Irregular Wars Wargaming

Last weekend I had some time to paint up two further buildings for my Bronze Age table - this time from Terrain4Print, purchased from a seller on Etsy. They are very similar in style to the smaller one-story buildings prepared back in December ( Bronze Age buildings ), although with different shaped doors and window shutters. The prints are a little rough around some of the edges, although I don't think anyone would complain to see them on the tabletop.  I also built a couple of Wargames Atlantic plastic chariots and gave them some spare Foundry crew. More on these to come!

Ah yes, Asteropaios, son of Pelagon, grandson of the mighty Axios River, and lord of the Paionians. For many (most?), Asteropaios may not be a household name, but for me, he is a favourite minor character in the Iliad . Admittedly, that's more to do with a fascination with the later Classical and Hellenistic kingdom of Paionia on which I have published a few articles in the past, but it is great to go back and see where it all began.  As a possible southern extension of the central European Lausitz culture, I wanted my Bronze Age Paionians to be visually distinct from the other contingents on the table. I've also been looking for an excuse for years to pick up a couple of packs of Wargames Foundry Bronze Age northern Europeans - so that's what I did. Now, they may be a little too Danish for the Balkans, but I'll fight for the right to put them on the table! Asteropaios was the second named hero to lead the Paionians. His uncle, Pyraichmes, being named in Book 2 of the I...

Only a little update for the Ilium project this week - sharing an objective marker of 'Trojan' women from the great 28mm Bronze Age Greeks range by Eureka miniatures.  Two of the scenarios in the book will feature objectives to capture notables - in the last scenario this is specifically Helen. This little vignette shows a defiant looking Helen in the company of a distraught Andromache and another attendant.

More playtesting of Ilium: A Game of Heroes this week - and this time with fully painted forces for the first time. Playing as the heroic Trojans (bottom right), I started with Sarpedon and Aeneas on the board - both in the central deployment sector. Aeneas' two promachoi archers were very pleased to be able to start on the roof of a small house.  Commanding the Achaean sea wolves, Andrew began with Telamonian Ajax and Agamemnon (top left), both of whom were deployed in their own right sector. Aeneas led his promachoi warriors around the left of the building. His archers moved forward cautiously, shooting at the Achaeans from the roof top, but both missing their marks. Sarpedon moved forward into the olive trees in the centre of the board, using his special 'shield leader' ability to buff his Lykian warriors' defence. They moved on past their king, forming a loose screen between Sarpedon and Ajax. Ajax and Agamemnon both moved across the plain, followed by their promac...

Over the last few weeks I have been very slowly working towards the completion of my fourth 'Trojan' contingent for Ilium: A Game of Heroes . This time round it is Sarpedon and his Lykians. All models are from Wargames Foundry Sea People's range. Indeed, they are all from the same pack! Sarpedon got the royal treatment and I didn't hold back on the purple. Despite that, or perhaps aided by it, I can't shake the feeling that this model was based on an aging Australian surfie. I think its the goatie and the bare feet, but it smacks of my childhood... The Lykian contingent includes Glaukos as a named promachos. Named promachoi have a slightly improved profile over regular promachoi and normally have a special rule. In the case of Glaukos, he has the Royal kinsman rule, meaning he takes over as the contingent's leader if Sarpedon fall. To make him out from the other promachoi, Glaukos got the same style of studded shield as Sarpedon, and a purple baldric. The inclus...

Perhaps there's something primal about February because in parallel with Mark's Palaeo Diet month, I was asked to run a couple of games of Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten this week out at Clare Gaming & Hobbies in Ballyclare. With four players (Andy, Dave, Roger and myself) sat around the ould 3x3, we set up a basic hunting ground with populated with a little bit of everything for the first hunt and set out with a hunting party of six hunters and two hounds. The party's inexperience played out hilariously as the wolf and cave bear savaged hunters and prey beasts alike, while our fire-bearer contributed to the chaos by flushing the prey right off the table. In the end, the tribe managed to secure enough food to survive purely thanks to the half the hunters getting killed. But at least the tribe's only female survived, so there is hope for humanity yet! By the second hunt of the evening, there was a much better understanding of hunter strategies. Working cohesively, th...

To finish this year’s Palaeo Diet season, Mark used the Pulp variant of the rules to play a game of skulduggery, as the black hand of the Russian regime - the Okhrana secret police - tries to capture V I Lenin who is resting up at a German army camp at Bialystok on his way to the Finland Station. So, it’s April 1917 and Lenin is being conveyed by the German High Command from his exile in Switzerland, back to Russia where they hope he will further destabilise the tottering Provisional government. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Here’s an overhead view of a small German army camp outside the town of Bialystok. In Lithuania if you’re a patriot or in Poland if you’re not. It’s the dead of night … (Photo #1). The camp is guarded by a detachment of six men (Goons, commanded by Sgt Ostmann, all armed with smg). A snatch squad of five Okhrana men (Adventurers, commanded by special agent Malinovsky, all armed with pistols) will try to infiltrate, grab Lenin, and escape with him (Photo...

Continuing with his rampage through prehistory, Mark returns with another Palaeo Diet: Pulp (mis)adventure! *** The freighter Excelsior! was carrying a fusion bomb to the Europa colony when it lifted off from Suvarnabhumi at the start of its most recent voyage. Unluckily, in what is being officially described as a sequence of unforeseeable events, the weapon had to be jettisoned to allow the ship to break earth orbit and enter the aether flux. Luckily the astrogation crew got a good fix on where and when it impacted. Six months later, and the Eromanga Sea about 93+/- 0.02Mya is the focus of the search for the errant weapon. As usual in such cases the Uttlerley-Barkinge (Time-travel & landscape gardening) Corporation is leading the search, on contract from Imperial Spaceways. The approximate site has been confirmed by aerial sensing, and a recovery team is ready for insertion. Here is the official group photo of the recovery team. It comprises six divers (Gold 1-3 & Red 1-3) a...