Irregular Wars Wargaming

I've been sent a quick update from Aberdeen Wargames Club (previously posted about HERE ) which they have said I can share. I love recieving feedback like this! I think you'll agree that they have done a smashing job! We ran the [ Faustus Furius ] Pod Racing game at Edinburgh's Claymore show in August (pictured) and again at the Aberdeen Modellers' Exhibition in September. It proved very popular both times, every time a race started we gathered spectators and people asked to play in the next race. At the Modellers' exhibition we were the only stand not displaying a "Do Not Touch" sign, in fact actively encouraging participants to move the models round the track, which went down very well!

I was recently contacted by John from Aberdeen Wargames Club to let me know that the club had instigated a club FAVSTVS FVRIVS competition. The photos below show the track from the final race (held earlier this month).  I am reliably informed that Carlos came in first and Andy got the wooden spoon. 😊 John goes on to say "We have also developed a version of the game which we call  Faustus Furious Mechanicus Podicus , based on the pod racing scene in Star Wars -The Phantom Menace . There are a couple of variations  from the basic rules like snipers and sand worms but it is 98% FF as written. We are planning to put on a participation game at the Claymore Show in Edinburgh in August." There are a few more photos below of the trial pod racing game that they  will host at Claymore. The group's original challenge was to build the pods from no more than 5 items bought at a pound shop, but that has since been expanded to include any pieces of junk that p...

I realise that I can be a bit special (sure, aren't we all in a way?), and I like to do things a little bit different, but this time I may have got a little carried away!  In Hellenistic and Roman art, chariot races between erotes (the pluralised form of Eros) is a relatively common theme. Generally they occur in dining/symposium contexts, and in that way, are associated with Dionysos and other Dionysiac themes. They also appear in burial contexts which can, again, have Dionysiac associations, either overtly, or more subtly. Thrice-born Dionysos was, afterall, a god of death and resurection as well as out-of-body experiences. Anyway, my point is that in the Greco-Roman world, winged children driving chariots pulled by animals was a 'thing'. Goat-drawn chariots from a fresco in the House of the Chaste Lovers, Pompeii. Goat-drawn chariots from a fragmentary fresco from Seleukid Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates. Deer-drawn chariots from a fresco in the House of the Vettii, Pompe...

With social distancing the new normal, and schools closed for the foreseeable future, I have joined many of my generation in trying to juggle working from home, with homeschooling a wee'un. Before the shutdown, my lad was looking a probability as part of the KS2 maths curriculum. 'Ah ha,' says I, 'Lets roll some dice!' Earlier in the week, we were just playing around with likelihood of rolling particular numbers on a d6, expressed as fractions. He readily told me that there was a 1/6 chance of rolling a 2, a 1/6 chance of rolling a 4, and a 2/6 chance of rolling 5+. To test this we rolled 12d6 (why roll a die 12 times when you can just do it all at once?). The photo above was his roll - and also the principal reason he tends to win when we play wargames... This, I complained, was not statistically average. To put our probability theory into action, today we went on to play what will become a part of the weekly lesson plan - a wargame. He opted for Faus...

I'm truly honoured that Alex Woodrow chose to run a participation game of my racing game, Faustus Furius , at the Crusade wargaming convention in Penarth, in the Vale of Glamorgan. The rules were designed for fast and fun quasi-historical chariot racing, but were intentionally written to be played with whatever figures the players wanted to use. Below are a few of the photos and the brief report Alex posted on the Song of Blades and Heroes Facebook Group, re-posted with his permission. It looks like an absolutely fantastic set up! Squig Racing at Crusade 2020 Here are some pics of the Faustus Furius based game I ran today at the Crusade show in Penarth. The course was a figure of 8, just one lap as in testing we found two laps took a bit too long for a show game. One innovation I added was having a deck of cards for players to draw from if they crashed into a mushroom patch which each triggered some random psychedelic game effect. I had thought players would avoid these as...

The last - or more probably, the 'latest' - racer to join my son's collection for Faustus Furius is Destroyer, the orcish steam-tank. I picked this up as an impulse buy whilst browsing the Perfect Six Miniatures site. I've said it before, and I'm sure to say it again, Richard has some really superb quality products on there. It is, rather obviously, a 6mm orcish steam-tank. In the game, it will run as a heavy chariot class meaning that it's acceleration isn't good, but it is sturdy and should handle anything other racers throw at it.

Following my less than impressive performance in our last Faustus Furius race, my wee lad was gracious/cocky enough to humour me with a rematch. As last time, we only played a single lap race. This time there were six racers - Antiochos and Darius, both driving scythed chariots, and Ranzo, the orc archer class chariot were teamed up, all racing on behalf of the lad. Driving to restore my honour were Hattusilis driving a standard chariot, Medb in her agile chariot, and Romulus in a heavy archer class chariot.   Despite having to set up behind the rest of the racers at the starting line, Romulus ended up having to activate first. He fired off a ballista bolt at Antiochos to try and clear a path, but completely missed his target. His compulsory move then saw him ever so slowly plod forward, collide with both Antiochos and Darius and flip over. Antiochos was shunted out of the way, heading off to the right (not the way he wanted to be going!), and Darius bounced away into a ...