West Wind Arthurian Pedyts

The West Wind "War & Empire" Dark Ages kickstarter I backed last year delivered earlier this month, and I managed to get my share of the figures painted up over the past few weeks.

I got two packs of the Arthurian pedyts, which I planned to paint as Gothic foot for wahj's Late Imperial Roman army. Two packs gave me 50 figures, but as one of the command figures in each pack had a helmet which I thought looked out of place, that gave me 48 figures, or 24 to each deep unit.

Fortunately, the kickstarter also came with several command figures (most of which are mounted) representing famous historical generals and leaders. I took their Arthur and (I think) Aetius, and used them to fill out my units.

As usual I based them in 4 x DBX bases, and I painted them in two different schemes to represent two deep units. There are fewer than the "official" 32 figures per deep unit, but given the heft of the figures and the way they are ranked, it's easy to recognise them as "heavy" foot units.

Once again I tried to do the flocking to match the playing mat we use, by making clumps of rocks from cork bits and gravel placed near the edges of the base.

Clumps of foliage from the tufts which I bought also helped with the effect.

I am very impressed with the figures, especially the 'Arthur' figure, which I thought was peak Angus McBride.

(image from Osprey)

These units will see service in our Roman-Sassanid campaign, hopefully in the near future.

West Wind Productions Armenians

Finally something wargaming related...

While waiting for the West Wind Productions kickstarter to arrive, I got impatient and decided to paint up an Armenian allied contingent instead. The Armenians were caught between the Late Imperial Romans and the Sassanid Persians for much of the period the three nations existed, so the Impetus army lists gave both the Romans and the Persians an option to include an Armenian allied contingent.

The list calls for one to three heavy cavalry units, two to four light horse units, and a number of archers (either as ranked or skirmish unit), and javelin-armed infantry. I decided to get two units of the cataphracti (two packs), two units of light horse (one pack), and two units of formed archers (two packs).

The cataphracti were a straighfoward choice, since West Wind had a specific pack for them, and they look somewhat different from their Persian or Roman counterparts. I was not able to squeeze 12 figures onto the base, so I put five figures in the front rank and six in the rear, slightly staggered.

Now West Wind has an Armenian Light Cavalry pack, but these are equipped with javelins and shields, so would not work for what I wanted. I googled around and decided that the Armenian horse archers would probably resemble that of their neighbours the Persians, so I got a pack of their Parthian light horse. As it turned out, West Wind gives a baker's dozen for the human figures, and the luck of the draw gave me only one figure with the characteristic Phrygian cap, so I managed to make two units with no Phyrgian-capped figure.

Impetus (and the Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up that we use) utilises a large base that is essentially four DBX bases in a 2 x 2 formation (with the exception of foot skirmishers, which are 2 x 1), so a proper Light Horse unit should have eight figures instead of six. However, each pack of cavalry figures came with 12 horses, so I decided to put the figures in a Catabrian circle, which made the spacing look about right; two of the figures are in a 'Parthian shot' pose, so it added to the look.

For the archers, West Wind actually makes an Armenian Skirmishers pack, but these come with a mix of archers and slingers with shields, which were not what I wanted. I ended up using their 3rd Century Auxiliary Archers, which looked about the same. The archers were supposed to have 12 figures per unit, but again West Wind gave me 26 figures in a pack, so I squeezed 13 figures onto each unit.

The larger base allows for a more organic arrangement of the figures, and also have space to add scenic features to the base. I added some 'tuft' which I got a while back, and also added some clusters of rocks made from cork bits to match the look of the Deep Cut Studios mat we use for gaming - I am quite happy with the result.

Over all I enjoyed building, painting, and basing these units, but in retrospect perhaps I should have chosen to build an Arab contingent, which would at least introduce some camels into the mix.

The kickstarter figures are expected to arrive this week, and my share from this will be four units of Gothic foot, which I hope to paint as two deep units, with mounted commanders.

Roman-Persian War Campaign - Game 1

We decided to play a short campaign using the set of campaign rules by Dan Mersey from Issue 2 of Battlegames magazine, this time with our Late Imperial Roman army invading Sassanid Persia.

The battle report is over at wahj's blog:

The rules are a mash-up of Dan Mersey's Dux Bellorum and Impetus, which we have cobbled together and refined over the years.

I've got some more West Wind figures in the mail, so hopefully in the next game you will see some new units.

Roman-Sassanid Game 1

View of the battlefield from the Roman side

Wahj, Martin, fg and I got together for a game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up on Sunday. This game features several 'firsts': it's the first use of my new Deep Cut Studios mat for a wargame, the first use of my new woods terrain pieces, the first use of the card Armenian church building, and the first match between our Late Roman armies against Martin's Sassanid Persians.

Wahj and I took the Romans, with him taking the bulk of the troops, while I took the Goth contingent on the Roman right.

Centre of the Roman line

Martin split his forces into two halves, commanding the bulk of the cavalry on his right, and giving fg command of some cavalry, the elephants, and the foot.

Sassanid battle line

Both sides were reluctant to move from their start positions at first, but eventually the Persians made a wide flanking move on the right and pushed forward their foot skirmishers on their left. I responded by sending my Goth cavalry in a headlong charge that saw my general surrounded by foot units and dying an ignoble death.

Cavalry clash. Note the use of replica Roman coins for Leadership Points

On the other flank the battle culminated in a massive cavalry clash that eventually ended with the Persian general being surrounded and killed.

As usual the game ended with talk of getting more units to make each army more effective.

I have earlier backed West Wind Productions' War & Empire III kickstarter, with the aim of painting up another 8 units of Roman foot to give wahj a helping hand, but as he is currently on a painting spree (and the kickstarter fulfillment won't be till the end of the year) I have decided to pass the bulk of the deal to Martin, who is planning to get some Palmyran units, while I plan to get some Arthurian foot to use as Goth infantry.

The other reason why I wanted to give up my stake in the kickstarter was because I have just bought some thirty 28mm figures and two chariots for my Trojan War project. These will allow me to field two warbands - one Trojan and one Lukka - for Tribal. If all goes according to plan we should be playing Tribal again in July.

War & Empire III Kickstarter

West Wind Productions has just started their kickstarter for their range of 15mm figures, and it funded in just 41 minutes.

I have bought a couple packs of their Successor infantry and cavalry, and liked them enough, so when I found that they will be releasing Late Romans this time round, I decided to back the project and give our Roman-Sassanid project another boost.

I am backing the King level together with Martin (who is looking to get a couple packs of Palmyrans), which will give me enough figures for three double-units of spears supported by archers, and two units of javelin-armed auxilia. That's 144 figurines to paint, not counting the free figures that will come with the stretch goals.

If you are looking for a new project for next year - the shipping date is given as December 2018 - then you may want to head over and have a look.

Legio Heroica 15mm Late Imperial Romans

I apologise for not posting anything other than the Giveaways for the past two months, but as I mentioned in my New Year post, I have gotten back into RPGs and GMing, which really takes up a lot of time and focus. I realised that I don't multi-task too well when it comes to gaming too: when my mind is on RPG, my wargaming suffers.

Sadly, RPGs don't make interesting blog posts, unless you are into session reports or "actual plays".

The figures in the photos are Legio Heroica 15mm Late Romans. They don't look as good as the ones in the photos on the Legio Heroica website, and the fault is all mine. Thank godness for Little Big Men Studios decals.

The 4 units represent my share of the Roman-Sassanid Wars project the four of us in the group are working on. We are using the Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules, and we are planning to use the deep formation rule which allows the rear unit of archers to shoot counting from the front edge.

I had a rather hard time painting these figures, despite the relatively small figure count. There was quite a bit of flash of them, and the fiddly pattern on the tunics didn't make it any easier either.

Next on my painting list are 24 figures from Iron Wind Metals: a dozen chaos warriors and a dozen chaos archers - heavily armoured archers holding spiked bows are hard to find, but they exist. These were bought primarily for my RPGs to represent Hurlocks in my Dragon Age game as well as Drakkarim in my planned Lone Wolf game, but it will be an easy task to stat them for a fantasy skirmish game like Strandhogg or Dragon Rampant.