2nd Battle of the Isen Fords - LotR Skirmish

For our club game this week I had been thinking previously about some LotR action and when Kev last week asked if I fancied a game I enthusiastically agreed, choosing to play the Second Battle of the Isen Fords scenario, a scenario I had played before and enjoyed muchly.

To see life on the bright side I chose to play the Rohan forces, as I had played on the Isengard side previously. Kev, providing all the nicely painted troops for both sides (as he has a impressive LotR collection) took the role of umpire with Pete stepping in on the night as the Forces of Darkness.

The scenario involves Rohan defending the crossing for 10 turns and in that time Isengard try to reduce the the Rohan numbers to 12 or below to win. From round 3, Rohan dice to see if their re-enforements come in the form of a passle of cavalry, and from round 4 Isengard dice to see if they get some Warg Rider re-enforcements.

Rohan (foolishly perhaps) take the offensive

Deciding to try and beat the odds I decided to go on the offensive and try and beat the c#@p out of the enemy when the wise thing to do would have been to withdraw and make the enemy come to me. With the Rohan Warriors on the west bank moving towards the gathered Uruk-hai and Dunlendings and accompanying Troll, Erkenbrand and the Royal Guard advanced across the ford with the archers supporting from the east bank.

Much to everyones surprise, not least my own, the dice gods were kind and the mighty Rohan warriors cut a notable swathe through the Isengard horde., giving generally better than they got, much to Pete's chagrin.

Re-enforcements arrive for both sides

Round three and four saw the speedy arrival of both sets of re-enforcements appearing and they added their joint weights to the now spreading melee for the ford.

Straight into the melee on the west bank

The Trolls might proved to much for Rohan on the southern side of the melee with the troops there getting pretty short shrift but on the north end with the cavalry arriving adding to the push, Isengard was cleared from that side pretty effectively. So the battle pivoted north south with the warg riders having a poor time of it on the east bank the fight there turned the same way.

End game with Rohan fighting to the bitter end - heroically

Come the end of turn 7 however a count of the particularly brutal round of fighting where Isengard caught up on the mayhem a bit both side had lost more than 50% casualties which meant courage tests for everybody.

Of course the odds were fairly poor to keep enough alive and fighting for another two or three turns and this proved to be the case with 9 bodies deciding that they would rather be somewhere exceedingly importantly elsewhere leaving 15 still fighting for Rohan. Even though they had been doing exceedlingly well, the Troll still kicking would a least kill a couple and even though they may have cleared the table of the enemy, 12 or less Rohan meant an Isengard win.

So the barny ended there with a loss for Rohan even though they had beaten the odds and gone on the offensive and nearly triumphed. C'est la guerre!

Great game, much fun and banter as the forces clashed and Pete was slagged for his rubbish dice throwing. Cheers to Kev for providing the figures and fun.

Future Wars Update 001

Fire Team One Bravo

This week I've finished off the first Fire Team for my Future Wars Project. This team was the guinea pig to see if my colour scheme was going to work and to try out the urban camo which I had never tried painting before.

The colour scheme certainly seems to work pretty much as I had intended so happy with that though I wasn't sure whether I should try to highlight the black body armour or not. I think I'll leave it with out the highlights to be honest.

Not a hundred percent happy with the bases though. I felt since the figures were generally quite dark that the bases needed to be reasonably light though I didn't want to have just sand colour so I've tried a textured base painted in mid earth tones and then flocked. I guess it's the flock that seems to spoil the finish a bit. Maybe static grass would have been better to go with the tufts and so on.

Anyway, happy with the paint scheme and I can now get on with painting up the other half of Squad Bravo (about half done already) and the other two squads and command to get the Mechanised Infantry Platoon done. So on course for this project in any event.

John Carter and the Princess of Mars

I decided to take in the premier of the newly released John Carter last night and I managed to find a cinema showing the 2D version of it and so myself and mate JTM caught the late showing.

A fan of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books when I was a kid with the Space Opera hero fights lots of bad guys and monsters and saves the princess storylines iot was fantasy/sci-fio which was easy to understand with ray guns and air ships, and scantily clad damsels all that you could want.

When I saw the film was being made I was intrigued, when I found out it was made by Disney I was not impressed. Didn't quite fit. I can say however that I'm glad I went along to see it.

Franzetta image of John Carter
 and Princess 

The idea of a 19th century confederate cavalry officer being accidentily transported to Mars and getting involved in  interplanetary intrigue sounds pretty good, very Victorian Steampunk, I'm up for that.

The idea of lots of fighting, battles, ship boardings (in the sky) last stands, sneaking night attacks, speed pursuits ala Star Wars speeders, and vicious hordes of aliens sounds pretty good.

A pretty attractive, voluptuous princess whose a scientist and hold her own in a sword fight sounds pretty good.

Mysterious bald mystics who serve some greater good scheming in secret with powers none can stand against sounds pretty good.

Sticking pretty rigidly to the story of the first book 'A Princess of Mars' to film translates to book quite nicely into a modern image of the pulp storyline but with only a few typical Disney sentimentality moments creeping in a couple of places but that's to be expected. There are a couple of 'Braveheart moments' which do actually work in the context of the film but might make you giggle, I'll not spoil them for you here in case you go and see the movie but you'll know them when you see them.

The whole effect of the amazing advances in CGI in recent years, a fairly solid but not surprising plot line - (hero finds girl, hero saves girl, hero wins girl, hero loses girl hero gets girl back) sits quite well in the Disney stable and now that I've seen the movie it makes sense. Disney is probably the best conglomerate to make the film.

Great scenics, air ships and the green martian hordes are suitably spectactular as is the scenery in general of an ancient civilisation slowly dying. I was impressed with the rendition of the airships. with the arial battles definitely catching my imagination.

The scenery and ruins in particular are worth looking at and a good source of inspiration for any one looking to build similar for their Sci-Fi games.

All in all a pretty good movie in the 'switch off brain and enjoy' category and enjoy the undeniably stunning visuals. Worth seeing if you've a couple of hours to spare and like the genre, which I do. Definitely go to see it if your at all into Victorian Sci-Fi/Steampunk as I'm sure you'll pick up a few ideas for some sky ships at least. It might be an idea to keep an eye out for what merchandise that might get released, you never know what might be useful?

Till next time....safe landings. 

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.

Claymore Castings Schiltron Figures

Claymore Castings Scots Schiltron x2

Tonight at the weekly club meet, David Imrie kindly dropped round and dropped off my pre-order of a couple of the new Schiltron Units from Claymore Castings, fresh out the injection moulding machine.

First impressions of seeing the figures in the flesh are very good.

The detail of the Paul Hicks sculpts is some of his best work (generally getting better as he gets older...don't we all) and the animation of the figures is first rate.

The figures being from virgin moulds is practically flash free and they require almost no cleaning up. Size wise they are pretty much 28mm toe to eye and are there fore comparable with Gripping Beast or Front Rank sized figures but half a head smaller than say the current Perry mini's though of a similar style.

I'm pleased to get these early and I'm looking forward to get these painted up and looking menacing, though I'm going to be a good boy and not get too distracted by the new shiny and continue with my progress with my Berbers first, to a point anyway.

As far as the use these nice figures will get put too is still not completely formed past a Scots Common type army for Harlaw kind of period or even, though at a bit of a stretch style wise, for the Scots in France at the beginning of the 15th Century. Certainly with a couple of different command groups and standards they could be comfortably be used for Scots at home and abroad over decent 50 year span. Though the figures are designed around Otterburn 1388 and do have a flavour of that period, us canny Scots make-do-and-mend, and make sure we got our money's worth so you can justifiably use these figs into the Agincourt period.

I'm looking forward to see the next releases due from the range in the fullness of time and will be looking to expand this new venture into a whole new project. Hurrah! more lead-fulness.

February WIP

Since I've been pretty busy over the last month and have managed to get some bit's and pieces done (yes, it's even surprised me!) I have managed to post a couple of completed works and I've nearly completed some other things too (but I'll save them for a future post) I thought I'd share some of the definitely WIP bits that I've got some progress on that will wait until other things have progressed more before getting some more attention.

The first up is the first of my WWI period troops that I've been thinking about for quite a while, these are some Cossack Cavalry for the White Russian themed force that I will put together.

White Russian Cossack Cavalry - WIP

These are Copplestone Back of Beyond range figures and are up to Marks usual high standard, looking forward to getting these painted in the fullness of time, though I haven't decided on the 'type' of Cossack they're going to be...yet.

Next up are some more cavalry, Armigeri (Mercenary German Men at Arms) destined for my Hungarian Black Army project.

Armigeri - Mercenary MAA - WIP

 Now based up and undercoated they will languish in their box until later in the year. These are all old Foundry figures picked for their more gothic look, sallets and armets generally. These should add nicely to the growing number of troops massing up for a paint job in the Hungarian forces.

The last of the trio that I thought I'd post is a bit different.

The Executioner - WIP

This old fella has been a favourite figure of mine for more years than I care to remember. An old Ral Partha figure that I liked as soon as I saw him. An old figure sitting in a box for years since I stopped playing any real RPG's, I dredged him out and have stripped off all the old paint (some of which really didn't want to go) and I've now got him ready for a new lick of paint. He'll no doubt get done over the next few weeks as I do other bits.

More to come next time in the way of completed figures but I'll leave that for then. Till the next time....

Begrüßen Alle!

Well once again another month draws to a close and the wargaming muse ( I assume there is one?) has been pretty active in this neck of the woods, with a bit of painting getting done, research into a few of the ongoing projects and a bit of modelling to boot, some of which has found it's way onto the Warblog.

The Warblog has been pretty well visited this month and thanks to all for their interest and comments, both kind and otherwise, on the goings on in the house of ALBAtwo Warblog.

A couple new welcomes are due to a few wanderers in the blog-ether who have stopped by and paused a while;

SADA was the first of the visitors who paused a-while and his interesting (by way of the pictures only as I don't read Japanese) blog Pages of Sada's Blog which has a fair few nice pictures on it of a Napoleonic nature.

thehermit also dropped by though I'm not sure if he has a website/blog as none are indicated on his profile, perhaps you can enlighten me if you do, but welcome none the less.

A trackhead going by his monicar StuG also joined in on his wanderings. His blog ARMOURED FIGHTING VEHICLE has some quite spectacular scratch built models, and being a bit of a trackhead myself, I think that's just fine. 

The last but of course not least of this band of travellers is Oleg (I'll not try and write your full Russian name if you'll forgive me, I couldn't find the cyrillic characters on the key board), once again blogger is not showing your blog on your profile but I think that the blog All World Game is yours. And any one who is doing a version of the Garde Ecossaise in miniature is OK in my book, and the miniature from Leonid does looks absolutely spiffing.

Lot's to come in the month ahead, looking forward to some games of Impetus with the first Monday coming which should be good, and progress being made on various projects, hopefully 

I'll have some good things to report in the coming days.