Rouvray Skirmish

First game of the year at the FDWC for myself and something a wee bit different. Dave K asked if I was up for a game on Monday and I suggested a Medieval Skirmish, something easy and not too long as there were a few club duties to perform early on so time may have been an issue. So pulling out the trusty Retinue Rules ( a rule set which are older than some of the club members) and a nice and easy scenario in a mini version of the Battle of Rouvray (sorry we just like pickled herring - honest), we were sorted. Pete joined us on the day to throw a few dice and jeer at the fishy defenders.

The forces consisted of a pretty heavily armed and armoured Scots contingent of 23 descending on the encircled English defending their herring, numbering a meagerly armoured 18.

The game went quite simply (we were using a simplified version of the Retinue rules which we have used before to speed things up) with the Scots advancing pretty quickly and the Men at Arms getting in the way of their bowmen in the process. The defenders fire took out three of the Scots MaA's pretty quickly with some pretty nifty dice rolling from Dave and managed to give the Scot's leader a bit of a limp wounding him in the first round of shooting.

The attackers return fire while they advanced was pretty dismal all told and once the MaA's and assorted ruffians reached the wagons, the bowmen advanced into the fray to lend a hand. 

To cut a short story even shorter, Pete and myself's dice were pretty atrocious and we couldn't hit the side of a fish wagon and by round 10 or so, the defenders were outnumbering the attackers with the none of the attackers without some form of wound and several had been disarmed and were fighting with their side arms, it was obviously not going to happen for the Scots, recreating the outcome of the historical battle quite nicely. So the Scots beat a hasty retreat to lick their multitudinous wounds. The only success being the doughty Falstaff had been laid low by one of the Scots MaA's in the midst of the melee, which is something that we did manage to achieve that the real counterparts didn't.

A nice, simple game and lot's of fun for a quickly put together bash. Looking forward getting into this in the coming month's and getting more figures painted up and have some more scenario's too.

Planning 2014

Once again the thoughts of  the year ahead and what has been achieved over the past year and what is planned is in everyone's mind and I'm no exception there.

I think the whole process of reviewing these things is very a therapeutic and indeed quite a useful task.

Last year was definitely a 'game of two halves' as far as getting stuff done and working to my planned output was concerned. The first half of the year I managed to get a reasonable amount done both in terms of painting/modelling and gaming with a great deal of variety thrown in to the mix of games/genres played. The second half of the year was a completely different story with work and life getting busy (in a good way) and my self imposed task of finally building my 'Man Cave' in the garden taking up nearly all of my free time and craft related energy.

With the 'Workshop' now pretty much finished in time for Christmas with all the power, lighting and data all installed the build has moved to the operational stage and I'm looking forward to reaping the rewards of this task with the first project being completed over the festive break being an Assembly Workbench made from off cuts and left-overs from the build.

 

This bench is already being put to good use but more of that anon.

With the year being carved up with different tasks my plan for last year was pretty much blown way and although my overall output was up on previous years, it fell well short on what I hoped to achieve both in terms of projects but in terms of completed figures and terrain too.
 

So the revised plan for this year looks quite similar to last year, but knowing what I and life in general  (and my own whimsy) is like is probably more a wish list that a plan of attack.

* Almohad Berber Army - Looking to get a bit of progress on this army (which I've been saying for some time now) but with pretty much everything prep'd and ready to go this well used army deserves a bit of attention.

* Italian Wars French - Again little or no completion here last year but with my Painting Mojo suitably fired up and a plethora of undercoated figures ready to go, I have a good feeling for about this one for this year.

* Hungarian Black Army - Not up there on the priority lists and the reality being it won't achieve much attention, but I would like to get the unit of Clipeati finished as they've been sitting on the painting queue for two year and their complaints are beginning to annoy me. The rest of the 500 strong army will likely wait until next time.

* Future Wars Project - The one general success of last year with a good bit of progress and the current scheme should be complete and up and running for Easter. Will try and get some more of the progress here posted. I have had a couple of thoughts of expanding the original platoon level scope of the project but will keep that for later.

* Mordheim Campaign - This has been on going and has produced some real fun games and is now more than half way through the second season and building to the finale nicely. Once the current season is done and dusted by the summer, the Season three is currently in development for later in the year and looking to do something a bit different here.

* More Skirmish level gaming - The gaming over the last year or more that I've enjoyed the most have largely been skirmish type games, probably because they tell more of a story or paint a picture that enjoy, so more scenario driven skirmish games of all genre's are on the cards. In particular, I plan to do more Medieval era games and with Osprey releasing their new set of medical skirmish rule 'Lion Rampant' which looks interesting.

* Scots Army in France - This one has been rocking around for a while and has begun the take shape in it's basic form. This one will be in the fullness of time a full table top 15th century army plus a retinue sized force of figures for skirmishes. The long term goal for this one is to expand the force to be a full Scots experience and enabling an 'Grande Army' or a recreation of Harlaw. But starting small and building with this one.

* Overall Painting Target - Since I was well shy of what I thought was an achievable target of 400 figures for the year last time, I'm looking at getting 300 completed and shiny for this year. Since I did manage to get more than this number prep'd and ready to go last year this should have no excuses and with a bit of luck exceeded.

* Terrain Building 1 - The Abbey Project didn't get much completed as hoped but I did manage to get most of what's required casting-wise so I can get into the fun part of building and modelling here with hopefully the majority of the project done and dusted by the end of the year. This is really my only 'must do' for the year, as I'm itching to see the finished article in the flesh instead of my mind's eye.

* Terrain Building 2 - The Terrain for the Future Wars project having stalled in the summer is once again under construction and although this one is likely to be an 'on-goer', I'd like to get enough bits done for the summer to get a couple of games in. The Assembly bench is already covered with the assembled bits of gantries and hab-pods and once I get my airbrush working again it should be no time in getting these bits finished and game ready.

* The search for my 'ideal' large scale Fantasy Rule set will continue. So a trial of different rule sets will be trialed.

* Attend more wargaming/modelling shows - I would like to get to a couple more shows this year including one's I've not been to before just to broaden my horizons a bit.

* Re-furbishing some oldies - Having done some clearing out during the move of my wargaming stuff to the Man Cave, I found a pile of my old RPG figures. Lot's of great figures but most looking a bit worse for ware, so a bit of cleaning and re-paint on a select few of these will be in order.

* Solo Fantasy Campaign - My solo campaign 'The War of Rulership' stalled last year too, because of above mentioned activities, but now that I have a suitable venue that I can lay out games and maps and leave them in-situ, I'm looking forward to move things on here and getting things moving here as well. I did get a lot of prep work done here and spent a lot of PC time doing more detailed maps of the campaign area and so on. So I'm looking forward to some interesting blood and guts here too. Once some un-resolved actions are fought out I'll post these up for anyone interested on the Lornian Chronicles blog. 

Generally more than enough to be getting on with over the next few months I think, and none of the above is in any particular order other than the priorities given above. I've learn't I can't force myself into scheduling these hobby related tasks and need to go with the muse on this. Which is the way I enjoy it really anyway.

Looking forward to a fun and varied wargaming year ahead.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing all a happy and prosperous New Year!

Looking forward to a productive and enjoyable year ahead, hope it's a good one for all.

Mordheim Season 2 - Rauberdale Rumba

The latest exciting installment of Mordheim Season 2 was fought out last week as the intrepide bands followed on the trail of the Necromancer Allek and tracked one of his minions to his lair in Rauberdale up the Talabec River.

Converging of the Magisters tower in a race to take out the minion and loot the treasures that lay inside the warbands of Kev's Beastmen, Ian's Reiklanders, Andy's Sisters, Dave's Marienburger's and my Kislevite's raced towards the goal as the Magister and his bodyguard of skeletons made a break for it.

The action quickly started with my Kislevite's and the Sisters closing and traded a few shots at each other but causing little damage. Ian's group took a few pot-shot's at my flank at long range while advancing in a tight group towards the tower and the Magister as he left his tower. The Beastmen made a steady advance towards the tower from the opposite side of the river while Dave's Marienburger's on the same side of the river advanced along the bank while lobbing ineffective shot's at the Sister's.

With typical luck the Magister on his first turn and randomly moving directly between the Reiklanders and the Beast men straight up the middle of the river and even worse luck occurred with his first spell casting, Eye of the Gods and rolling a 1 meant the Gods had judged him unworthy (obviously because of his cowardly action fleeing the scene) caused him to be sucked into the winds of chaos leaving only his smouldering boots and his skeletons to fend for themselves.

The Kislevite's and the Sister's were pretty evenly matched and after each had taken three of each other bands down both also failed their rout tests and promptly fled the field.

The game's main event then kicked off as the Beast men closed on the river and engaged a couple of the skeleton's on one side and the Reiklander's on the other engaging the other two.

 

The skeleton's were pretty quickly dealt with all in all but they had delayed the two bands advance and caused both groups to bunch up on the river banks and with both bands hesitant to launch into the water and potentially give the other the advantage, the two bands moved towards each other over the islet/landing in font of the tower on a pretty narrow front.

With the Marienburger's very slowly advancing on the Beast men's flank, the Beastie's finally gained the upper hand after a pretty lengthy skirmish between the two bands and the Reiklander's took a voluntary rout before too much damage was inflicted.

The Marienburger's then jumped into the slightly beaten up Beasts but even though inflicting a couple of further casualties (including taking down the Beast men leader before breaking leaving the Beast men in possession of the field and the goodies in the tower.

 

At a couple of points in the game, things looked very dicey for the Beast men but it was a surprise to everyone, including Kev, that they came through on top, but the band was probably worse off at the end with losses incurred including the leader being robbed of all his possessions including the Amulet of Allek, which will need to be retrieved in the next game to continue the plot line.

 

One thing which had worried the Beast men right at the start was the open terrain for this game, and the plethora of missile armed troops in the other bands, but as it turned out that all the shooting was extremely poor all round everyone obviously buying rubber arrows before the battle.

Another good game all round and the next sixth installment promises to be another corker of a game. Should be good.

Sisters do it Digitally

I note from the GW and Black Library Websites that they are soon to release (19th Oct) the new Codex: Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle to you and me) for 40K.

The decidedly 'Marvelesque' Cover
(Can u call it a cover if it's digital?)

Being a collector of this army for sometime (I've even had a couple of games with the army over the years too), I had a look at this as it peeked my interest, not only as I have a passing interest in using the army again but also cause the released 5th Ed lists serialized in White Dwarf a couple of years ago were fairly poor, so I thought this might be an improvement.

I quickly noted that this was an ebook only release. So digital but no dead tree versions, hmmm.

A Nun with a Gun

I don't have a big problem with this as I've recently embraced the ebook revolution, but what is of interest was that this is synonymous of a bigger move, away from hard copy to a digital only theme that seems to be building generally in publishing and more particularly in gaming. Perhaps it is because of the general low volume of gaming publishing that is pushing this move, or is it that us as customers are more agreeable to the digital medium.

I can see that the army is probably low sales comparatively, but at least the lower overhead option of supporting the still available (but alas un-added to) range of figures.

The pretty chunky price tag for a digital version of £19.99, for a 120 pages ish did seem a bit steep though.

I did note that GW's (Black Library) catalogue of digital and digital only products is pretty extensive, surprisingly so. Even if some of the titles are a bit esoteric to say the least, but I'm not one to gain say that.

I'll no doubt pick it up sometime probably at the same time I get around to getting the new Eldar Codex along with the Iyanden Sourcebook. Ouch, no change from £60 for some intangibles.

Hollow Crown Playtest

A Scots Schiltron 'on a roll'

Not having been able to get to the club for a fair while I was hankering to get a game in and when Dave Imrie (Saxon Dog fame) approached the powers that be at t'club to see if there was any interest in bodies playtesting the Hollow Crown rules, a fair number expressed an interest, myself included so a perfect excuse (as if one was really needed) had presented itself.

So last night was the duly appointed night of battle and Dave, Jack and Ian Hale (the progenitor of the rule set) brought themselves along to FDWC and kindly put on an a very interesting game with Jack and Dave bringing a grand pile of their rather tidy looking troops to do battle with.

So Dave K, Kev and Craig on one side taking a battle each on the 'Rebel' side and myself, Andy and Alan taking the 'Right' side each taking a command and with suitable traits in hand did battle using the rules 'Hollow Crown' which are still a work in progress but rapidly developing going by what we saw last night.

Dave had parcelled up the troops as a mixture of Scots and English troops on both sides so as not to cause any bickering (you know what wargamers are like with that sort of thing, but more importantly so each side got to see the abilities of all the troop types

Dave, Craig and Ian Hale look on as the troops are deployed

All in all the game was a roaring success for all combatants with our respective combats and shooting etc being over looked by Jack and Dave and Ian making sure all was circumspect and above board.

Things hot up across the battlefield as the forces close

Kev starts his advance on my command

The game though for all intents and purposes was split into three with the respective battles pairing fairly naturally, things did get a bit entangled as you would hope with any medieval battle, but in summary the game went my troops on our left stood and shot at anything that moved and hoped to soften up the enemy enough to withstand the inevitable crash of two schiltron's, Kev managed to skillfully blunt the worst of this with only one of the schiltron's being pretty messed up, but loosing his supporting Scots bowmen and skirmishers before his larger of the two blocks crashing into my line and making a big hole.

Kev's schiltron's advance in grand style

My Battle, 'they come on in the same old fashion,
 and we met them in the same old fashion'

In the centre, our 'glorious leader' being a bit rash, launched his bowmen, Men at Arms and Bill at the enemy line who in return did what I was doing and stood and shot them to shrebbins as they advanced and then launched his schiltron at the Men at Arms once they had been stripped of their supporting troops, only to be counter charged by the centre's secret weapon, a sizable unit of Islesmen who tipped the combat which raged for a couple turns before turning the tide.

The Islesmen in the centre about to charge home into the
 enemy's centre's schiltron
 (and save the honour of our glorious commander)

Though by this time what was left of Andy's very exposed Bill had been all but disintegrated in front of Dave's largely intact command.

Over on our right, Alan struggled to get his schiltron's across the battlefield due to some very obstreperous woodland which slowed him down and were only just coming to blows with Craig and Alan's forces with the pretty much intact line's on both sides crashing into each other in what looked like to be a bloodbath for both sides.

The largely intact schiltron smashes into the right of my command
 and has the desired effect

With time beating us but things really looking not to good all in all for the 'Right' side, we called a halt and tidied up and discussed the fore going and had a general chat.

Great fun was had by all and Dave and the crew picking some constructive critique and noting a few new situations and with notes suitable taken, all happy all round. Looking forward to another game or three, just to test the rules of course.

Thanks To Dave, Jack and Ian for putting up with us and putting on a very enjoyable game and letting us play with the very nice troops (you can head over to Dave's place Saxon Dog for some much better pictures of his troops in all their glory, I don't know if Jack has a similar laudable blog to see his fine troops I'm afraid) and I look forward to see the rules progress.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I have just picked up the other day the Computer Game XCOM Enemy Unknown. This game has been out for some months now and has received glowing reports generally and I'd been looking to pick it up at some point as I was a fan of the original game of the same name and it's subsequent sequels; XCOM: Terror of the Deep and XCOM: Apocalypse.

With the imminent release of the add on to the current game, XCOM: Enemy Within, Steam had an offer on for the main game with 75% off so it was an idea time to get around to picking it up. And I'm glad I did, it's a great update to the original.

They have kept to basic premise of the game, Earth attacked by insidious alien intelligence with an unknown agenda and you play the pert of a multi national elite force known the XCOM project who are there to find out about the aliens and repell their assault on Earth. The basic gameplay revolves around some resource management but this is pretty basic in terms of funding from the various 'council' members and the corpses and materials that you get from missions which are then used to build facilities and equipment and research new technologies, and the aforementioned missions which are the real thrust of the game play, with squads of troops with varying skills which you can enhance as the squad members gain experience.

The Original Version

In many ways, the actual game play and the choices you have through out the game have been simplified and the mechanisms for going through the game are also much simpler from the original but the actual look and feel of the game is much enhanced and slickers (as you would expect) and in fact in many ways positively cinematic with all the battlefield action nicely animated and annotated.

All the elements of the original series are still there with only a couple of additions with the main add being a running 'plot' through the game as you progress picking up on the progress of the war and adding a few specific missions over and above the standard recovery or abduction missions.

The names of the equipment types have been kept; Skyranger transport vehicle and Interceptors and the enemy troop types; Sectoids, Floaters, Mutons etc are all still there too.

A bit of colour is the ability to customise your squad members. 

Although this has no effect on game play you can get some nice looks to your troops with various skins for facial types, nationallity, armour, headgear and so on.

Along with the add of the different troop type development trees which lock in on each trooper once they get passed the rank of Rookie and they can progress as Assault, Support, Sniper and Heavy with a limited choice in skills as they progress on their paticular development tree, you can get a fairly pleasing variety of troops.

Once you have a squad and a mission comes along, you are launched on to the tactical gameplay where the main action of the game is.

In a fair variety of terrain types and looks (I've even had a couple of missions set in Glasgow!) with the addition of lighting varieties the action is interesting and thought provoking being three dimensional.

With a familiar IGOUGO based system with the Overwatch and reaction facilities to interrupt the oppositions movement/action the whole combat sequence can be very entertaining with the required tactics being similar to real squad tactics of move and cover and mutual support.

Rush moves where you run to cover are usually nicely cinematically animated and the score of the action usually adds to the drama too.

All in all the game is as I said, a good update to the original franchise and though there are a few minor quibbles (like where there is a choice in mission, you can only choose one and can't go back to pick up the others like you could in the original, and you've only one base rather than several to manage which I liked in the original) I wholeheartedly recommend the game to anyone interested in this genre, especially when it's available for download at £8.