The Greeks first battle!

After working all winter on a huge number of Ancient Greeks, it was time to get them out and on the table for a battle.  While the plan is to run a few story driven battles with everyone at Dallas's place, I really wanted to get a handle on the rules in a one on one game before attempting a big multi player game.

So, last week with Dallas away and no regular game booked, Greg and I got together to hash through the "Hail Caesar" rules and make a go at a game.

The protagonists were made up of a group of allied Greeks (Athenians and Thebeians) vs a smaller but more elite force of Lacedaemonians (more commonly referred to as the Spartans).   The battle field was made up of a lot of open desert area, with a well blocking part of one flank, and a few fields scattered around the edges.

Here are some of the Allied Greeks.

And here are some of the Spartans.

The rule set we used is "Hail Caesar" but most of you will be familiar with it in it's many other incarnations as: Pike & Shotte, Black Powder, or originally as Games Workshops Warmaster!


The game started with a lot of manuever failures on the side of the Athenians, with several units just refusing to follow orders. Eventually though after about 2 turns of minor move and adjust, both Greg and I went "Screw this!" and slammed our forces into each other.

 

 The initial hit, shattered an Athenian unit and sent it running right off the bat!  I suddenly worried that the game would be over in 30 minutes flat and that I would need WAY more units for a viable game.  However, it turns out that was a fluke, and things settled down after that with the push and counter push (literally) that phalanx combat was known for.

 Down the huge battle line, things went good and bad for each force.  In the center we fought forever back and forth, on the Spartans right flank they pushed through, and on the Athenians right flank, they pushed through.

The Spartan push on their right flank went well to start and then due to a number of bad rolls for them, and great rolls for 2 small skirmish units, they got held up for a large number of turns.  They finally routed the 2 small units but were too late to help elsewhere by that time.

On the Athenians right flank, they pushed forward, but then got pushed back 3 or 4 times all while shaken and disordered!  Amazingly they never ran and held several units in check for most of the game!  They finally did route near the end, but by then it wall in in the center for the game.

The center of the battle tied up at least 3 units on each side and was back and forth for a long time.  In the end both sides were battered, bruised, and shaken.  The deciding factor ended up being both of us throwing our generals in for a few extra combat dice, and units deciding to run due to being shaken and having to test on tied combats.

There were a lot of tied combats since phalanx units count anything that is a loss of up to 2 as a draw.  This meant that until they were shaken and had to test moral on draws, units just stood and took it!  The Spartans even more so, since they can reroll a failed armour save each turn so took far fewer casualties.

In the end, it was a blood bath with I believe 4 units left on the table!  Greg and I had a blast with it though, even though we made many mistakes, but figured them out along the way and corrected most of them.  We now both understand the rules much better and hope to have these figures out for a Thursday night game sometime soon!

Byron's 5th, 6th, and 7th Painting Challenge Submissions

Another week has past, and with it some additional submissions to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  After a super slow week last week due to being sick, I had a whole pile of things ready to go live, so even though it was one week, I had 3 submissions.

Entry #5 - Small Scale Items

This entry was a whole bunch of random small scale items.

Great War Naval Forces - 1/3000 scale Dreadnoughts

Having done WW1 in 28mm over the last few years, I started reading more and more of the history around the whole war.  The naval aspect of the war caught my fancy and I thought, why not do some ships to have some small games at some point.  After all, you don't need that many ships, and how hard could they be to paint?

Well, the answer to that last part is, very hard if the sculpts are not great.  I got my ships from Mick Yarrow Miniatures after searching around for a while, they had decent reviews online and they were cheap so I figured why not.  Well, they are cheap, but the quality is pretty horrible.  They must be using molds made around the same time these ships were really sailing!  Some were concave, some had bubbles, some were missing guns, some were 2-3mm thick and others were 7-10mm thick, making them all very inconsistent.  They were CHEAP though, so I guess I should have known.

 
Epic 30k - Death Guard (Part 2)
 
Thanks to Greg, I got corrupted and dragged along with the Epic 30k madness that he has descended into.  Luckily, I have only gone partially insane as I am sticking to one single faction and a small force of them at that.  

 
Team Yankee 6mm - American Reinforcements

 
I have been working on both Russian and American forces to do Team Yankee in 6mm, but basing them on a desert conflict so that I can use them for a cold war gone hot like Team Yankee or for theoretical or real gulf war games.  Anyway, I have most of the forces done already, but needed some additional infantry, so banged off another unit of American infantry and their transports, which have to be one of the ugliest transports ever invented.

Entry #6 - Arena Rex 35mm Beasts

My friend Steve picked up a new game a little while back, and after seeing the quality of the figs I just had to get some to paint up.  That game is Arena Rex, a 35mm skirmish Fantasy Gladiator game. The figures are just stunning up close, the detail is amazing.  The only down side, the price is stunning as well!

The rules are available for free though, and I tried a game with some proxy figured with Steve before I ordered my own.  It is one of those rare games that looks super simplistic at first glance, but has an amazing amount of depth hidden in it.  It has strategy, tactics, resource management, and more all rolled up in to what seems at first glance a simplistic smash-up gladiator game.

 I wanted to really sell the Arena setting of the figures, but also make them usable for other things, so... I picture that arena with a sand based floor I wanted to do something sand based.  However, not wanting something as mundane as simple flat sand, I decided to try some cracked earth effects in parts of the base.  I picture this as areas where the arena got wet from blood, thrown beverages from hecklers, or hell where a horse or bull took a leak, and now the sand and mud has dried and cracked.  I also added just a few tufts of dead grass to the base to add a bit more interest.  Again, probably not seen in a lot of arenas, but if you picture a weekend circus and then time passing before the next big event it is possible that some small tufts find a way to grow. especially around the dried cracked mud that has extra nutrients added.  That's my story anyway, I don't care if you buy it, I can live with it.

Onto the beasts themselves, I did almost everything with my new toy (a Harder & Steenback Infinity CRplus 0.15mm airbrush, which is AMAZING to work with!).  The beasts were done with black primer, then white or grey zenithal highlights and then many thin layers of glazes for colours.  I know Greg's eye is twitching over all that, but it really was simple and fast.  WAY faster than trying to get the same results with a brush.  I honestly believe that the Scorpion was done (primer - clear coat) in less than an hour of work time, and by brush I know I would have spent 4-6 hours to get the same effect.

These guys are HUGE, they are 35mm scale, the WW1 infantry
model is a 28mm scale fig to show just how big these are.

Entry #7 - 28mm Napoleonic Artillery Teams

Last up for the week was three teams of French Napoleonic Artillery all done on some huge diorama-like stands (60mm wide x 120mm deep).

Four years ago now, I started doing some French Napoleonic figures as a promise to Curt that I would at least try doing something historical for my first painting challenge.  It was a unit of Perry line infantry, and my first exposure to painting the madness that is Napoleonic uniforms! UGGG!

Four years later I finally have enough done to think about some small games!  Something Greg and I will have to arrange sometime soon for the group.

Having completed some pretty big projects in the challenge lately, I am pretty tapped out, and will not have much ready to go live this coming week, so I may not have another update here for a few weeks (other than the theme week entry).

IR #4 - 28mm Austrian Napoleonics

I Battalion, IR#4 - models from Victrix

Another batch of recruits have joined my Austrian collection.  This the first battalion, IR #4.  The models are plastics from Victrix.  These models faced several serious painting challenges, and also a little delay for bases, so I'm pretty chuffed to have them finished.   As with my other infantry units, it is beefy - 38 infantry and a single mounted model.

Waiting for the basing goop to dry

Colour party shows the variety of officers that come with the box

I scoffed and scoffed and scoffed at Victrix and their seemingly-endless delays between announcing these models and finally having them for sale.  But Victrix is laughing in the end. 

The box provides a good variety of poses, with minimal assembly

These plastics are incredible.  The assembly is minimal (and I understand from other gamers who have the Victrix French and British figures that assembly was a real challenge there).  The range of poses is still significant - everything from marching to loading to firing.   You get ample stuff for command, including a full selection of different heads for different officers, and two mounted officers.  The price is reasonable. Order from Maelstrom, and you won't even pay shipping. So hats off to Victrix for taking the cynicism of hacks like me and spiking it back hard and with authority!

A nice change from the "monopose" feel you get with Foundry stuff

The mounted officer is really into it - probably some schnapps hidden under the saddle....

The level of detail on these figures is very, very impressive for plastics.  Sure, there are a couple of detail lines that are a bit weak, and if you have sh*t primer I like I did, that can get really tricky, but these are top notch figures.  They even managed to get a cipher on the cartridge boxes.  Little details like that put these models at the top of the game.

You can see the Imperial ciphers on the cartridge boxes...a neat detail

I love how the foot-sloggers have a bit of a down-cast to their poses.  They look stoic, but with a sense of "Oh Christ, here we go again..." as they move to face off against the French, probably able to hear the French "pas-de-charge" beating through the smoke. They are ready to fight hard, but have little confidence their officers have put them in the right place or left them any real support to face the hard hitting French troops.  Nonetheless, their own (declining) Empire is on the line, and they are ready to give it their best...

Huge Austrian units are a wargaming tradition of sorts

My Austrian roster now stands at six full line battalions (one Grenz battalion, four German battalions and one Hungarian battalion), four guns, two cavalry regiments, and a unit of skirmishers, but the recruiting can't stop.  I would love to do more Victrix units, but I still have a pile of Foundry lead left, so I'm racking those up for another unit - trying for a "firing line" this time.  It will also be a little smaller - 32 model "spots" instead of 40 - a "normal" size.  While the oversize Austrian line unit is kind of an old standby for Napoleonic gamers, I think the extent to which those huge units were actually in the field can be exaggerated a bit, so it's time to get some smaller ones into the line.

The ADC encourages the men forward - that ranker on the right of him isn't so sure...

So it's quite a time to be an Austrian Napoleonic gamer - Victrix has a wide range of plastics out for the Austrians, and now the Perrys are getting their Austrian figures out there gradually.  The Sash & Sabre lines are excellent. Competition is a good thing! I hope to do some Perry Austrians later this year, but another battalion of Victrix would be great too.  It's nice to have a choice.  But sometimes the best figures are the ones you already have - for me that means a pile of Foundry stuff before getting back to some of these other manufacturers.