Playing Favourites

Plagiarism rules!  Several of my favourite blogs have had a go at listing their wargames favourites so I decided to have a go as well.

Rules

All time – WRG 6^th edition ancients.  I have played them every year since they came out in 1980

Current – Impetus – they give a great game in an evening session and I have thoroughly enjoyed the 2 tournaments I played in 2011, which were the first such events I had played in many years

Scale

25mm – my scale of choice from Ancients through to 1700.

Figures

My favourite figures have to be my old Asgard medieval infantry who have served in many a battle.  A close second are the Essex medieval knights.  When they came out I got them all in both foot and mounted poses.

Film

I don’t tend to draw much inspiration for wargaming from films.  The war film that I will watch almost every time it comes on is Kelly’s Heroes.  My real favourite is the extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Books

I do tend to draw inspiration from books and I many I time I have started to plan out how I might game the campaigns and battles portrayed.  Fortunately I am pretty good at only converting a small number of them into actual projects.

I have gone with a perennial favourite – The Airfix Guide to Ancient Wargaming.  It must be the most often revisited book in my collection and it was inspirational in getting me into ancient wargaming.

Magazine

Has to be Slingshot.

Non Ancients favourite

The above reflects the fact that the Ancient /Medieval period has long been a firm favourite of mine.  Readers of my blog will be aware that I do game a fairly wide range of periods/rules/scales.  I thought I would pick one out to balance the above and after much deliberation decided on  ACW Fire and Fury in 15mm. 

So - what are your favourites?

Support your local library

On Friday I called into my local library in Grangemouth.  Over Christmas I had bought Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion, the omnibus edition of a fantasy trilogy.  I really liked it and, seeing she had written quite a number of other books I looked her up on the library website, ordered a couple, got email confirmation that they were in, then went along and picked them up.  I read one of them on Friday night!

Not only would buying theses books have been expensive but I honestly don’t have room to store all the books I would like to read.  Libraries are also great places to browse – both for fiction and non fiction.  Unlike in a bookshop where I have to be pretty sure I will like a book to buy it in the library if I am unsure I will borrow it anyway – no harm done if it is not my cup of tea.  If I am researching new a wargames project the library is always a great resource – what they don’t have they can usually get.

Despite all I have said above I don’t visit as often as I would like.  In the UK the library service is funded by local councils whose budgets are under a lot of pressure at the moment, so they need to justify their existence or they will disappear.  I have decided to make a concerted attempt to borrow more books and have set myself the target of reading 52 library books this year.

One final benefit arising from my library visit on Friday – I picked up the Osprey Vanguard title Armour of the Vietnam Wars from their for sale section for 30p.  I never could resist a bargain.

It is never a good plan to mock your opponents dice rolls….

More on that anon.

So it was Monday night which normally means a trip to Falkirk and District Wargames Club for some gaming goodness.  My first game of the year was against long time opponent Rory.  He offered me choice of systems and I chose WFB.  Chaos Warriors v The Empire.

I had not played a game of Fantasy Battles for about six months and the plan was to give the rules a good read through and tweak the list a bit.  In the end it was a matter of digging up the list I used last time and rummaging through my very disorganised wargames space (the attic) to find the rules and the army about ten minutes before I left the house.

We were a bit late starting after wishing club members happy new year, shaking hands, enquiring about Christmas (Goose was recommended) etc.  We threw some trees and hills on the table, Rory rolled higher than I did and asked me to start deploying first. The plan was dogs on the flanks, infantry to right of centre and Chaos Knights to the left.

Having got half way through deployment I realised that I has forgotten that I also had a unit of Marauder Horsemen to deploy – there was just room on the far right flank in a double column so that’s where they went (and took no part in the battle).

Rory had several large units of infantry in the centre – flagellants, militia, swordsmen and one other.  His knights were to my right and a unit of mounted pistoleers guarded his other flank.  He also had a cannon on a hill.  He had 3 characters including a level 2 wizard and a warrior priest.  I just had 2 one of which was a level 1 wizard.

Not much happened in the first turn, Rory advanced as did I if more slowly, attempting to get my horse around the right flank.  On the second turn the level 2 magician miscast and was lucky to survive, only going down one level. Then a unit of knights charged my right flank dogs who went down without a whimper.  On the other flank it was a different story a unit of foot charged my leftmost chaos knights. The result was 9 to 0  and when the foot broke they threw 2 and hence were destroyed.

I then remembered that I was using Chaos Warriors and not Early Imperial Romans so I charged in everything that I could.  The victorious knights slaughtered the pistoleers.  The next 2 units, knights and warriors, won but against unbreakable opposition (to be fair the flagellants gave the warriors a bit of a fright). 

Then it was the big showdown – a unit of Empire knights led by a general against two units, one of marauders and one of chaos warriors led by my general.  Now my chaos characters always have to challenge opposing characters if they meet them.   Being armed with a Great Weapon meant that I had to go second, so it was with some trepidation that I watched Rory throw his 4 dice.  It was quite funny when he rolled four 1s but I probably should not have taken a photo as that was when the dice luck (previously very much in my favour) changed.  My attacks in retaliation scored no hits and then his horse bit my general making him lose one of his two lives!  Despite my numbers advantage I only just hung on and if there had been time for another round I would have been in a lot of trouble.

Moral of the story – never take pictures of your opponent’s poor dice rolls.

So that was game one of my projected seventy this year.  Next week it will be a game of Purple Heart Valley.

I haven't quite sussed out how to make the photos appear in the body of the post, so here they are at the

end

 

Rory in classic wargamer pose

The armies are about to meet

The four ones!

1000 point Late German Great War Army (plus WAB)

I have just ordered (on my wife’s credit card) 5 packs of Renegade figures.  My friend Marco of Rif Raf Miniatures will hopefully paint them for her so she can give them to me as a birthday present.  This will then complete a Sturmabteilung company.  I’ll post pictures when the full force is assembled.

These guys are primarily for use as Freikorps but will also allow me to play a WWI game straight from the Great War book.  I always believe in keeping options open.  So I’ll be looking for opponents next.

Angela is also buying me the new WAB book in the half price sale.  It’s the last day of the sale today and I hesitated over getting it but finally succumbed.  Once again it keeps my options open for Ancients games.

Visit to Dirleton Castle

I took a half day’s holiday today and we went for a drive to Dirleton, which is near the coast east of Edinburgh.  We started with an excellent lunch at the Castle Inn, perhaps a little pricey for a lunchtime but excellent food and situated just across the road from the castle

We then had a fairly brisk walk around the castle.  The weather wasn’t bad for January if a little nippy and overcast

During the Scottish Wars of independence the castle was held for a period by the English before being slighted by Robert the Bruce, the fate of many Scottish castles.  The English used castles to dominate the country and ready built Scottish ones were an ideal source. The Scots did not have the resources to properly defend all of them so slighting those most at risk of capture was seen as the best way to deny their use to the enemy.

The castle was subsequently rebuilt and became a fine residence as well as retaining it’s defensible characteristics.   It was not however able to resist Cromwell and it fell once again to military action in 1650.  Not long after it was abandoned and became a picturesque ruin.  It is in the care of historic Scotland and if you fancy a visit I would suggest looking up their website for directions, prices etc.

We have visited before and in the summer the gardens are spectacular. They seemed to have only suffered minimal damage from the recent storms but are of course not at their best at this time of year. I took a couple of photos but the light was not that good.

 

It would be good to have some comments as to how interesting this sort of post is.  We often visit castles, abbeys, battlefields and other historic sites on days out and when on holiday so my hope is that brief reports such as this will be a regular feature.

My photography will improve!

Games Workshop – Love ’em or Hate ‘em?

Whilst I would not say that I have ever actually hated Games Workshop I certainly used to look down my nose at them. Not ‘proper’ wargaming  - overpriced figures – overly simple rules - played by kids who didn’t know any better would have probably summed up my views.  Although I did give Warhammer Ancient Battles a go when it came out and had some reasonable games I wasn’t overly impressed by the bucket of dice approach and felt that the characters were far too powerful .

In recent years, having joined a number of internet forums, I have been exposed to the wider world’s take on GW - everything from the fanboys to those who consider it to be the evil empire.   Those that post do tend to be those with the more extreme views but I was surprised at the venom in some of the anti GW material that is out there.

I became something of a convert to the gaming side when I moved up to Scotland and joined the Falkirk club. There I found a number of the members gamers playing Fantasy Battles, 40k and Mordhiem and decided to give them a shot.  I found that I enjoyed the games and, in a non historical setting, throwing lots of dice and having powerful characters worked quite well.

My view now is that they are an important part of the hobby providing good games in their own right whilst acting as an introduction to the wider hobby for those that want to broaden their horizons.  Their figures are expensive but as I don’t see the company making huge profits I presume that this is because they have significant overheads to cover.  I can’t see myself buying very many, if any, of their products directly but then again 90% of my purchases are in the second hand market anyway.  Their rules are generally well written and fun to play.  So pretty much the opposite of my original position, although not quite Love!

What has prompted this blog entry is the fact that my first game of the year, on the 9^th, will be with the 8^th ed. Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules.  Last year some of the guys at the Falkirk club ran a campaign which sparked my interest and I decided to see if I could get hold of an army to join in.  Eventually I picked up a painted second hand Chaos Warriors army, although by then it was a bit too late to join the campaign.  It has been on the table a couple of times and I intend to expand it and get fully up to speed with the rules this year.  I’ll post a report of the game and hopefully will be able to  include some pictures from my new camera.

Dux Bellorum by Dan Mersey

Having played and enjoyed Dan Mersey’s previous offering for this period, Glutter of Ravens, I had no hesitation in placing a pre order on Amazon (it’s due out in August)

For more information have a look at the author’s blog

http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/444/dux-blogorum

I can provide figures for both sides for Glutter of Ravens and should be able to do so for Dux Bellorum as well so if anyone is interested in a game give me a shout