Claymore Castings - Highlanders Sneak Peek

Just saw that David had posted over on Saxon Dog a sneak peek for Claymore Castings forth coming Highlanders and thought they looked very nice indeed, and a very welcome, and indeed looked for on my part, addition to the range.

Definitely looking forward to see the rest of the release. 'The Reid Harlaw' here we come.

Battle of Helms Deep

The title of this post says it all.

A couple of weeks ago Kev at the FDWC had wanted to put on a version of the 'whole' of the Battle of Helms Deep from the LotR rule books.

But in the books they break the action down into seperate scenario's of attacking the Deeping Wall and the attack on the Hornburg (probably so they could fit into 4' x 4' tables) but Kev wanted the whole spectacle in a oner, so asked for willing volunteers (or victim's depending on your point of view) to take sides on a trial run of the re-fight of the combined action. Ian and Dave B volunteered for the side of light and jaminess, and Andy and myself took the side of darkness and sharp outfits (of course).

The bad guys were a suitably motley crew of Uruk Hai, Dunlendings and a few Orcs, armed with a hefty Battering Ram, two Ballista, two explosive charges (for blowing up the Deeping Wall) and a good collection of stout ladders, and their objective to win was to take out the three main good characters, Gandalf, Aragorn and Theoden, or for a draw any one of them.

The good guys, largely made up of various Rohirrim types of course plus Aragorn, Gimili, Legolas, Theoden, Eomer and a Gamling, plus Gandalf a passle of horse would appear around round twelve to stir things up. The good guys objective, apart from staying in possession of Helms Deep, was to destroy at least 50% of the attackers. This was not going to be easy as any casualty caused on the bad guys were re-cycled on a 4+.

Initial assault on the walls.

The initial surge forward towards the walls went fairly well for the forces of darkness with few casualties being inflicted on them and early on Andy managed to scewer Legolas with a well aimed Ballista shot and though not killing him did propel him off the wall at great speed and taking him out the fray for a few turns as he made his way back. (oh how we laughed evilly).

Once the ladders reached the walls things started to go a bit more poorly though. 

The good guys started realising the main threats, started targeting the engineers/sappers carrying the charges and the mad berserkers with the torches too with a fair bit of success.

Our shooting also began to form a bit of a repeating pattern of more often than not missing it's targets usually getting hits but being deflected by the chunky walls of the Hornburg. It got the the point where it became likely that the bad guys didn't need ladders to climb the walls ( they could just use the arrows and bolts peppering the battlements to climb up :-) ).

But pretty quickly we reached the walls and ladders were thrown (or fired up) and the bods launched themselves upwards, with mixed success, well really dismal failure at first.

The battering ram reached the Hornburg gate pretty quickly with minimal losses and started to pound away getting a good couple hits in fairly early on.

The engineers, or at least one, did finally reach the wall and managed to place his charge, but failed to detonate it the first time ( he actually failed his courage test and decided that detonating the charge, and himself with it wasn't a good idea).

A couple of turns later we managed to get the second charge in place and with three or four engineers in place, so we had a reasonable chance of setting the charges off (we never did manage to get a torch bearer near the wall for an automatic BOOM).

With the quartet of engineeers hammering away on the fuses we finally managed to get them to explode. One went off like a not very explosive thing doing a reasonable, but un-spectactular amount of damage. the other charge proved to be a complete dud. So no big gapping hole in the wall to surge through ( and insidently keep out the way of impending cavalry charges from the rear).

It proved very difficult to get atop the wall via scaling ladders as the guy at the top of the ladder had to first survive long enough to get to the top of the wall without the ladder being pushed away, then he had to win the fight at the top of the ladder with the defender having a slight (defended) advantage, and then had to win the subsequent fight to make room for some else to get onto the wall behind him. With some pretty meaty bods a top the wall, it soon became aparant that it had to be an Uruk-hai or Dunlending Captain to stand a reasonable chance of success.

An Uruk-hai captain manages to get a space on the Hurnburg,
but probably not for long.

But at the far end of the wall, Andy managed to sneak a couple of bods up around turn 8, and with that success, a couple of more followed till there were two or three locations where the bad guys had a toe hold on the wall and one on the Hornburg.

And about the same time the battering ram manged to break the gates with a resounding crash. The battle at the gates was obviously going to be a slog with the bad guys very slightly getting the edge there over the next couple of turns due to some reasonable melee dice.

The Royal Guard defend the breached gates

A toe-hold

Once into combat, the feel began to change and there was a definite shift in the flow and feel of the game with the good guys beginning to fell a bit vulnerable and the bad guys getting the moxy to push on.

And another

For turns 11 and 12, things turned into a bit of a grinding match but the good guys were definitely running out of plebs and Andy was beginning to roll up the wall from the far end it was definitely beginning to look better for the bad guys. It was then that Legolas who had recently got back on the wall and was making his way towards the Hornburg was spotted by the other ballista crew and was once more projected at great speed from the wall once again, much to the merriment of all involved. (Not that we've got anything against Elves you understand).

We got to turn twelve and with time running out and Gandalf about to appear, we decided to call it a day on the trial run of the battle.

It was still very much anyone's game with the forces of darkness doing things the hard way but cutting the numbers of defenders down slowly but still to make a significant mark on the main characters but still with plenty of man-power to put up a good show but their characters running out of might and fate but all still fighting. The good guys were running low on man-power but all the characters were still pretty healthy and Gandalf and a passle of mounted Rohirrim appearing in the rear would hopefully make a significant hole in the Uruk-hai ranks.

The almost complete lack of shooting success from the bad guys (apart from at Legolas), the abject failure of the explosives and the difficulty in getting onto the wall made the forces of darkness' job very difficult, but with the forces of light's troops limited to largely a waiting role for most of their troops and the fact that most of their shooting was at the totally ineffectual engineers and torch bearers balanced things out.

All in all a great success and with only a couple of suggested tweaks the trial worked really well and now all it takes is to plan the date for a full day of LotR mayhem, to give it enough time to play to a conclusion.

Numbers begin to tell -
but it's turn twelve and the there's help on the way.

A great game and full of surprises, and a stonker for a trial game. Simple set up but really effective mainly due to our resident terrain maker 'Captain Cardboard' Ken who put together the Hornburg and Deeping Wall to great effect and of course to Kev for putting the whole scenario together and umpiring another great LotR bash. Looking forward to main event.

Vapnartak 2013

With the years round of wargames shows under-way the first big one is Vapnartak put on by York Wargames Society, 'the best one day show in the North' being their slightly immodest claim, put on at the York Racecourse.

As a club, the FDWC had decided to go down en-masse with a bus load of 24 or so of us making the trip to the show (not counting the trader bods who also increased the body count from the club) with many not having been before.

All in all I liked the show with the venue being a particularly novel one and the layout over several floors and mezzanine, all accessed directly from each other and being a fairly modern building made it a bright and airy place to put on a games show.

50 or so traders plied their wares and mixed in with the usual suspects were a few I had not come across before, which was nice.

The venue was very busy for most of the day, with the time from 11;00 to around 13;00 absolutely heaving. Good for the traders and restaurant (whose fare I was particularly impressed with, though a wee bit pricey) though  did suspect that the ground floor layout presented a bit of an escape hazard as the squeeze of traders and games made a few pinch points which made travelling very stressful and I suspect prevented a good bit of browsing of said traders by the exasperated public at those locales during the busy time. I went and massaged my karma in the bar for an hour which was a haven of peace (comparatively) and beer.

Though a lot of traders I was a bit surprised what appeared to be the relatively small number of games on show. I think this was more to do with the size of the venue as there were about 34 games on offer not including the various tournaments on upstairs including Warmachine, Malifaux and Impetus which gave Joe Public a bit of sport to watch too.

A couple of games caught my eye in particular, the first being a stonker put on bt the Lance & Longbow society, which having read about the games planning and preparation in a recent issue of the society journal 'The Hobilar', was nice to see in the flesh.

I also liked the games put on by Bunker(?) and the League of Extraordinary Keigspeilers, which  also caught my eye.

Many others were good too with lots of effort as usual going in to getting them to the show.

All in all an enjoyable 'day 'oot' and definitely a bit different. All involved in our minor Scots raid of York enjoyed to day and the bus was a good bit heavier on the way back over the border with the loot plundered to the tune of a couple of tons of lead and mdf. My own haul including a plethora of Perry mini's, Ainsty castings and Sarissa kits plus an assortment of other bits and bobs gave the whole affair a good finish.

A well done the York Wargames Crew is I think due, as the venue and the sheer amount on obviuosly took a fair bit of organisation and running. As Terry Thomas would have said...'Good Show!'

This is getting to be annoying!

Intial Empire advance on the HE lines

This week another club game and surprisingly for me another game of WHFB's, two in a row being rare if not unheard of. This week it was a lay-down game with Dave Burns who was wanting a bit of practice for an upcoming tournament, and he was fielding his High Elvesa which he hadn't used for an age.

I fielded the same experimental list that I had used a couple of weeks ago against Ian's Orcs, which though a bit 'soft' for a tournament army had appeared to be quite fun to use and if it managed to get into contact with the High Elves would make mince-meat of them, but that was a big if.

With a standard Pitched Battle scenario we had at it, and the first couple of moves were uneventful except for a spectacular annihilation for a unit of Reavers by the Empire Pistoliers in Rd 1 and their subsequent rout caused by extensive missile fire. The Empire generally advanced as quickly as possible on the HE Line and the Elves tried to slow them down.

The killer for the Empire in this game proved to be the HE Level 4 Wizard with a rather nasty spell book which seemed to kick in pretty quickly and this destroyed firstly the entire unit of flaggellants bar a couple which went down to subsequent archery, then the unit of milita with warrior priest took a pounding over two rounds from spells and archery till it broke just before managing to get the enemy lines. Near the end the Greatswords took the brunt of the magic and was reduced to 25% strength before being charged in the closing minutes by the Sword Masters and a unit of Reavers.

My Mortar trio didn't do to well in this game being remarkably inaccurate but did manage to snipe a few figures here and there, but overall disappointing.

When the remnants of my force reached the HE lines in the person of the General, an Archlector an the unit of Halberdiers with Warrior Priest the result was quite spectacular, with the destruction in one round of a unit of Archers and the entire Unit of Lothern Guard going down in a very gory fashion. but it too little too late.

My Swordsmen didn't fare well against the axe weilding maniacs on the HE right and the mortar crews had been picked off by the remaining eagles so by the end of Rd 5 it was with time out, another drubbing for the Empire.

Quite a fun game for a quickly organised Pitched Battle affair. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the HE army list under 8th Ed though, bet they lose that spell book.

Ruination - The Return - Empire vs Orcses

First game of the year earlier this week, and one planned which was nice, was a re-match from the game back in November where my poor Empire dudes were beset by an Orc horde in the 'Ruination' scenario and the town was duly ruined which you can read about here.

As planned then, we had decided to stage a re-fight with the tables turned with 2400pts of Empire troops attacking 1800pts of Orcs entrenched in four buildings and misc barricades. The objective being to capture or retain as many buildings as possible each building counting as 1 victory point except the 'strongpoint' in this case the watch tower, which counts as 2 victory points. The buildings could also be destroyed but then don't count VC's but can be denied from your opponent.

Intial move with the Empire moving onto the battlefield

Ian's Orcs deployed first and his deployment was once again pretty good, his army being pretty much standard troop types but with a bit of artillery support in the way of 3 Bolt Throwers, a Catapult and a Doom Diver and a reasonable reserve.

My Empire troops then deployed off table, ready to move on in the first turn, with a battery of 3 mortars as an experiment along with a fairly standard troop deployment and selection of almost entirely infantry bar a lone unit of Pistoliers as artillery hunters.

The first move was uneventful with the Empire troops moving onto the field and a bit of mutual artillery sniping to small effect.

Second turn the Empire continued it's advance as quickly as possible and the artillery dual continued with a slight advantage in casualties caused by the Empire. 

The Empire close on the Orc lines

The Pistoliers decided that rather than face the vageries of a Pump Wagon charge, decided to charge it and with only one loss for the destruction of the Pump Wagon this was a wise decision.

The only other conflicts of note were regarding Ian's two small Wolf Rider units bent on mischief, the unit on his left flank decided to break in panic from the destruction of the Pump Wagon, the other on the right flank move towards the Empire where a unit of Archers peppered it with arrows but only causing one casualty and not enough for a panic test.

The third round proved to be the crunch with the Empire centre charging into the Orc lines. I had pretty reasonably surmised that nothing in the Empire army was amn enough to dislodge the Orc General and his bodyguard from the Watchtower, so the plan was to sweep the two supporting Orc Archer units and try and take the other three buildings to get a narrow victory.

Now the Flaggellent unit had been the target of much of Ian's shooting on the way in, both missile and magic and by the time they got in the were reduced to about a third or quarter of their number by the time they charged in and though supported by a slightly depleted Greatsword unit the charge in ended in a draw and a continuing melee.

On the other side where a slightly depleted Swordsmen unit and the army General, an Arch Lector charged into the other, around half strength Orc Archer unit and only managed the same result, a drawn melee.

The Pistoliers and archers shot away at the Orc artillery to small effect and the Mortars beginning to run out of viable targets began lobbing shells at one of the buildings holding a compliment of Orcs.

At round four, it was already apparent with the failure of the Empire first charge to dislodge the Orc Archers from the wall that I was going to toil with taking any of the buildings housing untouched Orc melee units with depleted numbers of Greatswords Swordsmen or Halberdiers, so a slight change of plan was attempted, namely in lobbing Mortar shells at one of the buildings to perhaps damage or destroy the building and therefore negating the Orc victory point but more importantly softening up the Orcs inside to a possible (if very likely fruitless assault) from my infantry.

Alas, most of the shells fell short (or long) of their mark.

Round four continued with the Empire managing to break the Orc Archer Unit on the right and pursuing and destroying them but losing the last of the Flaggellents in the process. The Sordsmen and General had a second drawn melee with the other Orc Archer unit and the Pistoliers charged a Bolt Thrower (because it was easier to charge and melee, than it was to shoot at the bloody thing) and destoyed it. The Orc left flank Wolf Rider unit rallied but didn't yet return to the fray, but the right flank Wolf Rider unit now circled round behind my one untouched unit of Halberdiers who were forced to turn to meet the small but delaying threat. (They likely weren't going to reach the town in any event for at least a couple of turns).

Round five proved to be the final round (out of a permitted 7 turns) as time beat us. The remnants of the Greatswords charged one of the buildings and took more casualties than they dished out against a unit of Black Orcs housed in the central buildings, the swordsmen and General finally broke the remaining Orc Archer Unit and made a bee line for the un-occupied building on the Orc left. The Mortars again pounded away at the other building in vain hope of reducing it and it's occupants to rubble but only managed some supperficial damage and a couple of casualties inside.

At this point it was obvious that even if lucky, I was unlikely to manage a draw with the best of my Units depleted and unlikely to win in melee against the entrenched Orc units to oust them from one of the occupied buildings and so with time beating us, victory once again going to Ian's Orcs.

A good battle this time once again and an interesting scenario that I would play again. The seven round limit seemed strange last time as it looked with the Orcs that this was way too generous, but with the slower and less deadly Empire they would need the seven rounds in all likelyhood to gain a good victory, all going well.

The Empire once again seemed to lack a bit of 'oomph' and just didn't really seem up to the task in hand, dice throwing was average, neither up nor down and Ian's dice throwing the same or perhaps going towards the poor side so that wasn't the issue. It was always going to be difficult with the Orc Toughness being the 'to over-come' factor never minding the extra -1 to hit for the cover etc. The Mortars as an experiment were a reasonable success but lacked accuracy on the day to swing it enough. The random mage spells being in-offence but augmentary didn't help but I've always thought that the magic phase for most armies tends to cancel each other out unless you get a mis-cast or unstoppable.

Not sure what I could try to make the Empire a bit more of a challenge in this scenario, in both battles they've managed to stay intact and deal a bit of damage but don't have the moxy to get Orcs shifted from the buildings or the keep them out on a unit to unit basis. Food for thought though and enjoyable scenario's for that reason.

Planning 2013

With the look back of my successes and failures hobby-wise done and a review of how things fared, I am now planning my year ahead. I don't expect the plan to survive intact after contact with the enemy once again, but it pays to have a 'plan' in any event.

I've decided to try and put a bit more structure around my planning this year and put some definite targets to work to, as I felt my plan for the last year was a bit amorphous and therefore was to easy to let slip.

On that basis I've decided at an optimistic general painting target of 8 figures a week (excluding holiday break) so a target of 400 figures for the year (cavalry figures counting as 2). I know this is a fairly low a number compared to many out there who have a pretty prolific output, but it's definitely a big stretch target for me and allows for a week or two's in-activity which can be caught up on the following week.

It's difficult for me to be proscriptive in what I do hobby-wise as I have eclectic interests at the best of times but there's no point in planning lot's of things that just wont get done so I'm deliberately keeping my list a bit more achievable (I hope).

Terrain Projects

• Abbey Project - This is one I'm enjoying so far, but it has dragged out a bit, so I'm going to concentrate on getting this one pushed along. The plan for the whole project incorporates 20 or so pieces and with the first four complete, I am aiming to get this to the half way stage by the end of the year. This will include two of the larger pieces in the set and so I don't intend to expand terrain project wise beyond the the Abbey (excepting the Future Wars below). The planned pieces for this year will be the Gatehouse, the walls for the walled garden/orchard, Ruined Colonnade West, Ruined Colonnade East, the Bell Tower, and the South Cloister.

Army Projects

• El Cid Berber Army - My Almohad army did get some attention over the last year but by no means enough and so is going to be my main thrust to getting some paint on figures. With 150ish figures targetted this makes up about a third of my target. I plan to do these over the year to spread the interest. The units planned will include some minor modelling so should keep the interest levels high but slow down the out put.

• Italian Wars - Still very much high on my interest levels and all the figures are bought that I need for the planned forces (though that probably wont stop me getting more). Targeted around 120 figures here, with the first off the list being the Garde Ecossaise unit which just needs a bit of a kick to get finished off. Then followed by Italian Pike and then by various French Cavalry units and some artillery.

• Hungarian Black Army - Didn't see any activity over the last year really and plan to rectify this over the coming months with again around 80 figures targeted including the languishing Clipeati, and a multitude of cavalry plus a rather nice battery of bombards.

Skirmish Projects

• Future Wars Project - The one I did get some movement on over the last year so I plan to get everything finished off in the painting front here. All the figures and vehicles are assembled and primed and ready to rock so a hopefully easy 50 figures worth to finish off over the year with the aim being to get these done for Easter (my aim last year, but I have added quite a bit to this list since then :-) ). The project now includes for the First Platoon, First Company, Third Scots Mechanised Infantry and now incorporates the The Enemy with suitable mechanised support. I've also started some terrain pieces for this project to give the planned games a bit of 3 dimensional playing but these are at the early stages but keeping the terrain simple to make the building fairly painless and hopefully quick to do.

• Mordheim - With another club campaign planned for this year coming, I've started up another warband this time Kislevites and so another modelling challenge. 15 figures planned out and about half already under way, this little mini-project should be a fairly quick and enjoyable painting and modelling excursion with the kick off early in the year I'll be getting this one moving first.

I know the odd other figure will creep in to the painting planned, the odd fantasy, medieval or renaissance skirmish figure that takes my fancy over the year which will make a break from what ever I happen to be doing at the time, or even the occasional small unit for my Empire forces but hopefully this will be in addition to the planned focus.

With various rule sets purchased and played or not played over the last year, I would like to stick to a fairly select group of rules. I've decided that Impetus doesn't suit my tastes for the Italian Wars so going to go with the Pike & Shotte rules to see how they pan out there. For my Berbers, it will still be Impetus no doubt (being a favourite at the club) but would like to try War & Conquest with that army and to re-visit the Crusader Rules which I have enjoyed in the past with my Berbers.

I'm planning a mini campaign for later in the year for my Berbers as per a previous post on the Conquest of Majorca, and that will give me something to aim for as far as my painting progress is concerned, and I will likely use either W&C or Crusader rules for that, deciding where to go once I've had a couple of games of each.

There will also be the occasional pick up game at the club where there is an abundance of variety there which is always excellent, so I wont be wearying for a game or a change of pace.

That's the basis of the plan for the year gaming-wise for me and I'm already reading others plans for the year and getting idea's for other stuff so better get going before I get distracted before I start.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing all a Happy and Prosperous New Year, hope it's a good one!