit of Milites, together with my not yet finished archers. I also took an assortment of characters, possibly slightly more than permitted.
On the Welsh side of the table stood a big unit of Teulu, another big warband unit, two units of cavalry and a smattering of skirmishers.

The Welsh form up

The battle took a while to get going, my advance was slowed by the screening archers (who, predictably, failed to shoot anything) whilst the Welsh were stymied by deploying their cavalry behind a unit of close order warband.
I think my opponent was also wrestling with the nuances (or lack of same) of early Dark Age warfare. More used to the subtle manouverings of the Andalusians he failed to simply point his big unit of double hard warriors at the middle of my line and deliver his general to where he could do most damage.

 As dawn breaks the Saxons advance. Quite slowly.

 Steady chaps. Let the hairy blokes do the fighting

 'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we...

 Sneaky Welshies hiding in the woods

 Big, slow warband. Note cavalry trying to get past

Sneaky Welshies leaving the woods to chuck stones

Eventually however, the battle lines crashed together (my archers, inevitably, being swept aside) and the real work began. A challenge between our generals demonstrated once again that Welsh fury (and WS6, 3A) beats Saxon power as my general was brutally cut down before he'd unhitched his buckler. However Saxon steel (and a flank charge) ruled the combat (just) and we settled down to grind, despite the death of my general causing a smattering of flight.

 Let the taunting begin

 First battle for the archers - inevitable outcome

 Steady chaps, steady...

 Wallop!

The scrum begins

On my left flank the Duguth eventually charged the Welsh warband, but came off worst and were cut down down, whilst the Geoguth were humiliatingly run to ground by skirmishers.

 Saxon bucklers, not enough to make the difference.

 Round two hundred and fifty of this combat

 Some substitute Norman cavalry sneak around the back

The Welsh general begins to run out of bodies...

Fortunately, in the centre, numbers eventually told and despite a late charge by the Welsh cavalry (which actually gave me more combat resolution) my foes broke and fled as the game ended.

So what did we learn?
That Welsh generals are proper frisky.
Subtle manouvering is not the name of the game
Cavalry are a bit bobbins
WAB and this supplement gives a great game of soldiers.

So another evening well spent.
Just got to finish the archers off and tweak the armylist a little (I think the Geoguth may be better as two skirmishing units of nine models to go and monster opposing skirmishers than a ranked unit of sixteen).
Apart from that I'm raring to go for the event