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!

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.

Battle of Hollabrunn

Last week we managed to get together for a mid-week game of grid-based Napoleonics. What's more, we hosted two members from another gaming group whom we got to know at a convention we went to the month before.

The scenario was Battle of Hollanbrunn, a rearguard action in the aftermath of Wagram that saw Massena's Corps catch up with the Austrians.

The game started with a Vincent's Division holding Hollanbrunn in the middle of the table, and the French cavalry arriving at their base edge. FG, commanding the cavalry on the French left, thrusted his squadrons forward and engaged the Austrian cavalry. In doing so, he crested a plateau and found another two other Austrian divisions behind the town.

The Austrians sent their cavalry and half of Kottulinsky's division to counter the French movement - a fatal error.

The opening set-up

On turn 3 the player playing the role of Massena, arrived late to the session but in perfect timing for the game. He quickly assessed these situation, and Neuenstein's Division on a march through the woods on the Austrian left, and then sent the light infantry from the Friedrich's Division to skirmish against Hollanbrunn's defenders while he organised a grand battery on the ridge overlooking the town.

While there are no national characteristics in these rules, the French had six commanders (albeit two being cavalry commanders that commanded only their respective squadrons), to the Austrians' four. In addition, Vincent had to command both cavalry and infantry and artillery. Having over estimated the importance of the French cavalry attack on their right, the Austrians were in addition plagued by poor dice rolls on the part of their artillery, and superb dice rolls on the part of the French which saw them moving through the woods on the flank at great speed. Belatedly they realised their peril, but with only three real commanders to speak of they could not redeploy their forces in time to counter the French, lost the town, and only by running down the game clock did they avoid a French major victory.

Mid-point of the game, with the French flank attack developing and the Austrians making their countermove

It was a fun game, and the timing was perfect, with the battle played to a resolution just as the game clock ran out and within the time we allotted for play.

In the discussions after the game one of the players was inspired to start painting 15mm Napoleonics, and Martin was motivated to paint up a few more units for his British-Portuguese army, which will allow us to play some Peninsular Wars scenarios in the future.

Kill Team

 Adrian hosted a game of the latest edition of Kill Team, where I pitted my warzone Bauhaus and Shieldwolf Miniatures figures against his Traitor Guard figures commanded by FG.

The rules are pretty standard to me, but the range is really helped by the beautiful figures and terrain. The gang have ordered several starter armies, but I have managed to pass the Saving Throw. I did scratch-build a Mekboy workshop shed for Adrian's terrain set, inspired by Orktober and GW's Mekboy Workshop terrain.

One peeve I do have with the system is the rather restrictive army lists, but hopefully that means that the lists have been playtested for balance.

I am tempted by the aesthetics of a Genestealer Cult army, so if we continue to play Kill Team, I may need to make another Saving Throw in the future.

The Men Who Would be Kings at Campus Game Fest 2024

Other than my usual home RPG group and my wargaming group, I have been gaming off and on with a public gaming group at a community centre these past few years. The group plays mainly RPGs and boardgames, and some Battletech Alpha Strike; I run the occasional one-shot RPG there, and play the occasional boardgame.

This year, the group was invited to take part in a games convention at a school, and I was invited to put up a historical wargame there.

This was when I realised that, while I do have many paired armies, most of them are sci-fi or fantasy, and the historical armies that I do own both sides of are not painted by me, but cobbled together from various ebay purchases. The only armies which look presentable are my Indian Mutiny forces, which were mostly painted by a single painting service.

Now while I do enjoy The Relief of Luckpore, I thought that a grid-based wargame would not be a good representation of most historical miniature wargame, so I went through to my library and decided on Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would be Kings, which I helped playtest with these same figures in 2015.

I modified the command rules a little to allow for five players - two on the British side and three on the Mutineer side - with three units each. I picked out a scenario from Colonial Conflicts: The Indian Mutiny, adjusted the set-up to fit, and with the help of a few friends tested the scenario, made some adjustments, and we were ready.

The set-up

Civilians in the village

The British train

We were scheduled for 4pm to 9pm, and I imagined that gave enough time to run two or maybe three games, each with five players on each side and FG and I umpiring. As it turned out the crowd were mostly there for the e-games and card games, and we didn't draw much attention apart from the other miniature wargamers who were there. One of them played the mutineers against me, and beat me resoundingly with incredible dice rolls.

We then had a student of the school walk by and he decided to take a swing at playing the British. He had better luck than me, and almost made it to the mutineer lines before his luck ran out.

The situation at the end of the second game

Over all the amount of gaming we did out of the session was probably not worth the effort of preparing the charts and cards and traveling down, but I did make friends with some historical wargamers and we might be getting some gaming in in the future, so that made the whole evening worthwhile.