Talavera (North)

Dom was back for the weekend and we finally got a chance to play the Talavera (North) scenario I have been planning for for a long. Despite the scenario representing only part of the battle, the number of units required were so big that we had to use double scale, hence the dice you see in the photos (to represent half-bases).

The battle saw three French divisions engaging the British (Dom's figures painted more than 20 years ago) left flank, hoping to turn their position, as well as the Spanish (Nabil's newly-painted figures) to the British left.

Historically, the Spanish took little part in the battle, but in our game I wanted to prevent them from influencing the main battle, and so resolved to rush their position en masse to take them out of the battle, before turning to aid wahj roll up the British flank.

However, the Spanish responded proactively, and prevented the French from enveloping them. Nevertheless, French numbers told and the Spanish were contained on their ridge. Then I made the classic error of being too fixed on the immediate objective and losing sight of the bigger battle. Instead of leaving a small force to contain the Spanish and diverting the rest of the division to my left, I tried to push the Spanish off the table. The Spanish held on, and I lost two precious turns before realising that that the French left flank was not making headway.

By the time the game clock ran down the Allies had won convincingly.

Blotz Dark Age Watchtower

After our first game of Ruckus, I wanted to use my other LOTR figures with the rules too. I own a small force of Rohirrim, but I needed some terrain pieces with verticality to fully utilise the potential of the rules.

The first thing that came to my mind was of course a Rohan style watchtower, which I have thought about scratch-building before. I googled for some ideas, and came across Blotz's Dark Age Watchtower.

The kit itself is not expensive, but shipping was a bit high, but a recent sale they had made me bite bullet.

The kit is built almost 'as is'. I beveled the edges of the base, and made some cuts on the MDF to give the timber a less regular appearance.

The genius of their design is that they made the distinctive horse-head finials a part of the roof piece (which lifts off) rather than the columns, which made it easier to access the cabin of the tower, as well as allow the gamer to perhaps build a different roof for a non-Rohan force.

Scatter Terrain

To improve the spectacle of our games, I have been making some scatter terrain pieces, chiefly using cork bits glued to a base, some sand and gravel, painting the bases to match my mats, and then adding tufts.

Recently I decided to make some bushes bases, and bought some ready-made tufts - the ones with yellow flowers in the photo above. On advice of Nowfel, I decided to make some more unruly shrubbery, but was unable to settle on a quick and simple method despite searching on Youtube, until I found this:

I had bought a pack of these new scouring pads to use, and while washing my dishes one day I realised that the colour of the pad meant I could use them as the 'branches' of my bushes without needing to paint them. So I tore one up, shaped and trimmed the pieces tot he shape I wanted, hot-glued them to a base, painted them with diluted PVA, and scattered fine foam on them. I am quite pleased with the results.

I also made some 'rough ground' terrain pieces for my arid mat, which will serve both as scatter terrain, as well as indicators for Rough Ground grids in the grid-based wargames.

Museum Miniatures 'ZSculpt' Normans and Anglo-Saxons

 I have a collection of 15mm Dark Age figures, mostly bought painted off ebay, which we used for a '1066' campaign based on an S&T magazine almost 20 years ago.

Since then these figures have seen little to no use, but the recent release of Midgard Heroic Battles has prompted me to try to put them on the table again. The figures are based on DBX convention, and while I could have used some of the bases as Heroes, I decided to paint up some dedicated bases for easier play.

After some browsing I decided on Museum Miniatures' ZSculpt figures, because I had a good experience with Cromarty's 3D sculpted resin figures. Museum Miniatures do not ship to where I live, but my old friend Steve in UK graciously agreed to make the order for me and ship them over. When the figures arrived, however, I found that they were metal castings, and that a few of them were bad casts.

With the few packs I purchased I was able to make a level 3 Hero base for each of the three contenders of 1066: William, Harold, and Harald, each with their iconic flag; four more generic level 2 Hero bases, and four generic Champion bases, which would give each side two of each, enough for a standard game.

Here's the Ruckus in Osgiliath

For the March session we played a game of Here's the Ruckus. I bought a copy of the rules last year, read through them, and decided that they were a little bit too finicky for me, and set it aside. Fast forward to this year, when I bought and played Midgard, and then decided that I wanted to play with my other LOTR figures, but I didn't have quite enough for a game of Midgard... So I picked up Ruckus again, and re-read them. This time round, I manage to get the game, and very soon I wrote a scenario for our first game.

The scenario is set in Middle Earth, and based on the movie version of the story, when Faramir brought Frodo, Sam, and Gollum to Osgiliath. In our scenario, the party was attacked by orcs, and while the men of Gondor were able to drive the orcs off, the three hobbits manage to slip away in the chaos of battle, and hid themselves in the ruins. Rallying his men, Faramir set after them, even as another party of orcs closed in on the same quarries.

The hobbits start off as hidden counters on the middle of the table, while the two sides come on from the edges and must move a character onto the counter to reveal who was found there. The side that finds Frodo and leaves the table with him wins the game. I placed the four counters on the second level of the ruined buildings, thus forcing both sides to have to make Climb moves to reach them.

Both sides made a cautious move towards the centre of the board, moving from cover to cover, until at last the leaders of both sides met in the centre in a mighty fight.

It was the orcs who found Frodo, and immediately they started moving him towards their exit edge. Having sent a section of their troops to secure their own exit edge, the men of Gondor found themselves in the wrong place to stop this.

Boromir would not have failed...

As usual I didn't get all the rules right, but we had a lot of fun. The rules themselves are pretty standard for skirmish games, but the rules for Gambit Movement: Sprinting, Leaping, Climbing, Crossing River, etc. add an element of unpredictability that skirmish games at this scale require. That also means that scenario design is important.

I am excited enough about the rules to want to build a custom terrain piece for a game featuring my Rohirrim force. Stay tuned.

Another Bus get the Rust

A few weeks ago Adrian ran a game of Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars game for us. In preparation for the session I watched the video by Free League. I was impressed by the terrain of the board they used for the demo, particularly by the abandoned bus, and decided to make something similar.

For Zone Wars, I needed a larger model, in 28mm scale. I managed to find a plastic toy of an appropriate scale.

The toy was taken apart, and I removed the soft rubber rear-view mirrors, the window panes, the tyres, and the electronics and wind-up mechanism. I then spray-primed the model with a red-brown primer, and then sponged it all over with orange and dark brown paint to create a rust effect. As I wasn't sure how much weathering I would be doing at this point, I created the effect all over the model.

I then covered the model with salt for the salt-chipping process. Unfortunately the high humidity meant that the effect wasn't exactly how I hoped it would turn out.

Once the salt has dried (as much as it would) I sprayed he model with yellow paint, and when that had dried I brushed off the salt. At this point the model still looked a bit off, and I decided to add a black stripe across the sides. As this would be a terrain piece rather than a playing piece, I left the interior in primer brown, and just picked out the lights.

The result is shown above, alongside the two other school bus models I already owned in smaller scales: a 10mm scale one from the Dropzone Commander range, and a 20mm scale one which I made using a diecast metal toy, with bits from the Northstar Gasalands conversion bits to make it look like the smaller one.

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!