Billhooks, Battletech, and Beer

Last Sunday we actually managed to get five of us together for an afternoon of gaming.

We opened with a game of Never Mind the Billhooks in preparation for the release of the Deluxe edition of the rules later this month. I used the set-up for Towton, and the game started with twenty-four 16-figure units on table, or close to 400 15mm figures. The archery was savage and decimated the front ranks on both sides before the Lancastrians finally made melee contact and the Yorkist right flank collapsed. Norfolk entered the table just before this happened, and decided to turn back to London.

We then played a test game of Battletech, which was really fun. Regular readers may remember that I have been looking at Battletech Alpha Strike and Reaper CAV as possible options for our regular mecha game, but now I am thinking Battletech (regular) may be a contender for the times we have enough players to play a team game.

We are now organising another session for the end of the month, when I hope to try out a grid-based Napoleonic game based on the To the Last Gaiter Button rules, and another game of Battletech.

Battle of Edgcote

The Royalists face their rivals

FG and I played a game of Never Mind the Billhooks on Monday. I picked the Edgcote scenario from Peter Pig's Bloody Barons (1st edition) because it features only two Battles per side (to start with anyway). I did not stick to the order of battle strictly, but tried to preserve the salient points of the battle (from what I could learn on some googling). The Royalists are outnumbered, have fewer archers, but start on high ground, and they have some Welsh pikes. The Rebels have more troops, more archers, and I decided to believe that they have cavalry, because it would make the game more interesting.

What was also interesting was the fact that FG played William Herbert in the WOTR campaign we played many years ago, and had painted command bases for him, which we used for this battle. However, I let him command the Lancastrians so I could take the "defenders", which I thought would be a more passive role and allow me to focus on the rules. Nevertheless, we did get some rules wrong here and there.

William Herbert rallies the troops

The game played pretty much like a standard medieval wargame with buckets of dice (more dice as I have larger units than the in the official rules), and I think FG did not fully appreciate the manoeuvre phase of the game or his advantage in archers.

The Event Cards added a nice touch, and I think are a good way of adding the uncertainty in WOTR battles that come from treachery or just plain blundering in a two-player game.

The Royalist arrows fall short

I do think the game will be even more fun with two or more players each side, and with each player having their own secret victory condition, like they do in some co-operative boardgames.

Welsh pikes see off the Rebel cavalry

I hope to play the game with more players again, once the lockdown lifts.

Paper Medieval Tent from Codex Manesse

One of the fun bits about Never Mind the Billhook is this rule about Morale tokens: each army has a number of Morale tokens, and every time you suffer a reversal you have to surrender one of them - when you run out of tokens to surrender, you lose the battle. To keep your opponent from knowing how many tokens you have remaining, the author recommends you hide them inside a miniature tent.

Now I have three 15mm DBX- style camps from the purchases I made on ebay, but these - as many 15mm tents made for wargaming are - are solid tents with no place to keep the tokens. I decided a quick way of making "hollow" medieval tents was with paper or cardstock terrain, and found this one on googling.

The template is in pdf, and comes in layers, so there are different patterns of the scallops, and you can choose to have the flaps up or down. The template seems to fit 28mm figures, but I scaled mine down by 50%, which works well for 15mm.

More importantly, at 50% the template fits just nice around these extra sturdy cardboard tubes which I have been saving up - gluing the template around a sturdy core makes things a lot easier, and also means you can just print on paper instead of cardstock. The template gives a slightly tapering tent, while the tube is straight; this isn't an issue in 15mm since it is easy to compensate by squishing the paper a little, but in 28mm you may want to find a suitable core first - like maybe a small yoghurt tub - and then scale the template to the exact size that will wrap nicely around your chosen core.

Anyway, it was a simple job of gluing the template onto the tube, then cutting the opening for the flaps.

For the roof I simply taped the edges together without bothering with the flaps.

You don't want to tape all the way to the edge, since the edge will need to be cut and folded down, as you will see later.

I chose a 60mm round MDF base as the base for the tent, and assembled the components with white glue.

I then snipped the edges of the roof and folded the tabs down, as you can see in the photo above.

Finally, I painted the base to match my battle mat.

This was a quick and easy project, and I am now thinking of ways to make functional terrain pieces for my other games.

Sludge Infantry Unit and Jaegers

I completed the last of the three units of Line Infantry for the Sludge project.

As with the other units, I added some scenic items on the base, in this case some fence sections I had in my bits box. I plan to use space on the command base for Stress tokens/die.

I also painted up the remaining figures as Jaegers. I'm not sure how important they are in the game, but it is good to have the option to field some skirmishers.

Never Mind the Billhooks Test Game

With no RPG this week, I decided to play a solo test game of Never Mind the Billhooks.

Now I have been interested in the Wars of the Roses for a long time - many years ago we played a 6-player campaign using Warmaster rules, and the campaign rules which we used were submitted to and published in Miniatures Wargame magazine.

Warmaster is a fun set of rules for quick play in a club setting, but I always felt that the armies were too generic and lacked period flavour. I have tried several other sets of rules over the years, including Flower of Chivalry, Blood Barons (first edition), and For Lord Tomorrow is a Busy Day, but none really hit the spot for me.

Then NMTBH dropped in the September 2020 issue of Wargames Illustrated magazine, and suddenly everybody was talking about it. I read a few reviews, and decided to get a hardcopy of the rules and the game cards.

So how do the rules play?

I enjoyed the Manoeuvre phase of the game, when the players would take turns moving units of their armies until one of the decided to shoot or move a unit into melee, when the game proper (with all the phases and activations) would begin. This reduced the amount of time taken before the two sides came to grips, and more importantly gave a sense of manoeuvring - I will really have to look at implementing this in my other games.

The gameplay itself is rather crunchy, requiring players to keep track of number of volleys shot by every archer units, as well as casualties (if using multi-based figures) and disorder and morale tokens. The use of buckets of dice for combat resolution and Special Events/chance cards means things can be unpredictable, but the latter also gave players more decision points and made for a gamey-er game.

Over all I enjoyed the flow of the game. Units deployed, manoeuvred into positions of advantage (or tried to), before the first shots are loosed, announcing the start of combat. Then players have to decide whether to stay at a distance and trade volleys, or brave the arrow storm and try to close for melee and decide things with cold steel... The plodding nature of the infantry means initial deployment is important. In my test game the Lancastrians masked their own gun, the result of which was it never got to fire throughout the game.

I played for about 6 turns before I had to take a break - these rules are a little too crunchy to be played solo. I am looking forward to playing against other players soon.

If you are thinking of getting these rules, you may want to note that a new edition is in the works, with a planned publication date of around Christmas this year.

Sludge Infantry Units

I will probably take better photos of these two units when I complete painting the force, but I am excited to share some photos with my readers and the Sludge FB group.

These are pretty 'vanilla' as Sludge infantry go: Perry WOTR bodies with Perry ACW arms. They are painted in the same livery as my WOTR/Warhammer Empire force. You may notice that the command bases look different from the line bases - that's because I cheated and simply glued the command figures from my other units onto a 40mm square base.

The figures are not easy to put together, since I decided on painting the bodies separately from the arms. They paintjob is sloppy, but fortunately the Sludge aesthetics is rather forgiving.

The project does leave me with lots of ACW figures without arms, and already I am thinking of an ACW-themed sci-fi force...

Perry WOTR Light Cavalry and my entire WOTR/(The) Empire Army

The Perry WOTR Light Cavalry have been sitting in a tub for almost two years, but I finally started and finished painting them in the past three days.

I assembled them in two fashion, half of them as mounted crossbows.

And three with lances, and three as command figures.

The leader rides a horse from Claymore Castings. The glue is still drying on the base of the last figure.

With these figures done, I can say that I have completed my WOTR/Warhammer (The) Empire army.

The problem, of course, is that the Warhammer (The) Empire no longer exists. Nor does the whole Warhammer world. Not that that will prevent us from playing Warhammer 8th Edition, seeing how we already have figures for at least four armies. I do like the Warhammer rules, especially the fancy army lists, but on the whole I find them hard to remember, given how rarely we play them.

I have been looking at alternative sets of fantasy mass combat rules for a while, and last week I decided to order a copy of Mantic's Kings of War 2nd Edition rules. The reviews I have seen praise the rules for their simplicity, which is a plus for me, but I do worry if the army lists are different enough to distinguish each army. I guess we'll find out when the rules arrive in a week or two.

Claymore Castings Crossbowmen

I know I say this a lot, but these are some of the best-sculpted figures I own. They are the French crossbowmen recently released by Claymore Castings, which has become my "company to watch". There are 3 packs of 4 figures in this release, so I bought them all. The detail and animation on these figures are just amazing, as is the engineering. The "cross-piece" (bow and bowstring) comes in a separate piece, and as you can see some bows are drawn, some are not, and some have quarrels in them... which means each piece is specific to a figure! At least one of the pieces had the tip of the quarrel on the bow piece, and the shaft on the stock, and one had the hand on the bow piece! And the thing is, everything fits together so well, I bet you can't tell which figure had which combination.

The pavises are from the Perry WOTR European mercenaries box set.

Here are the figures shown separately. About half of them must have played Skyrim, because they are wearing some form of knee armour.

I show the last figure separately, because it is probably my favourite of the lot; check it out: he is holding a crossbow bolt in his teeth!

The next release from Claymore Castings is Hundred Years War knights, which I may not get; but I will be keeping an eye for figures I can use.

The next purchase for this army is likely to be the WOTR light horse box set from Perry, which will be released at Salute this year. After those my army may be considered "complete". I think.

Real Steel

It took a while, but I now have a horde of Greatswords painted.

They are a mix of Perry plastics and metals, old Grenadier figures, and a Trent Miniatures figure. Fielded in the above configuration this single unit is almost 800 points - 40% of a 2000 point army.

I based 14 of the figures on multi-bases, which will make it easier to deploy the unit, and also allowed me to decorate one of the bases with a broken lance.

With this unit done, I have to wait for Perry to release their plastic light cavalry and Claymore Castings to release their new crossbowmen.

Meanwhile, I am working on a unit of skaven plague monks, which are not as nice sculpts as the clanrats, but are at least easy to paint.

Battle Standard Bearer

As with the Warrior Priest, I decided to paint a new figure for my Battles Standard Bearer.

This figure is made from the Perry Foot Knights box, with the left hand drilled through and a steel pike added. The flag is custom-made by Maverick Models (not to be confused with Maverick Models).

Warrior Priest

On of the most fun characters one can field in a Warhammer (The) Empire army is the warrior priest. I have previously used a generic leader figure for my warrior priest, but I decided to paint two dedicated figures to represent the character when I got my box of Perry Foot Knights.

The two figures above are made up of the torso and arms from the Perry Foot Knights box, with the shield coming from the European Mercenaries box. The heads are from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors box set, which I got on a bits trade. I thought the bald and bearded look made the figure look distinctive, especially once I gave him flaming hair. The "traditional" Warhammer warrior priests comes bald wearing a circlet and shaven, so my version looks more like a priest of Ulric, but no matter.

I made two versions of the same character because I have two "builds" for him: one for leading my Greatswords when my general is mounted, and one to lead my unit of swordsmen if my general is on foot (and leading the Greatswords himself); a third option is to field him and the general with the Greatswords in one single unit, which looks excessive.

I now have another 20-plus foot knights to go through, including the Battle Standard Bearer - hopefully I can complete him this weekend.

Mirliton Handgunners

With all the non-human units I have been painting for the rest of the gang, I thought I needed to restore balance to the Warp by painting up the Mirliton Handgunners (or Fighting Men with Guns in the Forlorn Hope catague and Harquebusiers in the Mirliton catalogue) I bought along with the Halfling archers.

As you can see, these come in 5 different poses, with handguns that look rather different too - which makes me wonder: historically, did handgunners have the same "model" of guns?

Here you can see them poses with my Perry plastic handgunners. The Mirliton figures are smaller than their Perry counterparts, but because of their stances they blend in quite well.

I have been thinking about giving my army a more "pike-and-shot" doctrine, so these are a useful addition. I should be getting my Perry foot knights from Martin tomorrow, which will let me bulk my Greatswords up to a horde of 40. Thereafter I hope to buy a dozen crossbowmen from Claymore Castings when their new figures are released. Stay tuned.

Schiltron!

This little project took me weeks to complete, but I am pretty chuffed with the results:

A unit of thirty-five!

The command figures are from Perry, while the rank-and-file are 50% Ebob, and 50% Claymore Castings. Of the two I prefer the Claymore figures, which are really full of character; the Ebob figures are not as well-cast, but while the Claymore figures have their pikes mainly at "porte", these are in attack poses.

Phalanxes look good from the side...

The rear view is more colourful...

To make sure that they all rank up, apart from the three command figures the front three ranks are actually based six to a 60mm x 40mm base: 2 wide x 3 deep deep on the flanks, and 3 wide x 2 deep behind the command figures. The rear two ranks provide "loose change" for casualty removal.

I bought an MDF movement tray to hold these guys, but instead of using the MDF base supplied I glued the top piece to a 1mm PVC foam card, which reduces the height and weight of the whole tray. The bottom piece will be used to represent the footprint of the unit once it comes into contact with other units, on account of the pointy sticks...

They will be fielded as spears under the WHFB rules. I do like the look of these, and were they easy to paint I might have been tempted to convert my entire army into a pike-and-shot army with just spearmen and handgunners. But for now, this will have to be it.

Pleasant Surprise 2014 Part 2

I went to the post office today to pick up a parcel which I thought was some spearmen I ordered, but it turned out to be my Pleasant Surprise!

My gift came from Simon, known as somegeezer on the Warhammer Empire forum, and are six Perry HYW armed peasants plus a priest, all of which I have actually been eyeing! What's more, in the friendly letter he had included in the parcel he explained that he tried to paint them such I can add these beauties to my unit of militia; and as you can see from the photo below featuring both his work and mine, he has done a pretty good job - my only complaint is that his work is better than mine!

These guys are definitely going on my army list for my next game!

The priest is superb - Simon's blending is beautiful on this figure. I can use him as a wizard or perhaps even a warrior priest. And not that I can field him in a unit of flagellants, but he really adds to the whole mood of the unit when I pose him together with them!

Thank you very much, Simon. I must say this has indeed been a surprise, and a very pleasant one too!

I can only hope that I can give so much joy to my recipient in next year's exchange.

Pleasant Surprise

Soon after I decided to build a Warhammer (The) Empire army I joined the Warhammer Empire Forum (yes, we Empire types have a Teutonic approach to naming things; none of this Round Table, Herdstone, UnderEmpire, etc. frivolity, ja?).

It's a lively forum with many excellent painters and terrain builders, and a place where I go for some inspiration every time I feel I need to recharge my painting mojo.

Anyway, they have this annual minis exchange project called "Pleasant Surprises" where you, upon joining up, are assigned a "giftee". The object then is to cyber-stalk your giftee and find out what he or she might want for a gift.

My giftee was someone who was involved in an online RPG who had once said that he would like a certain Reaper figure to represent his character, so I painted him that figure.

Today was my turn to receive my surprise, and what I got was this:

As you can see, it's the same scheme as mine, so the gifter has done his homework.

I have certainly enjoyed the exchange this year and plan to sign up again next year, and aim for a bigger, more ambitious project than a single figure.

Handgunners

Another unit of my WOTR/Empire army done.

I really hate painting these figures with the jacks - I can never get every single rivet picked out.

Crossbowmen

After a long break, I decided to start working on my Perry WOTR/Warhammer Empire figures, but met a problem with my primer.

The primer beaded on the figures, and I was forced to spray it on thick to cover the beading up; as a result, much of the details on the figures were obscured.

Fortunately, I have painted their pavises (which have no game effects) a while back, and hopefully they draw the eye away from the poor painting on the figures.

Coming up next will be the ten handgunners, half of whom wear the riveted jacks which are a pain to paint...

There are still a lot to paint before I can call this project "completed" - eight more archers, half a box of foot men-at-arms when Perry releases them, and replacing my current ECW pistoliers with the Perry light cavalry (armed as mounted crossbowmen). All that will take me past 1800 points in WHFB; beyond that I can probably top up to 2000 points with magical items, or there is always the option of bulking my halberdiers to 30 or 40 figures, either by painting more figures or using unit fillers.

Bear Country

Remember the single bear model I painted a while back as a unit filler?

Well, fg gave me another D&D pre-painted plastic bear, which meant I HAD to get a couple more to create a whole unit...

After much googling, I settled on two Reaper bears, and here they are all painted.

L to R: Pathfinder Battle - Rise of the Runelords Dire Bear, D&D Wrath of Ashardalon Cave Bear with Perry WOTR figures as handlers, bear from Reaper Animal Companions pack with Reaper bard Alfred Redlute, Reaper Dire Bear.

For some reason unknown even to myself, I actually based each bear on a 40mm x 60mm base, and then made a sabot base measuring 50mm x 75mm so I can field them all as a unit of Demigryph Knights for Warhammer, which I probably will never actually field in a game.

One thing I've learnt from this project is this: it's actually rather difficult to gauge how big a bear figurine actually is without some point of reference. For most humanoid or equine figures, you *know* they are going to be roughly man-size or horse-size, but with bears, especially *dire* bears, all bets are off. A few of the potential candidates I screened turned out to be enormous when I eventually found pictures of them posed beside other figurines (well, non-prehistoric ones at any rate - why is everything in the Stone Age so dire?), and the bear from the Animal Companions pack turned out to be even smaller than I expected.

Here is another view of the bard figure. I'm not quite sure why I got the figure or why I included him in the unit. I guess it's partly because I have at the back of my mind plans for a band of four bards - three on lutes and one on drums... Now if only I can find a left-handed bard figure...

Swordsmen

I'm really hitting the wall when it comes to painting my WOTR/Empire army, so I'm quite happy when I finished this latest addition to my army.

 
The unit has figures from four makers: Perry, Mirliton, Trent, and The Assault Group. The TAG figures are from their Italian Scrapoli pack, something I picked up from Atlantico in Madrid. I had to swap their heads with the Perry plastic ones as they were rather, well, Italian. The oversized swords are from Games Workshop, and the shields from some unknown maker, bought as a job lot on ebay.

Swordsmen

I find myself losing impetus as I try to paint another 40 or so figures to complete my Warhammer (The) Empire army. Times like these it helps to have "unique" figures to paint.

The first one comes from Mirliton's Halberdier Command Group.

I really like the character of this figure. The original figure cradled its helm in its left arm, but the helm, while magnificent, was out of period for my army. I hacked the whole left arm off, and glued a matching left arm from the Perry plastic set holding a poignard in its place. This figure will join my swordsmen unit; the unit is armed with sword and shield, and the poignard in the off hand has a similar function, giving the figure a "parry save".

The second figure (the one on the right) comes from Mirliton's Swordsmen Command Group.

Again, I hacked off the arm below the elbow to swap the shield for a more period one, and embedded arrows in the shield and the ground to add even more dynamism to the figure. I like how the figure echoes the unit standard bearer which I painted before I even bought the Mirliton figures.

And here are the first two ranks of the swordsmen unit:

The flocking and shields have yet to be added. I've given the figures red pants to set them apart from the other foot units - swordsmen have a higher WS in Warhammer and are I suppose "semi-elite", and I am using red pants as a mark for "professional" troops as opposed to militia in this army.

These are the last figures I will be painting for the next couple of weeks. I'm off to Madrid next week and plan to drop by Atlantica. Hope I don't overbuy...