Irregular Wars Wargaming

The last post of a busy month is another three-company unit of Romano-British pedyt for my Fantastic Battles Britannia Burning project. Accompanying them are the first two characters of the army, one pretending that they still serve the empire, and another much more comfortable in a tribal setting. All miniatures from the wonderful Pendraken Late Roman range. Going more uniform for this unit, the pedyt shields are based on the Petulantes Seniores auxilia unit noted in the Notia Dignitatum ; their banner is inspired by the shields of the Felices Iuniores in the same document. I've been having a bit of an issue with my painting hand recently, so the shield work isn't as fine as I would like, but they are done and I can more on now to the next unit. In total I now have a little over 500 points across four units and the two commanders. Progress is slow, but there is progress! ✊

October’s Big Game Sunday saw Tony, Garry and I facing off with a somewhat plausibly historic game of Fantastic Battles – pitting 1900 points of my Late Seleukids against their unholy alliance of Republican Romans and later Carthaginians. I had hidden a three-company unit of Arab allies in the woods on the Seleukid left as an ambush to slow down the Roman advance on that flank, but during the mishaps phase, both they and a unit of Roman velites opposite were enthusiastic and advanced towards each other. Thus, melee combat was begun before either side received orders to advance.  Elsewhere, the Seleukid side suffered little from mishaps (a single late unit of slingers). It could have been far worse. At one point I think I rolled four or five 6’s in a row which would have caused havoc if they weren’t adjusted thanks to the quartermaster strategy. The Romano-Punic armies suffered more with late, enthusiastic and diseased units along the line. The opening turn saw general advance orde...

I had the honour to be invited down to Cork College of FET - Douglas Street this week for a Fantastic Scuffles playtesting day with their first and second year game design students. Although they are studying computer game design, they have to create tabletop games as part of their assessment. It was a great day with more than 20 students putting Fantastic Scuffles through its paces, stress testing the mechanics and trying to find game-breaking loopholes in the rules. Where issues were identified, mostly driven by trait and equipment synergies, we talked through different approaches to resolve them and implemented a couple of changes. My thanks to Neil Crowley and all who took part. It was a great experience for me, and I hope that the discussions that we had around game mechanics and design choices were useful to the students as they prepare for their future careers. 

Andriochos and Antinichos met for a Seleukid civil war rematch this week running 1,000 point armies of second century BC Seleukids built for Fantastic Battles . Last time these forces clashed , I came out on top. Who would triumph this time? My legitimate forces, led by the rightful king, Antinichos, were defending which put me at a slight disadvantage. Normally I like defending, but our armies (by no means identical) both favour open terrain. This meant there were limited tricks I could play with deployment and Andrew/Andriochos was able to deploy cleverly in response to my setup.   Rolling for mishaps, the usurper's army suffered little other than a unit of skirmishers turning up behind the main line on his right rather than out front. Several of my units were suffering from disease and two units - slingers and thureophoroi - were late my left flank. The forces of the legitimate king advanced cautiously, trying to decide how best to negotiate the terrifying elephants facing the c...