I Could Be King Arthur!!!!!!!!

AHA!!!! That got your attention didn't it!!!???!! So, why the supremely odd title to this post? Well, I just got back from a superb WAB Age of Arthur gaming day at Maelstrom HQ and, contrary to all the rules of wargaming and the gods of dice, not only did I come 3rd in terms of territories owned, but I was vying with another player for 'the source of the legend of Arthur' AND I was the only player to actually beat one of the two Frankish armies on the day. I won 2 and drew one of my 3 games...my first ever gaming day with no defeats in 11 years playing WAB!!!! The pic above sees my Dux and the Franksih king duking it out to see who would be 'Arthur'. After 'handbags at dawn' for about 8 rounds of combat, each killed the other, hence the shared title of 'source of the legend'...

So...game 1, a doubles game with my Romano-British ally, Geraint... Pic below sees my ally peering through the dawn sunshine over our battkleline...we were playing Cat Coit Celidon against Saxons (TWD and fellow Peterborian Mike 'Trouble at t' Mill' Whitaker) and we were attacking (with Romano-Brits?? Yikes!!)
Pic below shows my end of the battle line... My army was a Dux on foot with Finest Armour and Fabricae, leading 19 commanipualres with heavy throwing spears, large shields and heavy armour, plus Decurio ASB; 24 milites, thrusting spear, light armour, large shield; 2 x 24 Pedyt, thrusting spear, large shield; 10 equites with full kit plus light armour; 1 x 11 and 1 x 10 bow armed Rustici. I also had a bonus force of 23 allied Saxons Geoguth led by a Thegn.

Pic below shows my line about to be assailed by the Saxons...yes, it started badly...

...and rapidly got worse as my milites (who were reduced to Toughness 2 by 'fatigue') got trounced...(this is about to happen in the pic below!)

However, we turned it around and my Commanipulares attacked Tom's Gedriht and I challenged his general....

While this was going on, my bonus force arrived and prepared to kick ass on some nasty Saxons (who had already charged and seen off two of my foot units, (hence the captured banners at rear of Saxon unit!)

Below, the ongoing comitatus 'slug-fest'...

....which reaches its rightful conclusion below!!! I must admit, my howls of triumph nearly reached Peterborough!!! A 3-up save on your elites is a real God-send!!!!!

After that, I got the commnipulares off table, along with my equites. My ally also got two units off. Close-run victory to us and I captured 'Arthur's Spear', a nasty javelin throwing advantage!! All in all a great game and I did nothing stupid and had average dice...hmmmm....surely some mistake, your honour!!

So, second battle...River Glein, against Alex, another chap with Romano-Brits. Slight tweak on this, as one only has to be within 3" to contest a crossing, not actually on it!!!! See deployment below

My battle line...

Part of my opponent's line...

My elites, plus loads of crap foot!!

Slug-fest at the ford...

My equites crossing the river...

My milites in shieldwall about to contest the bridge...

Halfway through the game...it could go either way. And yes, that is a unit of pedyt off table having been panicked by the massed archery of 23 sagitarrii!!

My elites, having captured the ford, only to see it contested by the late arrival of enemy milites... Bloody stand off!! Again, I played this pretty well, only making a minor mistake and leaving my cavalry advance a turn too late on the flank, but it didn't matter...

So to game 3: Battle in the Pass: Objective: Capture the shrine in dead centre of said pass...oh, and try to actually win a battle against the (thus far) all conquering Franks. This game was against Steve, who I have played before and is always a fun opponent... My lines below.

Steve's lines...two nasty Pueri units...shudder!!!

So, we both legged it through the pass at top speed and had a HUGE slugfest in the centre that left Steve one Pueri unit down and me lovked in combat with his other Pueri with my elites and with his Franci with my milites. My cavalry attempted to shoot his down with the aid of my archers, but the dice failed us and we got charged next turn. My equites elected to flee...all of 6"!!! Cue dead cavalry and my pedyt get the chance to charge Steve's cavalry...who flee and never come back. Cavalry not much use in this game!!! Below, the titanic slugfest in the centre...

The same fight from behind my lines below, shortly before I finally broke the Pueri and pursued far enough to capture the shrine, although Steve was contesting it.

So, a minor victory to me. I captured one of Steve's three Arthurian artefacts, leaving us with two each, hence the single combat described at the start of this post. This was probably my most tactically sound game of the day and the closeness of the victory is about right as Steve played very well as well...very close run thing indeed....

Overall, a fabulous day of gaming. HUGE trhanks to Scrivs (and Tom) for organising and to all my allies and opponents who made it such a great day. Kudos to Peterboro' Grahame, whose Franks achieved three mighty victories and carved out a new Frankish empire in Southern Britannia.

Apparently, there's an El Cid day planned in the Autumn, which I shall make every effort to attend....

On a personal gaming note, this Romano-British army has now played 6 games and is unbeaten!! I think I may have finally found an Age of Arthur recipe that works for me...after only about 6 years!!!!!

I hope you enjoyed the pics and the report!!

Cheers

Andy

Dip/Single Highlight Welsh cavalry

Here, in response to Matt, are some pics of my dipped models. The method is white undercoat, then bright flat basecoat colours (except armour/helmets, which is painted black before drybrushing with GW Boltgun Metal & Chainmail for mail. Helmets have Boltgun Metal painted onto the black.) Black areas, e.g horse manes, are highlighted in layers before applying dip.
The dip is lightly brushed on and left to dry at least 24 hours. Once dry, I use the original basecoat colours to add highlights, except helmets which are layered as normal. I then brush on GW gloss varnish followed by either Humbrol matt clear if working indoors in winter or I will use Dullcote brush on (cos I have loads to use up) in summer when working in the fresh air.

As you can see, some models work better than others. The following are Foundry Normans "11th Century Welsh-i-fied" for Saga. They work really well with this technique!

The following are Musketeer Goths. These are superb and suit this method brilliantly, as do the new GB horses! Bill from Musketeer is my fave sculptor now...he's gonna do early Byzantine cavalry soon and I won't be able to resist!!!

This is a West Wind Pict. He looks better in the flesh, actually...

This is Foundry Frankish/Goth cavalryman. He works ok with this method...

This is a GB Welshman on a Foundry horse. I don't like this model...It doesn't suit this method at all. Soapy definitely didn't get the Welsh as consistently brilliant as the Saxons, IMHO...

This is my favourite GB model...sadly, the mould must have been getting a bit shagged when I bought this one, as the detail is very shallow, so this method works less than brilliantly. Still a great model soldier though!

Here's one of Soapy's superb mtd combrogi from GB. This one works really well in this style...and yes, that's a Foundry horse he's on...I like to mix n match a bit!!!

All shields by LBM for quickness...

Let me know what you think. In ranked up units, the Musketeer models are brilliant done like this, some others less so. The method is about 33% of my normal painting time so that's 3 models finished in the time it'd normally take to do 1 and given the lack of painting time I get these days, that's a bonus!

Cheers

Andy

An ENORMOUS Dark Age game of Hail Caesar

Yeah...I know...It's been too long since I last blogged. Truth to tell, I have had neither time nor inclination, nor real reason, as I have had nowt to say... However, today is different!!


Last weekend I was one of the 'Dark-Ages A-listers' (quote James Morris) who were invited by Mr Morris to Nottingham to play a giganto-normous Hail Caesar game for an article to be published in Wargames Illustrated 300th issue bumper special for Sept 2012. We were to re-fight part of Y-Gododdin for this mammoth undertaking and so pitted 200 mounted Welsh plus various foot troops against the best part of 700+ Saxons. The pic above was taken by WI UK head honcho Dan and shows just how much better the pics in the mag will be compared to mine below come September!!!


Anyway, I had never played HC before but it wasn't gonna stop me! I painted a handful of additional Welsh cavalry (dipped and single highlight...!!) to give me a full HC division and I was off! I am not allowed to say too much about the game to avoid detracting from James' article and I have stuck to pics of the whole table to give you an idae of scale, plus a few pics of my division in action. Hopefully this is ok! If not, I'm sure James or Dan will chastise me and I'll then edit this post somewhat!!


Below, the set up...that's a lot of toys!!!


Here's the Saxon lines...

Here's one of my fellow Welsh commanders, Steve Jones (he of WAB Age of Arthur fame) looking somehat bemused by the enormity of his task on the Welsh right flank.

Here is my division on the Welsh left, simply charged with slaughtering as many of the foe as gloriously as possible... Tom W D (http://tomstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/) was our supreme leader and held the centre.

Here's my own models. Note my Welsh infantry banners temporarily transplanted to cavalrymen as I didn't have time to paint 3 new Welsh standards prior to the battle!!

Here's a great example of how HC can b*gger up your plans good and proper (below). You have to roll less than or equal to your command value to get orders through to your troops...clearly Tom ahs managed this, whereas me and Steve haven't!!!!!! Refused flanks anyone??!!

Here's my glorious charge about to go gloriously wrong (yes, it isn't just in WAB where it all goes t*ts up for me!!!)

Battle lines clash across the board...Mr Morris (our esteemed umpire) is just deciding whether it's me or Tom who gets the dubious honour of being first to charge that wall of Saxon death!!!! This is because, in HC, units within 12" of the enemy can move without a leadership test. Me and Tom both had units with 9" (cavalry charge distance) so both potentially could claim that honour. I won't spoil the article and tell you who got it...

This is me about to launch a second charge into what is now looking like a FLOOD of Saxons...

Well, stone the crows (or should that be "stone the ravens???" Sorry...in joke for the Arthurian fans amongst you...) look at this!! In HC, if you obliterate the enemy in combat, you can make a sweeping advance...especially handy when his supporting units roll shite panic dice and get obliterated also!! So, yes...my cavalry have actually broken through, slaughtering 2 Saxon units and seeing daylight!!! Can you spot the two dipped figs in this unit???

My other cavalry didn't fare quite as well...too many of the heathen b*ggers!!!!

And that's all I can show you, as I don't wish to give any more away!!

It was a fabulous day out. HC is a great rule set for this size game. We played 7 turns in approx 6 hours, including breaks. The Saxons were led by Dan 'Dux Bellorum/Glutter of Ravens' Mersey (http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/444/dux-blogorum) and were ably assited by Paul 'Scrivs' Smith (HC expert) and Andy Mactaggart. Some of us had never played HC before, which shows you how easy it was to pick up.

And, more to the point, I am re-invigorated and ready to rock again with my gaming and painting! I have a new Welsh mounted Teulu unit ready to go on the painting table and I have been sorting all my Dark Age models for dual roles in WAB and Hail Caesar. This has meant a few alterations here and there to get the right size units and some banners have had to be replaced anyway due to transportation accidents (dontcha hate it when a banner cross-pole bends and the flag rips???!! That's happened twice with Romano-Brit cavalry banners recently!)

Then there are the new rules! Dan's "Dux Bellorum" is out in August (pics of my models in the rule book, we hope!!) and the "Too Fat Lardies" have a STUNNING looking Arthurian set in the works (http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=730 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p-745 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p-755 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p-766 http://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com/) This latter set look like they could be the mutt's nutz of Arthurian wargaming for me (although Dan's set sounds interesting too...) Wargaming the Dark Ages has not been as exciting since WAB Age of Arthur came out!!!

I hope that you enjoyed the above!! I hope to be back soon... :-)

Clickable pic of the WW1 Brits from the last post

Hopefully!!! :-)