Rogue Stars - A Quick Tour of Duty

This week I was mostly playing Rogue Stars.

Several bods at t'club got together for a RS fest organised by Andy W and I joined in to give the rules a try as I'd not managed to attend previous gatherings.

Six of us teamed up in pairs and rolled up random scenarios for a pre-set Crew as supplied by Andy with myself picking up an Inquisitor based Crew against Andy's Cultists which proved to be an interesting pair up. The scenario we rolled being the Rescue with one of my crew being the captive to be rescued.

The game worked out to be a very evenly matched pair up with both sides giving each other a bloody nose. Initially things tended to go to the Cultists way while the Inquisition was a man down, but try as he might Andy failed to capitalise on the advantage by taking anyone out but repeatedly wounding the Servitor Cherub to the extreme and the Crusader ended the game with over 9 pins but only 1 wound but both refusing to get killed but the Inquisitor did go down mid game to an uncharacteristic good wound dice throw from Andy.

In the end the Cherub freed the Medic from the clutches of the Cult and she made a bee line for escape but taking out a Cultist with a Mind Bolt before getting tangled up but repeated knock downs.

In the end, the the honour's were pretty even with three down each side but a narrow points victory to the Inquisition.

Thoroughly enjoyed the game and I believe the others enjoyed their games too. Interesting game mechanics but with a fair bit of variety available in the seemingly light rules. Definitely get another outing with Rogue Stars soon.

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.

Antidiluvian New Medievals on Horizon

Recently announced forth coming releases from Antediluvian Miniatures are some additions to their historical offerings in their 'Wars of the Bruces' range. Announced are as below, Scots Spearmen;

Great looking sculpts from Matthew Bickley and with more to come, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next in these most useful mini's.

Claymore '18

Attended this years Claymore show through in Edinburgh a week or so ago, so been a bit remiss in getting posted but hey-ho.

A fairly nice day for the event but still quite warm in-doors but not as bad as previous years.

I thought the show fairly quiet this time, certainly not the usual buzz on previous years (though I didn't manage along last year, the only year I've missed since the shows inception). In fact I thought the atmosphere pretty flat all in all but that may just be me.

The usual traders were all present including a couple of extra ones I'd not seen before but didn't pick much up as shopping list was pretty small this time and not very successful on the accessories front so will need to get online so not really an issue. I did buy one Lucid Eye figure just for painting but nothing much else caught my eye.

A fair selection of games on show but not many with a wow factor. I did like the Durham Wargames Club Cossacks vs Ottoman game if only for it's unusualness, very nice.

Durham WC game

The Tradeston WC game was eye catching, looking pretty epic if only because of the size, but nice.

Tradestons game

The League of Augsburg game was quite nice too but really a display rather than a game but eye candy none the less.

League of Augsberg

I don't really do the 'bring and buy' thing as i can't be bothered with the scrum etc but I did note that the stall was half the size it used to be, so probably a sign of the online selling thang nowadays.

I only stayed for an hour and a half and things were getting quieter when I left so I can only assume the numbers were down on previous. The confusing thing was the car park was full when I arrived and was still full when I left ( in previous years I've always managed to park fairly easily) perhaps there was something else on too which scared some folks away?

All in all a bit flat, which is a shame really as it has been a really great show in days past and I'm sure will be next time.

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.

Battle Companies Campaign Update

Managed to get another small get together for the Club Battle Companies campaign last week. A fairly small gathering with Alan, Dave K, Andy W, Kev and myself getting another couple of games under the belt.

Myself and Andy W played the next campaign specific scenario 'Catching the Thread', with Andy's Mordor Orcs attacking my Arnor band who were in possession of the ruined village searching for the relic 'The Thread'.

The outcome of the scenario was a definite military victory to the Orcs as the strength of my band is definitely in the shooting department but this strength sadly eluded me as any of my guys couldn't hit a barn door if it was lying on top of them on the day. The Orcs lost a few guys in the end but my band went down almost to a man. It didn't help that one of my Rangers was so well camouflaged that I forgot to use him for most of the game. (You might spot him in the bottom left of the first photo above).

A good hard fought game and most enjoyable. The game result proved to be a draw in the end as I managed to prevent the Orcs getting a hold of the relic (the objective) right up to the last turn though losing it myself right at the end as my last man standing fled the field.

On the other games there was a prethala of other mayhem with Warg Riders, Elves, and the men of Gondor battling it out but several draws and one evil win were the results there.

With other previous games results in and a large increase in the number of no score draws adding up, the side of Evil is now slowly creeping ahead in the campaign tally with a score 11/14 good to evil wins.

Terrain Trials - Supplemental

Way back when in the mists of time, when I was trying out some trial works for terrain boards, specifically the Frost Ruins from Heroic Maps under my Terrain Board Trials - Side 2 post, I had had the idea to do some scenery elevation platforms utilising off cuts and spare card bits.

This as is usual with myself took a bit of time to get round to, and following my also usual over engineering a solution, I've finally got round to doing some of these 'elevators'.

Using some strips of polystyrene packing bits I had lying about, were glued together to make a suitable thickness and cut into uniform lengths. These were then clad in foam core to make square and smooth. (You would be surprised on the variance on the dimensions from apparently uniform polystyrene, though low grade packing right enough).

These were then covered in a couple of sheets from the Heroic Maps sheets I had left over but also a couple of extra sheets printed off mirror imaged to cover each piece completely. The elevations then had some photo-shopped 'arches' printed on card and stuck on once again.

Finished articles are pretty robust and definitely useful for adding a bit of change of height to city scape terrain layouts, though a bit more work intensive then previously thought. I will add another couple of blocks in time to increase variety/coverage.