Peninsular War scenario and Midgard Heroic Battles

For our session in February we once more played two games.

The first game was another scenario from Michael Hopper, this time the battle of Monesterio. The game featured Nabil's newly-painted Spanish army, and the participation of two players from the wargames group we made contact with last year. The scenario required the French players to move their siege artillery train across the table, while the Spanish had to prevent that from happening.

The rules were once more our grid-based rules adapted from To the Last Gaiter Button, and once again the grid-based nature of the rules caused some confusion at first for the new players, but once they got the concept things moved quickly.

The Spanish forces advance towards the French. The artillery train can be seen in the corner.

The Spanish forces were handled boldly: the two infantry divisions advanced down two axes, while the cavalry went down the flank to cut off the French route of advance.

Nabil's Spanish see their first action!

The French sent their lone unit of cavalry on the Spanish right to threaten their flank, and for a while effectively held up a whole division of infantry. But they were too conservative with their infantry deployment, and failed to create a perimeter around their siege artillery train, which became exposed and were captured by the Spanish.

For our second game we played the Battle of Azanulbizar using Midgard Heroic Battles. I had planned on using my LOTR figures with the rules, and which better battle to recreate with them than the battle that saw single combat between dwarf and orc leaders?

We played the Last Stand scenario, with Azog and his goblins deployed before an East Gate of Moria terrain piece. I commanded the goblin left flank, and decided to push my forces out to prevent the dwarves from getting too close.

The goblin left flank

Nabil, playing Azog and commanding the right flank, allowed the dwarves to get into melee too quickly, where their superiority in armour soon told. Azog threw his bodyguard into the fray, and then promptly fled down the hill through a gap in the dwarven line; however, it was too late - the goblins lost the last of their Reputation token, and lost the game.

Dwarves surround the last unit of goblins.

Despite this being my second game, I think I managed to get most of the rules right, forgetting only the Brittle rule for the goblins. The game was quick and fun, and at the scale we played fit the niche of a second game very well.

For our session in March I am planning to run a game of Here's the Ruckus!, once more using LOTR figures. I know I had earlier dismissed the rules, but when I was looking for a set of medieval skirmish rules that had climbing, jumping, and falling rules, I took a second look at them and managed to "get" them, and so decided to give them a spin. Stay tuned for more!

Terrain and Movement Trays from Supreme Littleness Designs

I apologise for going "recipe blog" mode in this post, but...

Like many wargamers, I too have been swept up in the Midgard Madness and bought a copy of the rules. I plan to use them with my GW LOTR figures, which I have several of, but not enough if I used the typical 8 or 10 figures per unit for infantry, and so I settled for units of 6 (3 for foot skirmishers).

As my figures are singly-based, I needed movement trays. Most wargamers seem to favour Warbases for this - they even have a range of movement trays just for Midgard - but I needed movement trays with 6 slots. In addition, FG already has several movement trays with 6 slots (which he got back in the day when we played Dux Britanniarum), and these had frontages of just shy of 9cm, instead of the typical 12cm.

A bit of googling brought up the Supreme Littleness Designs site, which happily offered movement trays with 6 slots. What's more, they offered them in straight as well as wavy edges - I have been wanting to try irregular-edged movement trays to see how they blend with my mats - and instead of using MDF for the base, they used thin cards, which I prefer.

And since we were paying for postage, FG and I ordered some kits from their Frozen City Ruins range.

The two MDF buildings you see in the top photo are from them. I made a few cuts on the edges of the walls so that not all angles were right angles, then painted the pieces with a slurry made of wall plaster, grey craft paint, and PVA glue. I based them to match my existing "Osgili-esque" buildings, using a textured sheet with York stone pattern for the base instead of the MDF one provided, did a coat of black and then brown wash over them, and garnished the bases with fallen leaves and stones instead of snow.

As for the movement trays, I assembled and then primed them with a brown spray primer (more to seal the cardboard base), then painted them with a basecoat of green mixed to match my mat, and then stippled some brown paint to match the pattern of the mat. Finally, I finished them with some tufts and Geek Gaming Scenics scatter. They are shown below with a measurement template made by FG.

We have actually played a test game of Midgard, and hope to run a game with the rest of the group soon.

A Trio of Terrain Projects

We begin this year with photos of a few terrain projects I have been working on.

The first of these is an "Afghan fort" style building in 15mm which I must have acquired more than two decades ago. I cannot remember who made it, but I doubt it is still in production. It sat in the same box as my adobe buildings all this time, until my renewed interest in the Indian Mutiny made me dig it out again. I decided that it needed to sit on an elevation, and made a low hillock out of cork coasters, including steps which wound its way up. I then textured the hillock, and painted it to match the arid mat which I would use the piece with.

Hopefully it will see some action soon.

The second of these are some cardstock buildings from Paper Terrain, which I bought and built last year when I was planning an Epic scale ACW project. The cardstock isn't really thick, but when based on a stiff base, they look durable enough.

A couple of the buildings were a little trickier to assemble, but they do add interest to the tabletop.

The final one of these is the East Gate of Moria terrain piece. The inspiration for this was Midgard heroic Battles, which I couldn't resist buying. I already own many dwarves and Moria goblins, so naturally my thought turned to the war between these two races as described by Tolkien in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings. The final battle of Azanulbizar took place outside the East Gate of Moria, where Azog slew Nain in single combat, and was in turn slain by Dain Ironfoot. The account of the battle seemed to be exactly the kind of battle Midgard is written for.

I decided to make terrain piece depicting the East Gate of Moria, consisting of an elevation, a gate, and maybe a mountainside. It turned out FG already has a resin dwarven gate/arch, so I was spared the effort of making one. I made the base using corrugated boards, then textured, painted, and added vegetation to it to match the mat we would use it for. Finally, I printed a picture of a dwarven-style gate I found on google and blu-tac'ed it to the arch.

FG and I tried the rules earlier this week, and we plan to run it for the gang later this month, so stay tuned for the battle report.

2024 in Review and Looking Ahead

A visit to the Hellenic Museum in Melbourne

2024 was a pretty good year for gaming. We managed some eleven sessions of wargaming, including two participation games at local conventions, and 17 sessions of RPG, two of which were one-shots GM'd by my friends.

A few major changes took place this year, chief of which was me moving to a new place; this necessitated a change in my work schedule, and resulted in attrition in my Monday evening RPG group, which in turn led my to take a break from a regular RPG schedule after we concluded our Three Worlds campaign.

On the wargaming front, we made contact with another group of wargamers in Singapore, which greatly expanded the pool of players and games each side could now "access". Hopefully this will result in more regular gaming.

I managed to play most of the rules I set out to play during the year, and while I didn't not start new armies, I did expand my 15mm Indian Mutiny and Saracen armies to bulk them up for the rules I enjoyed. This was done with the help of a professional painter, to whom I have also sent some 15mm Tribal Germans to be painted - they should be fighting against Martin's EIR in the new year.

As with previous years there were unplanned purchases of rules, this year being Here's the Ruckus, and Midgard Heroic Battles, neither of which required me to get new figures. The former didn't excite me as much as I hoped it would, its niche being already filled by other sets of rules I own and like, while the latter, which I resisted for weeks before relenting, turned out to fill a gap in my rules collection which I have been hoping to fill. An order for movement trays went out, and we should be playing our first game as early as January.

I do realise that I have been tardy with AARs the past year, and I apologise for it. Hopefully in the coming year I will be able to settle into a routine and post them in a more timely fashion.

Have a good gaming year ahead.

Everything I painted this Year

15mm Historical

Terrain

Games Expo 2024

After making contact with another wargaming group during a convention in October, we were invited to put up a game for their own convention in December. Martin and I decided to attend and reprise the Indian Mutiny game FG and I ran in the previous convention, since we already had the scenario and charts ready.

Once again we managed to run two sessions, and although the British came closer than ever to winning, victory continues to elude them!
 

The convention featured other games, including an A Song of Ice & Fire tournament, many boardgames, and a few RPGs, but the centre-piece of the convention was a giant Bolt Action Bastogne game which ran for some eight hours. 

Martin and I made more new friends, and no doubt more gaming will come from these meetings.

Conquerors & Kings and Kill Team

For the month of December we played the long-awaited battle between wahj's Late Romans vs Martin's Sassanid Persians. They were a matched pair of armies, but have not met in the field for many years.

Adrian and I played the Romans, and we managed to roll what I thought was a good terrain set-up for our predominantly infantry army. Our main line was anchored on two patches of rough ground, with the centre on a hill, and a small reserve force in the rear. Cavalry covered the extreme left flank.

Martin was worried about the deployment, but nevetheless decided launching cavalry charges on the flanks was the best option. On the Roman right the charge in the rough ground was repelled, but the troops in the open ground were routed by the Persian heavy cavalry, and the reserve force was unable to plug the gap.

On the Roman left there was a large cavalry melee, but Persian cataphracti triumphed against Goth and Roman cavalry. The Roman lines was thus cut up and surrounded.

Roman counter-attack on the left

This was the second game in a row where heavy cavalry settled the issue quite quickly and decisively. I wonder if this is a feature or bug of the game, as the lists do allow armies with historically large cavalry proportions to replicate that in the game. Or perhaps it is a matter of us not having figured out how to counter cavalry-heavy armies.

The next game should hopefully fit two infantry-dominant armies, and we'll see if they give a closer game.

For our second game we played Kill Team, pitting FG's newly-painted Ork Commandos versus Adrian's newly-painted Veteran Guardsmen. The figures were beautiful sculpts and the players did a great job with them, but I found the play rather complex and slow. Perhaps this is a game that requires investment on the part of the player to appreciate its full potential.