Crusades Game 1

A few finished bases

I've decided that the best way to make some progress on the 15mm Crusades re-basing effort is to set a manageable and meaningful short term goal. There is no better goal in miniatures than to be getting ready to put on a game, so that's what I am going to do. I will do a small solo campaign using Day of Battle. Whatever figures I need as the games progress is what I will need to make sure I have done before I can continue. I won't play a game until everything for that game is 100% complete. That includes figures as well as terrain.

With that in mind, I will start with a Crusader faction using the Crusader States list ("K1" in the Crusades supplement), and a Saracen faction using the Ayyubid Egyptian list ("K5"). Since the army generation rules provide good variability in what troop types respond to a warlord's summons, this should be a perfect way to be forced to base up different types of troops from game to game.

Each side will start with a Social Rank 3 warlord, Esteem 2 (and therefore Household value of 5).

The Crusaders:
Card draws (face, face, joker) result in 21 Army Points (5 + 5 + [3x2] + 5). This is 7 units (21/3). This comes to 2 mounted, 1 missile, 3 foot, and 1 "random" unit (which turns out to be a mounted unit), plus the free retinue unit choice. Die rolls on the muster chart result in:

• 1 Holy order knights (the free retinue choice), 2 mounted knights, 1 mounted sergeants
• 1 crossbow unit
• 1 Holy order spear unit, 2 regular spear units

The Egyptians:
The card draws (face, 9, 2) result in 17 Army Points (5+5+2+5 - number cards are worth their value, but to a maximum of the warlord's household value). This is 6 units (17/3 = 5.67). This comes to 3 mounted, 2 missile and 1 foot, plus one free retinue unit choice. Die rolls on the muster chart result in:

• 1 Royal Mameluke cavalry (the free retinue choice), 2 Mameluke cavalry, 1 light cavalry with bows
• 1 skirmisher with javelins, 1 skirmisher with bows
• 1 spear unit with javelins

Each army will also need a few command bases. Details on exact upgrades for the units prior to the actual game will be dealt with later, but none of that happens until the units above are complete. I have some units completed, but not all of the above. What remains to be done should be a very manageable bit of work.

Update - A quick review of my figures shows that only 1 Crusader spear unit and the 2 Saracen skirmish units still need to have the figs glued to the bases (along with the sand). The remainder are close to completion, needing only for the bases to be painted and flocked. So this is primarily an exercise in cosmetic base finishing. However, since I do need to do some gluing, I will probably do a dozen or so other various foot units at the same time for future games. I am doing pretty well on cavalry; much less so on infantry.

Fall In 2012 Convention recap

Nice looking beach landing game

November 2-4, 2012 was the annual Fall In convention in Lancaster PA, and I was especially looking forward to taking the day off on Friday and going up for the day Friday and Saturday. Since Historicon moved to Fredericksburg VA this past summer and I didn't attend, it has been since March that I have been to a show. And while I have done a good bit of painting this year, I have played almost no actual games. So going to the convention would be a good thing to get the juices flowing again. If nothing else, these conventions always spur a flurry of activity afterwards.

With all the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy in NJ, NY and CT, attendance was definitely down. Tournament areas were not as full, some dealers normally in attendance were not, and there seemed to be many less games. Still a good show though with plenty to do, and no bad weather messing up the drive.

Highlights of the show for me:

Villers-Bocage (Fireball Forward game)

• Spending some time chatting with Chris Parker, author of the Day of Battle rules, and a friend and great guy. I picked up his new Norman Conquests supplement, which looks really nice. Some good DOB conversation has me working on my Ottoman army after my return from the show, and thinking about events we might be able to do at Cold Wars in the spring. Very nice to see his brother David as well.
• Watching, at length, Leo play in a Fireball Forward WW2 game of a German attack on the railway station in Villers-Bocage, defended by Brits. I have read through much of the rules for this and it seems like a fun, playable, WW2 game. Leo recommends it highly. After watching for a while, I know I would enjoy it.

Purchases were kept within reason, and included:

• A bunch of Gale Force Nine pre-cut bases for more medievals and for my Seven Years War order that is currently in Sri Lanka getting painted. I prefer Litko's plywood bases (you can write on the light colored bottoms), but I wanted the instant gratification purchase and Litko doesn't come to shows any more (presumably because they have a suitably established client base). Cheap. Quick. Done.
• Fireball Forward rules and the Panzer Lehr at St Lo scenario book. I am a sucker for rules, and this scenario book makes sense for me because I have Americans and Germans and have much of what I would need to play many of these scenarios.
• Day of Battle supplement Norman Conquests as noted above.
• Three bags of Old Glory medievals very cheap at the flea market. All Hundred Years War, and exactly what I was thinking about buying retail. Sometimes you get very lucky.
• Extra Impetus 3 supplement for the Impetus rules.

It was a fun couple of days, and if nothing else, it has done the usual, which is to re-energize me and cause of burst of activity. I am assembling and prepping a few more bags of Ottomans, and am devouring all of my new rules and supplements. Next weekend I want to set up a Day of Battle game and actually push some figs around and roll some dice.

Desert Terrain

As mentioned in a prior post, most of my shopping at Cold Wars was focused on getting some ready to use terrain items for my Crusades project. It is amazing what a difference a few small additions make to creating the right look and feel on the table. I think my little desert terrain battlefield is actually starting to look like a desert. I still have a several things to work on, but I am satisfied that it no longer looks glaringly wrong. So that's a good start. I still need to work on the ground colors, but I have picked up a few quarts of different colored latex house paint and just need some time to try different combinations and experiment. This is functional and will do for now.

Cold Wars 2011 - Friday

Cold Wars in Lancaster PA this year is a Thursday to Sunday affair, but due to other things going on I only planned to attend on Friday. Since I was not preregistered and signed up for any particular games, and had become boxed in in the morning by a business meeting that I really couldn't get out of, it looked like it would even be a short single day.

My general plan was to get out of work by no later than 1pm and head straight to the show. Since February was a very unproductive month for geocaching due to horrible weather and all the standing snow on the ground, I wanted to take 2 or 3 hours on the way to the convention to grab a bunch of caches in the Lancaster area. Since I only get out that way a couple times a year, the area is still ripe with easy caches, so a few hours could get me a nice bunch of finds. After wrapping up my geocaching I would get to the show in time for an hour or more of browsing and shopping before the dealer area closed at 6pm. Then I would hang around with Chris Parker for the duration of the evening, batting around ideas for Day of Battle 4th edition and pushing some figs around to test those ideas.

The day ended up similar to that, if not exactly according to plan. I didn't get out of work until 2pm and traffic getting out to Lancaster was bad, so it was after 3pm when I found my first geocache. Instead of the 15-18 that I was hoping to get, I found 8 before needing to get to the convention in order to do any shopping at all, and I didn't want to miss that because there were a number of things on my list that I wanted to buy. Nothing urgent, but some odds and ends, mainly for my Crusades project.

The goal for my purchasing at this convention was not to buy anything that required assembly or painting. In other words, only finished game-ready stuff that could be dropped on the table immediately. I stuck to that very well. An hour of power shopping netted me two pieces of swamp terrain and two sets of "narrow muddy rivers" (all by JR Miniatures), a bag of 20 nice little palm tree clusters, two buildings from Miniature Building Authority (a castle wall tower and the Witt house), and two booklets (Extra Impetus 1 and 2 for the Impetus rules). And I still had time to spend 10 minutes or so catching up with my friend Ed Wimble from Clash of Arms Games. He was excited about the impending publication of the new edition of La Bataille de Moskowa, as am I.

After that I got together with Chris, who had remembered his schedule wrong, and was actually running his game at 7pm. I sat and watched his Stirling Bridge scenario, which was a brief and bloody English disaster (historical in other words), after which a number of us sat around and discussed the rules. It was a nice evening, and I think some promising rules change possibilities were proposed. Chris and I both agreed to write up what we think we all discussed and then try them out. I can't wait. I am going to wrap up Crusades game number 1 this weekend, and will use the new rules in the next game.

Leaving the convention at around 9:45pm, I grabbed three more park and grab caches in the new shopping center next to the convention hotel and was home in bed by 11:30pm. So while things didn't go exactly according to plan, it was a productive day. More than half of a work day, eleven geocaches, a little gratuitous spending on hobby stuff and a miniatures game. Now that I think about it, that sounds like retirement if you drop the work part...

Crusades - Reynaud's First Battle

I haven't posted much recently, but I have probably made more progress on miniatures related things than I have in a long time. That is to say I have made a little progress, which is a vast improvement over having done nothing much for many months. I have been energized with the idea of the Crusades project I have undertaken. This evening I played through one turn of Reynaud's first battle, and while I will save a battle report for later (once there is something to report), I can at least post a picture to show what I have been up to.

My Litko base order is still listed as "in production" on their website, so the troops have been pressed into service in their old partially finished green "WRG" basing. A couple of Crusader leader/banner stands have been completed. They are the small round stands behind other larger units. Saracen leaders are bare round bases with no figs.

But the progress I have made is the first attempt at a terrain board and some hills. The method I used is fine: wood glue on blue board insulation sprinkled with sand. When the sand is dry, a coat of desert color latex house paint which is subsequently dry-brushed with a few successively lighter shades of the base color. A little darker color is added in a few spots for variety. I'm not completely sold that I have the right paint colors for this, as everything looks a little too yellow for my tastes, and while the middle east is an arid land, it isn't the Sahara. I think I need to go with a little bit of a darker grayish-brown base layer and then lighter tan highlights that aren't quite as yellow. That being said, repainting will be easy, and before I embark on a more ambitious set of modular terrain boards and pieces, I wanted to test the colors. I think this little exercise taught me what I needed to learn. As an aside, I think the simple rough hill in the extreme back of the picture behind the stream may be closer to the color scheme I want for the base layer. We shall see.

Other pieces of terrain, such as the lame "oasis" at lower left and "swampy area" at back right are stand-ins for the real thing, but you have to start somewhere. Note to self: buy palm trees at Cold Wars next weekend...

Outremer Settlers domain list

This is the domain list I have drafted to represent a Frankish settler's domain in a border area in the northern part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid-12th century. I want something that will give a blend of the Frankish and native troop types that would probably have been more typical than a straight "Crusader" army in this kind of situation. It is a work in progress, and I have a few other ideas rattling around in my head that I think are worth exploring, so I would expect I will be posting an expansion on this in the not too distant future.

12 March, 1148

From the Journal of Reynaud of Aarma

"Sunset on this the Twelfth day of March, the year of our Lord 1148. It has been four years since I arrived on these shores and two years since I have been graced with the lands of Aarma. My two years here have been peaceful, and my daily work has been ruling these lands and not wielding a sword. But war has come from the East. Amir Habib ibn Hamad has been raiding into the borderlands, stealing livestock, robbing caravans and burning crops. Outriders from my neighbor Stephen of Yuval came to Aarma scant days ago with word of a force moving up the valley in my direction. I have called my men to me and marched to meet him beyond the borders of my lands. I will not see the toil of my time here undone. Nor shall I forsake the trust my lord Gilbert of Tyre has placed in me. I will do my duty. My scouts have found the Amir and his horsemen camped near the burning village of Houra, only a few miles hence. In the morning, he shall feel the wrath of our lances and the bite of our swords. Lord, may your blessings shine upon us on the Day of Battle."

Crusades - Game 1 Prep

The Situation
March 12, 1148. A troublesome Syrian amir has been raiding into the Christian areas east of Reynaud's lands. Reynaud has summoned his forces and ridden forth to do battle.

Game Overview
I will play this first game as a straight-up battle with a Syrian domain list led by a leader with stats identical to Reynaud's. The Syrian army points available will be equal to Reynaud's with one plus/minus randomizer card. I will use the Early Crusader list for Reynaud as I have not drafted the Early Frankish Settlers list. Since this project is being tackled as a "just in time" endeavor, item one on the immediate term ToDo list becomes "draft Early Frankish Settler" domain list to have it ready for game 2.

Summoning Reynaud's Army
Army Points (AP) will be his household (HH) value (SR3 plus Esteem 2 = 5) plus three random draw cards. Cards are a 4, an 8 (max of his household value, so reduced to 5), and a Queen (faces are value 5). So his three cards are worth 14. Plus household of 5 is 19 AP. 19 AP divided by 3 is 6 units with one AP left over. That can be used to purchase an SR1 leader. There is a new Household Units rule that lets you pick a few units off your domain list before randomizing the rest. For a HH 5 leader, this is 2 units. The obvious choice here is to take 2 units of knights, which I will do. The remaining 4 units are rolled for randomly, and answering Reynaud's summons are: 2 units of spearmen, 1 additional knights, and 1 turcomen light cavalry. Just to use the new Mercenaries rule, I will make the additional knight unit a mercenary unit and say that they are Byzantine adventurers fighting for pay on the frontier.

The Syrian army of Amir Habib
Syrian AP will be 19 and a randomizer card, which is a black 5, meaning plus 1 AP, for a total of 20. This equates to 6 units with 2 AP leftover, which allows the Syrians to have an additional leader or two. To make them more flexible, I will choose a pair of SR1 leaders rather than one SR2. Habib's household units will be a pair of heavy cavalry. His remaining 4 units are rolled for and come up: 2 horse archers, 1 light cavalry and 1 infantry unit. Not an unrealistic force.

Postscript
I will now either re-base enough figures for these units or maybe play this first game with the figures still in old standard basing. I just went down to the basement to check on one unit of knights that I re-based on a basswood sheet base as a test, and the results aren't pretty. The basswood bases are large enough that even though they are thick (3/32"), the amount of glue put on top to glue the figures and the sand texture at the same time have caused the base to warp dramatically. Looks like I need a plan B...which most likely means an order of Litko plywood bases that should be dimensionally stable. Looks like ToDo list #2 becomes "order bases." Bummer.

Crusades Project - Background

I have a lot of work to do on my 15mm Crusades armies. Re-basing figures, painting buildings, working on "brown world" desert terrain, buying some additional figures and other tasks that I am sure haven't even occurred to me yet. At the same time, the other main objective of this project is to help Chris with Day of Battle 4. I am afraid that if I get too bogged down in all the miniatures related tasks, I'll never get around to playing anything. So this is my plan...

I will create a new character to build the campaign around (and let's hope I can keep him alive for a little while!). I will do the pre-game prep for the first battle, up to the point of army creation. Once I see what I need for that battle, I will re-base the figures needed (but only what is immediately needed), fight the battle, and so on. This should force me into a nice mix of background tasks and actually playing.

Our Story Begins
We'll follow the exploits of Reynaud, a lesser son of a minor French noble who has come to the holy lands in the wake of the First Crusade to find fame and fortune. Or at least fortune. It is the middle part of the 12th century, let's say 1148. Reynaud has some experience in battle from his days in France, and has been granted lordship of a small fief in the northern part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His holdings are modest, but more than he could have dreamed of back home. The town of Aarma, and its tiny little castle are his home, and he has feudal authority over the nearby villages of Dafna, Ghajar, and Baj al Malouk. The people of his fiefdom are a combination of Frankish settlers and locals, who he has treated well and are for the most part loyal to him.


His first couple of years have been mainly consumed with settling the area better and winning over the locals, but this inland area is in a historically contested area near the Syrian border, and things seem to be flaring up... There are raiding Syrians, roving bands of bandits, unfriendly "friendly" neighbors wanting more influence in the area, and all sorts of other potential enemies.

The Games
Chris has been kind enough to throw together drafts of the army lists from his On Holy Ground supplement for my use in this project. As I intend the character to be a Frankish settler between major Crusades (I and III primarily), depending on the circumstance I will be using the Domain lists for Early Crusaders, Syrians, and a homemade blended list for "Early Frankish Settlers". I want Reynaud's core Domain list to be the kind of amalgamation of western and local troop types that such a holding would have had access to. And it also gives me the opportunity to mix in Byzantine mercenaries and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy. Once I draft this "Frankish Settlers" list I will post it here and forward it to Chris for his review and input.

Now on to Game 1...

Crusades Project - Plans

I have been inactive in my wargaming for far too long. Now that we have gotten some family things straightened out that had things in a state of flux, I am ready to dive back into something.

First, I need to get an order out the Fernando Enterprises for painting. I don't have the time to paint quantity, so some of my figure stock needs to get on an airplane and go overseas. This will end up being 25mm Ottomans, 25mm Seven Years War, or 25mm Renaissance.

Second, I need to get back to work on helping Chris Parker out with his ideas for Day of Battle IV. In conjunction with this, I plan to rebase my 15mm Crusader and Saracen armies using the Impetus style basing that Chris is using. There is no real risk in doing this, as I have never really used these armies the way they are based now, and I have been anxious to base something on the kind of diorama-style bases that Impetus uses. I will try to use these newly rebased armies to do some playtesting of DoB4 as part of a small solo campaign.

Hopefully, between these little projects and the fact that Cold Wars is coming up in less than a month, I will get back on the hobby track.

Day of Battle 4 - Playtest Game

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving (11/27), Dave, Ryan, Leo and I got together to push some figures around. Our intent was to spend some time working through some of Chris Parker's draft rules and ideas for a new version of Day of Battle. This post isn't going to be a review of those ideas, but is just an excuse to post some pictures from our game with a minimum of verbage. At this point the game was three weeks ago, and I doubt I could write a detailed battle report, seeing as how my main memory of it at this point is being unceremoniously driven from the field. Oh well. It happens...

For this game we used figs from my Hundred Years War collection to set up a French-ish medieval force and an English-ish force, but set in the decades prior to the full-fledged ascendency of the longbow. To be able to get a feel for our impressions of some of the core parts of the new rules, we went light on missile troops and hoped to concentrate on the melee and morale sections, which contain a lot of new material.

The set up: French on the left and English on the right. Three battles (commands) per side. Mixed infantry and cavalry in the center and far flank. Infantry near the town.


French and English cavalry mixing it up in the center. The English (me) held on for a while, but the tide would turn against me...


Infantry advancing into the village. This bogged down into an inconclusive pushing and shoving match.


The cavalry battle turns against the English. French weight of numbers grinds down my horsemen.


Oops. The French are in front of me... beside me... and behind me. The "behind" part is especially bad. At this point, the new battle line morale rules that Chris is proposing really came into effect and had the English battleline begin to fade away.


A good game, a fun evening, and a solid run-through of Chris' new ideas. After a few months of very little in the way of gaming other than the occasional bit of painting, it was very refreshing to get a few friends and family together to push some figures around.

Historicon 2010 - Hundred Years War game, Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Having been playing in part of the game, and therefore focusing on a smaller piece of the battle, I don't have a great memory or overview of parts of the game, and so it is difficult to do a very good battle report. The English position stabilized quickly after Warwick's initial disaster, and Chris did a very good job of putting Clermont back onto his heels. In the center, Edward's attacks against the Dauphin were largely ineffective. On the French right, the Captal de Buch did a better than expected job of holding their own against Audrehem's qualitatively superior knights.

On the right, English and Gascon knights bring the fight to the French, pushing them back up the hill. Cheshire longbowmen in their green and white tunics can be seen at far right.

Edward and the Dauphin go at it in the foreground while Clermont and Warwick continue their fight in the background.

Situation toward the end of the game. The English have made some headway, but not nearly enough.

Edward is held back in the center. Warwick rallies and holds off Clermont.

Captal de Buch continues to do well against the French nobles on the right, driving them further up the hill.

I think that every figure on the table was Old Glory. Flags are by The Flag Dude (the nicer ones) or by me off the internet. Painting was split between myself and Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka. I did every mounted figure and maybe half the foot figures. The Pros did the rest.

The game was a success insofar as it went, and everyone who played in it had a good time. I committed to running the same scenario again at Fall In in Lancaster over the Halloween weekend. Maybe we'll see you there!

Historicon 2010 - Hundred Years War game, Part 1

Day of Battle, 1356
King Jean II vs Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince

I ran one game at Historicon this year with the assistance of my nephew Ryan and Chris Parker, author of the Day of Battle rules. 3rd edition Day of Battle were the rules we were using, and the battle was a "Poitiers-ish" 1356 battle between the French and English in the Hundred Years War. The game was published incorrectly in the Event Listing book, saying it was 90mm instead of 25mm, and this error probably scared away some people who look at the very large scale figures as toys. (Yes, even in a niche hobby, we still have snobs). As a result, we were expecting few if any people to show up for the six player slots for a game that was scheduled to start at 8pm and run until midnight. As a result, Chris, Ryan and I began the game just the three of us playing, and were joined a bit later by two players. So it ended up being an enjoyable game with all three gamemasters playing.

The overall situation was a different spin on the historical battle of Poitiers, but a "what if" that had a reasonable basis in the realm of possibility. In our version of the game, part of the French army under command of the Duc de Normandie (the Dauphin - the eldest son of the King of France), was able to get in front of the English army as it headed south to get back to friendly territory. Also in the Dauphin's army were two cavalry wings commanded by the two Marshals of France, Clermont and Audrehem. In our scenario, the entire English army would fall upon the French force, and would have to try to drive them off and get across the river safely before the remainder of the French army, under the King himself and the Duc d'Orleans arrived. Because of the shortage of players, we played with a partial English army and no French reinforcements. Chris played the Duke of Warwick's battle, Ryan played Prince Edward, I commanded the French (and was joined by 2 players who would each take control of one of the Marshals).

Initial dispositions. Marshal Clermont is on the French (near) left, with the Dauphin's large battle in the middle, and Audrehem's cavalry was on the right flank. The Duke of Warwick has begun advancing in the left distance, with Edward advancing in the center and right distance.

Edward (Ryan) boldly surges forward, attempting to get his longbowmen into range as quickly as possible. The French wait, with Genoese mercenary crossbowmen sheltered behind their pavises manning the front line.

The English are coming! The English are coming! A small English mounted wing under the Captal de Buch, a Gascon noble, advance on the right in the distance, facing off against Audrehem's elite knights.

The battle lines, after trading missile fire for a while, are about to clash. On the French left, Warwick's men have advanced very close to Clermont's knights. The French Marshal spurs his horse forward and sounds the charge.

Clermont's first charge was devastating, breaking through the first line of longbowmen and crashing into the English dismounted knights behind them. As a result of the flight of the first English line, two supporting units broke and fled as well. The three fleeing English units can be seen in the distance, milling about in the farm fields in confusion. In one charge, fully half of Warwick's battle had fled the field. Not an auspicious start for the English...

...to be continued.

Day of Battle Campaign

I have been feeling the strong urge to do something of a campaign nature, and I think I have just the answer. A ways back I had been working on a number of expansion ideas for Chris Parker's Day of Battle III rules. What I had been tinkering with were not changes to the base rules, but things to add an additional layer of flavor to the personality aspect of the game. The honor point and advancement mechanisms already in place would serve as the basics of the game-to-game progression, but there would be additional charts to roll on to get new traits and characteristics as you rose in social rank and esteem. Subordinate leaders rolling on these tables would add a bit of spice to the games, and would help in a solo campaign because it would give you the need to have certain leaders behave in certain ways. All of this additional material would require using the full universe of advanced and optional rules, something that Chris and I have not been able to do in convention games. For example, a trait could be that the leader must always lead from the front when attached to a unit in melee. I have to dig the drafts of this stuff out and revisit them, but I think a modest sized solo campaign would provide just the impetus I need to polish these things up. It will also give me a good reason to be working on something in the white space between face to face games with real people...

Fall In 2009 - Chevauchee 1355

Forgive me for I have sinned; it has been 16 days since my last hobby-related post.... While taking the afternoon off to watch the Phillies first playoff game against the Rockies, I decided to take a few quick pictures and post something hobby related for the first time in almost two weeks. We are only one month away from Fall In, and I have work left to do.

This is the English/Gascon army of Edward, Prince of Wales (The Black Prince). I have laid it out roughly in its intended deployment; Left, Center, Right and a cavalry contingent on the far right. As can be seen, it is sitting on an incomplete blue board battlefield. More on that later. All figures are complete but the bases need to be flocked. Details of the deployment would be different, but the contents of the army are set.

Each of the three main infantry "battles" consists of five or six units of three stands each. The front line in the picture consists of longbowmen and crossbowmen, the second line is hobilar foot and Gascon spearmen, and the third line is dismounted knights. Singly based leaders and banners are in the rear. I have been a slacker and not ordered flags from the Flag Dude. It may be too late and I may need to make some flags myself. This wouldn't be a big deal, as many of my flags were made by me from the beautiful flags that can be found on the Danish wargaming site that is in my Links section.

A typical English infantry "battle" is shown here. This battle has five units, and will be the English Left - 2 longbows, 2 hobilars, and 1 dismounted knight along with their leader and banner. A battle this size will probably be led by a leader with 4 command cards. This will make command somewhat flexible, but still make it difficult to do everything you would want to do once the troops get fully engaged.

The English order of battle will probably be very similar for the two different games that I have signed up for at the show, but the scenarios will be pretty different. In one of the games, it will be a fairly standard "English on the defense" scenario, but the other will put the English army in a position where they must attack. That one should be interesting. The scenario with the French attacking will probably be similar to Poitiers (my originally intended game) in many ways; the game with the French on the defensive will be significantly different.

This picture shows some of the French mounted knights that will form the hard-hitting core of the French army, along with some of the leaders and banners. The red flag in the center rear is the Oriflamme, the most sacred secular token of medieval France, which is only brought out from its resting place in the church of Saint Denis on the most important occasions. Whether or not the Oriflamme makes an appearance at Fall In remains to be seen.

One of the main things I need to decide is what kind of battlefield I want to go with. Simple terrain cloth with stuff on it is the easiest, but I much prefer to run games on a stiff terrain board, like the in-process ones in the first picture. I am in the midst of making a set of 2.5 foot square modular boards, but finishing six or eight of them in the next few weeks would be a project I don't know if I want to commit to. Maybe I play it by ear. Terrain boards look much better, and the chances of the game getting disturbed by an inadvertent slip are much less.

We shall see soon enough...

Welcome

My primary hobby for the last bunch of years has been miniatures wargaming, or painting and fighting battles with toy soldiers. I actually spend considerably more time painting the figures than using them, and I have a notoriously short attention span for completing projects, so I intend to use this blog to focus my efforts a little bit as well as to let interested parties know what I am up to. Having never done anything of this sort before, this boring little tidbit is an exercise in using the tools and not making anything blow up. So far so good. Going forward, I will be posting pictures of games we play, painting efforts, and whatever else of a hobby-related nature that comes to mind. Or anything else for that matter.

The project on the docket at the moment, and one which has a due date, is to finalize the events that I will be running at HMGS's Fall In show in Gettysburg PA in November with my good friend Chris Parker. Chris is the author of the Day of Battle rules set (whose title I have shamelessly pilfered for the title of this blog) for medieval battles, and we will be running a pair of games at the convention based more or less on the battle of Poitiers (the Hundred Years War one, not the other). We need to nail down the orders of battle we will be using, finish painting the last few units needed, and then playtest and tweak the whole affair. More to come...