Last of the Egyptians

I've finished the last of Craig's 1/72 Egyptians and he can take them home when he drops in for a playdate with the kids next week. I'm keen to have them out of my hobby room as getting it cleaned up is one of my holiday tasks.

Sorry this group shot is soft. I could swear the camera was autofocusing on the front row of figures bit it seems drawn to the pattern in the backdrop (which is super crisp!).

I was quite happy with how the figures turned out. The flesh has enough depth (since there is a lot of skin in this army) and the armour drybrushed quite nicely. These were very easy to assemble, which is not my usual experience with chariots.

Up next: Well, the inlaws are en route and I have a lot of drinking to do before they get here. I finished up some stone walls that I will show off tomorrow. I also have 600 points of Flames of War French Goum infantry built, glued to sticks and primered. That is a lot of stripes to paint! We'll see how far I get on them but that is the next big project. Then perhaps some tree repairs and some 28mm Roman auxiliaries.

Last of the Egyptian foot

These are the last of the foot for Craig's 1/72 New Kingdom Egyptian basic impetus army. These are Caesar figures.

Overall, lovely figures to work with. I have the chariots built and primered and will tackle them this coming weekend.

So far the chariots have been the least frustrating chariots I've out together in any scale, just narrowly edging out the lovely Wargames Factory Celtic chariots in 28mm.

Up next: I spent the weekend building a river system for varoius Richard Borg boardgames that I play using miniatures. I just need to drybrush and flock the bases a bit. I also have six 28mm cavalry underway and then onto the NKE Egyptian chariots.

I also have a couple of commissions en route and the club's last game of the year is this weekend. Any, most exciting, two expansions for Battlelore arrived in the mail today. I hope to get a game of Epic Battlelore in with Craig over the holidays to playtest my MayDay game.

1/72 New Kingdom Egyptian Bow and Skirmishers

Here are a few more of the Egyptians I painted for Craig. These are 1/72 figures produced by Caesar.

First up are three bases of skirmishers. Most are armed with spear but there are a few slingers in the mix.

Then there are four bases of bow. These are nice figures with a good mixed of poses and clothing. I'm pretty happy with how the flesh came out.

Up next: Some light Egyptian foot are drying, I'm working on some river terrain for CCA/Battlelore for my MayDay game and I have a couple of 28mm mounted dark ages guys underway. It is also the last club night of the year on Tuesday.

1/72 New Kingdom Egyptians

Craig passed me a couple of boxes of Caesar New Kingdom Egyptians to paint and I have managed to finish off the foot. The chariots I will do over Xmas, I think.

First up are four bases of heavy foot. Sorry this group shot is a bit soft--not sure what the issue was. And Thanks to Dave for the refresher on Impetus base sizes as well as the army lists.

These are based on 120mm frontages and I think these fellows are 40mm deep (heavy foot). The Caesar figures are very nicely done.

I'm not a huge fan of ring hands and separate shields in 1/72 (although the effect is lovely) but these guys went together far nicer than, say, Italeri kits with similar assembly.

Up next: Some skirmishers are drying, then four bases of bow and four bases of light infantry and that completes the foot. Add in four chariots and Craig has the minimum army needed to play. I see he has quite a set of boxes of opponents sitting in his basement. I also have some 28mm mounted dark age fellows for my MayDay game.

Monmouth Courthouse

One of my summer projects is to finish up 10 scenarios and a small booklet adapting Impetus to the AWI. This has stalled out due to distractions but I had Bruce over Sunday afternoon for a test of the Monmouth Courthouse (June 1778) scenario. The basic background is that Washington directs Lee to attack the rearguard of the British army. Lee goes forward with no plan, the British rearguard turns around and routs him. Washington then has to rally the troops. Oh, and it is hotter than hell that day so troops become exhausted quickly.

I've tried a couple of different approach to this. I've tried gaming Lee's attack but getting a quasi-historical match-up requires the American player to either act like an idiot or have a crippling set-up (fun, fun!). I've tried gaming the rout, where Washington has to go around and rally each unit while it flees and is pursued--that is more interesting but hard to get right. Finally I've tried picking up the game where Washington has established a defensive line of sorts and both sides feed troops into the battle. Coincidentally, this is the approach take in the British Grenadier scenarios book.

We played out the latter scenario with the Americans started deployed and disordered, far across the board. The British arrive and initially are overpowering, but the reinforcements can very much change the play balance--if the Americans can survive long enough. Bruce played the British and adopted a two-pronged approach with the reinforcements supporting his left wing. He quickly drove in my left wing, which spent the whole game retreating until the met with reinforcements and I managed to break his grenadiers with cannon.


Over on my right flank, the British were overwhelming... except a single militia unit managed to hold up his entire thrust (survive right to the end of the game) and dealt death to anyone who came close. A very dramatic action!

Eventually, though, Bruce's reinforcements arrived and started to push back my crescent defence by flanking it and peeling the line back. We had very asymmetrical rolls this game with Bruce winning almost every initiative roll but having a hard hard in combat whereas my boys clearly had their dander up!

Bruce used this to his advantage, out maneuvering me while I held on hoping to inflict enough casualties for the game to end. Below you can see the end game as Bruce suddenly kills off two units and breaks my morale. Overall, a pretty good game that was tense right down to the line. I would probably have been wise to fall back some more but felt obligated to support my brave militia unit.

I realized at the end we had forgotten to use the "hot day" mechanic which suggests to me that it was not a good mechanic. I will try to cook something up that affected cohesion tests--maybe reducing the cohesion test by one or making it impossible to rally off disorders? It looks to me that replayability is high, with various placement options and different strategies for both sides.

Up next: I'm working away on 15mm Carthaginians (assembled, primed and painting is underway). Need to get some more glue to affix the shields though. And I'm puttering on some 28mm skeletons for HoTT--experimenting with washes over a white primer coat to get a washed out look.

MayDay Saratoga Report

We had our sixth annual MayDay gaming convention this weekend. Congratulations to organizer Craig who did a great job (again). I played a bit of Blood Bowl in the morning which was a fun introduction to the game. In the afternoon, I played Bruce's DBHx Franco-Prussian war scenario. I spent most of it bashing myself silly against Don Ray's dastardly French forces. Oh, such casualties!

In the early evening, i ran my Basic Impetus version of Freeman's Farm in 6mm. Here is Scott putting the first few Brits on board. The scenario entails map movement (to mirror the historical development of the battle) combined with a variable-speed clock.

Alas, the clock ran quickly as Terry rolled a 6 on 10 of the 15 turns (AHHHH). This put a lot of pressure on the British who struggled to get on board in time. I'm not sure what to make of this freak occurrence. It was certainly possible within the rules of the game but was very unlikely. Adjusting the clock mechanic would likely unbalance "average" games. Hmmm.

The British came on the east edge of the board, eschewing a more historical deployment. But the time pressure forced their flanking maneuver to show up and enter a kill zone before the Americans has been drawn far enough forward that the flanking maneuver was really on the flank.

In short, the British could not come to grips with the rebels fast enough and the Americans won by not losing. Thanks to everyone who played--seems like the basic mechanics worked well enough. Glad to get the game out again!


I also caught a bit of Bob's 6mm Zama game (which I would have loved to have played in).

Up next: Some 15mm Rus are on the paint pile and some 28mm Romans are also underway.

1/72 HYW Impetus

I dropped over to Dave's this morning and he pulled out a version of the board/miniature game he is planning on doing at MayDay. While his game will be Rome v Celt, we play-tested using his 1/72-scale HYW miniatures.

The board game went well, forcing some interesting choices and making for a fun lead-up to the game. It also affected who started with what forces.

Dave played the French, charging across a muddy field against my English lads on a hill. I got creamed.

Some of it was troop choice (should have gone with foot knights, instead of mounted). And some of it was just plain awful dice rolling. We played using the full Impetus set (instead of Basic Impetus); there were some nice differences.

And here are the guys who cannot shoot straight. Most of them died for their incompetence. Seriously--did they get their arrows wet and they warped? I could not hit anything.

Up next: Some 28mm Celtic chariots are drying. And I have a bunch of 15mm Saracens on paint sticks for a friend.

Winter 2009 Campaign

We had 10 guys in my basement this afternoon participating in an eight-empire campaign. The overall winner was Dave C, followed by Terry S. Chris and Mark. Also playing were Bruce, Ian, Chen, Scott and Dave P. The game board was this modified wagon wheel.

The game started with Dave P and Scott duking it out for the Macedonian city of Delphi. Dave managed to lambast the Macedonians, seizing the city and setting the tone for Scott's day.

The summer saw two more battles, with the Egyptians wailing on the Indians and the Romans losing the battle to the Celts but coming out ahead on points.

We ended the year with Mark W and Dave C squaring off for the first of a series of battles. Dave's strategy appeared to be to intimidate other players into avoiding his army and this largely worked for him, allowing him to collect Mark as a vassal early on and the range far away from his homeland at the end of the game.

The broken armies of Scott and Terry also had a poke at one another in the north.

Year two saw another dust up with Dave C. and Mark as a result of which Mark became Dave's vassal.

Dave then quickly returned to fight Chen while his minion... errr... vassal beseiged Chen's retreat path. The Badassyrians beat the hell out of the Egyptians. This drove Chen back towards Mark's army which also gave him a pasting. In the meantime, Chris drove north and managed to sack the Roman capitol with Terry's army inside, thereby gaining his own vassal. This brought us to year three.

Mark chased Chen to his capitol, capturing it and gaining his own vassal. Chen and Mark then combined forces to fight off an Indian army attempting to seize Las Vegas.

In the north, Scott, and Terry threw in with Christ to trap Dave P and then fight him in Scott's capital, bring their three armies (well, one army and two partial wrecks) against Dave. Dave struck boldly but lost a key battle and then was slowly whittled down as the the remaining allies entered the board.

And thus ends an enjoyable day (7 hours) of gaming. Thanks to everyone who attended and to Mark and Dave for providing all of the armies.

Up next: Perhaps some 15mm Anglo-Irish and then maybe onto trying some of the 28mm plastics I have been socking away.

Holiday Basic Impetus Campaign

Following ritualistic sacrifices to the Gods (i.e., having my in-laws over to Christmas dinner), my wife consented to a games day with eight guys from the Edmonton Wargame Group. Our plan is to have a three- (or four-) year campaign with eight players tomorrow. There will be map moves using rules derived from Tim Brown's various HoTT campaigns with tabletop battles resolved using Dave's and Mark's 1/72 armies and Basic Impetus.

The map looks like this:

Now on to making up move forms, finding army counters, buying beer, etc.

In the category of Christmas miracles, I emerged from the basement on Boxing Day to find my wife and daughter playing a wargame. Now, admittedly it was Battleship, which is mechanically defective (no CnC, no morale mechanics, ahistorical fleet deployment, simplistic combat system) but it is a step in the right direction!

There is also an interesting variant in the rules called Salvo! which allows a bit fast resolution by using a more realistic combat mechanic and step-reduction in fire power. It is not Victory at Sea or Flat Top, but getting there!

Up next: A campaign report and maybe some 15mm Anglo-Irish.

MayDay Playtest

I agreed to host a game at MayDay this year involving a combination of map movement and miniatures play (the latter determining the timing of the troop arrivals on the former). Bruce agreed to come over to playtest one approach to this that was in Battlegames 20. I set up a basic Rome-on-Rome game with all troops moving first on the map and then arriving on board.

The pre-game proceed fairly well, but I think an area-movement approach would work better in a convention setting. It also better simulates the offboard traffic control issues of the battle I'm trying to model. Below, you can see my cheeky light horse units occupying one of Bruce's outpost hexes.

Then the heavies finally showed up, nicely modeling the staggered way in which armies appear in battle--the fast vanguard followed by the core. Below you can see my legion have come down the stairs, wheeled left and stand ready to attack.

Below we see the legions about to clash in the middle of some dodgy terrain. Bruce is advancing from the top of the picture and I surged forward, hoping to pick off the unit on the hill. Damned thing held out for at least three turns of pounding!

Here is a shot of Bruce's bowmen about to grease some light infantry. Apparently his units got issued with laser sights and depleted-uranium arrows. Good lord, what didn't they kill!

Another picture of Bruce's annoying bowmen!

And here is the end game, with Bruce's legion on the hill having held off my advance until he could bring a flanking unit around to finish me off.



Overall a fun game using Basic Impetus. Bruce completely outplayed me the entire game and broke my forces. Afterwards, I recalled that we never did examine the actual victory conditions (which had something to do with setting up a picket line). Oh well! I learned a lot for my MayDay game and I will start to work through some of what we talked about afterwards. Definitely area movement is the better mechanic, but the map made for an interesting pre-game. This could be extended by adding in a couple of waves of troops.

Up next: 15mm New Kingdom Egyptians are on painting table along with camps for both them and their Hittite opponents. I'm not sure what will come next. I need to rebase some 6mm troops (AWI) for MayDay.

2010 Plans?

With the faculty party over and the house restored to order, I spent most of this morning moving several groups of figures to completion (last of the Gondor LotR for Tuesday's game, finished painting a bunch of 15mm dwarves) and looking about the hobby room. It seems to me I have four things that I would like to accomplish in 2010:

1. I need to complete the rebasing of my 6mm armies to 80mm frontages. I have only the ancient pike stands and my AWI armies to complete. This should go quickly once I get motivated.

2. I have a large collection of 15mm DBA armies in the paint pile or en route. Most of these are meant to be painted and sold to fund a pool table (really a war gaming table but one has to spin things sometimes when facing down the Minister of Finance...). There are two republican Roman armies, orcs, barbarians, several more ancients en route (Egyptians, Hittites, more Romans, Vikings). I also have put away Pict and Anglo-Danish armies for myself. And a friend from Ontario is shipping me some Saracens to paint up. These are all nice because they are so manageable--10 days of solid work ad they are done.

3. I have a growing collection of 25mm plastic (still in the box). I think there is enough here to do some very large DBA armies. Not sure why I need ancient Romans and Celts in both 6mm and 25mm... . But sometimes a cool diversion is nice.

4. The 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 starts in two and a bit years. I was thinking this would be an interesting project, with some magazine articles about the battles, about collecting the figures (maybe in 1/72) and converting Basic Impetus. LIkely this is a project for 2011, though.

Next up: 15mm dwarves should be based up tonight. And some 1/72 Gondor heavy infantry. And club is Tuesday so I'd better that scenario worked out!

1/72 Lord of the Rings Basic Impetus

My buddy Chris came over last night for a test game of my Lord of the Rings adaptation of Basic Impetus. Finally my 1/72 fantasy stuff hits the table!

I set out a basic meeting engagement to try out the rules, which differ from the various internet versions by abstracting magic (no special abilities). With 120mm frontages, I used a 6x4' table. As the lists look, the evil army has more punch but less mobility and missile options. We each had 12 bases.

Good had 3x medium cavalry, 3x light foot, 2x skirmishers, 2x heavy foot (dwarves), and 2x bow. Evil had 2x warg riders, 1x uruk-hai, 6x light foot, 2x skirmishers and 1x troll.

With more space than the frontages could cover, there was a fair bit of maneuvering on both flanks. On the left, Rohan cavalry advanced again against the troll. This match up seemed pretty even. On the right, the warg riders took on some Rohan bow, again with fairly "historical" results given the relative abilities of the units.

The game decided in the middle, however, as the line of heavies collided and pushed back and forth. Eventually, the evil side broke just ahead of the good. I have one more playtest scheduled and then will bring it out to the club on November 17th. If it seems to work, I'll then bring out a double-sized games (4x12') in early December.

As was foretold by the Oracle of Coltphi, there is not quite enough thematic feel to the game yet--a bit too dark ages. So I'm going to add in some pre-game rolls for magic items (which modify basic unit stats or set up) to get at the trinketry magic in LotR. I'm also going to create some rules whereby heroes not only duel if they meet on the field, but they affect the stats of the unit they are with. I'm really trying to stay away from special rules because, as Chris said, "special abilities are just a vector of abuse". Ahem!

Next up: Likely from 15mm medieval foot, then maybe a few more 1/72 foot and mounted to fill out the Rohan lines. Then perhaps some 15mm Marian Romans for sale. Oh, an a DBA tourney on Remembrance Day!