The Flood Plain Wash Out

Start of the battle on the Flood Plain

This weeks club night saw the start of an occasional Mordheim Campaign with the 'Flood Plain' scenario from the Nemisis Crown supplement.


The protagonists were my Gunnery School cadets, Dave's Scottish flavour Middenheimers, Iain's Skaven, Ken's Mercenaries, and Kev's Reiklander's, fighting over a flooded battlefield which slowed down movement and if you fell knocked down or stunned meant you might drown as an added hazard.


An interesting start to the campaign, albeit a bit slow, as we needed to refresh our memories for the rules, but we soon got into the swing of things. My Cadets took an early bath and after a hefty tussle between the humans, Kev's Reiklander's took the honours.


A new warband to paint up for next time and some interesting modelling opportunities so maybe a bit of spit and polish on the cadets uniforms might mean a better showing next outing.

Caught Napping!

Dawn Raid Deployment with the Empire packed on the Left Flank

Once again the Empire troops of Baron Sidle rode out to do battle in the Clubs on going Campaign. Since the last outing against the Dark Elves was a defeat (ie didn't Capture/keep the Watchtower) the Empire was at a disadvantage for our next outing and Kev decided on 'Dawn Raid' scenario with only the Empire on the random deployment.


Ended up the Empires deployment wasn't too bad but certainly not ideal. The game started off promising enough with an exchange of fire from the two Fast Cavalry units the the Shades with the Pistoliers doing a bit of damage. the plan went well enough until the Empire Greatswords met the enemy general with his large complement of Corsairs and though they were expected to die bravely prooved not even to be the speed bump they were ment to be and the corsairs defeated , broke, pursued caught, and over-ran into my knights and making a mess of them.


Up shot of it all was the the shear number of attacks, combat and missle was over-whelming for the empire and although the flaggellants made a considerable mess of the Dark Elf Witches the most anyone has done to date, the empire was were completely defeated. Only some handgunners and the general and a couple of knights made it off the table.


One new rule that the implications of hadn't been noted before was that a Battle Standard Bearer in a unit that breaks, stands and dies on the spot so in breaking you lose an additional model, a character and his standard so even if the unit rallies, it is minus that character. Ouch!


The next outing is the Empire rallying back to the village of Almsburg tp defend it from the raiding Dark Elves. So far the Empire has not done well, so an uphill challenge.

End Game - End of Rd 4 and no Empire troops to be seen!

Invasion!

Starting positions on 8' x 6' table for Invasion Scenario

With the WHFBs Campaign gathering momentum my Empire forces under Baron Sidle had their next outing close on the heels of the last against Ians' dread Ogres. This time the Invasion scenario from the 8th Ed rule book with my empire stoutly defending their homeland against the invading horde of Ogres.


With Ian recycling his destroyed core troops I thought it was going to be an uphill struggle and it proved to be a pretty much that. Not helped by some very cowardly Swordsmen, a totally ineffectual Cannon and Greatswords. Once again the mighty Handgunners, Pistoliers and Flaggellants managed to save the day (or at least save face) and in the closing turn managed to grab a table quarter and deny a fortified position to clinch a 2 all draw, before the clock beat us once again.


A very enjoyable game with lots of ups and downs, and it now means the next game against the Ogres will be on an even footing.....which is nice.

Final setup with more Ogres piling on and the Empire just standing and no more.

Next up against the Baron is the next rematch against the Dark Elves in a Dawn Raid scenario.


Other forces joining the campaign are a force of High Elves commanded by Dave B, Chaos horde from Dave K, another Choas horde from Al, and Ians Orciness with more to follow. Should be pretty messy all in all.


If you want to read the full story of the Barons stalwart defence of the northern borders of Averland, check out the ongoing story here.

All Along the Watchtower

Dark Elves kick off and advance to the tower

This weeks club game was the first (hopefully of many) of the new WHFB campaign that the club is running.
The game being the Watchtower scenario from the rule book, pitting my doughty Empire hero's, being ably assisted by Dave K (who has been drawn to the dark side of Fantasy gaming) against Kevs' wicked and cowardly Dark Elves in a spritely 1500pt game.
Things started off pretty poorly for the Empire, with the Dark Elves starting play as I was defending the watchtower the Dark Riders advanced, shot my Pistoliers to bits who (quite rightly fled) and my Light Cavalry was shot up by the dastardly Shades skulking in the village and a horde of crossbow bolts even took out a couple of crossbowmen, although the Witches charge to the tower wasn't very enthusiastic and they ended up advancing two inches on a failed charge.
Round two and three went pretty badly two with the destruction of the unit of Halberdiers in the tower in one round all to a whopping 22 casualties dished out by the Witches when they did manage to reach the tower, my Pistoliers and Light Cavalry being out shot by the Shades and destroyed, my Swordsmen with wizard being run down by the Corsairs and one unit of Knights failing to make a dent on the crossbows and being cut down to a man.
Honour was however satisfied by the general Baron Sidle and his Knights who saw off the Dark Riders and then returned to destroy the Corsairs and the enemy general, and the Crossbows managed to do what the mighty Knights failed to do and caused the DE Crossbows with their attendant harridan to flee for their lives in Round four.

Battlefield at the end of play, pretty sparce

At the end of Round Four with nothing the Empire could do to dislodge the Witches from the Watchtower with only the General, BSB and Preceptor and a unit of Crossbows and a unit of Handgunners, the brave survivors decided to live to fight another day and grudgingly allowed the dark ones to retain the tower, for the moment....
Good if pretty brutal game with really only the General and his attendant Knights getting any glory from an otherwise poor showing, and again the changes to the Warhammer rules coming to the fore with the Dark Elves putting down a pretty devistating amount of fire power and followed by an equal amount of attacks in close combat, definitely an improvement for them since the last edition. Again I like the changes to the rules and, with admittedly only a couple of games so far, like the feel much more than the last edition, much more fun games.


The next steps in the campaign will see the Baron pitting his troops against his old adversary in the form of the Ogres and then again against the Dark Elves once again but in the Dawn Raid scenario, at a disadvantage having lost the first round. A part of the next step will be to get some troops painted.

The Empire Strikes Back.....Almost

This weeks club game was a return to Warhammer Fantasy after at least a year.


With the release of the 8th Edition late last year, there has been quite an upsurge of people returning to the game, certainly going by what I've read on the Interweb, and our club is no different. With an up and coming club campaign in the offing I thought it a good idea to get my hand in and try the new rules.

Ians Ogres advance towards the Empire line in Rd 1

Ian offered to give me a game against his Ogres. I've not got a good track record against this army being 1 - 3 but you never know I thought, maybe today.


Anyway, being fresh to the 8th Ed rules, there were a number of surprises awaiting for me through the process of the game before the clock forced an end to the game, most of which I found entertaining (though my troops maybe disagree). The sheer number of attacks that the Ogres can now throw at you under the new rules being the most heinous. All in all I did like the changes for the most part but I'll need a couple of games to pick up all the real meaning of some of them.


The Empire behaved themselves and put up a spirited defence against Ians Ogres and held him   to a draw but with the advantage with the Empire, mainly due to numbers.

Near end game (clock wise) with the Empire numbers and a STank beginning to tell.

Enjoyed the game and I am now looking forward to my first game in the Campaign against Kev's Dark Elves.


The whole thing has given me some impetus to get back to painting my Empire hordes (or at least some of them) so flaggelants and knights will be next on the agenda.

Bad War - New Rule Set

This weeks club game was a quick test game of the new(ish) Renaissance rules from AB One Games called Bad War.

The basic rule set covers the Italian Wars and the 16th Century generally and is of the same ilk as the AB One's 'Father Tilly' Rules, which I had heard of but never played.

We have been looking about for a different set of Renaissance Rules for a while and have not found an alternative set we liked completely, and aren't fans of FOG (although the Ren Version do look interesting) so seeing these rules on TMP we decided to give them a go.

Plonking down a random mix of troops, we went through the rules for the first time.

After having gone through the rules and playing a few turns the agreed verdict was that they were a fun set of rules to play and would certainly give an alternative to the more serious rules available elsewhere. The only down side to them is the appalling layout and generally bad writing, I would guess they haven't been proof read or at least not by someone who didn't already know the rules. They have probably been cobbled together from the previous rule sets as there are a lot of redundant terminology which may be left over from 'Father Tilly'.

That aside, we did enjoy the mechanics (once understood) and liked the War Token idea and the fact that the game produced a light hearted, fun, fast play game.

We'll certainly be playing them again, although the Army Lists need seriously tweeked, maybe the author doesn't play the period?

AB One Games have also produced a couple of supplements for the rules; French Wars of Religion and Tudor Warfare, both of which look interesting if a bit pricey for 26 page pdf's, but I will probably pick these up too.

There are more supplements promised in the pipeline.

Also this week I've updated ALBAtwo with a few bits and bobs but mainly with piccies of the finished terrain piece, the first of my 'Abbey' terrain project.

Check out the full finished article in the Terrain Gallery here

 

Rescue the Duke!

Well, finally had the first game of the year at the club this week, which was actually one of the games from last year that was postponed due to the inclement weather, namely the scenario I had thought up loosely based on the old 'Baggage Train' scenario.


Dave K, my regular Renaissance adversary took the mantle of the English, rescuing their captured Duke who is being escorted through rough country to the local seat of power to be 'interrogated' by the indigenous Spanish forces.


Simple terrain a winding road end to end of the table with a reasonable assortment of difficult terrain and soft cover where the rescuers had picked as being to ripe spot for a rumble. The forces were roughly equal in both numbers and points (using the old Sword & Pistol Rules), the Spanish having the edge in training, the English in missile power.


The Spanish need to get the prisoner to the opposite end, the English to either long edge intact, if the prisoner is killed then it's a draw. Fairly simple.


In the end the missile fire early on disrupted the Spanish sufficiently and caused a ripple of wounds which tipped the edge in the inevitable melee. Both sides having a few fleeing the field and some slumped bodies lying by a lonely road side but in the end the English managed a daring rescue and I'm sure were suitably rewarded by their magnanimous lord who no doubt allowed them to continue their service in a foreign field until they died of scurvy.


Next time for a replay, the Spanish will have a bolstered number to allow for the ambush that's coming and to give them a bit more of a chance. Also, the rules are a bit flat so we intend to use a slightly adapted version of the Retinue Medieval Skirmish rules which definately give the game a bit more flair. Still, good to get the year off to a bloody and thoroughly violent start.

Spanish Arquibusier (Mid 16th Century)