Painting - Romans and War of the Roses

Hello All,

Time for another painting update I suppose.

Lately I have been working on some more 15mm ancients as you will see. I have also been working on a side project of Age of Sail ships. Finally time to get that set completed. I have most of the painting done there, but still have the rigging to do so you should see them in the next couple of weeks. Anyway on to the stuff that is completed.

Romans:

I finished off the last few stands I needed to have a full size (200 Points) army for Art de la Guerre in Triumvirate Romans. These legions are some Essex models I got at cold wars which are a bit smaller so I put more guys in front and just the command at the back. I wanted to be able to use these as mediocre legion so I painted their stuff green (hah). Also the final Cav from my CB romans set to round out the mounted troops. That is almost all of that set done, except from the legions which are for a different period. But that gives me enough for now, with a decent mix of stuff.

War of the Roses:

I was enjoying this kick of 15mm ancients that I have been on, so I decided why not keep it going. So I moved on to some old DBA sets that I have had kicking around for years. First up is a Museum Miniatures War of the Roses set. This army had a ton of options in DBA so this is a quite large set. I figured this would get me a good bit of the way to an army so I went for that first.

Foot Knights:

First up a couple of stands of foot knights. these were super easy and fast to paint due to mostly being armor. This is when I decided this was a great period! hah.

Mounted Knights:

Also some mounted knights of course. I gather they didn't get used alot, but also not never.

Bows and Giant F-Off Cannon:

Of course there are some ranged troops. The set actually has quite allot of bows. Like 7 stands in DBA terms I think.And a huge cannon which is just good fun. I painted them in the livery of the Earl of Warwick as I went to his castle one time and it was pretty cool.

Bit Stick Guys:

More peasants to due the dieing, these guys have pikes and bills. I really like the look of the bill men for some reason.

That is all I have done so far. Still some more knights, archers, and Irish javelins to do. Will have to order a few more stands to finish this army off since it is pretty cool actually. I think I will end up a bit more then half way to a full army. So just need a few more commanders and foot guys and what not I guess.

Well that's all for now, let me know what you think!

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 337 (some infinity adn 40k stuff) 
Painted: 440
Total: +103


Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Flames of War - Desperate Measures

Well, time for another Wednesday Wargaming battle report. This week we are trying some Flames of War, using the Desperate Measures Book, well I wanted to use my IS 2s who aren't in that book so I used Red Bear. I guess the main reason for this was that Serge wanted to try out Rudel, so fair enough.

Game 1: Pincer

I got stuck as the defender, I deployed 1 company of 3 IS2 with another in Ambush. Then so T-34s and Recon in Delayed Reserve. Picture shows the end of turn 1, things are going well as you can see. The Germans moved up and Rudel flew by to kill 2 tanks. I just sat there as I didn't want to be in a fight with Panthers really. Not that I have another choice!

The Panthers and Panzer 4s moved up, but couldn't accomplish much due to range and being gone to ground. With the Germans now being very close to the objective, I thought I better put down my ambush. I was forced to go in the woods by the Objective as I had to contest it to not lose.

That went pretty well actually, I got half of the Panthers. But the counter attack was bad as expected. Rudel killed another tank, and the Panzer 4s got another 2 I think. Was not rolling well at all for saves. All these shots are only AT11 vs side armor of 8!

So that was the end of that game, reserves didn't even have time to arrive.

Game 2: Surrounded

On to the second game. This time we decided to try Surronded with the Germans in the middle. Seemed appropriately desperate! My plan is simple this time, just kill everything that is not a Panther, and just stay away from them!

Round one I just doubled everything up on the top left. Hiding from the Panthers. My other tanks fired on the Panzer 4s without moving and got some decent kills. Rudel was just not interested in this game. But the German AA made a mess of the doubling recon guys all crammed into one truck, and the last Panzer 4 killed the car. Annoyingly the Enjoy the War rule which is supposed to make it harder for the Germans to stick around I thought seems to be making it easier for them.

I was now forced to fight the Panthers. I thought I would to hull down on the hill and bang away. This got me no kills! But my T-34s murdered the AA. I brought my other platoons to fight the AA. The Panthers of course masacred my 3 IS2s on the hill, Hrmm.

Feelings in trouble wanted to accelerate my plan to fight the 88s. Being Russian I can't move and shoot them so my choices were shot 2 shots or assault. I decided to try a lucky assault, 3 shots shouldn't get to kills right? Nope 2 kills so failed assault.

The Panthers are now on to killing T34s. They get 2 bails and a kill which is not bad. But Rudel is still having none of it.

I decided that shooting was they way to fight 88s, so use my breakthrough guns to send one back to it's maker. But just one kill so not getting rid of the platoon. My heroic T34s now laugh at the Panthers and kill the last Panzer 4. So now I just need to get rid of the 88s and I am golden.

The Panthers close the net on the T34s and miss all their shots! hah, well they kill one guy who was in the open. Sadly Rudel arrived and killed another tank, just rude really.

I try to get my last IS2 moving to kill the last 88, but he bogs down. That is how it is going to be.

The Panthers give me another round of missing to be sporting, but then the murder the T-34s, and then kill my commander, or maybe a company morale was failed I forget but either way. Was at least close this time, just needed to kill a 88 to start forcing the Germans to make Company test but was not to be.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Ronin

Hello All,

So had a big Samurai game over on the weekend. There was 4 of us in total, Me with the Koryu (Fencing School) Stan had some Bandits, and Duncan and Ed had different groups of Samurai. I didn't really add up the points just choose a bunch of stuff that was on hand and hoped that it would work out. Everyone also had their own secret objective card that tells them what to do.

Here is a shot fairly early on. The buildings represent the school so my guys are all in and around that area. One group of Samurai is coming in from the right escort some important person. Another group is coming from the left to meet them, but they are mostly interested in killing Bandits. The Bandits are trying to get some loot from the school, but also one of the Samurai is a spy so they want to meet up with him as well.

Chaos breaks out pretty fast. My guys attacked the Samurai being escorted, but have no armor so they were getting cut down left right and center. But I did put some guys at the gate to prevent them from entering. The Bandits made a B-Line for the loot taking arrows from the other Samurai as they went.

The Samurai continue to close in. By now my guys are all dead except for the Sensei, so he hops the wall and runs off. The Bandits have scaled the wall grabbing what they can, with a big scary Ronin to hold off the Samurai.

Allot of Angry people

The Bandits are mostly able to get away, well the ones that matter at least. The peasants pretty much all die. We called it around here as there was pretty much just Samurai hanging around. I added up the victory points that I had arbitrarily assigned. I got none as my school was looted and everyone died! The escorting Samurai got a bunch for the Escorts being alive, but didn't kill enough of the right people to score super high. The Bandits got allot of points for loot but failed to meet the Spy. Finally the Angry Samurai got a bunch of points for killing people. But ended up 2 points short of the Bandits.

But the Samurai commander cut his belly to avoid the shame of defeat giving them 2 more points for a tie game! We added in some undead stuff for a bit of a laugh in the post game turn, so that explains the ghoul!

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Art De La Guerre - Reduced Format

Hello,

Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report! This time we decided to try out a new ancients game ADG (Art De La Guerre). There are a couple of reasons why I thought it would be worthwhile to give it a shot. The main one is that I saw that the first print run had sold out and another print run was just starting, and it seems to be gaining popularity at the conventions in the states that I attend, so seemed like there might be something to it. Additionally DBMM was re-printing all 5 of the books and I am not very keen on that game due to complexity, so seems like a good time to try a change.

As seen in the last painting update I re-based my Roman DBA army and added in a bunch of new stands so that I would have a good army try this out with. You don't have to re-base of course but I just felt like it for whatever reason. Good excuse to add to my Romans that haven't been used since the campaign and refresh it. Serge had his Byzantines.

We tried the reduced format for the first try as I thought it would be an easier way to get into it. Basically you get half as many points and one command instead of 3. At this size it feels allot like DBA but with different rules.

I have 2 Elite Legions, 3 Legions, 2 Cav, a mediocre Elephant, a Light Horse with Javelins, and 2 Light infantry with Bows. The Byzantines have 4 Knights with Impact, 1 the General, 3 Cav with bows, 2 Mediocre Heavyspearmen, and 3 Mediocre Bows.

My thought is that I need to get my good legions to beat up on the mediocre infantry before I get killed by knights.

First turn the Byzantines move in with everything and I mostly stick my ground. I wanted to use the small forest to protect the side of my line from the 3 cavalry. I sent my one light infantry on the other side into the woods as well. The other one has to stand in front of mister elephant to protect him from arrows.

The byzantine start shooting arrows and get a hit on my Elite Legion doing a point of cohesion and disordering them. (this game uses cohesion points like Lasalle instead of the recoil back and forth). The Knight have a good start routing one of my cavalry units right away but take disorders on the other 2. The Elephant panics all mounted units that touch it even on the corner so the last one didn't have super great odds.

My Legions then charge in to try and do a number on all the mediocre infantry. The cavalry battle remains indecisive, but my legions kill one unit of bow and slide over to fight a spear. The other units all take some hits disordering them.

The knight general plus the hole in the line and provides support, but mediocre bowmen and no match for legions in melee so another one of them routs. The Knights start winning the Cavalary battle again but is to little to late.

On the next round the Knights clean up the rest of my cavalry, but my Elite Legions kill another 2 stands of infantry, so that is enough to break the Byzantines!

Game 2:

That was fast so there was time for a second round. This time the Byzantines changed things up getting rid of as much infantry as possible and loading up on knights.

Here we are after the first turn. That is allot more knights. I put the Elephant with the Elite Legions this time. I am not confident about fighting knights so I am hoping at lease those 3 can win. My cavalry are a bit less interesting in fighting now so they are cowering behind a bit.

The battle is about to start for real now. I moved up my lines and unpacked the mounted units to protect my flank. My light horse rode up to be annoying and try and get a lucky disruption. The Byzantines have been getting bad rolls for commands so I have a bit more freedom. In this battle the way the pip rolls work we can get between 1 and 4.

On there turn the Knights split there line, wanting to avoid the Elephant, so I sent them forward on my turn. The fights go fairly even for now with both sides taking some disruptions. The Knights have more of an advantage on the charging turn so it is not good for them to take a hit. It evens up the fight and they can only take 3 hits vs 4 for the legions. I killed the one bow but the general came in to cover.

The Knights are easily able to kill the Legion they had disordered and overlapped. Whcih had me worried. But some abysmal rolls lead to a pair of other Knights routing. So things are starting to look grim for the Knights.

But things mostly continue to go poorly for them. The General is pounding my Elite Legion into the ground, But yet another Knight routs.

In the end the Knights break as they are not able to kill my mounted units fast enough. But it is pretty close this time. Both of my mounted units are 1 hit away from routing, and the general is about to finish off a legion!

So far I like this game. It is allot simpler and easier to read and figure out. The troops still have the same game of being good at fighting some things and abd at others but there are less intersctions. Looking forward to trying the full size game at some point.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting Update - 15mm Romans

Hello Folks,

Time for another painting update. I have been working hard to get my Triumvirate Roman army ready to try out some Art De Guerre. So got a bunch of finished off bases to show you.

Caesar:

Might as well start  off with the big man himself, Julius Caesar. Seems a bit odd maybe to have him all by himself. But this game lets you have Generals that are incorporated in units, or separate so since you don't want Caesar dieing in a sword fight I felt he should be separate. The model is from Warmodelling which I don't really like that much but he is the one I have. The main issue is that he is bigger then his horse!

Elephant & Artillery:

Next there is a couple of fun bases. An artillery unit from CB and a big old elephant which is Essex. This Roman list allows you to have a mediocre Elephant, so can't pass that up. The Essex guy at Fall-In convinced me to get the cheapest Elephant so that is him hah,

Legionaries:

Then I have another pair of Legions, these ones are meant to be ordinary so just red. Original plan was just to make a 100 point army which limited me to 6 legions, but I decided to just go all the way and get 200 points so now I needed a few more.

Light Troops:

A couple of stand of light troops. The 2 on the right are new, they are Cretan Archers, somehow they look a bit like elf archers to me but there you go. They are elite in this game.

Medium Infantry, Spears:

Lastly I have another unit of medium infantry, this time with spears. These ones are CB and I was running out of medium infantry with spears so half of these guys have swords. But the ones in front mostly have spears so I figure they can count either way.

I only have a few more stand to do to complete my goal now. Another pair of legions, this one in green to be freshly recruited legion which are mediocre, one more stand of cavalry, I probably will do another couple of stands of lone generals as well. I think that will give me 200 points with a few options to mess around with.

Warrior Monk:

In addition to all of the Romans I also got another 28mm Samurai guy done. This time another warrior monk leader. He is meant to be an Ashigaru commander.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 330 (Got some Ottomans at Fall-In) 
Painted: 423
Total: +93


Thanks;
Mike