Civil war battle!

Regular readers will know that every other Sunday is a club day. Most of the club wanted to play Saga. I was not in a Saga Mood so I played a game of Civil War Battles (Peter Pig rules). Me and Rob were confederates and Graham and Peter were Union. All figures terrain and rules were supplied by Graham. Using Peter Pig rules you never ever get the force that you anticipate or the battle field you selected.  As such me an Rob set the battlefield up and Peter and Graham managed to move several of the key features to more favourable positions to them. It was a mid war eastern battle and the Confederates were defending. And that's where it started to go wrong!  The Picture to the right shows the Confederate battle line we had a rail track and a stream, they did us very little good. Pre game procedures meant that the whole left flank (Most of my troops to command either failed to appear at the start of the game (they would arrive later in the game) or Failed to appear altogether! As such the troops I actually did manage to field were a general, 2 stands of Cavalry a smoothbore  battery and a rifled artillery battery. Which means 5 stands of figures to hold the left flank. Rob managed to get loads more... he actually had some infantry.... 2 units on the board at the start of the game and 2 in reserve.

 As mentioned I had 2 artillery batteries, but the Union Cavalry pregame had managed to displace them from the hillock they had set up on. So it took a couple of turns to get them into a firing position. But not all was lost at this stage. I dismounted my cavalry into the tree line of one of the wooded areas. As skirmishers (carbine armed) they had a short (6") range but they managed to come out of the wood in skirmish line cross the stream and bring fire on the Union cavalry that were circling my flank about to enter my rear area. No one likes enemy cavalry in their rear. As a plan it worked for 2 turns but they were charged by 2 different Union Cavalry units and routed of the table. Rob was doing a lot better His of table troops had arrived and the right flank and part of the centre looked solid and secure. I had a unit of Veteran infantry in reserve and needed to roll 5+ on 2d6. You would hope that in the game I would manage to roll 5+ on 2d6 each turn. Yeah Hoped they would too. But I proved that I can roll consistently low at all the wrong times. My artillery batteries were doing sterling work. They managed to stall the Union Infantry units and slow their advance. I was only ale to slow one unit each turn by this tactic and facing 3 units it was just a matter of time before they inevitably were in danger. The Union Cavalry had re grouped and were no longer disrupted by forcing my good ol' boys from the table and as we ran out of time they were just in canister range of my rifled artillery battery, but unfortunately it was facing the wrong way. It was confederate turn next and If I had been lucky I might have been able to wheel into position and let rip with canister into the cavalry. I would have needed to roll 4+ on 1D6 in order to be able to attempt this.
Overall I was on the back foot from the start. I did manage to hold the Union forces of for long enough for Rob to push his flank into enemy territory despite being on the defensive. I did ask Rob to send me some of his troops to Bolster the left but he was more intent in killing Peters troops. I can't blame him for that, but it would have made a big difference to me as I had so few troops on the table. Still that is the joy of multiplayer games everyone has their own agenda.

Her Is a pic of the Saga multiplayer game mid flow. They managed to get 2-3 games in with different opponents on each side and a board game afterwards while we failed to complete a game! It was a good day and despite the fact that I did not want to go originally I am glad I did in the end. yes I lost dramatically but they guys are the kind of people that make loosing worthwhile!

SAGA day at club

 We had a SAGA day at the club. I had to leave early so only got two games in. My first game was against Dave, (He's not really a club member as he belongs to Walderslade club, but he's a nice guy and was most welcome). I Had the Vikings and Dave the Normans. The picture shows my last turn. As you'll know I have only played one other game of Saga, which is about average at our club. So going against Dave who has played many games, has all the armies and is playtesting new ones for the producers would be a forgone conclusion you would think. And you would be right. He played fair and explained the rules as he went which was beneficial. However he did manage to beat me quite easily despite my best efforts.
My second game was against Patrick, also fielding Vikings. This was a much closer game and I was actually winning but I left my warlord exposed and Patrick was able to send a fresh unit of Hearthgurd against him. The Rest of Pats army was decimated and his leader about 18 inches behind his front line well out of reach. Without going into details too much in the fight my warlord rolled 5 dice, and scored 1,1,1,1,2. While Patrick managed to inflict 3 wounds on the warlord and I failed to save any of them!  Curses. The dice gods hate me!

The pics are just random shots of some of the other games in progress. All in all I did have fun despite loosing both games I played. As mentioned earlier in the post I left early to get some sleep as I am on silly amount of overtime at the moment. Given the overtime I might have to go dark later in the week simply through lack of time to get anything posted.

I shall post again on Wednesday as I have finished a couple of things, but after that who knows.
Anyway enough of my waffle for now. Take care, have fun and talk again soon. Cheers Clint.

Tim's Anglo Danes against Patricks Vikings

Kevs Normans vs Stuarts Vikings

Relfie played Anglo Danes

Andy's Welsh vs Relfies Anglo Danes. 

Two Axes, a Horse and a Helmet (but no camera)

Yes I admit it, I forgot my camera at the club yesterday. No one to blame but myself, so no pictures as such today. No excuses, all my fault. Saga players will guess from the title that I played my first game AGAINST the Anglo Danish army.I myself have Vikings, not because I had any affinity to the Vikings, but because I had a box set of the Gripping Beast Plastics, and no other reason. Frugality drove my army choice! Not that I am unhappy with the Norse, but if money was not a consideration I  most likely would have chosen Normans. However all this rambling does not tell anyone about the club on Sunday.

 

Not a terrible turnout at the club, most of the regulars, but only Tim and myself had bought our SAGA figures along. So we set up a very simple encounter 4 points each of my Vikings against Tims Anglo Danes. just between ourselves and just to learn the rules. Being a lazy git I did not have masses of choices and fielded two hearthguard, 1 Bereserker and one warrior unit for my points. Tim was far more courageous and selected a bigger variety of troops to better learn the rules. Well we did learn the rules slowly. I had read the rules through once several months ago so it took some time.

 

Highlights and low lights of the battle in order were. My berserkers chopped down a heathguard unit of Tims with lucky dice rolls and gained some fatigue. Thinking they were thus invincible I sent the 3 who survived to attack Tims warleader. Despite throwing loads and loads of dice they failed to inflict any wounds (well they did inflict 1, but warlords can ignore the first unsaved hit so they did nothing). Tim on the other hand single handedly wipes them all out! You could blame the dice, or a lack of armour, or me for attacking his warboss while fatigued. No matter what you blame the result was the same. This was compounded when one of my Hearthguard units charged into Tims Geburs (levy quality) and inflicted only 2 dead. Tims aggressive peasants killed two of mine, and I was forced to back of a couple of inches and stand exposed on my left wing.

Anticipating that Tim would reinforce his Geburs with his leader to fight alongside. I Chickened it and moved my leader as far away as I could, Erhm... I mean my commander decided to support my right flank. This subsequently worked in my favour giving me a fresh warlord and two fresh units against two of Tims units. I'm playing Vikings so I charged. By this stage I had started to use and "understand" the Battleboard. So as it was my turn I managed to drive back both opposing units inflicting heavy losses, but taking minimal losses myself and using the battleboard to reduce my fatigue. By the time Tim could get his warleader and supper levies across the battlefield his two units were devastated. One round of fighting his super levies, not a prospect I was cherishing with my warlord and a hearthguard unit. Did the trick and Tim conceded.

 

That game did take a while as we checked the rules and got to grip with the mechanics. So we had a second game. I reffed and Kevin and Relfie took joint command of my Vikings and Tim retained control of his Anglo Danes. As Kev and Relf had not played before I did a little coaching, suggesting options for the dice on the battle board. (Mostly they ignored me!) Both armies formed up and Tim put a unit of Dane-axes as a vanguard. The Vikings took one look at them and just charged! Subtle we aint! Let me just say hot knife and butter with fatigue to all Tims close units for the loss of a unit in close proximity. We then got to warlord versus warlord. No result as they continued to ignore the first unsaved hit from each melee. Then Kev and Relfie added a unit of warriors to the mix and despite Tim Killing more Vikings, Relfie and Kev managed to inflict 3 hits on the Anglo-Dane leader who could only save 1.

 

Post game analysis: The objective was to learn the rules. Which I think we did. I shall read them again before next time just so we know where I was getting things wrong! (I am not silly enough to think we got through it without making mistakes). But we now have 4 club members who have some passing familiarity with the rules, battle boards and concepts of the game. So I would say we have achieved the objective. All 4 of us have decided to set up a Saga day at next club. Kev and Relf have promised to get their figures painted, Kev doing Normans has only a couple of horsemen to finish off. I think Relfie is doing Anglo Danes, but am not sure, it could be Vikings. Stuart, not present yesterday will do either Vikings or Joms Vikings, Ian will do either Anglo- Saxons or Anglo- Danes. And Andy has bought Welsh at SELWG, but I am not sure how many he will ever get painted, The general consensus is that Stuart will paint them in the end!

 

So all in all despite the lack of camera it was a successful day. Thanks for Reading, next Blog post will be Wednesday. Until then take care, roll some dice and have some fun! All the Best Clint!

Berserkers (2)

About 4 weeks ago I picked up the "Gripping Beast" Viking Berserkers. Wanting a brak from mechs (there's plenty more of them to come), I decided to paint these, afterall it's better than watching TV in the evenings when I get home from work. (As I am sure we all agree.... absolute rubbish on most nights). Anyway 4 figures in a pack, I found the sculpting OK but not great, and the poses so similar on each one as to seem almost the same. Casting was acceptable, some flash and mould lines, but nothing major. Overall they are not something I took delight on, but at least they are done, and I won't be doing them again. When If comes to SAGA the game I will probably swap out the two handed axe man and add the Ulfhednar from Citadel I have already painted. I Painted their shields in black and white patterns. I remember when I was doing dark age re-enactment (about 15 years ago now) some woman, who was into textiles claiming that people in the dark ages probably did bot have a word for black as they could not dye it. I have never looked into it but for me common sense says that they did. After all just because they could not make a black dye did not mean that they could not make black ink or paint, or even just accept that the colour of coal could have a name. If we use her agrument today, it would mean we have no word for chrome, just because we can't dyd it. (SOrry went of on a Rant!

AS you can see these all have wolfskin "Cloaks" and the spear used overhand are quite long. I did not trim the spears and perhaps in retrospect I should have. While I am not overly impressed with the figures (or the painting if I am honest) they do round out my SAGA Vikings, so as far as I am concerned that's enough for me.

Thanks for reading, I shall try to post again on Thursday. All the best and speak soon. Clint

Nil Points!

Well I finally finished a leader for SAGA. This is supposedly a welsh warband leader. I say supposedly as it could be any faction. It is easy to think that we have to have the "correct" figure as supplied by the manufacturer. Obviously that is not the case where we are dealing with a dark age force. As mentioned in earlier posts there was no uniforms and all equipment was used by everyone. Given the "gifting" of items from battle fields (Taken from the defeated force) anyone could be wearing items of any origin. Some times things might need to be adapted, for example a side split Hauberk "gifted" to a Norman knight would need to be front split. For those not in the know it's hard to ride a horse in hauberk that is not side split.... I know I have tried. You end up sitting on a really uncomfortable fold of metal chain link. Which is unpleasant for both rider and horse. Additionally your legs are exposed to the danger of the battlefield.  Not the idea of armour! 

Anyway back to the figure. In addition to the two axes and shield he carries a sword as well. I would have given him a spear instead of the axe in his left hand if I had any spare. But I have taken a liking to the additional axe so I will not change it now. His shield carries a stylised Raven. Having repainted the shield 3 times now this will be the final solution. I am not totally happy with it feeling that is should have been "Crisper" but I can't be bothered to have another go just yet. So it will do! While all the others in the warband have two colour geometric shield designs. All his clothes have a contrasting colour stripe as well. From what I know this was fairly typical on garments which would have been decorated with embroidery or Tablet weaving.

I am not sure which manufacture makes this dog, it was an eBay find. Relfie at the wargames club also wants a dog for his leader. Relfie said it out loud before me, but when he said it the dog was already in the post. The breed of dog is also correct for the period not that they had breeds as we would think of them, but a certain well known tapestry has dogs which look similar to this at least in proportion.  The last thing that identifies this as a leader is the size of the base. All the others are on 20mm square bases, so a larger round base should give this enough impact on the table that it is clearly something different.

Given that in Saga your warband leader is free I still only have four points of Vikings ready to play with. Until the majority of other players reach that level I feel justified in taking a break and working on other projects!

That's if for today. I'll Blog again on Friday, Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all soon. All the best Clint!

Berserkers (1)

My computer has picked up a virus over the last few days. Which is the first one I have ever had that's nasty enough to make me think about smacking it with a baseball bat. I will no doubt overcome this minor setback but in the meantime it really stinks! However for the moment if I send you an email with "NO SUBJECT" in the title, just delete it don't even bother opening it, it's a watse of time from some waste of skin.

Back on the painting table I have done a couple more Vikings for SAGA. I will use them as Berserkers. One is a very old (1980's) Citadel Viking Ulfhednir. The other is a Gripping Beast plastic. Having done just the tinniest piece of Internet research it does indeed suggest that Berserkers should be bear chested. SO this is something I will change at a later date, but for now these 4 figures will suffice to fill the roll.

I'll try to post again on Sunday, and with luck the virus will be a distant memory. All the Best Clint

3 points

Although not very clear there are 8 figures in this unit. (I Promise).Which in the SAGA rules means these are warrior level troops. Not Militia or elites, but more your standard fighting men. As mentioned previously I could find no historical precedence for giving them all the same shield colours, I have gone so purely for game convenience so that I know which unit is which. These clearly are the blue and whites. as opposed to red and whites and yellow and whites shown previously. The second photograph is my unit of berserkers. I am not totally happy with them and will swap out the Dane axes (2 handed axes) this coming week for a couple of guys with two weapons. It's little things like that which tend to bug the hell out of me. Which is why I have called today's post 3 points, and not 4. I have previously shown the other two points, and will take great delight adding the berserkers when I feel I am happy with them. The last picture is them all jumbled together.In retrospect I should have taken the snap from a higher angle. Therefore that will be the plan for the final shot. I only need a couple of figures to get there, two more berserkers and a warlord. One of the club was looking for a dog to have on their warlord stand. I shall blatantly steal that idea, unless I can find a female captive of course. They are Vikings arfter all.

That's it for now. Thanks for looking I should post again on Monday. All the best Clint.

Today's SAGA

As you can see I am slowly expanding my SAGA warband. Only 5 more here, but a few more on the painting table that should be finished by Tuesday next week I suspect. That however depends of if I get sidetracked. As I have a single box of Gripping Beast Hirdmen, I shall attempt to build everything from that one box. So far so good. Yes it might seem tight fisted of me, but I am not in a position to through money at every project that comes along. Having said that I have 3 or four figures from many years ago which I can add to this warband, but seriously only 3 or 4 and I will have to be very selective which ones I use. One for example is wearing "Russ" trousers so I won't use him this time, only 0ne has a bow, so he won't get used either. Two others are in padded gambisons and so they don't look right with all the rest. And so the list goes on. Realistically I am expecting to re-use two of them.

For those that have voted on my poll thank you very much. If you haven't there's still two weeks to go so for the sake of a button click what have you got to loose.

That's it for today. I'll post again Saturday. Thanks for looking all the best Clint.

2 Days to Go!

 As I am sure you are now WELL aware of BROADSIDE

will take place on Sunday and this is the last post from me before it does. I did contemplate detailing the show, but lets be honest if you are interested you're either coming or not by this stage, I really doubt there will be any last second changes of plans. However I would be doing the show a dis-service  if I did not put a link in as well. http://www.mhwc.co.uk/broadside-2012 
So there you go.
I thought I should also show where I am with regard to Saga. As I already had a box of Gripping Beast Hirdmen, also known as Vikings it was an obvious place to start. Given the lack of uniforms and the universal use of equipment by all sides, often given to loyal followers when stripped from the dead of either side following a battle. These troops can easily be used as Scots, Viking, Anglo Danish, Anglo Saxon, Welsh etc. The main differences come at the levy quality troops which would most likely not be given battle trophies. In the Saga rules "Dane Axes" are not given to Vikings, (they get berserkers instead) so the guy on the right in the SAGA rules would be Anglo Danish. In Real life obviously every faction used every weapon but for the game this guy is an Anglo Dane. The top unit of four figures are in my mind "Hearth-guard" as I have unified them with the same colour shields. While not a uniform as such it does identify them as being together. Call it Artistic licence. I am sticking to geometric shield designs just for ease of painting but I think it works quite well and gives a good look. Lots more to do of course. but at least it's a start.
That's it for Today. I may sneak a quick post in tomorrow (no promises) as I would post on Sunday, but I will be at the show. So take care and speak soon. All the best Clint.

What next?

Well that is the question. I have a feeling of Anti-climax now the Afghan boards are finished. (OK there are a couple of very small tweaks to make on them, but I'm not doing that in the rain.) So a week before Broadside and having booked the week off work I find myself twiddling my thumbs.

Don't get me wrong it's a fantastic position to be in. However I can't help thinking I should be working on something wargaming.

I have loads of ideas of course, but I don't want to start something and then get inspiration at Broadside and loose impetus.

As a club our next project will be SAGA. That being the case I will probably build a force for the game. Which is why I have photographed these two. About 18 months ago I was going to build a 28mm Viking DBA army, just for fun. Shame to let a few painted figures go to waste so I may well work on these this week. I really need to bite the bullet and decide which faction I want to do. Viking, Anglo-Dane, Norman, Scots, or even Breton. The others don't interest me. I think I'll just paint and see where it takes me. I have a couple of Ulfhednar and some with broad axes so Anglo-Dane or Viking seem to be the place to start.

In addition to Saga I will also get a bit of a mix of other projects progressed as well until I can get some focus.

That's it for today, thanks for reading. Hope the Jubilee celebrations are to your liking, after all they almost definitely won't be repeated in our life-times. All the Best Clint.