Saturday 29 October 2011

Mordheim Gunnery School Recruiting

The Gunnery School Seven
I've just finished off the original Nuln Gunnery School Warband recruits for our current occasional Mordheim Campaign.

Quite pleased with the results overall and have learnt a couple of lessons painting wise in the process. 

The Instructor
Senior Gunnery Officer


Senior Classman
'The Old Boy'

Under Classmen
'The New Boys'

Gunnery School Marksmen

Enjoyed painting them up and I'm now working on the new recruits for the warband in the form of a Pistolier and a couple of Sons of the Guns. (read this as Cannon Fodder).

Gunnery School WIP
Pistolier and Sons of the Guns

I've also been doing a little on my Empire Army Standard Bearer on foot which is coming on slowly (as ever).

Empire Standard Bearer WIP

Next up is the next game of our Mordheim campaign, a special for Halloween; 'The Burbs'. Report on how the Gunnery School Cadets fare in the suburbs on a moonlit night...

Friday 28 October 2011

Welcome!

Another welcome is due, this time to Kenzie and Oli who have dropped into the Warblog this week.

Oli has a very interesting blog Camisado which is dedicated to his early 15th Century Wargaming, well worth a visit for nice figures and some good source info too.

Saturday 22 October 2011

Welcome!

Welcomes to the Warblog are due to  Sebastofig and Captain Richard and who have joined us this week.

The Captains blog Captain Richards Miniature Civil War is chock full of ACW goodness and some damn fine vignettes and diorama's, check it out if you've not seen his blog before.



Foundry Condottiere Cavalry


I note from the Foundry releases that they have now release the Condottiere Rules and as surmised earlier in the month include mounted Light Cavalry. 









Once again the figures are less than startling. I'm not sure if this is because of the fairly flat painting or just the figures. The cavalry are pretty generic and all a tad lifeless but will have uses and it is good the see more figures for the period and the area.






I'll probably pick up a few to see how they paint up and do a bit of mixing and matching but we'll see. One thing I'll not do is use the figures with helmets which are appallingly bad. A bucket over someone's head would be better.


Thursday 20 October 2011

Impetus Berbers vs Normans

Berber Skirmisher
This week I finally managed to get a game of Impetus, using my Berbers against Dave's Normans in a pretty historical match up (think Sicily-ish). Having only played a couple of games a couple of years ago and enjoyed the games and with a rash of players getting into the rules for various periods and scales at the club, I'd been looking to join in.

Dave with quite a few games under his belt with his Normans took me through the mechanics as a refresher (read this as leading me by the hand) with Chuck and Marco lending moral support as onlookers and tech support as they also knew the rules better than I.

An enjoyable game was had and Dave, unsurprisingly perhaps, managed a convincing win even though suffering from frighteningly terrible dice, with his Norman Knights doing the bulk of the damage. Though I did notice that my Berber Infantry did successfully break through his centre, interesting only in that Impetus is yet another rule set that shows the Berber army's strength is it's infantry. (Or maybe I'm rubbish at using the cavalry).

The Berber Centre steamrollers
 through the weak Norman Centre
Interesting game all the same and I look forward to play these rules again.

I did notice that Dave's Normans do look very nice based for Impetus. The large bases do lend themselves to showing off figures nicely.  I did pick up some pre-cut bases from Warbases for use with Impetus (a nice quick service from them) but will use them as sabots as my figures are based to suit WAB/Crusader style basing. I may in the fullness of time do a dedicated army for Impetus, thinking about Byzantines here, but that's for another time and another year.

Tribal Skirmishers
I plan (as I am want to do) to get my Berber Army into a more complete state and will no doubt have more games of Impetus. Though I quite like Bad Wars (being fun and different each time you play) I intend to also use Impetus for my Italian Wars project, as much because the availability of opponents to play but also the more 'serious' feel to the rules also gives a good dependable game experience. I think more practice is much called for.

Sunday 16 October 2011

Oh What A Lovely War!

The Great War Rule Set
I had noticed with interest on various blogs and guys at the Club saying that Warhammer Historical's were having a half price sale. I already have most of the Rules ans Army Books etc etc for WAB that I wanted but I had had thoughts on picking up 'The Great War' which has recently been in the Wargames press having just released their first Supplement for the rules.

At half price I went for it as they have had a reasonable press and I have had thoughts over the last few months of doing something 'Early Twentieth Century', with thoughts of Russian Civil War White Russians which have always appealed and more recently the Mesopotamian Front from WWI having read some interesting articles on this part of the conflict and in particular the Third Battle of Gaza.

Having picked up a few figures recently, just because, the purchase of these rules was probably a good thing, concentrating the thought processes rather than random buys. I did note in the blurb at the back of the rules that there will be a supplement in the future for the Mesopotamian theatre which I will definately pick up when available.

With the rule set only appearing in the post today I can't really give an in depth review or anything like it. Suffice to say the rules have the usual high production values of the GW stable with lots of nice piccies and fluff for the background, painting guides and so on that we are all beginning to expect from our rule sets these days. The admittedly quick read I've managed to have seems to indicate a fairly standard WAB format to the rules with a few pretty simple add ons to allow for the 'modern' warfare element but they seem to cover most things needed and I look forward to give them a try soon. So watch this space for some vintage 20th Century action. 

Thursday 13 October 2011

Bad Wars on Trial

Bad Wars Trial Game

This week at t'club Dave K and myself had decided to have another trial game using the AB Games rule set 'Bad Wars'. Previous quick trys had given a promising taste of the rules and highlighted some good points and looked to be promising but we were put off slightly by the exceedingly poor state of the writing and layout of the rule set.

Since it had been longer than we had planned to give the rules another try the learning curve was pretty steep at first but once going the ideas got to flow again, and indeed we picked up a couple of things we had previously missed.

Although the game was exceedingly frustrating, due to the fact that some things just weren't explained or seemed to suppose that the player is already familiar with the AB system and so not explained at all, all in all the rules do give the flavour and feeling of the period through various mechanics which give the non-professional armies an thoroughly non-professional result with troops sometimes not arriving on time or being forced to halt due to lack of command and the War Tokens, if used with some sensibilities can be quite funny or just adding to the period feel.
The game we played was a fairly small 1000pt a piece game with Dave having poor luck in the deployment phase and struggling to get his troops on the table and barely getting past the start line whereas my French got off to a better start but managed to defeat themselves in a thoroughly French manner and recklessly charging off willynilly at the enemy and Dave's artillery and crossbow dealing out death and destruction.

The actual feel of the shooting and combat is quite similar to WAB, and although different mechanics the result can be similar with good dice rolling resulting in devastating results. Such are fast play rules.

In summary, we are going to give the rules another try with some modifications to a couple of points mainly on the deployment and the War Tokens and try to put together some form of play sheet to ease the flow of the game since there are some gems buried in the debris worth salvaging.

On a similar but different note I see that Foundry have put their 'Condottiere' rules on for pre-order along with the first releases of their Condottiere range of Italian figures.

Condottiere Renaissance Rules
The foundry site has several page previews of the rules, (click on the title above to take you there) and these do look quite nicely produced with good production values but little in the way of info on the rules. What the previews do give is a couple of sneak peeks into other figures Foundry are going to release in this new range, which look to include mounted crossbow and arquebus and new landsknecht and men at arms along with the Italian infantry already released. These appear to be by the same sculptor who has done their new medievals, which I am sad to say is a shame. Some look to be OK and useable, others quite chunky, basic poses and little detail. Could be that these ones pictured in the rules are from the Medieval range. Still good to see more figures for this period and even some usable is a good thing. You can make your own mind up on what you think;













The new range can be viewed here.

I will no doubt pick up a copy of the rules to see if there any good as part of the perennial search for a good set of Renaissance Rules.

On a completely different note, a welcome to the Warblog is due to Galpy who has joined us this week. His blog 15mm Paint Shack should be checked out for some very fine 18th and 19th Century figures and lots of other goodness. 

Monday 3 October 2011

Italian Wars . . . . I have a Cunning Plan

Battle of Fornovo 1495
Back from Wales and though very nice it was I'm glad to be back home. I will get around to post a few (selected) photo's of the many medieval delights that Wales has to offer, but that's for another time,  once I've downloaded and sorted them out etc.

During one of the enforced days of rest due to crappy weather I managed to sort out my plans for the Italian wars project. I tend to go at these things a bit piece meal but I thought this time I should have an end goal. So I have now put together a project plan, all slightly anally retentive but hey, it occupied an otherwise dreich afternoon.

In brief I've listed out a French, Italian and HRE/Spanish armies which with a bit of forethought should provide a bit of variety interest and usefulness. All are aimed at the early Italian Wars for flavour which should mean I can use most of the units for other generally late 15th Century armies. I could list all sorts of alternative forces/armies but I'm sure you can figure the kind of armies out for yourselves.

The list for units;



I'll keep this updated on the Italian Wars Project page.

A welcome to the Warblog is due to Arlequin who has many on-line exploits but his main blog can be checked out here and you will see his many interests are legion and you can pick up on his other sites.
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