Fun Times at Campaign in Milton Keynes...

Went to Campaign in Milton Keynes today with Cameron, as his mum was away at a holistic therapy show in Birmingham.

It's an odd one to go to, as it's full of competition gamers playing their games and is slap-bang in the middle of the shopping centre! The latter means it's free entry and they get a fair bit of 'passing trade', which is cool.

Anyway, the club was represented with its Dambusters Challenge game that won an award at Salute this year - sorry, didn't get pics as I was playing it with Cameron and forgot to go back and take photos later due to us getting involved with a Darkest Africa participation game (of which more in a mo) but do head on over here to get an idea of how awesome the Dambusters game is! Cameron and I managed to avoid all the Jerry flak AND hit the dam... Jolly good show... Brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. Well done, club-mates!!

So, having destroyed most of Jerry's industry with nary so much as a shred of shrapnel in the fuselage, and having gained our medals, we wandered round the rest of the show and ended up playing a fabulous Colonial game with Black Wolf wargamers. This was an awesome game where Cameron commanded a British force of 2 units of Naval Brigade types and 1 unit of redcoats attempting to get to the safety of their river boat having burnt the village of a rebellious Ngoni chief.

Although in hindsight, the rules were weighted fairly heavily in favour of the Brits, while in-game, this was not so evident and there were a few nail-biting moments before Cameron finally destroyed the native force and got his men to safety! He LOVED it! So huge thanks to the Black Wolf guys who ran it really well and were brilliant with Cameron. A very successful participation game and I shall be taking some lessons learned from this to our own Hereward show in November where I intend to run a Colonial participation game with Andy Mac.

Here's a couple of pics of a little boy having a FABULOUS time!!

Back In The Land Of The Living...Just!!!!!

Greetings one and all. Apologies for lack of updates over the past 2 weeks. I had planned to post some pics of painted models, as I had several awaiting completion and had planned to do those over the holiday period. Sadly, a flu virus intervened and utterly wiped me out for 10 days!!! Truly, 'twas a mighty and most virulent virus, made worse by the fact that we were on a family holiday at the time...Great!!!! :-(

Hopefully, I am now on the road to full recovery and I hope to resume some painting and gaming next week. Next posts are likely to be the final practice game of Dux Bellorum before Salute (gaming that one on Monday evening) and I do hope to eventually post some pics of some Colonial Sikhs, a Saxon standard bearer and a new bunch of Elves...plus of course the next Dux Brit battle, where I attempt to salvage an iota of pride and throw Mike's Saxons back from the walls of Linnius...That last one is coming after Salute.

Talking of Salute, if any of my esteemed readers are frequenting the show this year, please look out for the Newark Irregulars banner, as that'll be where you'll find me demoing Osprey's Dux Bellorum rules. Please do come over and say 'hello'!!

Dux Bellorum Romano-British for Salute

Ok, so at long last, I can post something related to 'the other Dux B', or Osprey's 'Dux Bellorum'. Yes, I have agreed to join the supremos of Arthurian Wargaming (James Morris & Steve Jones, of course), plus a number of the other 'usual suspects, in demoing Dan Mersey's Dux Bellorum at Salute this year.

And, after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing about the hows, whys and wherefores, here are the new bases for the job!! For those of you who don't know, Dux Bellorum is an element-based game that relies heavily on the base size as a key measure for deployment and movement. We have agreed that we will use 120mm wide bases as they 'look about right' for 28mm (according to sir Steve of Jones on his blog and I have to agree that he is bang on the money there!)  However, as 120mm is a pain in the arse for movement purposes, we are using the good old traditional 4" as our equivalent of 'base-width' when moving troops.

You may recall me buying a load of sabot bases from Warbases ages ago for this purpose and that is largely what I have here. The only difference is that I decided once I'd got them that 4 models on a 120mm wide base looked absolutely crap for noble and companion cavalry. Accordingly, I fashioned '5 men per base' sabots for said cavalry using GW movement trays with balsa inserts, gaps filled with Green Stuff. These look great and are only a tiny bit over 120mm...not enough to worry about!

Here are the empty sabot bases I'll be using...

Home-made Companion/Noble Rider cavalry element base

WarbasesShieldwall infantry base - Close order foot

Warbases Bow base- I opted for a looser formation for this base to simulate medium infantry in slightly more open order

Originally planned as a Rider base, I opted to use this Warbases cavalry base for the skirmishing cavalry

Light troops - Romano-British Bow and Skirmishing Cavalry

Shieldwall Infantry

The 'main event' - Arthur's Companions (front) and Noble Riders behind

With regard to the army, I have been asked to supply 'Arthur's army' for a straightforward 32pts per side (standard army size) 'Arfur vs the Saxons' game while the others do some kind of mega game. This suits me down to the ground, so I have designed the following army. Clearly it is not one iota historical, but it is, nonetheless, what most people will expect to see from any game involving Arthur!!!

We have:

1 x unit of mounted Companions (kick-ass heavily armoured cavalry) led by the Man Himself (5pts)

2 x units of Noble Riders (armoured noble cavalry) @ 5pts each (10pts)

3 x units of ordinary Shieldwall infantry @ 3pts each (9pts)

1 x unit of Romano-British Bow (3pts)

1 x unit of Skirmishing Light cavalry with javelins (2pts)

This comes to 29pts, allowing me to add the strategem 'Imposing Horsemen' to make my Companions and Noble Riders even harder in combat for the additional 3pts.

When choosing models for the units, I opted to include my classic Romano-British 'Mounted Arthur' model to denote the unit of Companions (even though it's not 'necessary' - it just can't be Arthur's army without him!) and the Noble units are denoted by banners. This makes it easier to remember in the heat of battle which units are which should I ever opt to mix noble and non-noble units of the same type within an army.

So, there you have it...the 'Dux Bellorum' Army of Arthur as you might see it in Rosemary Sutcliff's books: Shedloads of rock-hard cavalry backed up by spearmen and a few light troops...Classic Arthur!!

All I have to do is learn to play the game and learn how to use the army now... all in about 2 months...less, actually as my first game is on 4th March!!! Yikes!!! I hope Dan is on hand on the day for the first run-through!!!!!

BIG Games - Newbury and Catraeth (Y Gododdin)

In the past two weeks I have been fortunate enough to take part in two BIG games! The first was an all-dayer at the club, led by Carl Fisher and involving Mike Whitaker and Gary (chaps from the ECW campaign running at the club, of which more on Mike's blog). This game used Gary's models (give or take a unit...the man has too many models!) and the Pike & Shotte rules and was a re-fight of first Newbury. Now, I know less than b*gger all about ECW, but nonetheless am really enjoying the campaign and had a real blast at the all day game, managing to help secure a Parliamentarian victory by resolutely advancing across all the fields that actually exist outside Newbury, effectively pinning the Royalist right while my boss (Gary - Earl of Essex) trashed the much better and more numerous Royalsit cavalry and basically did all the hard work!!!  He was assisted by the fact that Mike did a bit of superb role-playing as Pwince Wupert, launching an impetuous cavalry charge that, had it worked, would have meant curtains for Parliament. However, it didn't and it was the Royalist cavalry commands breaking that secured the victory.
Parliament deployment below - my foot commands who were tasked with securing the bridge by advancing across the fields and hedgerows of middle England...oh joy!!

 Below, Royalist right flank opposing me...

 Royalist cavalry below...

 Parliament cavalry...outclassed and outnumbered...but still kicked ass!!!

 My advance...steady as we go lads...trudge, trudge...

 The ECW equivalent of trench warfare. I was coming out on top in this firefight, but only just...it was soon after this point that the Earl of Essex got himself captured (doh!) while his right flank rendered the Royalist position untenable as vast hordes of Parliament troops were about to outflank their line on the right....VICTORY!!

So, that was fun!!!

Now to last Sunday where I joined Sir James of Morris and several chums (Age of Arfur's Steve Jones, Tom and Scrivs, plus Andy McT and Matt) to re-run the mahoosive 'Hail Caesar' refight of the Battle of Catraeth as immortalised in the Dark Age British poem 'Y Gododdin'. This is the one that will appear in Wargames Illustrated's 300th issue in October (we saw the article proof on Sunday...you NEED to buy the mag for this alone (and the other articles will be just as good, trust me!)

Anyway, Sunday saw us take the game to 'The Other Partizan' at Newark. We were slap bang in the middle of the hall next to Simon 'Bigredbat' and Phil Hendry's superb Ad Castores Roman civil war game (@Phil and Simon: sorry I didn't get to chat more than 2 mins to either of you...the game took all of my attention apart from enough time to much a jacket potato and buy a few bits and bobs...)

I took my usual place on the British left and was joined by James and Steve as fellow Britons. Basically, our scenario was as follows (hopefully this enlarges enough to read!):

As heroic and glorious death was the order of the day, we attempted to do just that, only to be thwarted by failed command rolls and stupendous Saxon saving throws. I came last (b*gger all glory!) with the day being well and truly won by Tom whose Saxons kicked our butts quite royally!! Nonetheless, this was one of the best games I have ever been involved in. With over 1000 beautifully painted models on the table, it was quite a spectatcle and the interest we provoked in the punters was, understandably, high!! To all who came over, I hope that you found us all appropriately friendly, knowledgeable and helpful.

A few pics below (I gave up after lunch as fatigue set in...just buy the mag in October as WI's Dan F takes MUCH better pics than me anyway!!)

Full deployment below...

 My models. Note the three new banner bearers. The chap with the yellow banner will be standard bearer in the full unit of Gododdin Teulu I am painting for WAB/Saga/Dux Brit/Dux Bellorum and which are on my painting table as we speak.

 View of the Saxon lines from behind my position below...

Below: the attack goes in...just before it all went dreadfully 'Pete Tong'... Steve Jones looking unconcerned (his Companion cavalry were our best unit, mauling the Saxon left and actually cutting a path of escape, but valiantly returning to die with their comrades...)

I hope you enjoyed these tales of BIG gaming. I heartliy recommend the Hail Caesar and Pike & Shotte rules to all of you. Gather some mates and put on a BIG game of your own...you won't regret it! :-)

Next up, the Dux Britanniarum campaign for Linnius begins!!!