Conquerors and Kings: Battle of Arbalo

The opposing sides size each other up

For our August game we once more played Conquerors and Kings, with Martin once more commanding his Early Imperial Romans. The scenario was the battle of Arbalo, where the Romans are ambushed in a narrow pass by the Germans. The battlefield was simple: a forest with a narrow central clear path that opened up towards the German side of the table; the Romans had to exit with at least half of their forces 'at strength' (i.e. at at least half strength), while the Germans had to prevent that.

Martin decided to simplify the tactical problem by essentially deploying on only half of the table, putting his legionaries on the left hand side of the path, with the left flank protected by auxilia in the woods, and the right flank protected by cavalry.

Confused fighting in the woods

The Germans sent out flanking forces on both flanks. The forces on the Roman left was more successful, quickly neutralising the auxilia. The main Roman column pushed on ahead while the battle in the woods was going on, leaving the auxilia to their fate, but when the Germans tried to exit the woods to engage the legionaries, they failed their movement rolls and never made it.

German flanking forces are unable to exit the woods to threaten the Roman centre

The fight on the other flank went in the favour of the Germans too, but the cavalry had played their part in delaying their enemies. The legionaries in the centre continued their push, routing the enemies in front of them, but it was still not enough - only five 'at strength' units made it off the table, making it a narrow win for the Germans.

Conquerors and Kings: Battle of Callinicus

For our July game we returned to Conquerors and Kings. Once again, wahj faced Rafael; we have played several games by now, so the game went rather smoothly.

I wanted a chance for Rafael to field his Macedonian Successor army, and found a suitable battle in the form of the Battle of Callinicus.

The Macedonians and Thracian allies

The battle was unusual as it featured only light troops and cavalry, with the iconic heavy infantry from both sides - the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legionaries- sitting out. I wanted to see how the battle would have gone on if both sides decided to commit their heavy infantry. 

Romans and Pergamene allies

I had both players deploy their light troops and cavalry as usual, then let them roll for their heavy infantry as reinforcements.

The lines clashed, with the cavalry wings coming to a standoff quite soon afterwards. In the centre, the quality of the Macedonian Agema and Thracians gave Rafael the advantage. Both sides were only able to bring on about half of their heavy infantry by the time the game ended, but the Macedonians were a little quicker on the draw and overwhelm the Roman line before it could be stabilised.

We have played enough games of C&K for me to be confident in using it for historical scenarios. We are planning to play historical scenarios with C&K for the next three months, so stay tuned.

15mm Khurasan Miniatures

A few weeks ago I bought some Khurasan miniatures to add to my existing armies.

Here are some crossbowmen from their (older) Frankish/Norman range, based as Bow/formed instead of Psiloi/skirmisher, to use in my First Crusade games.

Here is a war drum from their Sung Chinese range. There are two drums and two drummers in a pack, so I am passing half of the pack to wahj. I painted mine to match my Warring States Zhao army, adding a spare pikeman I have as a standard bearer. Since the basic style of the Chinese war drum did not change for centuries, I think this will pass as a command or just a decorative base.

The main reason why I made the order in the first place was to get these Nikephorian Byzantine archers. I bought some Nikephorian Byzantine archers from Forged in Battle's War & Empire range to use as Armenian mercenary archers, and liked the way they look, and so I decided to add a couple more bases to allow me to field two units of them in my Conquerors and Kings games.

The Khurasan miniatures are a little thinner and have smaller heads than the War & Empire ones, but they mix together well enough. 

I am glad I managed to complete all of them this week, as I have a terrain project to complete for another multi-player demonstration game which Eugene is planning for August. Stay tuned.

TMWWBK: Battle of Isandlwana

When Eugene was playing the Indian Mutiny game I hosted in January, he felt frustrated ("in a good way") by how the mutineers were pinned down by fire and could not reach the British lines. It occurred to him then that the game mechanic could be used for a game of the Battle of Isandlwana, which he had the figures for, in 10mm.

We continued the discussion after the session, exchanged many messages over the following weeks, and soon we had a plan. I modified the cork hills I had in my collection to represent Mount Isandlwana, made a few paper bell tents and a flag base, while Eugene painted up more Zulus, and in March we ran a multi-player game for seven players at Elias Community Centre, which was documented by Eugene in the video below:

Do check his channel out for more videos, and subscribe for future videos.

Nolzor's Marvellous Miniatures: Xorns

Long-time readers will notice that I have stopped posting my RPG reports for quite a while now. My week-night RPG sessions have become few and irregular, but we are still playing - I have just decided that I cannot afford the time to write lengthy reports of every session.

We did, in fact, play a Dying Earth campaign using Forbidden Lands rules, and have just started a Dungeon Inc. campaign.

Dungeon Inc. is a new RPG from The Merry Mushmen, where players play monsters employed by the eponymous company to kill adventurers and take their stuff for the company. In between jobs they engage in office politics.

So far the player characters include: a genteel, refined dragonborn, a sneaky kobold who hates do-gooders, a territorial skeleton, a minotaur who is easy to miss, a cowardly sasquath, and a greedy xorn, whom we see in the photo above.

The figures are given to me by the character's player, and is from the Nolzor's Marvellous Miniatures range. You get two figures in the pack: one standing on the floor and the other bursting out of the ground, as xorns do. They come pre-primed, and rather interestingly have transparent blobes for eyes. I avoided painting over the eyes, and simply painted them over with yellow ink, and adding a black line for their irises.

So far Ron Ron has gone on his first mission, which he failed spectacularly by eating the MacGuffin. Hopefully he will do better on his next mission.

Archecore World Fortress Tank

I came across the Archecore World Fortress Tank at a toy store in Taiwan a few months ago. The toy line is in 1/35 scale, but the size and vibe of this model fit the 28mm WW1 sci-fi forces I own, so I decided to buy it and repaint it to suit.

The model is pre-assembled and could not be disassembled for easier painting, but fortunately the turret could be removed from the hull. I primed the model black, and sprayed on a base coat of Tamiya Field Grey. I then used a make-up sponge to apply a light shade of field grey - some of the recessed parts proved hard to reach, as you can see from the photos.

Once the base colour was applied, I applied some Black Templars decals I had lying around, and then worked on the weathering.

I decided to paint most of the tank in field grey, so the only parts that had to be painted another colour were the exhaust pipes and the tracks. Once all the colours were applied, I added by mud and dust with a large make-up brush.

I hope to use this model in an attack-defence scenario in a game of Blood and Valor soon.

War & Empire Nikephorian Skutatoi Bowmen

I painted a pack of later Byzantine archers from Forged in Battle as Armenian mercenary archers in Fatimid service. The Armenian archers seem to have been an important part of the Fatimid armies, and feature in various army lists, so even though I already have a large number of archers elements in my Saracen army, I wanted a unit them to make my Fatikid army more legitimate.

Despite their prominence in history, I wasn't able to find figures in 15mm that matched what I imagined them to look like, which is how Perry Miniatures' 28mm Armenian archers look like. Fortunately, these later Byzantine archers look similar enough for my purpose.

As with the other War & Empire figures, they are quick to paint. I am tempted to add another unit of these someday.