Orkney road trip

A few weeks ago we went off on a busy 10 day break back home in Scotland.  This was a combination of a visit back home for my nephew's wedding (which was lovely), and a longer break afterwards. After a couple of nights in Ayrshire for the wedding we then headed north on a trip to Orkney.

[Warning... this post may contain photos of dogs!]

This has always been on the wishlist of places to visit and we'd decided that as we were halfway there already, this was the year to do it. Its a fair old journey to the north coast so we headed up the A9 to Imverness, driving through the Pass of Killiecrankie, site of the 1689 battle, sadly without time to stop, although did take a break nearby at Dunkeld and Birnam, of Macbeth's mobile Woods fame.

After a night stop on the edge of Inverness we headed up to Scrabster on the north coast.  On the way we stopped off at Carn Liath to see a very impressive Broch.  These are fascinating structures and although this one wasnt very tall it was quite complete at lower levels.  It dates back to the Iron Age and was built on an earlier Bronze Age settlement.

Later that evening we made the 90 minute ferry crossing to Stromness  and then drove to our Air BnB in Kirkwall.  It was the dogs 1st experience of a boat trip and they were perfectly behaved... thankfully for them, and me, it was a very smooth crossing... I certainly haven't inherited my dad's sailor genes!

Orkney is full of archaeological sites... you can't move without tripping over a standing stone, but I especially wanted to visit Skara Brae.  I still have vivid memories of history lessons in school where they talked about this and being fascinated by it. It's an incredibly intact Neolithic village dating back to 3180 BCE

Neolithic dice!!

Close by are a couple more remarkable sites... the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar.

On nearby Lambholm island (connected to the main island by a causeway) is an amazing WW2 church, built by Italian POWs.  It's actually constructed out of 2 Nissen Huts with the interior handpainted to resemble bricks.  Partway through the construction Italy stopped being an enemy but the Italians weren't allowed to go home and were kept on to work on local farms.  Sadly just before it was completed they were all shipped off to Yorkshire so never got to see the finished Church.

And of course Orkney is famously the location of Scapa Flow, resting place of the German High Seas fleet and HMS Royal Oak.  Most of the German ships were refloated and scrapped bit there a few ships still at the bottom of the bay.

Scapa Flow

Scapa Flow with dog

Memorial to HMS Royal Oak in
St Magnus Cathedral

It was a great trip lots to see historically, and this combined with my other interest of birdwatching meant there was lots to do (sadly no puffins which I'd hoped for).  Ive been reading up about the military activity on the islands... as you'd imagine it's mostly naval or air conflicts in the 20thC (and sadly the 1st civilian casualty of an air raid in WW2) but there was the Battle of Summerdale in 1529 between different branches of the Sinclair clan which allegedly featured a witches prophecy and the appearance of St Magnus!  Definitely one to recreate on the table!

We finished the trip back in Glasgow to catch up with family before heading back down south.  The round trip clocked in at around 1800 miles and  was pretty tiring but well worth it.

Red Book of the Elf King

 In my recent post about a base coating disaster*  I mentioned I'd been painting some figures from Lucid Eye miniatures.  These are all from their Red Book of the Elf King range and the associated rules, written by Rick Priestley.  The setting is themed around an Elvish Civil War but the range also includes Trolls and Humans.  These aren't Tolkieny elves but are much more inspired by Irish myths with a hefty dose of Michael Moorcock thrown in.  This version of elves makes them much darker and less fluffy.  As Terry Pratchett famously described them...

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

I haven't really explored the rules much yet but they look interesting and are aimed at around 19-20 figures per side which is perfect for me.  Lucid Eye also sell 'Elf King Red' which is a smaller skirmish set of rules, again by Rick Priestly, for the princely sum of 10p! 

 

I've picked up some of the figures from the range and they are really lovely and well worth checking out.  I could also see my Arthurian figures fitting in as mortal opponents or allies.

* the figures have all recovered from their disastrous basecoating and are back to their shiny metal state after a dettol bath and a good scrub with a toothbrush!

Its an Ill Wind...

 

Bloomsbury Publishing announced a while ago that they were winding up the boardgames part of Osprey to focus on books, RPGs and wargames.  Sad news as they've published some excellent boardgames over recent years.

The one good thing out of the sad news is that Osprey are having a big sale on lots of boardgames till the end of the month.  Inspired by my friend Andrew's recent shopping spree with them (and a very good sales pitch from him... Osprey should consider employing him on commission!!) I succumbed and ordered a couple of boxes from the Undaunted range (more on these in a separate post).

I've played a few games of Undaunted Normandy (UN from now on) and think it's an excellent and clever little board/war game.  It treads a fine line between being a deckbuilding game and a tabletop skirmish.  I have a copy of Undaunted Stalingrad which I acquired very cheaply from eBay ages ago but which has been in the loft since then and could really do with coming out to play.

Inspired by all of this we dug out Normandy for a game on Monday.  This scenario has the Germans launching a raid against a canal to take back control from the advancing Americans.

UN is a deceptively simple game... players have a hand of cards to activate their squads and can use officers to add to this from a supply pile (think of this as off table reinforcements). Clever use of deckbuilding allows you to shape the deck to match your strategy (assuming you have one!)  

The rules neatly differentiate between troop types... in UN only Scouts can advance into unexplored tiles while Riflemen follow in their wake.  Riflemen can take control of tiles however which is essential for scoring VPs.  MGs are great for laying down covering fire, especially suppressive fire which was crucial in our game.  However as the Scouts move into new spaces, 'Fog of War' cards are added to the deck... these only serve to take up valuable space in your hand which nicely reflects the growing chaos as the battle expands. 

In our game I played the Germans with  Andrew taking on the US.  They begin with 2 out of the required 6 VPs already secured and have a choice between trying to hold the VPs at their board edge or preventing the Germans racing to the canal.  Andrew made good ground quickly and seized another 2 VPs before I'd reached the canal, but then became bogged down due to unlucky cards and increasing fire from the German squads.  

The pinned US riflemen... so close
to seizing the last VPs

The turning point came when I was able to deploy both my MGs in a good central spot.  This was when we discovered how effective suppression fire can be... the US needed to activate 1 more rifleman to snatch victory but he was under a constant hail of MG fire which kept his head down and allowed me to snaffle the victory from under his nose.  

For a very simple game it works really well... troops have different and complimentary roles, planning how you build your deck as the game progresses is key, and officers and NCOs (although they aren't on the table) are key in reinforcing and shaping your forces.  The more I play this, the more impressed I am.  It'll be a shame if it falls by the wayside and perhaps another company will pick it up.

Priming fail!

 Had my first proper failure when undercoating some figures yesterday, thanks to the hot, sweaty weather we're having

I thought id take advantage of a day off to do some painting and sprayed some Epic scale Civil War Highlanders and 4 of the really lovely Jim Fitzpatrick miniatures from Lucid Eye.

When I brought them in after drying I found thet were quite grainy and the paint is very powdery and brushes off on my fingers.  Just too hot and humid I think.  It's off to a dettol bath for these guys and we'll try again when/if the weather ever cools!

Cry Havoc!

Many of us (of a certain age... and I'm guessing most readers of this blog are of a certain age...) will remember Cry Havoc from Standard Games which came out in 1981.

I played quite a bit of this when I was at Uni, avoiding lectures.  It's a great medieval skirmish game... very simple and ideal for creating your own scenarios.  It was followed by Siege, which I never played but always thought sounded intriguing, and then Samurai, Crusader and Viking versions.

Back in April Footsore Miniatures launched a Kickstarter to launch a rebooted version which arrived yesterday.  They very deliberately kept all the components the same, but with reworked artwork (very much in the original style) and with better production values.   Steve Beckett, the graphic designer, has previously worked on the Beano and the Dandy... if only there was a Sir Dan the Desperate character!! 

I imagine it must have been tempting to add in the usual Kickstarter extras, especially for a company that makes miniatures which could have been added in.  I think they made a very conscious decision to stick to the original game and lean heavily into the nostalgia market.  It definitely worked... the project was funded very quickly and, unusually for a KS it was turned round and delivered 2 months from funding!  Of course it would be very easy to use your own figures in place of the counters.  It does also mean that if you own the originals they're all pretty compatible.

It looks great... there are 3 booklets included.  The rulebook and Scenario booklets are only 16 pages long each and there is a 12 page Historical info booklet.  The counters are double sided with live and dead characters ranging from Knights to Peasants and some sundries like carts etc for certain scenarios.  The maps are also simple but very effective.  It comes with the originals plus 2 new maps.

Looking forward to trying this out.  And it'll be interesting to see if they release updated versions of the other games in the original series.  They've hinted this might be on the cards so fingers crossed...

Teutoburg Wald #3... the Angrivarii Boundary

 So far we've played through 2 out of 3 of the Command and Colours Ancients Teutoburg scenarios which have all gone the Germans way, as you'd expect.  This time round we skipped on a few years and gave Germanicus a chance to exact his revenge against the Angrivarii and Arminius.

This time the Germans are on the defensive behind a wall of ramparts but the Romans have arrived in strength (somewhere around 60 000 troops against an unknown number of Germanic tribes)... historically it didn't go well for Arminius but could we re-write history?

The C&C map has the Germans holding a line of ramparts with a wood on their right flank.  I was tempted to leave the safety of the defences and charge along the line into the Romans but given my initial hand of order cards I had a chance to distract my opponent Anthony by pushing through the woods... I hoped this would at least allow me to keep his attention away from a general assault along the Roman line and sure enough it worked.  Thanks to some lucky dice rolls my warbands actually chewed up the Roman left flank quite spectacularly and, more importantly, left the main Roman forces standing around while he tried to shore up the flank.  Would it have been better to ignore the flank attack and push on in the centre... maybe... put it would have allowed me to run riot on the flank so I'm not sure the Romans had much choice.  

As usual all the figures are from Anthony's lovely 54mm collection

The battle was pretty much entirely decided on my right flank.  As always with C&C it can hinge on which order cards you receive and here I was pretty lucky.  Although I mainly had cards allowing me to act on the left and centre sectors, I kept getting a card each turn which allowed me to keep the attack on the right going... it could easily have stalled in which case I might have been tempted to go for an all or nothing attack along the line, but the Gods were with me and I always received a useful card in the nick of time!

I did have one other important ally in the game when Leonard, Chieftain of the Chattii Catii tribe arrived to boost morale!

yep... billions of pounds spent on developing AI technology and I'm using to
enhance cat photos (but he's so cute!!!)

I'm a Millionaire!!

I missed the actual date, but at some point in the last few weeks my blog stats tipped over the 1 million views threshold!  Admittedly a fair number of these are probably bots but that's fine.... I know there are real people out there who read and comment on my ramblings and that's much appreciated.

I started the blog back in 2012 when blogs were the new cool kid on the block.  It was really more of a diary of games I was playing for myself than anything else, but it has connected me with lots of gamers across the world and led to me finding a regular real-life gaming home with Eric the Shed and his motley collection of gamers.  Ive also acquired at least 1 weird stalker but thats another story!!

My posts come in fits and starts but thank you to all the lovely people (and lovely bots) who stop by and have a look and comment.