War & Conquest - Further Trials

Last week myself and Dave K wound up the WaC machine and had another outing for our Berbers and Andalusian's for another trial game with a bit more knowledge behind us.

We went for 2500 pts a piece to give a bit more scope for troops on the field even though this was probably a bit too large a game to be likely to complete on a club night.

My line up was fairly similar to the previous game but the change was to ditch the skirmishers and add a small unit of mercenary knights plus a unit of Mercenary Spear. The Archers being added to the spear units to make up two large combined Spear/bow units, and the addition of a Captain. The General upgrade was ditched as well. Dave's line up was pretty much the same as before with the addition of more jinete types to fill out the points values but still went for the big unit of knights.

We went for clear and boring table to simulate the plains of Spain (and more importantly, keep the rule's simpler so we could concentrate on the moving and combat).

With a better understanding of the rules this time round we got much further through the game but still didn't manage a conclusion, though this was more to do with army size than rule checking this time round, though there was still a fair bit of that.

The game was much more balanced this time and produced much food for thought.

The combined arms units were quite powerful but more aligned for defence as the bows massed fire could only be used stationary so Dave pretty much avoided these keeping clear of their fire power especially the Merc's. In future I would probably field more but smaller units to give a bit more flexibility.

The small unit of Merc Knights proved to be too small to be really useful (at 6 Figs) but still held up the cavalry flank but were really too fragile.

The Berber Cavalry faired pretty well against the Knightly types causing mild casualties and remaining out of contact with their feigned flight and would hopefully draw the knights off the table or put them out of position for long enough for the game to be decided else where.

With the bulk of the Infantry not coming to blows before we ran out of time, not much was picked up here, but I did do a unsupported advance with my Guard Cavalry to see what would happen and a few points were noted here in rules terms mainly about counter charging.

Another interesting game with much food for thought, though Dave has a slightly jaded view of the rules we will have some more games to try and at least get a game to a conclusion. I find the rules fairly light and quite easy on the brain, just needing some familiarity to smooth things and certainly take out the extreme results that WaB was prone to quite nicely.

War and Conquest - Four Year hiatus

OK, its took a bit longer than I thought, a lot longer in fact. Four years in fact. That is to say when I said four years ago we would have another trial game of War and Conquest rules, I didn't think that it would take that long, but it did. But at least it finally happened.

The game was a 2000pt affair keeping things simple with my opponent of four years ago Dave K taking the Andalusians and myself the Almoravids again, probably with similar lists.

We did take a bit of time to get into the swing of things with both of us struggling to find rules we were looking for but knew existed but managed to track things down eventually.

We did struggle a bit as the first contact produced a fairly complicated melee with light troops fleeing through friends on both sides and a strong flank attack with multiple knock on effects, so this did pose a good test of the rules and a stronger test on ourselves to find the appropriate solutions to the problem. As a result we didn't get very far through the game which is probably just as well for me as things were looking pretty dicey by the end of round two.

We'll dig the rules out again (soon this time) to have another, more informed bash with the rules as they do have some nice points though as last visited they are very WABish. Looking at the army lists, I think these need to be re-visited but no tinkering with these until another couple of games under the belt.

I suspect we did get a few things wrong but thats all part of the process, we even talked about digging out WAB 2nd edition to see how that compares.

Hail Caesar on Trial

This week I have mainly been playing Hail Caeser, that is to say I had a game of Hail Caesar as a a bit of a trial as I have not managed to actually use the rules in earnest since picking them up some while ago.

Dave K at t'club had broached the topic of seeing if I fancied a game of something this week and I offered to play either a game of Hail Caesar (as I had yet to try these rules), or War & Conquest (only one previous trial game), Bad Wars (haven't used the rules in ages and I quite like them) or something eslse. All of this to aid Dave's yearly quest to play as many different rule sets in the year as possible.

Dave, having only played HC once previously plumped for these, also in the frame of mind to give them a whirl and see if his previous opinion of the rules was still in place.

Due to a bit of limited resources both in terms of figures and time available we plomped down two divisions apiece and had at it. Since this game was just a trial run through of the mechanics of the rules, we considered this to not be a problem.

Turn one, and I won the toss to start and I elected to let Dave go first in the hope that him coming forward would subsequently allow me to jump into engagement. Dave infantry division of a mixed bunch of Levy, Heavy Infantry and Crossbow screened with some skirmishers duly moved forward en-masse with a double divisional move and occupied the centre of the table. Next his cavalry division with general and a mix of Jinetes, Noble types and Heavy cavalry decided not to bother to move at all. Yes, this was the first mis-reading of the rules,..but onwards.

My go on turn one and my infantry division consisting of a unit of Black Guard, and three Berber Medium units again screen by some skirmishers made a tentative one move forward to engage.

This is where we really started to become unstuck, as my understanding of the orders allowed me to give a divisional order to my cavalry division to 'engage', and promptly super-succeded on the order roll and got a massive 'three move' move, which meant that my light skirmishing cavalry and Hasham Guard cavalry bounded across the table and 'engaged' the enemy.

As we were playing the game in a 'to see what happens' kind of way Dave decided to stand as part of his charge response. Oops. My Hasham Guard Cavalry unit completely destroyed the light cavalry unit to it's front, used its consolidation move (for want of a better term) and continued its charge into the flank of Dave's Heavy Cavalry unit of knightly types and with a decidedly one sided skuffle demolished these with the remnants fleeing to table, leaving my Heavy Cavalry right through the enemy lines at the other side of the table, all on turn one. Wow!

It was later we questioned my 'engage' order as I took this to mean different things to the different troop types involved, ie melee troops melee-ing and skirmish types skirmishing all depending on their natures. To my mind this works as you trust your troops to know what their doing and skirmish types wouldn't charge heavy cavalry, you wouldn't have to tell them that. Dave was of the mind that the order was engage so my skirmish types should have closed too, not just chucked javelins, and I can see in gaming terms this is probably true.

Next turn and the the infantry closed toward each other and a unit of Dave's levy charged my Archers and I looking at the odds thought stand and shoot and then melee should be a fairly even contest against the levy, the dice decided differently and my archers beat a hasty retreat followed by the levy. the cavalry circled each other a bit and some more discussions around failure of order throws ensued and whether this halted the command turn, which it does.

Finally the infantry clashed with Dave launching his levy against my Black Guard and this turned out to be very messy as we realised the amount that this unit could dish out and soon it was all over with time run out and Dave's forces largely in disarray, mainly due to some rash outcomes brought on by a disire to see how the rules worked.

Discussions were sought and some other players consulted post-match and the whole round of supporting units was broached and discussed and a couple of the concepts for break test especially from shooting were accepted to make no sense at all or even what they mean't.

The trial game was, in the end slightly inconclusive as a result of a low grasp of some (read most) of the niceties of the rules and a firm understanding appears to be required to get the most out of them. Certainly the extreme results in a small game like this were hugely devestating but in the large 'epic' games that they are portrayed as being for, the effect of this would be largely over-ridden by numbers though still effective. Certainly not the easiest rules to pick up and slightly frustrating, and definietly not for a monday club night pick-up game. Definitely for the arranged one off scenario, battle re-play kind of game seems to be about the mark.

The thought of trying these for the Fantasy Hail Ceasar has been broached and I might pursue this to see how they feel with imaginary armies. I suspect they may be a step too far...

War and Conquest Trial Game

With this being long overdue, myself and Dave K were looking for a game for this Monday night and I suggested a trial game using the War and Conquest rules that we had been talking about doing for ages.

We duly drew up a couple of small 1750pt army lists for El Cid period using the newly available lists from the WaC forum just to keep things simple.

As with any new rule set there was the usual checking to see if we were doing things right but almost immediately fumbled on a couple of points and sought to clarify what the rules wanted us to do. The main one which though really pretty clear on the rules was, I suspect just our luck picking an odd situation right at the beginning of our game where Dave's Jinete's charged my Tribal Skirmishers whose response was to Shoot and Flee, and subsequently Dave's cavalry failed to contact.

Now, all was fairly clear in the rules what we should do, it was just that it appeared the outcome was 'odd', in that Dave throwing how far he moved after failing to get the charge in (throwing 4") meant that he would not have got into missile range of the skirmishers javelins in the first place. We concluded that the outcome was really only a mechanism of the rules and the cavalry had in effect rallied back from their failed charge. Fair enough.

There were, after that, the usual leafing through the rules to check what we were doing was right, so things took longer than usual which was expected, but what we did notice through this process was that although some rule details may have been in odd places perhaps, the fact that the rules were very well annotated and cross referenced with page numbers etc that all in all the rule details were pretty easy to find. To a certain extent a bit of foreknowledge probably got in the way a bit as things were wrapped up sufficiently differently to cause the odd stumble in the flow of the game and a tussle through the rulebook.

We didn't get the game finished which we had expected but did get four full turns in (which is not bad for a first time go with a rule set), which was really just getting to the crunch but the effort did throw up a couple of questions to be looked up for next time and over all the game gave us the flavour and feeling of the rules, which is what we were looking for on the night.

The basic game mechanism of move/shoot/fight/combat resolution/run-away/rally was easy enough and very familiar and WAB-esque with a couple of tweeks to make it a bit different. The rolling for initiative (or Strategic Advantage as called in the rules) is a nice simple amendment which I like. The strategic advantage points for personalities/characters is interesting enough but not fully developed in the rules, though Rob does lean towards you making up uses for these yourselves. The other point here is we both felt that personalities appear to be a bit over costed relative to their effectiveness/value in the game, though it may be a bit early to really gauge their value just yet. There were a few other noticable differences but these are mainly a simplification from the WAB process

There were a few things in the rules which are not expanded upon but refer you to your particular army list for details but as there aren't many fully developed army lists, this does present a bit of a dilemma in that to get into the rules you need the Army List's as a starting point but the army lists are to be developed by the community who would only do this once engaged with the rules.

Over all we found the rules to be as expected for a first run through, it is very WAB like which we had expected, perhaps I found them more so than I had expected. Perhaps the game is more the game that WAB 2 should have been, as there are definite improvements and several points we both liked over WAB. (It still has the runaway and get destroyed and the pursuers can instantly re-join the fray mechanism from Warhammer, that I really don't like though, but that can be easily ammended).

We were both up for another trial game to add to the knowledge of the rules following a refresher on the finer points in the rules, particularly in relation to personalities, but we will wait for version 2 of the army lists along with the promised Andalusian list to flesh things out a bit before we do.

Sudanese Mercenary Spear

I've finished the first of my infantry units for my Almohad Berber army project. This is a unit of Sudanese Mercenaries.

The figures are all Artizan with particular 'mercenary', rather than tribal shields selected, to tie the unit together a bit, plus the bamboo spears have a green stuff 'tug' added to make them a bit more North African.

The standard is from a LBM transfer sheet but for some reason has darkened down quite considerably but it seems to look the part with the mercenary vibe.

Switching to a unit of cavalry next. 

Impetus - Berbers WIP vs WotRs Lancastrians

Hadn't had a game of Impetus for ages and as I had promised Marco a game a while ago we had arranged to have a game this week.

I pulled out my trusty (but up to date, unsuccessful Impetus-wise) Berbers, using the new army lists for the army from Extra Impetus 5 for the first time. Marco fielded his War of the Roses Lancastrian's, which he has started working on (having retired his Romans recently).

I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning of the game, mainly due to Marco fielding a reasonable number of Longbow A troops due with a bit of successful terrain placement I hoped to delay the inevitable by having some screening hills to prevent early shooting casualties to my likely advancing Berber Spear.

Early advances, with luck on the Berber Left flank
going their way

The game opened up with a general advance by the Berbers and Marco's light cavalry coming out to play on the Berber left flank but the Berbers avoided his charge with ease and retaliated and with meaty dice throwing quickly destroyed them.

Marco next managed to inflict a smattering of casualties on a couple of units but the Berber throws were successful in preventing losses and only received some disorder markers. The one success here was from the Light artillery shooting at my Black Guard which was home to my general and a six on their cohesion test and subsequent casualty roll meant death for my general, but a trusty 'Dice of Destiny' remembered (as I invariably forget about them) saved his bacon.

The next round or so saw my Light Cavalry, Mercenary Knights and Skirmish Javelinmen advancing on the right flank and with a successful tag-team result charged home and took out his Heavy Cavalry unit on his left flank and then quickly followed by destroying a unit of billmen on the pursuit.

At this point I would like to point out that my dice throwing for the game were particularly un-characteristic and were generally pretty good for the whole game. Marco on the other hand had some of the most appalling dice I've seen in a very long time.

To prove the point Marco managed to get a charge in into one of my annoying light Cavalry on his right flank, and into the flank of the unit and despite throwing a whopping twelve dice failed to score even a single hit and in fact my Light cavalry actually won two rounds of combat against his Knights before finally succumbing.

Stewart does the lucky dice dance to try and improve
Marco's chances

Things then went from bad to terrible for Marco as my victorious Right wing proceeded to begin to roll up his army from the side with his Artillery and a unit of Archers being the first to bite the dust.

The Berbers advance and destroy the Lancastrian left flank
and begin to roll up the enemy

With the noose tightening around his army and the Berber Infantry now charging into his surrounded troops and even getting the worse of these encounters, and the light cavalry and skirmishers moving in from the flank and rear we agreed it was really all over.

The end near's - surrounded and diminishing numbers
say's it all!

A victory to the Berbers, their first using the Impetus rules and a pretty decisive one, though a distinct lack of any good dice luck on Marco's part certainly added to this, though Marco relying very much on his archers to do damaged proved to add to his downfall too, as many of his units really played no part in the battle, whereas the Berber units all saw action and the numbers certainly told in the end.

Marco explains what he thought of his dice throwing
 to Kev and Stewart

The new army lists for the Berbers has definitely improved the army, even though there's a couple of slightly unusual omissions from the lists, like no Hasham Guard Cavalry, but generally a big improvement over the Beta lists as you would guess.

I'm now looking forward to some more games with the Berbers soon (and getting some more of the units painted up as a reward for success) and trying them out using the War & Conquest rules.

Crusader - Post Traumatic Stress

Dave K and myself, keeping things fresh in the mind had another, slightly impromptu, game of Crusader this week with a start on the forces of Aragon and Jaime the Conqueror to get a feel for the forces.

Another game where we both tried something a bit different, me trying out the Berber tactic of lining up archers in the back rank of spearmen in big chunky units and a few more light cavalry using amended army lists taking out the little errors and Dave with a huge chunk of Heavy Cavalry but just with spear (no lance). 

We both played it a bit cagey with the light cavalry skirmishing back and forth on the Berber left flank and a small (and rules illegal) unit of skirmishers managing to see off a unit of light cavalry and the Berbers getting the better in the cavalry skirmish too.

On the other flank there was a bit more jockeying for position and no one wanting to comit and end up in the open.

The Infantry centre's stayed pretty static with the Berber infantry edging forward and shooting at the Christian skirmishing bowmen and not achieving much.

I then saw the best opportunity I had to deal with Daves' cavalry (thinking then that he had lance and I didn't want him to get the charge/counter charge bonus) I charged my Hasham Guard cavalry at his Noble skirmishing types who fled and revealed the Heavy cavalry, who were 'surprised' and couldn't counter charge.

Now I knew the likely odds of success were poor but it was my best shot. I was unfortuntely right about the odds with 8 rolls needing 9's or 10's versus 12 roll's need 5's + I was really on to a hiding to nothing. And bang, I lost a stand and a bit against the HC loosing a stand (lucky that the Guard Cavalry unit was upgraded to veterans) the unit broke due to the combat resolution. On Dave's turn he charged my light cavalry had to get out the way and the automatic response for my guard cavalry was to evade which took them off the table.

I think both myself and Dave both realised pretty much at the same time a slight issue with the rules here. With Daves large Heavy Cavalry unit and the rule mechanism of completing a units whole move to completion including melee/morale results before the next unit, there was nothing on the table that could effectively fight such a large unit of knights. The knights may eventually be worn down but it would take at least half the enemy to do so.

To prove the point I tried charging the cavalry with a nearby infantry unit which outnumbered the cavalry but with similar dice needed the result was much the same. I've also noted (remembering from when we had played the rules a couple of years ago) that the use of the massed archery rules is not very affective use of points. It does give the otherwise vulnerable spearmen an effective response to light cavalry which would otherwise harass and wear them down) but it ties up a lot of points in a 50% less effective group. Archers were marginally more expensive than the spear but halved their attacks in the back rank and so couldn't do much to any serious opposition. Shooting seemed to be pretty ineffective generally usually needing 9's or 10's even when point blank, so I'm not sure about the slightly more expensive points values.

Though the unit of Heavy Cavalry was legal as far as the rules are concerned (8 stands for cavalry and 12 stands for infantry being the maximum sizes), we both thought that such units should effectively be limited to 3 or four stands (though the rules state that the minimum size for a unit should be four, mainly that for less stands the staying power of most unit types in three stands or less is practically nil, again as we found out in this game).

For post game dissection, I've come to the conclusion that as with most 'quick play' rules Crusader have a pretty small window of operations, and though the mechanics are simple and indeed quick, they really lend themselves only to a set piece scenario or set piece battle where the forces are drawn up in matched unit sizes etc. Otherwise all you need to do is have one really big unit of your best guys and charge!

Though still not finished with the Crusader rules,I'm going to give War and Conquest a go for the Malaga campaign by way of experiment and see if they might give a more naturally balanced game.

All in all it's fun going through this investigation and we haven't even started the campaign yet. 

Crusader Rules Refreshed!

Well after last weeks taster, a re-introduction to the Crusader Rule set, myself and Dave K set up for another game this time to see if we could get a whole game done in a night and put to good use the bits and bobs learnt from last week (while still fresh in the mind).

The army list were the same as last week with my Berbers vs Daves' Andalucians in a 3000pt match. With the initiative going to me, I decided to let Dave go first.

Dave had changed his deployment a bit from last time having learnt a few lessons and his first line was made up of most of his cavalry with his infantry following, and so his cavalry advanced but this time he had his general firmly holding his impetuous types in check until it was time to go. I also had a general advance, most units advancing as quickly as they could to minimize the time my exposed infantry would be exposed to Daves shooting.

The Cabelleros charge the Black Guard

The second round was one of the expected advance/shoot/run away from the Andalucian Jinetes both of which did rather well in the casualty causing front on my Berber and mercenary spear. And then at the end of his move (cause if you lose a combat you lose the initiative and your turn ends) Dave launched his knightly types (sans general) at my Black Guard. The Black Guard, with the aid of a pretty nifty general attached, made short work of the knights who promptly broke and galloped away from the fray but had managed to make a significant dent in the Guard before legging it.

The Andalucians pour in the fire on the advancing Berbers

I promptly followed up this small siccess and in my turn once again had a general advance, with the Guard charging at the retreating knights (no chance to catch them but it pushed them further to the rear and if they failed to rally the following turn may have legged it off the table). My return fire from two units of detached archers, two units of Berber Cavalry and a unit of skirmishers failed to make any headway however, only managing to cause a solitary casulaty on Daves skirmishing light infantry on his flank.

The next couple of turns proved to be much as the second turn with Dave cutting down the numbers of my infantry with his untouchable (but very accurate Jinetes) and his archers took a few more casualties off my guard as they re-formed to face the new threat. His knights did rally behind the woods but they had been taken out the fight for all intents and purposes (but their services proved to not be required in any event). My Berber Cavalry seemed to be unable to harm his Andalucian Nobles who, after a quick exchange of missile fire charged my cavalry and easily broke the first unit and then the following turn broke the second unit. His untouched infantry then charged home my depleted infantry units both of which broke.

My Guard Infantry at last charged his annoying archer unit and though at half strength easily broke them sending them running, the archers managed to take a casualty in return which was enough to drop the Guards to one stand which meant automatic dispersal. My Guard cavalry acting in reserve chased off one of his Jinete units and put a noticeable dent in one of his infantry units while my archer units continued un-inspiring nibbling at anything they could see. The Tribal Skirmishers and Daves Light Infantry continued to skirmish with each other over the wood to little affect though both units by the end had last a stand, with the Tribal types beginning to get the upper hand due to higher starting numbers.

The End Game - Still fight in the Berbers but it
doesn't look good for them.

By turn 5 or 6, (I lost count), all the routing Berbers units had rallied (bar the Mercenaries) but they were still on the table. My Berber cavalry units both rallied and promptly managed a couple of casualties forcing the Nobles to retreat. Both of Daves Infantry Units were at half strength or so (He hadn't taken off the stands as the bases were a bit large so the above picture looks slightly more busy than it should) but his cavalry force was still largely intact (if a couple of dents beginning to appear) but pretty scattered and the skirmishing in the woods very much a side show in regards the main event.

My forces were however pretty much out of luck, with all the units (bar the skirmishers and Guard Cavalry) at about half strength but in much dsarray, so even though most of my units were technically not destroyed or routed off the table it was an obvious victory to Dave.

So all in all an interesting game and one which certainly achieved it's aim in getting to refresh the rules in our minds and got a game to a conclusion (or very nearly anyway).

Daves' extraodinary luck with his dice (even he thought so) made a big difference to the eventual outcome, but also his tactics were pretty good with every unit getting into the action and the tactics he used I thought were very in keeping historically with the jintes screening his infantry until the right moment for his infantry to charge.

The game proved to be pretty quickly done too with a later start and a couple of welcome interruptions (in the form of the local press interviewing Dave and taking a couple of pictures as they were doing a feature on the club following the FDWC involvement at the NMS Viking exhibition at the weekend (Do you want to know more; Check out the Falkirk Herald soon for full story and pics) meaning a bit of a delay to the game but we still managed to get the game played out so proving it's 'quick play' tag and that we had picked up the rules sufficiently to get through a game with minimal rules checking or clarification.

The game though slightly one sided (due to Daves' un-characteristic good dice rolling) proved to be an enjoyable one and had lots of to-ing and fro-ing which gave the feel of the period nicely and though quick play produced a reasonably good 'feel'. Certainly lots of movement and change which I like.

Our next game, while the rules are still fresh in our minds' will be next month some time but with Dave playing the Aragonese, to see how they fare in a mini-preparation for the Majorca campaign thing. 

Crusader Rules Refresher

This weeks game was a quick refresher of the Crusader Rule set from Mark Sims of Crusader Miniatures and Publishing.

We have used the rules in the past and all who played them seemed to like them all told, but the whims of fate and new shinier rules (mainly Impetus) moved the interest away, so we hadn't used them for a couple of years. I however have been keen to use them again, mainly to refresh my memory of the rules and see if they would be suitable for use in the forth coming mini-campaign 'Conquest of Majorca'.

So Dave K and myself sat down earlier this week and we dusted off the rules and plumped for a 3000pt a piece barney just to refresh ourselves with the rules, with my Berbers taking on Daves' Andalucians.

The game went slowly at first, but we soon started to pick up the niceties and foibles of the rules.  With the rules and age addled memories beginning to kick in we began to remember the issues we had with the Rules which were few, but the army lists for the armies being the main  problem with a few of the stats being silly like formed troops with Javelins they couldn't use as Javelins.

The game went interestingly with Daves' Impetuous knights careening across the table in round one and pushing back in disarray a unit of Berber spear and destroying a unit of archers. And then being forced to retreat back across the table and to be caught by the avenging Guard Cavalry. The rest of the forces were just beginning to jockey for position.

We were really only starting to get the swing of things when we ran out of time, so a 'proper' game has been organised for next week to keep things fresh in the mind to have a proper test of the rules, and the army lists tweeked slightly to take out the 'silly factor'. Will keep you posted on the results.

The Conquest of Majorca

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm recently back from a short break with my wife where we were away for just a week in Majorca for a bit of late sun.

Now, I don't know about the rest of you out there but when ever I'm abroad (or even just down the road a bit) I tend to look about and delve into the local history, partly just out of interest and partly to see if there's any inspiration for further reading or research, or more pertinently gaming potential, scenario's, terrain, new periods etc etc.

The one bit of local history which I quickly picked up on with my interest in the Berbers in Spain was the fairly prominent conquest of the Balearic Isles by Jaume I of Aragon, starting with the conquest of Majorca in 1229. This was prominent largely because we were staying in Santa Ponca which is where the Aragon forces landed to begin the conquest.

Disembartion Point Monument

The campaign to conquer the Balearic Isles lasted several years and the conquest of Majorca lasted several months mainly due to the siege of the Medina (now Palma) but there were at least three engagements including the siege, the largest set piece being near Santa Ponca.

The campaign and it's various goings on are pretty well documented, as indeed are the whole reconquest campaigns of Jaume I along the eastern coast of Spain, and a good bit of reading for this subject is 'The Book of Deeds of James I; A Translation of the Medieval Catalan' (which you can read on Google books).

The whole checking out of this bit of history quickly merged into an idea for a small campaign for my Almohad Berbers pitting themselves and defending their homeland against the infidel invader.

The good thing about this campaign idea is that it is pretty compact and self contained and could be played out over maybe three or four games and involves a reasonably limited number of troops on both sides.

A slightly harder thing to figure out is the 'victory' conditions for both sides, with the end result being if not a foregone conclusion, then at least a likely conclusion of the Aragon forces winning out against the Almohads. The main consideration here is likely to be time, so I think I'll try and base the objectives around a timescale, the Almohads trying to delay the progress of the Aragonese forces and the they trying to win out quickly.

A bit of reading up is still required for this little side project to take off but gives a bit of a direction for me and my on-going Berbers, so I'll do a bit more reading and jot down some ideas and see if this idea has got some legs on it.

Impetus; Berbers vs Late Romans

It's been a while, but my game of the week this week was what turned out to be a bit of a re-fresher course for Impetus.

I trotted out my slightly altered list of Berbers (using the Later Andalusians Beta List) against Kev and his newly painted Late Romans.

Since more a reminder to the rules, we kept the table simple and played a straight forward pitched battle.

I knew the game would be a tough one for my Berbers being a pretty light force and up against lots of FP infantry with Shortbow A support and some Impetuous Heavy Cavalry the forces VDs pointed out the difference with my force at 27 for 300pts and Kevs at around 34 I think, a small but significant edge.

We played the game un-subtly and generally put the hammer down and laid into each other. The game was interesting and indeed enjoyable and perhaps more to the point, though provoking with several lessons learnt on both sides.

My medium and light cavalry surprised us both and managed to destroy his general and take his other two units of heavy cavalry down to a wound a piece. My Infantry was however outnumbered and pretty descively out classed but went down fighting.

In the end, with a couple of units gone on the flanks but my general and the other infantry in the centre being destroyed I reach the army break point and we called it a day with Kevs' Late Romans the victors and in what appeared at first glance a final walk over despite early swearing from Kev as his General and other cavalry managed to get a good doing from some riff-raff. However, if the final shooting from some light cavalry had just scored a couple of hits on his cavalry then he would have lost another 6 or so Vioctory points and so would have been in a pretty shaky position too.

A few points on army composition did come out of the game for us both, with Kev thinking about how exposed his general is in a single unit of bodyguard cavalry and me deciding (probably just taken me a while) that skirmish screen is really a waste of points, so will give the supporting archers behind spear a bit of a go.

Light Cavalry is definitely very powerful in the game, possibly un-realistically so, but I'm not tempted to power game and have lots of them charging about the table. I'm going to keep the historical balance in the force and try to see if I can develop the force into a game winner. We'll see.

As a slight aside, the post game discussion led to us deciding to try the same game but using the Crusader Rules to see how they compare. To date they are the rule set that my Berbers have had any noticeable success in. We'll see how they fare up against some Romans soon, with a report to follow of course.

Impetus - Berbers vs Spanish

Another game of Impetus and a bit of practice to get to know the rules better before the first leg of the Scottish Impetus Championships which I'm going to take part in, as is Dave K my adversary for the evening, who is also organising the event.

Initial Deployments

I fielded the army I'm going to use which is my Berbers (masquerading under the Later Andalusians beta list as it's a slightly better list) and Dave used his El Cid Spanish (again using the beta list which for 300pts was almost all compulsories) for a historical match.

Mid game and just getting interesting

As you can see, my Berber's still haven't seen much paint over the last month that I'd planned to do, and are unlikely now to get finished for the competition. I'll see what I can get done before then though.

The game was more about getting more familiar with the rules as we are finding that though the rules are enjoyable, they do have a pretty steep learning curve in terms of getting the system and the rules fixed in your mind. This is not helped by the layout which is pretty different from most other rule sets I've seen for a number of years, and the pretty constant amendments, but we're getting there.

The game turned out to be a pretty slow affair as we quickly got into 'checking the rules' mode for various movement issues and then on through the rules. We did manage to get through five turns each and as we were both playing it canny, the game was really only getting to the interesting bit when we had to pack up.

The Cid charges forth

So in terms of the game it really was only a practice and getting to know the rules event and this it did as several points were picked up and several issues with my army list were high-lighted so all good really and I'm feeling I like the rules more after the game rather than any less.

The game itself was interesting with the Berber Cavalry keeping the flanks covered until right at the end when two rubbish cohesion tests in a row meant that the two units on the left flank disappeared. The infantry in the centre seemed to be doing ok while advancing cautiously against Dave's Spanish who were doing the same only slighlty slower. His impetuous knights though scary didn't seem to be doing well on either flank and in the centre the man himself The Cid charged into the right of the Berber line and that was where we left it when really the game was just getting to the interesting bit.

End of round five and end of game

All in all an education rather than a pleasure, but useful none the less. The Impetus rules are certainly gaining a particular popularity at the club at the moment with even a couple of seasoned fantasy/sci-fi players getting into it, so not a bad thing, and should provide a considerable number of opponents in the future.

The rules I think seem to suit a competition style of play and definitely give a more 'ordered' type of game in comparison to say WAB, or the newer HC or WaC and can be a bit linear in terms of movement.

I do enjoy playing the rules but I don't see myself abandoning the other rule sets just yet.

Impetus Bash - The Berber WIP take on Crusaders

This weeks game was part of a multi-player Impetus practice event at the club organised by Dax in which eight or so of us had a game of Impetus with most of the participants using armies kindly supplied (almost to order) by Dax himself and he offered sage advice to those of us (ie pretty much all of us) into the niceties of the rules and didn't get a game himself!

I brought along my very much WIP Berber to the fray and was pitted against some very spiffy Crusaders who were under the able command of Chuck.

Med Cavalry get peppered by XBow A

As we were just getting to know the rules better rather any serious 'gaming' the troops were plonked down on the table and they set to.

Chucks dice prooved to be pretty vicious through the early part of the game getting initiative in all but one turn and he did throw a lot of sixes in combat, ouch, though his luck did begin to turn towards the end of the game. He was fairly cautious to begin with with a slow advance with his infantry and only taking on my Light Cavalry and Mercenary Knights on his left keeping back his general and a passle of knights as a reserve. Only on his right did he throw cation to the wind and send a solitary unit of turcomen archers rushing forward to disorganise my medium cavalry (which he did in spades) and when I did get to charge him and destroy him he still managed to disorganise and take three casualties off one unit. Ouch.

Knights about to charge

His Impetuous Knights on his left held in check by being opportunity  were let loose and did manage to take out one of my Light Cavalry but took a little damage in the process. His two other units charging into my Christian Knights were bounced repeatedly and driven back in no uncertain fashion.

The Knights get bounced

We soon realised the the screening skirmishers were unlikely, neigh impossible to actually hurt each other so after the tussle on the flanks between the cavalry and the rest of my medium cavalry getting biffed about by nasty VBU 4 crossbow A, I decided that it was likely that my infantry in these rules were likely to be my best asset the same as all the other rules I've tried, and so it proved to be with my Black Guard and associated others leaping forward and giving his infantry a damn good bloody nose.

A good to and fro melee was developing in the centre with the Berber beginning to get the best of it when my Black Guard (with general in tow) who had driven all before them had a minor reverse at the end of a good run of combat, and of course I threw a six (you knew it was coming didn't you). To see his fate I promptly threw double six plus three - instantly killed and army fizzles into nothingness result. So ended the battle in much hilarity and general derision, totally forgetting about the dice of destiny I had put aside for just that event. In truth I think the Crusaders would have triumphed in the end by shear weight on numbers. (Aren't the points system in Impetus odd BTW?) All in all a good fun game with lots learnt.

Only a few actual losses on either side but everybody hurts

The other games went well too with I think (but don't quote me) Palmyran vs Anglo-Dane, Late Roman vs Something all Cavalry and I totally missed what the other game was. There was the other goings on the night as usual but attention was on Impetus on the night.

Impetus games to the fore

Late Romans take on lots of horsey people

Unknown armies clash (but there's elephants!)

AngloDanes vs Palmyran

Good fun on the knight and thanks to Dax for organising the fun. No doubt more Impetus will ensue soon and I'll be getting more progress done on my Berbers.