Warlord Epic - Romans v Carthaginians

Haven't posted for a few weeks due to work and general business.  Here in London we're currently sweltering in a mini-heatwave which is particularly unpleasant to those of us used to cooler Scottish climates... it's definitely 'taps aff' weather, as they say in Glasgow!

A couple of weeks ago I had a game of Hail Caesar with Andrew, using his newly acquired HC Epic Scale Romans and Carthaginian armies.  These were a real bargain and he has masses of them.  We played a relatively small game and there was a lot left packed away in storage boxes (he even got those thrown in with the deal!!).  Epic scale equates to about 13.5mm or a small 15mm size figure and en masse they looked great.

The Romans definitely looked outnumbered on the table but had the advantage of better commanders, a hefty piece of artillery,  and more flexibility in manoeuvering and redeploying their legionnaries.  And they had their secret weapon... flaming pigs!  The Cathaginians on the other hand had the advantage of numbers... their units are larger and can soak up more damage.  And of course we had elephants...

Oink!!

The game was a close run affair... both sides were struggling with mounting casualties but the Carthaginians were better able to absorb these and continue fighting.  Sadly neither the elephants or the pigs actually got stuck in to the fighting (I think the elephants may have provided some support but there was no trampling involved).  The figures looked....erm... epic.  A really fun game and a rematch is definitely on the cards

Roman Clash of the Titans

Another game at Eric the Shed's this week, and a rather special occasion as it saw the unveiling of 2 enormous Roman armies.  Eric and fellow Shed-er Mark have been building 2 ridiculously large Roman and Celt armies over the last year but their debut was obviously delayed due to Covid.

Monday saw their first deployment en masse on the table with a huge Roman vs Roman game of Hail Caesar.  There is a proper write up of the game on Eric's blog HERE and you'll also find lots of posts about the process of building and painting the armies.

My son and I were lucky enough to be the fellow players for the debut and it's fair to say Eric and I didn't come out of it with any glory....

Both armies deployed... there were even more figures that stayed off-table in their boxes!!

The 'Good' Romans...

... and the 'Bad' ones

My son's legionaries steamroll through my Auxiliary archers

One of the triumphant enemy generals

As always Hail Caesar proved fun but very bloody.  The game was great fun but there was so many figures on the table it was hard to manage everything and remember which units had which stats.  But then if you have this many figures you need to have at least one game where all the toys come out to play!   Next week's game promises to be a bit smaller and more manageable.

Wars of the Roses Game #1

So my Wars of the Roses troops finally made it onto the table with Lord Percy finally able to take the fight to his arch-rival Richard Neville.

This evening we tried out the embryonic rules for the planned WotR campaign game which Eric the Shed has been working on.  There are still some tweaks needed but essentially, using the boardgame Kingmaker as a starting point, players are given a selection of troops depending on which Nobles, Titles and Offices they have... not exactly the same as in the boardgame but inspired by its cards.  Once the game starts  some players are definite opponents while others are undecided and use a card system to 'bid' to support one side or the other.  The main players can also influence this.  After the 1st couple of turns this resolves itself with players committing to one side or the other.

This does mean that in a 4 player game there is a danger that 3 players will end up ganging up on the 4th which is exactly what happened in our game.  I think this would be less likely to happen in a 5 or 6 player game though.  We used Hail Caesar as the rules for the actual battle.

In our 1st game we ended up with Neville quickly being attacked on 3 sides by an alliance of nobles.  My troops led by Lord Percy and Lord Talbot took a more cautious approach than the 2 other players and stayed back exchanging bowfire at long range: I did try charging at one point but failed my command roll and stayed safely tucked behind a hedge, dodging the enemy arrows.  The other nobles took a less subtle approach and charged straight in.

Looking length ways down the table with the Nevilles on the right

The Percy forces deploy - the cards were used in selecting
 the force but weren't needed in the game

Neville's troops move up through a farm

Percy forms into a neat battle line ready to advance

The cows decide to ignore the advancing infantry...

Once Neville realised the odds against him were pretty overwhelming he threw most of his troops towards Percy in an attempt to resolve the historic feud between the 2 families but the other Nobles were able to crush his flank before he could get to me.

While the Percy's hide behind the hedge there is ferocious fighting
on the other side of the farm buildings at the top of the picture

Apart from bowfire my only actual attack was unleashing the Irish troops who were obliged to make a 'frenzied charge' if possible but by this point it was all over for Neville.

The Irish charge home...

The pre-game mechanics were interesting and mostly worked well: there is bit of fine tuning to be done but it has the basis of an interesting way of setting up games that aren't a straightforward head to head fight.  We also realised that we'd made the units too small which meant it was too easy to concentrate a lot of force against units... making units a bit bigger should balance this out.

It was very satisfying to get the figures on the table...I'm sure this will be the first of many games!

Wars of the Roses...the final straight.

Back at the beginning of the year, after a rather epic all day re-fight of 1st Newbury (details HERE) we'd discussed what the next large scale project should be and quickly settled on the Wars of the Roses.  This seemed ideal for a multiplayer game as each player could put together a few (or many) units based around a particular Noble.

Fast forward 7 months and I've just about finished my retinue.  I say 'finished' but of course there's always the temptation to add 'just one more' unit!  The figure tally now stands at over 240 figures which, while it might be small compared with some of my fellow gamers, is a huge amount for me.  It's been a long time since I've rattled so quickly through a project like this... I guess there is a small benefit to Lockdown and Furlough!

The retinue mostly comprises infantry figures with a couple of units of horse: we decided early on to work in multiples of 6 which makes it easy to use these for either Lion Rampant with 12 man units or Hail Caesar with 18s

So the final unit (for now) has been completed...a unit of Lord Clifford's mounted Men at Arms and some mounted commanders

I've also spent some time prepping a lot of movement trays which is strangely therapeutic...

The exciting news is that the Percy/Clifford Northern Powerhouse gets it's first proper outing this evening so hopefully lots more photos of their stunning victory to follow...

Hastings 1066

I've been a bit slack in getting this post written up but here is my account of a truly epic days wargaming courtesy of Eric the Shed's grand Hastings game which took place a couple of weeks ago.

All the details (and there are a lot of them!) can be found at Eric's blog... here.  There is a full explanation of the set up of the terrain as well as the adaptations made to Hail Caesar including special event cards that both sides took great delight in playing at key moments.

The table was played on a 3.5 x 2m table built on boards that had been bolted together with a deceptively steep slope to the north which was where Harold was making his stand

This was a rare all day game making full use of over 1000 figures that Eric has been painting up over the last year.  I'm very chuffed with myself if I can get enough figures painted for a skirmish game so this is really impressive.  The day began with a very well-received bacon roll before we began planning our tactics.  Along with Steve and Glen, I was on the Norman side and had the honour of holding the centre as William and Bishop Odo. 

The full table length...Normans on the left

Our plan was a relatively simple one.  Hold back the Saxons on our left while the centre and right commands cut off the hill and kill Harold.

The view looking up towards the hill

On the Norman right

...and on our left

As usual our plans didn't quite go as expected.  On our left Steve did a sterling job, tying up the Saxons while Glen on the right pushed forward and drove into the Saxon left.  The Saxon dice throwing at this point proved spectacularly bad and Glen was able to drive his opponents right back to their table edge where they did manage to stage a bit of a rally before eventually succumbing

The Normans push ahead on the right

In the centre my advance was much more steady...mainly thanks to unspectacular dice throwing.  In the event this worked in my favour as it meant the Saxon centre couldn't easily assist the flanks.  I tried several times to use the event cards to lure the Saxons off the hill using Feigned Flight but they had clearly been reading their history books and stayed firmly put.

Advancing slowly towards Harold on his hill

Eventually the Saxon centre began to fragment as Glen's attacks on the right forced them to respond, and Harold abandoned the hill and his Huscarles to the safety of the Saxon left flank where they were still intact but now hemmed in.  I decided it was now time to push up the worryingly steep hill and threw everyone forward.  We discovered that Norman knights are incredibly powerful...they cut their way through several Saxon warbands before eventually becoming a bit beat up but they'd done their job...sadly in the course of this Bishop Odo fell leading a cavalry charge.

The advance up the Hill

The final act came as William led his knights up the slope and into the Huscarles who weren't able to stand and broke

The Saxon Huscarles stare down as William and the Norman Knights approach

The table towards the end of the day

So the history books were right and the Saxon line ended at Hastings.  It was a great days gaming with great company (and pizza!).  Despite the very unlucky dice throwing on Harold's side it felt like a close result.  I've only played a couple of games of Hail Caesar but it does give a very good feeling of a real meat-grinding battle with defence in depth adding lots of support.

Many thanks to Eric and to everyone who took part and made it a really fun day.  Now I'm off to knock up a quick tapestry....

It's the Snowpocalypse!!!!

I'm updating my blog from the snowy wastes of Surrey where we're in the grip of 2" of snow and have been largely cut off from the outside world.  The Tesco Express next door has row upon row of empty shelves [not even an horse burger to be seen...] and we may have to eat the dog if they aren't restocked soon [... only kidding... he's too skinny, we'll have to eat my son instead!]

It's the annual weekend of snow that we get here and everything grinds to a halt... this is where I should go into a rant about how it wasn't like this when I was young/ they're all southern softies down here in Surrey/ everyone's hysterical etc, but actually I've been mainly preoccupied by the fact that our heating and hot water packed in and it was bloody freezing!!!  We now have heat but not hot water but at least I can grab a shower at work so it's not too bad.

The snow has meant a quiet weekend though so there was a chance to do some more work on my Saxons [see... I really am trying to stick to my plan!]  I've built 20 of my Gripping Beast plastic Saxons and had part-painted them last year so wanted to try and get them finished.  They're now painted and had an ink wash and just need to bases finished off.  Somewhere I have some shield transfers for these and for my Vikings but I couldn't find them anywhere so have had to give them some rather boring shield patterns.  Hopefully the transfers are in a box in the loft and I'll be able to track them down for the next batch as they really did make a difference to the Viking shields.

Saxon Warlord and Standard bearer

 

 



 



 

 

 

On another note I saw that Warlord Games have reduced the price of some of their rule books in the last week or so.  I decided to order a set of Hail Caesar at the reduced price of £20.  One of my quests has been to try and find a decent set of rules for my Italian Condotta and Swiss armies.  I originally used these with DBM but it's a rule system I struggle to love although I really do like DBA!

 

I've tried FoG which is the Ancient/Medieval rule du jour at the club but again struggled to get along with it.  I quite enjoyed them but never really felt like I knew what was going on [... nothing unusual there!]. 

 

I've also been having a look at some of the Perfect Captain rules  [ http://perfectcaptain.50megs.com/captain.html ], especially Strongbow and A Coat of Steel to see if these could suit the early Renaissance period.  I'm a big fan of Black Powder though so Hail Caesar seemed like a good bet for the Italians and Swiss.  I'll let you know how I get on.