Happy New Year!

Well, hello one and all. Happy New Year! Sorry it's taken me nearly a fortnight to get around to that!!

So...2011...b*gger me, how did that one sneak up on us, eh? And, more to the point, what is going to happen on this blog in 2011??

Well, the repetitive strain injury is no worse, although I haven't painted in weeks and haven't had a proper session on the guitar in a while either. Now Crimble is out of the way, I can at least get the painting kit back in the lounge so I can try a bit now and then when I get a mo in the evenings, not that I seem to have much time spare these days...

So, what's the 2011 plan? Well, changes are afoot from what I thought I'd do in my last message: My wargames club is going to run a WAB 2.0 Late Republican/Early Imperial Roman campaign around Easter and I do want to paint a new unit of Auxiliaries to go with my Sulla Romans. I have a load of Foundry Greek peltasts and will be using them (to fit in with my 'Sulla in the East' theme). Ideally, I need to layer paint them to match my Caesarian legionaries, but I may do them in the style of my (on hold) repo Romans, so basecoat, dip, one highlight...depends how the arm holds out and how lazy I get/how little time I end up with!! Once they are done I will have 3500pts of Romans which is cool. I did field them all in a game against my mate Grahame's EIR last week and won a close-run victory in a 5 and a half hour epic encounter!!

I have also been on the hunt for alternatives to WAB for Age of Arthur. I have found two great little sets for skirmish type games (Brytenwalda - http://brytenwalda.blogspot.com/) and Tod Kershner's 'Pig Wars'. Both are light years away from WAB's systems and need far less models. Pig Wars is especially good for multi-player games. If you want a copy of Pig Wars, join the Pig Warriors Yahoo group where you can contact the author and receive a download of the rules for $10, plus access to various additioanl files in the Yahoo group's file section. Well worth a look!

Anyway, along with these, I have been writing my own rules for the period - sort of GW Lord of the Rings in scale (30-60 models per side, large scale skirmish). I now have almost enough to playtest, I just need to type up a couple of playtest scenarios. Some of you already know about this and have offered to read/playtest, which is kind! Expect to receive an email shortly! If any others fancy a look, let me know. I am not claiming that they are great...they may not well even be reasonable, or even remotely playable, but it has been a fun and very interesting experience writing them! If you do have a read/play, you'll see bits of Triumph& Tragedy, bits of LOTR, bits of WAB...all given my unique 'twist'. Am hoping to start my own playtesting shortly as well, so watch this space for further info...

Talking of Arthurians, I do have a hankering to paint some more Age of Arthur stuff and willbe doing a few more Franks/Saxons this year, enough to do a warband for each of the rulesets mentioned above, but not a full WAB army yet. I also want to do a unit of Wolftail warriors and Arthur's cavalry based on Cornwell's books. They'll be useable in the skirmish rules and might see light of day in aWAB army at some point. It may take me months to do them, but I intend to have a go!!

I also intend to do a bit more with my colonials. I intend to get 2 or 3 squads of Brits and another mass of Pathans done in 'dipping' mode this year. I have half a Sikh unit basecoated already and intend to finish those this month.

Finally, on the back-burner are the Repo Romans, as I'll not have time to do them this year and gaming the era isn't high on my priority list this year. Also, I do intend to paint 2 more El Cid units: Knights Hospitaller and spearmen in the livery of the Hospital to join my 'Alfonso the Battler' El Cid force. These will wait til late in the year if I do them at all this year...

So that's me so far. Hopefully I wil get my a*se in gear and post more this year. Thanks to those who still follow this blog. I appreciate it.

Cheers
Andy

Quick update...

Hello one and all. So sorry for lack of updates recently, but I have been on a self-imposed painting ban since attending the Warhammer World campaign weekend with my El Cid army. This is because the frenzied painting spree that had lasted from June til the end of October has aggravated an already unpleasant repetitive strain injury in my right arm. This is impacting on all my hobbies, as guitar playing doesn't do it any good either - not good when one has gigs booked and needing rehearsal for!!!

So, basically, I have stopped painting, or, at least, I had til this week, where I picked up a brush just to see what happened. I managed 90 mins before it hurt, which is good...that's 85 mins more than when I stopped painting in October!!

Anyway, the El Cid force now stands at 2500pts, so I don't need to do any more to it, although at some point I do want to paint a unit of Knights Hospitaller and a unit of peones in the livery of the Hospitallers to give the army an early 12th Century Aragonese feel (Alfonso 'The Battler' introduced the Hospitallers into Spain in the early 12th century.)

However, my next job is to finally finish the 4 Saxons I promised someone I'd do for him in August. They are over halfway complete, so should be easy to get done in the next two weeks, even with a limit of no more than an hour at a time painting. Then it's Colonials time. I aim to get enough Anglo-Indians and Pathans done to start trying out Triumph and Tragedy with a couple of chaps at wargames club early next year. These are being painted in the same way as my Repo Romans that have now been temporarily shelved, so 'basecoat, AP dip and one highlight' jobs. Have just picked up some Pontoonier Miniatures British - very nice models!!!

Once those are done, I need to paint a unit of peltasts to join my Sulla era Romans as we have a club campaign starting in April and I need some 'auxiliary' infantry (I figured Greek types would suit the overall 'Sulla vs Mithridates' army theme and have had the models for ages but with no deadline or no event, I hadn't painted them before) , then it's back to Repo Romans, probably midway through next year.

One thing is certain though...no more mad frenzied painting-fests...the doc has already told me that the arm damage is only going to get worse, unless I do everything in extreme moderation or simply stop everything altogether...the latter is not an option!!

Pine Wood of Tevar new pics

Courtesy of Chris Payne, here are 3 rather cool pics from last weekend at Partizan.
First, a close-up of James' marvellous new banner for El Cid...

Here's a close-up of the camp...

And a really good shot of the whole battle...really good lighting on this one (something of a miracle in the Kelham Hall!!!) so you can see the whole table in all its glory...

Enjoy...

Andy

The Pine Wood of Tevar demo game, Partizan 5th Sept 2010

Here are the pics I took during James Morris' demo game 'The Pine Wood of Tevar' at Partizan yesterday. Apologies for the quality of some of the pics, but I was struggling to find a few moments to snap away in between chatting to the myriad of interested gamers (so many that in fact we only played the game once all day!!!!) and rolling some dice. So, if you nclick on a pic and it's a wee bit blurred, I'm sorry. Also, these humble pics don't really do the game justice. James' magnificent terrain and brilliant eye for how to arrange it (note the way the wooded slopes pull the eye onto the rockty outcrop and the perfect position of the camp on the other side...brilliant!!) simply loked stunning, as it was a table of about 10 x 6 feet!!

The pics tell the story of the game as we played it until I lost the will to take any more pics!
Below, view down the Catalan battleline just before my Andalusian allied cavalry failed the first of 3 failed allies tests (yup...three ones in a a row!!!)

El Cid's force mooch out of the camp to meet the onslaught...little suspecting the Count of Barcelona's devious ruse...

View from the Catalan right flank - Christian Jinetes, led by a newly-painted hero...

The Count of Barcelona and his personal retinue and army standard...

The other half of the Catalan panzer division!!!!

Close-up of El Cid's personal retinue (yes...a Copplestone Charlton Heston...note the faberoony banner. (BTW...El Cid...WS7!!! 4 attacks...veteran...ugh...!!! We later agreed that WS7 was too much and that he should be WS6 instead, with all other stats remaining as usual.) This unit is veteran too...sigh...

El Cid's Andalusian allies...no failed allies tests here, no siree...

El Cid's Christian jinetes...led by a veteran character (all El Cid's characters were veterans)

El Cid's camp...just look at those brilliantly painted tents and the myriad of 'stuff' to make the camp look mega cool!!

What's this??!! Sneaky catalans on the ridge behind the Cid's lines...Crossbows and archers, no less! We also had spearmen attacking out of the wood on El Cid's right flank...(cue evil laughter...)

El Cid's army from above...

The crossbowmens' view of the battlefield..."Hey, amigos...El Cid has NO IDEA that we are here...!!!"

View from behind the Catalan lines...look at that panorama towards the ridge...stunning!!

Another of El Cid's nasty characters...

El Cid's best mate, Alvar Fanez...he had a rough time of it later on...shame!!!

Another view of that brilliant El Cid retinue...awesome painting!!

Turn 1: General Catalan advance (we got first turn automatically...) My allies top left are still debating whether to join in. On my right flank, I attempt to draw El Cid's Andalusian nobles into a charge...This continued with charges and feigned flights over a few turns...

Turn 4: After messing about for 3 turns (actually, we were 'jockeying for position' with our caballeros), James caved and advanced into range (Andy Mctaggart had told me earlier that he would if I waited long enough...it's true..he did!! ;-) ) So I charged my 'panzer division' into El Cid's 'Tiger division'...

Close up of the main event. The Cid challenges the Count...he stoopidly accepts and, despite charging and going first, causes no wounds and receives one! Overall, it's a drawn combat, even with the muso roll-off!

In this combat, Alvar Fanez challenged my character and slaughtered him despite going second!! Killed outright!! However, this incensed the Catalan caballeros, who kicked major arese and ran the El Cid unit down, capturing Fanez in the process!! Hoorah!!! Yes, we were using the 'Ransom' rules from the El Cid book...

The end of turn 5: The Count is wounded a second time and his caballeros seem to be armed with rubber swords!!! We flee, but get away! We decide that, new rules notwithstanding, army standards are NOT captured unless the bearer is killed (or captured)

Those pesky Andalusian nobles use their special move to get on my flank...so I charged them..and bounced, reduced to 5 or less...bye bye jinetes....even with a flippin' character in there...sigh...

The Count has rallied and been caught in a charge. He declines the inevitable challenge and flees twice more before eventually being caught and captured. His army standard who accepted the challenge was killed outright...

This is better!!! On my left, a combination of bowfire, crossbows and (eventually) Andalusian jinetes causes the El Cid jineters to be in a spot of bother!! We slaughtered them with caballeros and the character fled only to be peppered with about 4000 crossbow bolts...ouch...

Earlier, my peones had stood off a unit of dismounted knights, chaisng and slaughtering them to a man. The gallant caballeros thenm turned and finished off El Cid's archers and crossbowmen, capturing the camp in a final glorious charge, just before the Count was captured!!

So, game over! A Winning draw for El Cid, as he had fulfilled the main objective - kill or capture the opposing general - difficult for the catalans with El Cid being as hard as he was, hence the decision to tone him down a notch!! However, the Cid had actually lost more men than the Count and had lost his camp with all its accumulated loot, so no shame in that at all!!

As I hope you can sense from this narrative, I loved every second of it! A brilliant game on the best terrain I've ever played on with a great opponent! It was my first show demo and I loved it!!

Thanks to all who came to look and to chat and to tell us how great it looked. We really appreciated the interest.

Watch out for a full article and scenario in Wargames Illustrated soon with better pics of course!!!

Now, I have to paint some more models ready for October at Warhammer World. More info about my army choice and the new models shortly...

Thanks for reading!!

Andy

El Cid, El Cid and MORE El Cid...

Ha! That got your attention didn't it?! :-) Sorry that there's no eye candy to go with the title...just advance warning that my El Cid army will be making an appearance at 'The Other Partizan' on Sunday September 5th at Kelham Hall, Newark. Yes, James Morris has kindly invited me to join him in putting on an El Cid demo game! We shall be doing 'The Pine Woods ofTevar', where El Cid took on the unfortunate Count of Barcelona and destroyed his army, capturing most ofthe Catalan nobility in the process!! Naturally, I shall play the Count of Barcelona and James shall play El Cid...for two reasons:
1. James wrote the El Cid supplement - who else could be El Cid?
2. El Cid needs to win!!!!!! With James playing the great man, that's significantly more likely than if I do!!

Scenario details to be revealed on the day (James and I have spoken and he is currently drafting it out) but suffice to say that it will be great and will look fab, as the terrain will be marvellous and James' army looks stunning. He's also painting new character models, which I'm looking forward to seeing!!!

Anyway, I'm doing a bit of painting for the event. I shall be increasing the number of models in one of my cablleros hidalgos units, as well as adding additional models to my Spanish and Andalusian jinetes units and my Peones unit. I shall also be adding an additional character (4 Catalans are named in the sources for this battle, so I shall field all 4!) and a small unit of Ballasteros (x-bows.) As with all this army, the models are Perry. Look out for them on the blog over the next few weeks and if you come to Partizan, do drop by and say 'hello', especially if we have thus far only corresponded online. I always like to put a face to a name whenever possible...

Following the event, I shall continue to paint El Cid stuff as I hope to go to the October Warhammer World El Cid campaign, also being run by Mr Morris and for that I need 2500pts...YIKES!!!!!! That's one more unit of caballeros and another of peones. to add to the load I already have painted...better get the painting going!!!!

Andy

Clickable Byzantine army pics...

Hi

Apologies...some pics in the last post weren't clickable...I think because I re-arranged the order after upload... So here are the full army shots and some cavalry shots that SHOULD be clickable so they expand!

Let me know if they don't... You'd think I'd have got this blogging thing sorted by now wouldn't you!!??!!

Andy

Justinian Byzantines for Hot Lead 2010

Hi Folks
Here is my 1500pt Justinian Byzantine army that I took to Hot Lead at Gripping Beast HQ lasy month. The army is built from the Beyond The Golden gate supplement, which was quite a challenge, as I wanted to take an army that was 'opponent friendly' and which suited the event. Most WAB players seem to feel that BtGG armies are rather OTT so I wanted to disprove that. Accordingly, I decided to take no Bucellarii, as they are HUGELY cheesy, being strength 4 with options for kontos or thrusting spear, making them strength 5 on the charge!!! I also decided that I would take no kontos armed troops, using thrusting spears instead, as I actually feel that, as well as being more 'friendly', the thrusting spear rule more than adequately portrays the use of the various kontos-type weapons in use at the time - I hate the 'always strike first' rule that Kontos gives, unless I'm playing against other kontos armed troops at my wargames club, of course!!!!

So, here's the army: Clockwise from top left back row:
9 Psiloi with javelins
24 skutatoi (thrusting spear, large shield)
ASB and Magister (Magister armed with heavy armour, shield and throwing spear, both drilled)
24 skutatoi (as the first unit)
10 psiloi with bow and buckler
9 Regular Byzantine cavalry (light armour, bow, buckler: superior byzantine cavalry)
12 Comitatus (heavy armour, thrusting spear, bow, buckler: superior byzantine cavalry, drilled)
10 German allied cavalry (light armour, thrusting spear, shield, superior German cavalry)

Here are the Comitatus: My late Roman cataphracts remounted on unarmoured horses (they can also be used as Romano-British commanipulares now!)



Here are the HGerman allied cavalry. Some of these are from my Arthurian armies, but others are repainted late Roman cavalry (I repainted tunics and shields to match my current colour scheme and to take away the 'uniformed' look, as I had done months ago with the cataphracts.) They also have a new leader and standard bearer, both old Late Romans also with repainted tunics and shields.


Regular cavalry: More repainted late Romans (tunics and bucklers) with a Romano Brit as the unit leader.

The Romano-British milites masquerading as Eastern Romans. I chose the most 'Roman' models for this unit. Next to them, repainted Roman archers (tunics and bucklers)

A unit of Late Roman infantry with repainted tunics and shields. Again, originally painted 10 years ago in 'parade ground' colours, now redone to match my other models.

The Magister - West Wind's Arthur model, who also commands Romano Brits for me!

ASB: West Wind Arthuian banner bearer on holiday from Romano-British service ;-)

So, there you have it!!

On the day, they trashed a 1000pt Sassanid army in the 'Saving the Plunder' scenario. Basically, the Persians had to get a wagon load of booty off the table before I caught it! After enduring a turn of massed archery, I decided that a full-on charge was the order of the day. As the Sassanid player had also not taken kontos, the fights were evenly matched, but my troops came out on top, his allied Parthians and Lakhmids fled and the rest of the game was me chasing down fleeing troops - oh, and capturing the wagon! Victory by 1500pts to 0!!

Second game was against Shieldwall Welsh. I only had 1000pts in the 'Scared Shrine' scenario that I've talked about on here before. I was hideously outnumbered and due to an unlucky panic test failure early on was on the back foot all the way through. Luckily, I had read the scenario victory conditions carefully and played very well by sticking to those and only lost by 200 ish points, so a close-run defeat/draw.

Game 3 was agaisnt Romano-British with Welsh allies. The Romano Brit player played the scenario very aggressively (it was 'herediatary enemies - 2 random units each with 'hatred') and destroyed my infantry before I could destroy his flankers and get in his rear. In the end it was a draw - I lost by 85 points in another really good game.

Game 4: Multi-player game. Me and some AoArt Picts vs 2 Rus armies, 1 pagan Rus and 1 Era of Princes. This was a fabulous game where I managed to outmanoeuvre the Rus opposite me while his ally utterly (to the very last figure) trashed the Pict allied force. As a result, of the 4 players, the Era of princes Rus player got about 2000 VPs; I got 1150, the Rus opposite me got about 300 and the Pict about 100.

All in all, I came about 15th out of 30 ish...way better than usual. If I'd played a few more games and practised co-ordinating my cavalry better, I'd have done even better as that was what let me down in game 3 and 4 particularly - I just took too long getting into position for the killer charges... Still, none of my opponents found my army 'Cheesy' or 'OTT', so I reckon that was a result! I'll use it again for sure and am about to paint a unit of Huns to go with it (once I've done a load of El Cid stuff for a demo game and gaming event in October!!)

I hope yuou enjoyed this post! It's been a while since I showed you any stuff!!

Cheers

Andy