Another project? Seriously??

 Yes, I know I'm painting SYW Austrians..and yes..I am still working on my Muscovites....and adding a few bits and pieces to my Poles...oh and yes there are still some 18mm Crimean War figures on the painting blocks......and I do have a few more Vikings to go.......but the conversations went something like this......

FIRST CONVERSATION
Me: "Hey Ross what army are you going to use?"
Ross: "Assyrians."
Me: "Do you have any opponents for them?"
Ross: "No"
Me: "So your army is Assyrian- 8th and 7th Centuries BC  ...right?"
Ross: "Yep"
Me: "Any particular ruler?"
Ross: "Yep."
Me : "You're a man of many words. Which one?"
Ross: "Ashurbanipal"
Me: "Ruled from 669BC until 631BC? Considered the last Great Assyrian King?"
Ross: "Yep"

Hmmmmm.... I did a bit of reading.

SECOND CONVERSATION
My kids:"Hey dad, What do you want for your birthday?"
Me : "Elamites"
My kids: "What?"
Me, rolling my eyes : "Elamites. Actually Neo-Elamites. In 28mm. A people who fought the Assyrians. Eureka Miniatures make some."
My kids..rolling their eyes. "Okay".
(NOTE- They KNEW who Eureka Miniatures were!!)

THIRD  and FOURTH CONVERSATION
My kids: "Hey dad, What do you want for father's day?"
Me : " Elamites"
My kids..rolling their eyes again: "Okay".

My wife: "John, what would you like for Father's day?"
Me: " Elamites"
My wife- looking across at the kids who just nodded. "Er...ok...."

FINAL CONVERSATION.
Me: " I'm gonna do a Neo-Elamite army from the 7th Century BC."
Ross: "Why?"
Me: "They were opponents of your Assyrians. Ashurbanipal destroyed the Elamite kingdom in 653BC or so. There is a relief in the British Museum that depicts the crushing of the Elamite army. It's called the Battle of Ulai Relief. "
Ross: "Good choice." ( very talkative- TWO words!!)

A game of 40k

I hope readers of this blog won't object to a 'sci-fi' post!

My son and his friends are very big GW 40K fans and they get together to play games as often as life permits! All in their 20s, it is kinda nice to hear all the yelling and screaming coming from my garage as they dish out pain with 'fleshborers', 'plasma guns' , 'powerfists' or any other such weaponry.

He recently had 5 of them over playing a mini-tournament in the garage over a full Saturday. It may not be my historical stuff, but it's gaming nevertheless and my terrain is getting used. I put a couple of pictures at the bottom. 

Before the day that he held the friendly tournament, my son ran me through the new 40K (10th Edition!!??) rules. I hadn't played in years and my old Tyranids were brought out to swarm, natter, twitch, screech and devour.

The mission was to recover the remains of some imperial communications beacons. ( Objectives)

In my case, as the Tyranids, we have no use for them- but we had to get them to stop him using them for calling reinforcements. He needed to plug into them to call in more of his Chaos Legion...whatever that is!

Our game. I was Tyranids and he was some sort of smelly putrid miasma producing, disease carrying mutated space marines......I think I heard the word 'Nurgle'.....but he could have just been clearing his throat.

My deployment and plan. The beacons and comms equipment was spaced across the middle of the table.

War of the Austrian Succession and The Seven Years War

 Hmm.....another post..... another project. Early this year Ross and I were pondering the possibilities of New Year resolutions- what to paint.  In the end, after long deliberations we settled on the Seven Years War. We had played games in the past using Honours of War and liked the very fast nature of them. So we sent a bulk order away to Crusader miniatures- Austrians for me and French for him. Now why no Prussians ? I hear you ask....well we just preferred these two armies- and they were opponents in the War of the Polish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession. In the Austrian Succession the uniforms are similar to the SYW.  Below are our painting efforts so far and we will have to order the cuirassiers, dragoons, officers, artillery etc etc...but for now it's fun painting these guys.

Hungarian Infantry from the army of Maria Therese in front. German infantry behind.

GREEKS VS GALATIANS....

 

A game that pitted my Hellenistic Greek army against the Ross' rampaging Galatians. Paul was siding with Ross and the ever insightful Chris gave me the benefit of his sage advice and quick wit.

VIKINGS!!

 Well, it had to happen. 

I have Normans.
Ross has Normans.
I have Anglo-Danes.

And someone keeps whispering "1066" in my ear. I swatted him away, but he tried the other ear. 
Knock it off Paul!!

Oh well, it was inevitable:
So I ordered some...and then some more..and some more....it's easy to do ...it's just a few clicks on my computer...and some numbers change in my bank account.

So simple!!

7th Cavalry on the Plains! The Sioux aren't impressed.

 Four troops of the 7th Cavalry were sent out after intelligence was received that a group of hostiles had set up a village a half day's ride from their fort.

Orders were to demolish the tipis and drive the hostiles away.

The Black Foot and Lakota tribesmen were not going to go easily. The white men were harassing them again. 

Using The Men Who Would be Kings with some amendments for Plains Wars Spyros and I played a great little game that looked like it could have gone either way until the men of  B Troop got through the defending Braves, setting fire to the tipis and the Indians decided to retreat.

Running Moose, chasing the Buffalo.

The Village at Peace.

Normans and Anglo-Saxons

 

Looking back to a couple of posts a looonnngg time ago I noticed that Ross' Normans had beaten my Anglo-Saxons a couple of times and I had only had a single victory against his mounted thugs.

It was time for a rematch!

My side of the table- Sitting behind a low series of hills. His crossbowmen unable to get too many hits.

It happens a lot......Muscovites!!

 I was sitting here one day admiring my Ottomans. I do that a lot.

Then, as is my wont- I started admiring my Renaissance Poles. I do that a lot too.

Then...I figured,  well..who else can I collect that I could admire....hmmm well....someone to fight the Poles...and to fight the Ottomans........well why not?

So I started 'window shopping' via the 'net. I do that a lot too.

I was looking at The Assault Group website. I do that a lot.

And ..well, like magic...all these figures appeared. That too happens a lot at my place... ....they just magically arrive on my doorstep.

The command stand- painted.

Republican Romans, Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans!

 A game that was fought years ago and I came across the pictures- thought I'd post them.

Two bloody huge armies- fighting across a river. An Etruscan/Gallic alliance fighting against a combined force of Samnites and Republican Romans.

We threw a lot of figures on the table- and rolled a lot of dice!

In the end the Gallic/Etruscans won by the narrowest of margins- mainly because there were so many Gauls!

Gauls!

RAPID FIRE- 20mm

 Late last year, Richard put on a game with his outstanding 20mm WW2 collection of Rapid Fire - it was a scenario that called for a German Counter-attack during the early stages of the Normandy campaign by a Kampfgruppe of the 21st Panzer Division. 

The scenario called for the Germans troops to get a vehicle and a set number of figures off the southern end of the table.

Ross and I ( as the Germans) decided to hit the forward British defences and once it was cleared make a break for the table's edge- Unfortunately it didn't go as planned ( what plan survives contact with the enemy?). We failed to clear the first village- and even if we had, allied reinforcements had arrived at the second defensive position in the shape of Sherman tanks- so we wouldn't have got past them anyway! The Allies (Richard) won the game!

Battle of Wallhof Jan 17th 1626- Baroque

A couple of us assembled around Ross' gaming table on Friday night a couple of months ago and Ralph put on the Battle of Wallhof fought between the Poles and Swedes using his 15mm collection.

 

I love this period ( like all the others I play -I guess!) The Swedes have excellent infantry and more of it- but the Poles have more cavalry- and three units of the dreaded winged Hussars- classed as 'Feared Units' in the Baroque rules.

As we played through the game- a thought hit me- I also have these figures in 28mm...and have a home grown set of rules.....so a replay in a larger scale was on the cards too.

One of the Swedish foot units and a gun.

The Table at the start of the battle.

Battle of Lesnaya, September/October 1708

 

Another Great Northern War scenario and game.  My favourite period and my favourite style of game- an historical clash.

The Battle of Lesnaya was a decisive clash of the GNW. It took place on September 28th 1708 between a Russian army commanded by Tsar Peter I of Russia. (October 9 for the Swedish Calendar) His number two was Prince Aleksandr Menshikov who ably assisted the Russian ruler. The Russians numbered approximately 14,000 men. The Swedes, numbering 12,000 were commanded by General Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt. Lewenhaupt was one of Sweden's foremost generals and commanded a well trained and motivated force. Some of his regiments were veterans of many years' campaigning. 

For Peter the Great it was his first great victory over the Swedes.

The Russian guns from the southern column deployed.

Swedes waiting by the town

Overview of the table. The Swedes were tasked with holding the village and the crossing in it- and the crossing at the very bottom right of the picture. They had no troops at all at that point- and as is marked a Russian column was headed straight down the road.

Ottomans and Teutonic Knights!

 

Sticking with my late medieval/ early Renaissance themed battles-  another game one afternoon when both Ross and I were on holidays- and it was a bloodbath!! 

His late Teutonic Knights came out of hiding to take on the Glorious Might of the Sultan and his Janissaries! 

The Ottoman army had Janissaries, finesse, style, colour, dash, archery, Janissaries and a nice big bombard.  Oh...and did I forget to mention I had Janissaries?

The Teutonic Knights lacked all that. They just charged. That's all..hell for leather, heads down, get the flock out of the way because here we come, charge.  

My Ottomans- heavily weighted on the right with Cavalry.

The Teutons....as you can see, off into the distance, a long line of people who think that diplomacy, negotiation, tact and any other sort of interaction starts and ends with a charge.

Renaissance Clash: Spanish vs Maximilian's Imperials!

 Ross and I played a game from the late Middle Ages/ Early Renaissance a little while ago.  I took all these photos at the start....then forgot to take more as the game progressed. It was Spanish vs Maximilian Imperialist. One of those games where I totally forgot to take the pics because it was such a close fought engrossing engagement.....so for posterity...I'll put them on the blog and in years to come kick myself for forgetting to take more pics!

The Spanish- left flank anchored on wood- lots of pike, some supporting shooters and a bit of cavalry.

Maximilian's boys- not quite as much pike- less shooters...but a bit more heavy metal- The Knights!

Thracians vs Samnites

 An interesting game between two armies that never actually met on the field of battle- but were both from the same time frame. Ross' Thracians came out to take on my Samnites. Both armies are made up of predominantly Light Infantry or Light Heavy Infantry.  Ross' Thracians have a lot more cavalry- I had two units for the Samnites- he had four for the Thracians. His Thracian Cavalry also have the ability to mix in Light Infantry , which slows the cavalry but gives a crucial +2 dice in melee.

My best troops- Linen Legion

Battle lines moving up.

AWI: Bennington 16th August 1777

I got the AWI collection out the other day and decided to refight one of the battles that struck me as being a little different to the many of the other I’ve refought in the past( Click on AWI link on the right hand side!)

I settled on Bennington  16th August 1777  and used the Scenario Booklet 4 from the British Grenadier rules, but decided to try the Little Wars TV rules, “Live Free or Die” as I have watched their games on YouTube and was impressed with the way they played. I used the OOB in the scenario book and just divided the number of figures by 4 to get the appropriate number of bases. For skirmish units I divided the number of figures required by 2 ( see below).

What particularly grabbed me about the fight was two interesting ingredients. The first was that the Continentals ( well- militia mainly) are assaulting defensive redoubts instead of the usual attacking redcoats. The second aspect was the fact that on the ‘redcoat’ side there are few actual British troops. The vast bulk are Brunswickers, Loyalists and some Indians…so hardly any ‘redcoats’…just a few riflemen! 

The table- looking north.

Poles vs Swedes

 Trying out our own rules and wanting to put some of my Poles and some of my 17th Century Swedes on the table, I dragged a couple of boxes over to Ross' house. The armies weren't big, we just wanted to get a feel for the period and our rules modifications- and see if I made the right choice in basing the infantry the way I did- see previous blog on TYW/ECW basing!

Poles to the left, Swedes to the right.

Romans vs Macedonians

 A few months ago Geoff and Zels asked us to put on a game to run through our own home grown set of ancient rules that we have been using for a long time now. It was my Republican Romans vs Ross' Antigonas One-Eye's Macedonians. 

The Roman right flank- Elephants and Light Infantry backed up by a unit of Triarii. We won on this side.

Last of the Mohicans..........Painted!!

 My painted Indians for the AWI are done! I found these a joy to paint..but it clearly didn't improve my painting quality. Anyway....a game soon is a must! 

Success for Admiral Seymour - Boxer Rebellion ( Part 4)

 

The campaign towards Peking continues and Admiral Seymour's Allied force has taken the first major obstacle! 

The eight Allied continents started at each end of the table- four at one end, four at the other and had to fight their way into the huge fort that took up the centre of the table.

Following on from the format from the large game a couple of years ago- all players were on the same side against an umpire controlled enemy. Each player was briefed as to who they could and couldn't assist and who they were in fierce rivalry with.  The main objective- establish a foothold in the fort. Other objectives included the 4 Chinese artillery firing platforms and the 3 gates - 2 at the northern end, 1 at the southern end.