Vikings versus Greenies - Song of Blades and Heroes

When my brother dropped by at the weekend, we played a couple of games of Song of Blades and Heroes. I fielded my totally unsuccessful Viking force, while my brother took to the field with his Orcs and Goblins. The games were interesting but highlighted how random the commands can be. My force consisted of 5 Vikings with a mix of missile and hand weapons, and a heroic leader. My brother's force consisted of about eight or so Orcs and goblins with a mix of archers and melee troops, led by a tough leader.

Game 1 - Set-up


The first scenario included a place of magic on the board with bonus victory points for occupying it with a magic-user. Neither of us had a magic-user so the game came down to driving the enemy from the field. I felt sure that the Orcs would win by weight of numbers. As it happened, poor command rolls led to the Orcs being driven screaming from the field.

Game 1 - Orcs being driven screaming from the field


The second game was an all-out battle to kill the enemy. It had the same result for the same reasons. Patrick (my brother) had real problems with his command rolls, which resulted in the Orcs being outmanoeuvred by the more tactically astute Vikings. The Orcs were not able to bring their greater numbers to bear effectively and so they lost.

I felt that the second game more than the first was lost by the Orcs through poor command rolls rather than won by me through tactical genius. However, in both cases the better quality troops won by virtue of failing fewer command rolls. So, why have my Vikings always lost to Steve's Teutonic Knights? :-)

Wolves from the Sea

My brother came to visit today. He was dropping off the Vikings supplement for Field of Glory, which I plan to try at some point in the future. Wolves from the Sea is a nice shiny army list book. I already have some quibbles with the Vikings list (Cavalry? What were they thinking?) but the book itself is well-produced and has lots of inspirational artwork from the Osprey books in it.

I suspect that Field of Glory will fall short of my desires in the same way as every other rules set that covers the entirety of prehistory and history up to the end of the medieval period does, but I shall try them first. The game play may be sufficiently good to warrant continued play. On the other hand, I may well prefer Impetus. Dadi e Piombo already scores well by making Basic Impetus freely available, and I like the fixed army lists for BI. One thing I hate in army lists is the ability to pick and choose every option that was ever used in history, even if it were only ever used once. My view is that army lists should produce representative armies, not the exceptions. Unfortunately, the Ooh Shiny Complex seems to creep into the lists. Wargamers want to be able to field flaming tar pigs and stampeded cattle at every turn, even if they were only rarely used, but I do not subscribe to that particular fetish. Anyway, I already have a ton of 15mm Vikings, Saxons and Normans to paint, so I shall paint these figures up and try the rules out.

My brother also dropped off a copy of Command Decision: Test of Battle. I have played Command Decision since its first incarnation and have both the second and the third incarnations and have always enjoyed it. I also have and have played the WW1 and modern versions of the rules (Over the Top and Combined Arms). The new version is nice and shiny and comes with Fog of War cards, which I understand are played like random events. It also claims to have streamlined the combat system (a definite plus because the rules are quite techie) and now includes a points system for pick-up games. You decide which theatre and time period you are playing and get a core force for your side based on that. The core force is fixed but you then have a number of reinforcement options. I have not looked at it in detail but it looks like a good way to produce historically believable battle groups without the usual problems that a points system brings. The rules also include 12 scenarios to introduce you to the game, so there is plenty to do with them. In addition to this, a quick glance at the index suggests that they are very complete in terms of combined arms attacks, air support and all the rest. I can't wait to try these out. Time to dust off the old Western Desert forces and break out my copy of the Benghazi Handicap. Tally ho, chaps!

Searchers of the Lost Uraei - A Wargods Report

We played Wargods again last night. Wargods really is a good game and the command system in it makes every game tense and exciting. Last night's game was a continuation of a mini-campaign that we started many moons ago. It saw my warband heading into the swamps to try to recover information about a tribe of no-good Nekharu that we have to find for some reason that currently escapes me. Steve has written the scenario up on his blog. I am now really looking forward to the final part of the campaign. Then it will be my turn to write a mini-campaign for Steve's warband, the forces of Karn the Flayer. I wrote a Wargods of Valhalla mod some time back that is still downloadable from the Gods of War ezine. This introduces Viking forces into Wargods. As anyone that knows me will be able to tell you, I like Vikings. So, I have tentatively titled this new mini-campaign Snow Trek: The Wrath of Karn. I wonder if there are merchandising rights to sell based on this one?

End of June Update

This month's target was met about a week or so ago, which was nice. I am now looking forward to next month's objective. I have identified some Wargods of Aegyptus figures that I would like to get painted and some 6mm figures for variety. My plan is to paint all of my remaining Totanem (children of Ptah), which amounts to one unit of warriors, one hero and a stone colossus that I bought last year at Salute. Having seen the retail price for the colossus now that it has been released, I think I got a bargain. I also plan to paint the figures I had set aside for my Border Kingdoms army in our Warrior Heroes campaign. My original goal was to use Normans for this army, but there are none on the market in 6mm that I like, so I am going to go with more Wars of the Roses period figures from Baccus. This has the advantage of adding to my Wars of the Roses collection so that I can fight larger battles with those armies too. I recently bought Warmaster Medieval Armies and would like to try those rules. The army lists are a bit of a nonsense for this period, but the game is fun and I can always write my own lists if necessary.

Other options for the month include rebasing my 15mm Vikings for Basic Impetus and patching them up. I have had most of these Vikings since the late eighties and it shows. The paint jobs stand up well enough, but the paint is flaking and the figures look decidedly like grizzled veterans. I have a ton of 15mm Saxons and Normans to paint so adding them to the queue would be useful, and I could use them as opponents for the Vikings. I also have a half-painted Qin Chinese army that I bought to fight my brother's Han Chinese. We had planned to use Armati for this battle but my brother lost interest in Armati after a poor showing at a tournament, so I put my figures to one side. Now I am tempted to dig them out and try Basic Impetus with them too. I think I actually have enough unpainted Chinese to produce a couple of Warring States armies. I doubt any of these 15mm chaps will be the subject of a monthly objective because Steve has no similar figures to oppose me, but I may well treat them as a personal subobjective. With two armies on the table, Steve can hardly refuse to play me, can he?

Thinking back on the drive for thrift, I am quite pleased with what I have achieved so far. The challenge is now 6 months old so I thought I would pen a few words on that. Steve and I have managed to paint a bunch of old lead without buying too much new lead, which is a good thing. I have certainly curtailed my spending quite significantly, which is also a good thing, and I have dealt with a number of projects that had previously languished through lack of focus. This is brilliant. Adopting this project-oriented approach has really helped in getting things completed. Mind you, I have not really noticed any diminution in the lead pile, but that is probably because it was so large to start with.

One thing I have done each month is define a realistic goal. I have not posed any difficult challenges because I felt that over-facing myself would be counter-productive and kill my motivation. Therefore I have looked at what I wanted to achieve and what I could achieve, and have set my targets based on that. On the whole this has worked well. I have had moments when I did not feel like painting at all, and others when I felt like painting all the time. This has balanced out and I have been able to make steady progress. One thing that has really helped, has been playing a game with the new figures each month. By using them almost as soon as they are ready, I have been more motivated to complete the next project.

So, I now face the next 6 months. Steve and I have agreed to expand our Warrior Heroes campaign with new nations. We plan to paint and add a new army every couple of months to the campaign. This will give us more options for the campaign and will help to ensure that there is a continuous stream of battles. At the moment, there has been an unpleasant outbreak of peace among two thirds of the participants. We need to deal with that. We also have the annual Wargods tournament in November to work towards. I cannot decide which army to take and may well opt for some unpainted units just so that I get more lead painted. There are also numerous rules sets that we both want to try; rules are our real downfall. We keep seeing cool rules and getting them, although my thrift drive has led to me spending less on rules too.

If you have managed to read this far, thank you for reading. Pictures will follow as I tackle the July objectives. In theory I could have them done in early July, but I am still looking for a new job and working on my thesis, both of which take up rather more of my time than you might think.

The Battle of Hälsingborg, 1710 - The Swedish Army

On 10th March 1710, the Swedish army marched on Hälsingborg fuelled only with a shot of schnapps that morning. It was a frosty day, which worked to the Swedes' advantage, for that meant that the marshes and bogs along their line of march ceased to be serious obstacles to their progress. The Danish army was deployed north of Hälsingborg but the Swedish approach march was aimed at their flank so the Danes had to quickly redeploy, leaving most of their artillery behind.

About ten years ago I decided that I wanted to refight this battle. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea why this particular battle became the focus of my efforts. I had been looking at the Baccus 6mm Great Northern War ranges and decided to make a large purchase, my first from Mr Berry. I then set to painting the figures and doing background research. I found Dan Schorr's excellent Northern Wars website, and also Nick Dorrell's work on the same subject. Communications with Dan Schorr led to him sending me a copy of the Danish General Staff's description of the battle, which still languishes half-translated on my hard drive. One day I shall finish the translation but in the meantime I have read it through a few times and been able to apply what I knew to the production of my armies.

Having bought vast quantities of 6mm figures, I needed a set of rules. I had played Koenig Krieg before and liked them. I also had Volley and Bayonet, which I also enjoyed. I opted to produce my armies for Koenig Krieg. What I fool! Had I but realised, I might have had this project completed ere now by simply opting for Volley and Bayonet. So, I painted all the figures and dutifully began building terrain. Unfortunately, the project lapsed and languished not forgotten but merely shelved, because my opponent moved away and I had no one enthusiastic about the project to keep me interested in finishing it.

And so we return to the present. Followers of this blog will have read my reviews of Polemos: GNW, so you will have seen that Steve, my regular opponent, is foolish enough to have shown some interest in this period. Bwa ha ha ha ha! As a result, I have stuck all of my figures on bases to a Polemos standard, which will also work for Volley and Bayonet. I have just completed the rebasing process for the Swedish army, so here is the full Swedish army according to the order of battle in Polemos: GNW. A Volley and Bayonet version of the same army would be about half this size. I have posted more pictures of this army on my Photobucket account. Although I have not photographed them, each regiment has a full set of casualty markers in its own colours too. How sad is that?

The Swedish Army at Hälsingborg (click the pictures for larger versions):


Jönköpings regemente:


Smålands och Östgöta femmänningsregemente till fot:


Östgöta kavalleriregemente:


Along the way, I appear to have successfully managed to paint a whole pile of extra bits too. Some of these are versions of the infantry regimentes in the main army, but with pikes, while others are spare bits as a result of the change of order of battle caused by using different rules. The vast amount of artillery is brought about by a general feeling that I wanted it.


And finally, if you have been interested enough to read this far, I shall work up a scenario for this battle at some point in the near future and post it here. I also need to do the basing on the Danish army, so that will be one of my next projects. With that done, perhaps I can turn my attention to finishing the terrain. Fortunately, there is not a lot there because there were only a small number of low hills on the battlefield, none rising higher than 40' above ground level.

Wargods - Punishment of the Priest

We played Wargods using our newly painted figures last Thursday. If you can remember that far back, we painted Wargods figures for our May objective. I painted a Khemru (children of Khnum, the goat-headed god) warband, while Steve painted Heru (children of Horus, the falcon-headed god). So, we agreed to play a basic 1000 point game using those figures.

My warband had two units of slingers, one of mace goats and a selection of heroes to captain the units. I also had a beastmaster with three lions, and a master of words as well as my harbinger (a warlord type figure imbued with the power of his god).

Steve had a unit of Heru archers, a unit of halberdiers, some heroes and a unit of Anubi warriors, together with his harbinger.

Wargods comes with a list of 10 scenarios in the rulebook and 20 sub-plots. We rolled a d10 for the scenario and rolled up The Punishment of the Priest. In this scenario the defender has to protect a priest, while the other side is trying to capture him. I was the defender, so I received the priest. Steve was not allowed to kill the priest, so he had to capture him and stop me from getting him back. As a further complication we rolled a d20 to get a sub-plot. We rolled up Sandstorm. I groaned when I saw this, because it would reduce visibility and make my slingers less effective. They were the backbone of my warband so I was relying on them to weaken the enemy before he closed to melee. My problem was that the Heru are brilliant in melee, while my Khemru are rubbish. I could only hope for some good dice on the visibility roll. If they were high enough then the sandstorm would abate. I did have one advantage though. My master of words had a spell that would remove the sandstorm for one turn each time it was cast. Perhaps all was not lost.

We set up and set to. I hid the priest behind my slingers, who were on a sand dune. Meanwhile my mace-goats and my beastmaster set up on the right flank. Steve set up opposite with his troops focused on the area where the priest was.



It did not take long for the troops to clash, although Steve was a trifle upset to lose half of a unit to a Spiky Ground spell. That did help me though! You can see the Spiky Ground template just in front of the temple. Between it and the temple, you can see the proxy shining chariot with the Heru harbinger in it and my harbinger attacking from its flank.



With the troops closing on each other, I chose to run the priest off into the temple, to try to keep him out of harm's way. At this time we both envisaged a bit of a Benny Hill finish with his troops running around after the priest.



I could not foresee my Khemru holding out or even beating off the Heru, but, as the final shot shows, they did. Although two of my units routed, they recovered immediately and returned to the fray. Meanwhile, my harbinger had dispatched his harbinger, which really finished the game. At this point, Steve had a hero left and a small number of troops. We agreed to call it a day.



Conclusions
Wargods is an annoyingly good game. We both had an excellent time playing and the game was tense. The way to win at Wargods, is to second-guess your opponent. You could try to design a broken tournament army if you want, but the warband design system is such that this is not really possible. This means that most games of Wargods are all about sussing out your opponent and doing the unexpected. Sometimes we do this by forgetting which is our left and which is our right when putting out turn orders. More often it is about trying to decide what you opponent is planning to do and then spoiling it for him. This makes it a great game.

So, why is Wargods annoyingly good? Well, that has to do with the support it receives from Crocodile Games. They are a small company, so they cannot afford to produce new figures all the time because they rely on sales of the newest release to fund the next release. But, worse than that is the lack of focus. Some years back Crocodile Games released some figures for the Wendigo, hairy snow beasts. There were enough figures to form a warband, but not to do all the options available in the rules they released for it. Of course, these rules are playtest rules and have never been released in a final format. Similarly, they released the Olympus playtest rules and finally the Spartans. However, at the time, there were not starter sets for each of the races in Aegyptus. Some races had starter sets but not all of them. There are more figures available for Aegyptus now, but you still cannot buy a starter set for every race. This is quite a psychological barrier when trying to get other people to play. I cannot help but think that more focus on the Aegyptian races and less on expansions would have benefitted the game and made it more popular. If you could get a starter set for every race, people might be more willing to invest in it. You can still form warbands for every race. That is not a problem now, and new figures are in the pipeline to expand these races, but people see the game as incomplete because of the starter sets.

So, it is annoyingly good because the game play is brilliant but people see the lack of starter sets and don't want to start playing it. Still, we enjoy it.

The Great International Christmas Pudding Hunt - A Tusk Scenario

I have been considering, but not getting round to doing yet, a Christmas game using Tusk rules. I then thought that if I posted it here, perhaps someone else might get it done. So, with apologies to the Goons, I hereby present a daring tale of mens' trousers in a far off land.

[plays stirring martial music]

[puts on pith helmet and shorts, revealing short fat hairy legs]

Gentlemen, I give to you:
The Great International Christmas Pudding Hunt
On the far distant island of Neringi-Baba roam the great herds of wild Christmas puddings. Every year fearless adventurers must brave the dangers of this island to supply families with their Christmas puddings. People have tried domesticating the Christmas puddings but they always die in captivity, so wild puddings must be hunted down every year to ensure that Christmas cheer is there for all.

Set-up
The table represents the plains of Neringi-Baba. It should be mostly flat with a few lakes of brandy sauce and a little intervening terrain (holly bushes, Christmas crackers, presents, etc.). Brandy sauce lakes are generally shallow but sticky. Figures may move through them at half speed for the turns they are in the lake and also one full turn after they leave the lake, because they are too busy licking the brandy sauce off themselves. Players should agree how to deal with other terrain before the start of the game.

At one end of the table is a small volcano. The volcano will spew out gouts of burning hot custard at the end of any turn in which two players roll a 6 for their APs.

Each player gets to place two pits anywhere onto the table, into which they will try to herd the puddings. They may also try to shoot or net the puddings if they prefer.

A herd of puddings is placed near the centre of the table. It should consist of one male pudding per player and two female/child puddings per player.

The Custard
Each custard splatter is the size of a CD. Randomly place it by any means you prefer. Anything that the custard lands on must roll a 6 or less on 2d6 to dodge the custard or be killed. The custard remains on the table for the duration of the game. Anything that moves into the custard splatter after it is placed is killed automatically.

Christmas Puddings
Christmas puddings come in two types:
Males - These are large and ferocious. They will savagely protect their herds against all comers, including other Christmas puddings. Male puddings use the T-Rex reaction tables and are treated in all respects as T-Rexes.
Females and Children - These are smaller than the males and more docile. They use the Brontosaurus reaction tables and are treated in all respects as Brontosauri.

Game End
The game ends when there are no puddings or only one player's figures are left on the table. Alternatively, you may set a time limit on the game; give it a couple of hours and plenty of brandy.

Winning
The winner of the game is the person that captures or recovers the most Christmas puddings. A player may only win if they have figures left alive on the table.

Puddings that land in a player's pits are automatically captured by that player as long as they have figures left alive on the table at the end of the game. Figures may also recover dead Christmas puddings by moving into contact with them. The first player to move into contact with a pudding automatically recovers it.

Other Rules
Players may not directly attack each other.
Players must wear odd socks for the duration of the game.

Final Thoughts
Depending upon the scale of your figures, you may be able to find cheap plastic Christmas pudding decoration thingies to use. Otherwise, it should not be too difficult to paint up some table tennis balls or polystyrene balls.

I am not sure about the size of the custard splatter. If a CD seems too large then reduce the size of the custard template to something you are happier with.