Irregular Wars Wargaming

Over at The Recoiling Knight and the Surrounded Spear  blog , Franko has just posted a great after action report of a recent game of Irregular Wars . Franko has a great blog and I urge you to check it out. In the mean time, he's been gracious enough to allow me to repost his AAR below. Happy reading! **** It has been some time but my friend Josh and I had another go at Irregular Wars . This time we played the Second Edition and I must say a great game just got a little cleaner and we were blessed with even more army lists! At top, Josh and his gold seeking Colonial Spanish. I hope he remembers the shellacking he received the last time he faced my Mapuche (bottom). This photo is actually after pre-game rolls and a turn of movement. My warriors armed with loncoquillquill (halberds) and bow enter the rough going on the left. My 2 pike units and my lancer cavalry with a Lord unit are on their right. 2 archer units sneak up the right flank woods. We rolled and I was the attacker. ...

Ganesha Games and 15mm.co.uk have jointly announced that, as of today, hard copies of all Ganesha rule sets will be available from 15mm.co.uk , and Ganesha will start selling 15mm.co.uk stock at shows. This means that there is one more place for you to pick up Song of Shadows and Dust  and, shortly, Galleys & Galleons !

Ok, so first up, there are no bears. But there are Samnites, and there are hoplites. Being off work with the pox and having a lot of down time (child at school, wife at work), I've managed to get an awful lot (for me) painted recently. I didn't realise until this weekend when, with some good weather, I marshaled my freshly painted stuff together for varnishing. It turns out that I am now the proud general of ten more Hail Caesar units than I was a couple of weeks ago. Considering my initial plan was to collect an army of 12 units, this has been quite a good run (the total is now 40 units and eight commanders...). Among the new units have been Thracian mercenaries, more Taurus highlanders, more Arab light cavalry and the like, for the Seleukid army. I may also have ordered another unit of elephants and two more units of heavy cavalry from Baccus.... but these have not arrived yet so wont get done before I return to work next week. However, a few of the new units have been...

I'm delighted to be able to show off the front cover for Galleys & Galleons . The rules will be produced in 6x9 inch format and will probably come in at around 80 pages. The 6x9 format makes for a tidy book, but also works well as a pdf to be read off tablets etc. The rules will include eight scenarios, a campaign system and at least 40 profiles for assorted vessels and the like. The most likely release date still seems to be September.

Pox-ridden though I may be (chickenpox that is), there was nothing that was going to stop my oldest friend visiting us during a trip up from the Antipodes. I have been in no fit state to go anywhere with him, but handily enough, he was something of a wargamer himself during his teens and twenties, so over the course of a couple of days, we player multitudionous games. Below are only a couple of photos from some of our games of Song of Shadows and Dust and Galleys & Galleons . Josh was one of the proof readers of SSD , but had never played it, so it was a delight to see how much he enjoyed the narrative feel of the games we had.  In this shot, my Antiochene militia had been caught spread out around the town. Here you can see the grizzled Captain Pyrrhos trying to get his squad to form up again. During a later game, Pyhrros and the lads from the militia had to fight off an attack from the zealous gang known as the "Thunder of Ba'al" who set the militia drinki...

Well, somehow it transpired that I never bothered myself to get the chickenpox when I was a kid. Even when my friends or my brother had it, I was just never that 'into' contagious diseases and didn't catch it. Just over two weeks ago, my son got it. Now I am ridden with the pox and I'm not a happy camper; blisters everywhere, including one in one of my eyes.  On the upside, it looks like I'll be off work a little while and I've already managed to paint four more infantry units for my 6mm Seleukids project/obsession. I thought I'd just pop 'em all out on the table to see how it's getting on. My conclusions: I think I need more heavy cavalry. My cavalry already dominates the battlefield - and might be able to take on all my opponents' cavalry together with a fighting chance - but it just feels like I need more. It's not that I'm addicted to cavalry, I can stop any time I want to. This army roster shows the current state of pla...

As my prize from this year's Pendraken painting competition , I ordered some of the new 10mm Picts to flesh out my two Dux Bellorum armies (nether of whom are Picts I might add). Over the weekend I was able to slap a bit of paint on the new chaps and take a few grainy pictures. These are the Pictish cavalry. There are only two sculpts, which is quite a shame, as these are very versatile generic hairy cavalry types. The model with the spear/javelin is really quite splendid, although I'm not a huge fan of the horse for the other sculpt. Both figures wear trousers, long sleeved tunics and cloaks. The sword waving chap has a simple helmet and both obviously carry small-medium sized round shields. I've painted mine up to be riders - non-noble cavalary - for my Romano-British army. Here they are alongside a unit of noble riders (Pendraken Late Roman armoured cavalry). The Picts are quite a bit slighter than the Romans but this is more noticeable in the horses than ...

The play testing of Galleys & Galleons has gone very well and we are about to enter the proofing stage. I'm not particularly fond of tempting fate, but I can't see too many scenarios stopping the rules from being released on schedule - in time for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. I thought I post a few more pictures to give an idea of some different fleet types possible in the game. So far I have shown off my pirate fleet , and my Dutch East India Company fleet . Powering out of port, propelled by the sweat of enslaved oarsmen, I'd like now to present my Barbary Corsairs. The three galleys are from Skytrex with Peter Pig deck crew; the xebec ( as some of you may have seen ) is a conversion based on a Peter Pig schooner. The Corsairs The Galley Sultana - 48 points Q3 C3 Special Rules: Galley, Intimidating, Swashbucklers, Yare The Galliot Emir - 50 points Q2 C2 Special Rules: Derring-do, Galley, Shallow draft, Swashbucklers, Yare The Galliot Pash...

In breaking news, the European Ministry of Defense had announced that it has seen fit to increase spending on the armed forces, bolstering each Imperial Response Group to include a full platoon of Special Forces Storm Troopers including a brace of Shadow Scouts, a Banshee Gun Ship, Goliath Mobile Artillery Unit and a Vixen Battle Walker. Costing 600 points, the Imperial Response Group is ready to tackle even the mightiest of Mighty Monsters .

Yoyo Skywalker has been at it again and has posted two great little AARs from recent games of Irregular Wars . I re-post a couple of photos from his games below, but for the full story and many more pictures, check out  his original blog post HERE . The first game saw the conquistadors ambushed by the Zapotecs. The second game saw the conquistadors making a punitive raid against a Zapotec village.