Viking Game

In the catch up department, here's the rest of the pictures from our 29 April WHAB Saxon/Viking game. My son Norman had a battle report up on the day...

Before the action; a slightly reset version of the table for the previous Skype game. Saxons to the left; Vikings to the right.

Little does the simple shepherd imagine what the dawn will bring...

The Viking army advances.

Just beyond the Saxon village ...

the local fyrd awaits the onslaught.

The sheep are hurried toward safety.

Viking commanders

Saxon commanders

A strategic hilltop position is a help...

...but not enough to prevent a contagious rout.

Scooped!

My son managed to get his battle report posted, http://junkyardplanet.blogspot.com/2012/04/saxons-vs-vikings.html , before I even managed to download my pictures from my camera.

As a result, I'll still download some pictures later, but let his battle report stand as is.

From the referee's point of view, this wasn't a bad game, except for the contagious rout situation which developed among the Vikings. With experienced players, we'd all laugh it off as the wrath of the gods of the dice, but as an introduction to a couple of new people, I should probably have set the scenario up to be unbalanced in their favor by about 5:4 or even 4:3 rather than even up.

On the bright side, I painted these massed Dark Ages troops, about 400 of them, about twelve years ago, and I think this was the third time they actually made it to the table. A couple of years ago I rebased all of my skirmish-game-ready individuals onto smaller washers, so that both groups have the same figure frontages, making it possible to play something like WHAB with a mix of massed and single troops. I was also happy to find that I was pleased with the overall visual effect, so I think that answers a nagging question I've had about whether I should sell off some of these figures. Better to do more gaming with them, I think...

Game scheduled today...

I've been travelling on business extensively the last couple of weeks, so blogging time has been a bit scarce. I've been working with/from my iPad as well, which makes it difficult to upload multiple pictures to a blog entry, a technical issue I should work out some time. Anyway, we should be back in the swing of things shortly, and I'll post a catch-up entry of photos. Since the last time we have had the Skype game of Charge! with Ross, a trial fantasy skirmish game with Song of Blades and Heroes, and a group painting day which resulted in some colonial buildings and a batch of Bronze Age Libyans to help out with my son's Historicon scenario. Today we're scheduled for a Warhammer Ancient Battles Viking/Saxon battle with some of #2 son William's friends, so it should be a busy day...

Egyptian Chariots

I finally had some time today to sit down and work on a project which has been nagging me for a while: finishing the last two chariots for a 1000pt WAB Egyptian army.  I've had the army on the table already, but have had to borrow a couple of allied chariots from my son, the Great King of the Hittites.

I don't have all my basing materials with me, but I at least have them attached to the bases proper, and will do sand and grass tomorrow or Saturday.

This pair of chariots completes the original plan, and I therefore ordered a little reward, an Atlantic Pharaoh's Court set to gather a few civilians, and possibly to build a little vignette of a scribe counting a pile of hands, with which to taunt my opponent.

One More Chariot Battle

I had the opportunity to engage my son in another round of Egyptians and Hittites using Warhammer Ancient Battles on Sunday (10 January). We have been playing these rules repeatedly lately for two reasons: to encourage ourselves to paint more figures for this project, with a goal of putting on a game at Cold Wars or Historicon ’11, and to increase our familiarity with the rules to the point where we can get through a game without needing a rules lookup in the main book.

The picture shows the view from behind the center of the Egyptian line. Given that the Hittites have a substantial advantage in chariotry (50% of points versus 25% maximum for the Egyptians), I decided that I would deploy the infantry forward and attempt to soften up his chariots before committing mine. Success was somewhat limited...my foot figures shown here were routed and destroyed in pursuit by the lead Hittite squadron, thought I did manage to destroy the pursuers in turn by archery from my chariots. The game ran about eight turns in two hours, so was a pleasant way of spending the morning before I took him back to school. Next week I think we’ll continue the Warhammer familiarization project, but, unless I finish the chariots currently on the desk, we’ll break out the Saxons and Vikings or the Second Punic War figures for a change of pace.

I am still working on project goals for this year; continuing the expansion of the Bronze Age is high on the list, as is the fictional tricorne project expansion (the Not Quite Seven Years War).

New Year, Old Battle

My older son, aka the Great King of the Hittites, has been home for winter break, but will be headed back to school today for a January mini-term. We decided that we had better get in at least one game to keep us encouraged on our chariot project before he left, so we pulled out the figures and cleared the table last night. We had a quick game of Hittites attempting to raze a village against a local force, with the Egyptians coming on the table relatively slowly. The picture above shows the advance guard of the Egyptian force preparing to take on the left wing Hittite chariot squadron. We were not too concerned about scenario balance (which could have used some work), since our main objective is to get to the point where the Warhammer Ancient Battles rules are automatic and don't require stopping to look things up. A few more games should see us at that point, for a while ...

I haven't had a brush out yet this year; but will put in some time clearing and organizing the painting desk today.

Into Battle, Again

Inspired by the lack of success in the previous battle, and, more practically, by the fact that my son has to go back to school today, we did a reprise of the Egyptian/Hittite encounter on the same terrain last night. Here you can see the Sea People in action against a group of Hittite spearmen. We are using Warhammer Ancient Battles with house modifications to deal with multiple figure bases; these are still evolving. Tokens (unsightly, but as unobtrusive a color as I could find for this ground cloth) represent casualties.

The results were more satisfactory, from my point of view, although we were both set scrambling back to the painting table to provide dismounted versions of our generals, so that when their chariot is destroyed next time, they are not also removed (per the rules.)

When we were finished with the game, I had the not unusual experience of being ready to sit down with a brush and add some color to something. The project at the front of the bench was a squadron of semi-flat cavalry for Charge!, but more of that later...