Tentacles and Chariots

As I mentioned last time, the move is absorbing most of my time, and an especially busy period at work is taking most of the rest of my energy. Therefore, despite the fact that I played this game back on the 3rd, the pictures have been languishing in a draft post since then.

Without further ado...

Norman ran a playtest game for the rules he intends to use for his Cold Wars games in just a few weeks. We used a tried-and-true scenario, The Wagon Train, from C.S. Grant's Scenarios for Wargames, and armies built from the Caesar 1/72 scale Egyptians and Hittites. The scenario calls for a random entry of the attacker's troops. I was attacking, as the Egyptians, and it worked out that most of the game was spent in a chase after the supply train. A unit or two appearing ahead of them could have been of considerable assistance. We inflicted heavy casualties on the Hittite escorts, but never got near the supplies.

Norman's rules are designed around the idea that cohesion is the only statistic tracked, and all manner of things, excess movement, attacks, and combat results particularly, all reduce cohesion. Units can rally to regain cohesion. This worked fairly well, although it would probably work best in scenarios with time limits, to avoid being all about rallies.



We had the game on the dining room table, about 3' by 6'. The wargame tables have not yet made the move.


Norman's baggage train is a favorite. When he is working in 1/72 plastic, he usually works with the artistic limitation of restricting himself to plastic figures. The cows (painted in accordance with Egyptian tomb painting depictions of cattle) are from the Atlantic Stampede set. The pack donkeys started as Airfix Tarzan zebras, and the oxen with the scratchbuilt wagon were a flea market find in hard plastic of unknown origin. Drivers are from the Caesar Hebrew set.

Buying into the Reaper Kickstarter last summer left me with a taste for fantasy. I later bought into a Kickstarter for some wierd fantasy miniatures called Tentacles and Eyeballs. I picked up my package of Tentacles and Eyeballs at Christmas, but was only recently able to start on them.


In keeping with the theme, the first miniature I painted was the medium tentacle...


...followed by three small floating eyeballs.


They are shown here with a Reaper Bones fighter for a idea of the size.

I had a little time to do some painting yesterday, but will save the pictures until something is actually completed. While my plan for the year was to crunch on NQSYW figures and start on the Reaper package when it arrives, moving has caused me to look in all the boxes of incomplete projects I have. I collected all of the remaining Dark Ages figures for a look and inventory, but I'll save that for another post...