Warhammer! It's alive!

For some reason General Ballroom has decide to spend the next few wargaming evenings locked in a sweaty room wrestling on a mat with someone called Second Dan.
More masculine than playing with soldiers he reckons.

So Steve and I seized on the chance to play some Warhammer. Hurrah!

All a bit rushed and ill-prepared but Steve picked Empire and so I naturally went for the classic greenskin match-up.

Pitched battle was the name of the game and Steve, his plethora of war machines already drawing a bead on green flesh, castled up in one corner of the board. I just lined my men up in a pleasing way to the eye. Game on.

 Night Goblins - horde style

 A bunch of utter grunts

 Like a blue and yellow hedgehog

The Empire began the game by firing a lot, and mainly killing Night Goblins.

 Bang, bang etc.

Displaying traditional Orcy kunnin' and no-wots my boys ran at the enemy yelling Waaagh!

 Waaagh!

The chariots squeaked forward.

 Fewer gobbos than before. Thanks for that Mr Mortar

The Empire Wizard cast some lightning and gave himself a blinding headache

 Ow, me noggin!

I thought this flag was an Orcy Grin, turns out its a boat (must get my eyes tested). Because what you most want when you're out at sea is full plate armour.

 Arrr, brave shipmates we in our heavy,rusty, non-boyant armour!

Anyway by this time the Orc hammer had fallen and the centre was taking a bit of a pounding.

Errrrm, you are going to hold them, aren't you chaps...?

It was at this point the vulnerable positioning of the Empire wizard began to dawn on Stephen.

Meanwhile Clive the Giant couldn't quite get to fighting as the spearmen had first bumped in to Nubbinz.

 Boing, boing STAB!

Who soon fled.

 Boingboingboingboingboing!

And so Clive could begin wailing on spearmen.

 Hur, hur, squishy!

Assisted by both chariots

Rumble, squak,clatter!

Inevitable I flubbed this completely. A mighty four impact hits caused a single casualty and a boar killed another. Clive himself only just managed to kill three and was then turned into a pin cushion by the pikemen.

 Can't even fall the right way! What do I pay you for?

It continued to go better in the centre where the trolls ate some militia, the wizard, a rocket launcher (ow, bangy!) and then the militia again.

Over on the right some halbardiers fancied their chances against the squig herd. And then did the maths and wished they hadn't thought this was a good plan.

 Aaagh! So. Many.Teeth!

Flushed from their giant toppling antics the spearmen hunted Nubbinz down and popped his squig (not a euphemism)

Let him have it!

At this point we realised not much of interest was going to happen over the remaining turns. The Trolls and boars would maybe mop up another warmachine each, but the squig herd was too far (and too flimsy) to catch the Greatswords and the spear unit was largely undamaged. Our armies had, essentially passed through one another - so we each claimed a draw.

In the absence of a clear winner the only thing to do was to declare Warhammer the winner.
Hurrah! Proper soldiers and fun and larks.
Hopefully we'll get some more of this in whilst General B is indisposed.

What to play..?

All has not been harmony and lightness recently within the Sherwood Hucknall and Ilkeston Team. Like a less childish and petty version of the internal strife playing out in the Labour Party we are riven by the aftershocks of the death of Warhammer and the birth of Age of Sigmar.

Firmly in the AoS corner is General Ballroom, who is merrily rebasing his Empire army onto round bases and refusing to countenance any 8th Edition tomfoolery.

General B's empire soldiers on proper square bases (playing AoS)

The polar opposite of this is me, with all my soldiers remaining resolutely square based and no truck with the flimsy construct that is AoS.

See, square is better

In the middle is Stephen, who just wants to play soldiers.
Except that’s not completely true, he wants to play big battles. With seven or more ranked up units on each side - proper wargaming, none of your skirmish malarkey.

What Steve likes to see

So Steve and I can play WFB and Steve and General B can play AoS, but all three of us can’t get our Games Workshop soldiers out at the same time.

Happier times when I was still countenancing AoS

You may well ask why I don’t just give up and play AoS? I’ve asked myself that and I think the reasons are twofold. Firstly if I’m using my Warhammer models I want to play Warhammer set in the Warhammer world with ranked up units fighting for the love of Warhammer. And AoS isn’t those things. Part (indeed possibly most) of my love for WFB was tied up with the background and the stories, and those stories don’t include Dwarfs on Lizards, Sigmarines or even Empire Men on round bases.
Secondly if I want to play a fantasy skirmish games I have plenty of those available that either I already know how to play (Mordheim, LotR, Frostgrave) enjoy the background for (same) or that are just easier and quicker to learn and play (Dragon Rampant). Stephen and I often joke that if we were starting now we’d never be able to learn WFB from scratch (and in fact our games use a kind of mish-mash of the most recent rules mixed with generous misremembering’s of previous editions) and AoS for me is the same – don’t be fooled by the “only four pages of rules” lies -  to learn the additional rules, synergies and nuances of AoS is a pretty steep learning curve and I’m too old and curmudgeonly to try.

So we’ve been dabbling with various skirmish alternatives. T&T went well, Congo is planned Sharp Practice we were unable to master before General B’s attention wandered to pastures new.
However, fun and diverting though these are, I’m sort of with Steve on this. I like playing big battles with proper units all ranked up and marching steadily toward one another to the beat of fife and drum. Skirmish games are a bit like McDonalds – briefly satisfying, but you want something more substantial soon after - and they generally fail Steve’s ‘Desert Island Test’ - if you could only play one game for the rest of your life would this be that game? I have a suspicion that with some narrative or campaign behind them they’d feel richer and I’m going to try and introduce that when we get round to TMWWBK but in isolation they’re not hitting the spot at the moment.

Short lived Sharp Practice

So why not just play big battles then I hear you cry gentle readers (thank you both)? Herein lies the other challenge. Steve paints nice miniatures and he paints them fast. General Ballroom paints beautiful models but he paints them slow. Even slower since he had a stroke. And I paint less nice models than either of them quite slowly. But faster than General B.

So to get an army for WAB or Hail Caesar we have a problem. Steve has the speed and determination to crank one of those out over a few months. I *can* do it but realistically we’re looking at a year or more with at least one distraction/diversion in between and the chances of Gen B painting more than about 40 figures of a single type are, I think even he’d admit, pretty small.

I'd like an army of these. There's slim chance of me painting one, though

And so we’re a bit stuck. Stephen is toying with painting both sides for WotR but that feels a big ask and by his own admission he’ll get bored once one force is out of the way. We’ve talked about WAB Romans versus something or other, but even combining our efforts I doubt Gen B and I have the stamina and focus to work on one side quickly enough to match Stephen’s speed.

I’m considering re-starting my stalled 28mm Late Roman force – I have all the Saxons painted and if I can provide both sides we could start with some Dux Bellorum and then work on up to WAB or To the Strongest (which the cool kids like James and Scrivs seem to enjoy).

Whatever happens, I’m sure we’ll muddle through to something over the coming months – even if it’s just some more drinking and being rude to one another.

Pendraken Late Roman Cavalry

Finished off three stands of 10mm Pendraken Late Roman cavalry to add to my Dux Bellorum forces.
These will be Ordinary Riders in the rules.

Old Glory Pathans (5)

Nearly there now, just 12 more to go...

Must get the last few done, then it's off to see Nick Northstar and buy the TMWWBK book

Wee Saxon Cavalry

A couple of stands of Magister Militum 10mm Saxon cavalry.
Yes I know the jury is at best "divided" on the existence/use of cavalry by the Saxons. Divided in the sense that the majority of people don't think they had any. However the Dux Bellorum rules allow you to have some. As did the Warmaster rules. As did the WAB Shieldwall rules and as this army started off as an attempt to recreate my 28mm WAB army for 10MM Warmaster I have had a bag of these lying around for years and they've been on the painting stick for at least a couple of years.

As a break from NWF I painted them up this weekend.
I feel the urge to play some Dark Age stuff soon so have added a few Pendraken Late Romans to the painting queue in an attempt to finish/restart my Dux Bellorum in 10mm project and campaign. Or possibly for another game of One Hour Wargames.
They're actually not terribly good models (the Pendraken Romans are much nicer) and they're for the later Saxon period - I think they're supposed to be Huscarls with big Dane Axes and large shields - but I don't care - they're done and at this scale no-one will ever notice. Two units is at least one unit larger than I'm really likely to use - and probably two units larger most of the time.

As a final indignity, just as the static grass was drying I found a bag of 40mmx30mm bases, which is what Dux Bell cavalry at this scale are *supposed* to be based on. Oh well, at least the Late Romans will be on the correct size.

Old Glory Pathans (4)

Nine more (there were ten, but one of them slipped away from the painting queue and hid. Dashed wily these chaps) Old Glory Pathans.
Nice and easy to paint simply. But not as nice as the Artizan ones. But, on the other hand cheaper than the Artizan ones.

Dan Mersey author of Tim Wubbuk  says Northstar actually have stock of the book. Better crack on with the rest of these then....

AWI with Ahistorian

This week wargaming chum Matt invited me over to his place for an AWI game.
Matt's just moved so this was a chance to show off his gaming room.
He's also playtesting some rules of his own devising Tree of Liberty and I suspect I was drafted in as the "lowest common denominator" tester - if I can understand it they must be really nice and simple.
Now although I have read a book about the AWI and last year I helped Steve Jones at Salute with his mighty 28mm display game it's not really a period I can claim much, or indeed any, real knowledge of.
However the rules are nice and simple to understand - they're also very short at just two pages. Short and simple - a bit like me - this was going to be fine.

Matt set everything up and I made the dread confession that I'd never actually played a 15mm game before. It's a scale I've never quite got my head around - my one attempt at painting some 15mm ECW ended in failure as I tried to lavish the same level of detail on as I applied to 28mm models.
Matt, being a generous soul forgave me my sins and we were able to get on with the game.

I declared my preference for the righteous redocats meaning Matt would be forced to field the perfidious American forces.

The British deployed in column along the road, with the Colonial terrorists revolutionaries arrayed along the fences

Before the game Matt had advised me to avoid using single units to charge off ahead of any support. Especially elite units as it was easy to get carried away.

Here we see the Fusiliers which I used quite brilliantly to illustrate his point.

After initial success they were thrown back into the river and fled the scene. Oh.

The Colonial rebels largely hung out on the fence line on the left, whilst their militia riflemen spread out along the ridge.

A firefight broke out across the stream - meanwhile my second line deployed ready to storm the wheat field.

Having learned the lesson of the Fusiliers I wisely sent some support up behind them.

This time British success on the wooded ridge was more enduring.

The Scots in particular made bloody work of the riflemen.

After an initial reverse the British infantry hurled themselves into the cornfield and began to drive off rebellious Marylanders

In the meantime cavalry had arrived in support of the British column.

The Scots, their danders clearly up, ploughed through three units of militia before falling on some colonial regulars and driving them off with tails between their legs as well!

And with that the craven Colonials melted away into the American wilderness.

I very much enjoyed this. The basics of the rules were very simple and gave what felt like a historical result and awarded historical play (at least as far as my limuited knowledge understands things).
The mechanics of combat rely on dice multiples, which I never quite got my head around in this game, but they were easy to look up each time - probably something that would come after only a few plays.

All in all a very pleasant evening with good company and a great looking table and models.
Matt is hoping the rules will be up for sale in the not too distant future.