Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Holiday painting

Here's what I painted over the Thanksgiving break:
Inarr Redhand and his bodyguard, for SAGA.
reverse
Inarr's Hirsir
15mm Bugbears from Splintered Light, a pleasure to paint.
Some troops and tanks for Robofire! or another SciFi rules set
Tanks are Mechwarrior repaints
Finally, Dystopian Wars Prussian flyers.
Weird how I kept getting progressively smaller, huh?






Friday, November 18, 2011

the Battle of Derlopp

I am but  mere chronicler of these sad times. As Unkerlant stretches into its second year of war for Succession, our focus shifts to the northeast, where duchy of Zlobenia has invaded the Principality of Franistover.
The first year of the war, Franistover and Zlobenia, centuries old rivals, marched back and forth across each other territories, even capturing each other's capitals, but to little effect, other than the starvation of their subjects.
Hoping to finish Franistover in one fell swoop, Duke Sigmund massed the forces of Zlobenia on the border, largely undetected due to the Spring torrential rains. Meanwhile, Prince Adalbert, despite his well earned nickname "Addle-brained", had the same idea. When the weather let up, both sides found themselves facing each other outside the border town of Derlopp, ancestral home of Otto Von Derlopp, colonel of Zlobenia's own Derlopp Grenadiers.
After much posturing and redressing of lines, the battle didn't start until well into the afternoon. Prince Adalbert, found of food and drink spent too much time arguing with his head chef over the menu for dinner, while Duke Sigmund was discussing strategy with his many foreign advisors. A task which required more than half a dozen translators.
Franistover's cavalry, never good due to their homeland's mountainous terrain, operating on the wings charged forth with elan. The infantry, however, especially the guards charged with taking the town, dallied behind.
Across the field, Zlobenian troops, drilled by the latest European officers, marched steadily forward in parade ground percision.
Neither side made the attempt to cross the river to the north and try an end around flanking move. Such a bold move is perhaps beyond the scope of most Unkerlantan generals.
One the Franistover right, the hard charging Cuirassiers collided with their Zlobenian counterparts, including the much vaunted Ducal Horse Grenadiers. Still smarting from their beating by the Franistover 1st Dragoons in a previous outting, the Horse Grenadiers were itching to prove their standing as the elite of Unkerlantan cavalry. Little did they know, their rivals were among the fight.
The fight was terrible. Franistover's horse was driven back, but managed to give out worse than they got. It was when the Zlobenians counter attacked, that the fight became truly bloody.
Meanwhile, in the center, Zlobenian troops captured the town, just moments before the Franistover guard units.Troops in the town began peppering the Frannies to little effect.
The regu;ar Franistover regiments, however, came under increasingly accurate Zlob artillery fire. The 1st regiment, the Bakers Legion (literally made up of the Royal Baking Corps) took an especially brutal beating.
To the north a similar cavalry battle was playing out. Both sides see sawed.
The battle raged. On the slopes outside Derlopp, Prince Adalbert's Loyal Mountaineers poured volley after volley into the Derlopp Grenadiers. They died outside their own walls in droves.
On the southern flanks, Frainstover cavalry was getting the worst of it, but not before routing the Ducal Horse in shame once more. Soon, only the 1st Franistover Dragoons held the flank.
On the opposite side, Prince Adalbert's forces were faring better. Not only had the effectively smashed the Zlobenian Horse, but his infantry was making gains. Night was falling.
There was a pause in the fighting. Neither side could seem to get the their troops motivated for one last push. The infantry battles in the middle were evolving into slow grinds, troops falling in bits and pieces.
Finally, Frainstover was able to get the upper hand in the north. As the sun went down, more Zlobenian troops were falling than Frannies. Duke Sigmund watched in horror as his regiments disssolved, even given up Derlopp.
Devoid of cavalry, Zlobenian troops were hunted into the night by victorious Franistover dragoons. The Duke himself barely avoiding capture.
Prince Adalbert would have his grand dinner, albeit a little late, in the Zlobenian town of Derlopp.
I was good. Once again, Might & Reason provided a period feel in a short time withe fun results. I apologize for the distinct lack of miniatures.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Mini-Basement-Con

The Baroness left for a gathering of the lady nobility this weekend, so I put on a mini version of Basement-Con. Thursday and Friday were mostly boardgames so I pulled out the stops for a GASLIGHT mega-battle Saturday night.
Here's the pictures:
a "Spider" walks through the trees....
Franco-British forces push towards the bridge

Clankers advance towards the farmhouse

French marines find a ford, while the Le Roue blocks the bridge

Skirmish on the flank

One of the Empress's Own Elite Lady Hussars brings the Roue to a halt.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Another nice review of Fistful of Lead


from Wargame Downloads:
"Delightfully concise and simple, this game manages to cover all the rules you will need to play an entertaining and satisfactory tactical wild west wargame. FoL is quick to learn, entertaining to read, and a breeze to house-rule and expand."
Though my Wild West rules have been out for a while, its always nice to hear someone new discovering them and liking them.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Jumping on the Saga bandwagon

I loves me my Dark Ages. Dunno why. Maybe it was watching Kirk Douglas in "the Vikings", or Chuck Heston in "the Warlord". Or all those Bernard Cornwell books I keep reading.
Whatever the cause, you can't swing a stick in the Wargaming Blogosphere with hitting "Saga". After reading countless reviews, I broke down and ordered it.
It's like a boardgame with it's Battleboards where all the strategy is done. It's like a traditional wargame. Its simple but has depth. I'm sold, and with the low number (by wargame's standards) of minis involved, I'm already envisioning new factions. Crusader just came out with some Dark Age Scots. Hello Old Glory 40% Discount!

Friday, November 4, 2011

Hail Caesar Renaissance playtest

First of all, let me apologize for the lack of pictures. It was a playtest, so the terrain was pretty sparse. Also, I'm in the process of repainting/rebasing for this playtest, so I hard to improvise on troops and commanders (thus the War of the Roses command stands).
As a background let me say, this is one of favorite periods. I've been waiting for just the right rules for these guys for literally, years. I've tried every wargames rules set there is for Renaissance (yes, I have. So don't throw out suggestions). Playing Black Powder really got me jazzed when I saw Hail Caesar.
To me, Renaissance is really Ancients with gunpowder. Most generals of the day had been studying ancient texts and were trying to recreate the legions  and phalanxes of years gone by. I wanted a set of rules where I could build the units the way I thought they should look. I don't like counting figures, or a ton of modifiers. I'm getting old, so I like simple, too. HC did it for me.
I've read the rules 3 times but never played, so of course we got things wrong, but there was a lot of right in here too.
The scenario was a fairly even match up between Neopolitan Spanish and the French. The forces were fairly small, 4 commands a side. Each side had two commanders with a unit of Heavy Cavalry (rated as cataphracts) and a mounted crossbow/arquebus unit (rated as missile armed light cav). One general had artillery, a pike unit, and two open order crossbow/arquebus units. The final commander on each side had two pike units and two crossbow.
There were surprisingly few 3 move manuevers, so the sides moved slowly at each other. Our supreme leader (even with a reroll) couldn't get the center forward. The heavy cav on one flank clashed and after a quick see-saw had my Gendarmes running for the hills. On the other flank, our mounted bows kept the enemy tied up all night.
Over all, everybody fought as they should. Regular units that didn't get out the way got smahed by the pike blocks. The pikes scrummed for a bit, til one broke. I gave the pikes a short range attack to simulate the arquebus skirmishers many used, and it worked great. In the future, I might let them detach such units to act as Forlorn Hopes. I'm very pleased with the results. Once everyone got the hang of it, the game went really quick. The French got chased off the field, but just barely.
Huge, huge thumbs up.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

This is Halloween!

So. A zombie business woman, a Necromancer and a Mexican superhero walk into a bar...

Enter the Galactic Arena!

Sorry for the delay from last Thursday's usual battle report. I've been working on a set of fantasy gladiator rules for awhile. Something easy enough for a convention, but good enough to hold up for one of or regular Thursday night games.
So, I had the rules, but no arena. Using 2 inch thick pink foam, I cut 6 x 6 inch pieces. Glued those to a same size foam core base.I scribed in one inch squares, added cracks, painted black and dry brushed grey. I repeated this 15 more times to create a 2 foot by 2 foot geomorphic arena, that can be easily reconfigured over and over. Some tiles have walls, some pits or crevasses. I still have to add some flavor: different color tiles here and there. Moss, blood and most of all sludge or water for the pits.
I used some marines I had laying around and painted them up quick for test run. This made it ore SciFi than fantasy. There were "power ups" all around. Players could land on them and had a 50/50 chance or grabbing upgrades, ammo or armor to their gladiator, from the cards I made. This served as a way to keep the players from sitting in one place blasting away. I also limited the ranges and gave them limited ammo. I added simple teleporters and viola!
It was great !
Things I'm adding:
Traps. Now when you land on an upgrade, there's a chance it's a trap.
Drones. Eliminated players can still screw with the living by piloting little bombots around.
The list goes on!