Irregular Wars Wargaming

As the second edition of  Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End  nears completion, I thought I'd post up a few sample pages to allow people to see what they're in for.  The rules have been formatted in the publishing programme and are now receiving a final round of proofing (so that means that these pages are not necessarily in their final form). You'll be able to see from the contents page below that this book will consist of 30 pages of rules, a campaign system and 46 different army lists. I am planning on having the rules available from both Vexillia Ltd (downloadable pdf) and Amazon (hardcopy) for the start of December. If any surprises are thrown up during the proofing I may have to delay release until the start of 2015, but the plan is for December 2014.

I have been following the AARs for Song of Shadows and Dust posted by Tim from Saskatoon with great interest and enjoyment recently. If you haven't come across his (much better than my) blog before, I'd certainly encourage you to check it out HERE .  Re-invigorated by seeing somebody else enjoying my game so much, I decided I needed to add something to my mini-city, Antiocheia Mikros. Looking around the house, I grabbed some spare insulating foam from the roof space and decided that I could add a touch more three-dimensionality to my city with an acropolis, or 'upper city'. Using a black marker I outlined a rough shape on the foam, sufficient to house my temple or a few houses and started carving with a breadknife. I made sure there would be a couple of ways up to the top, with a small ramp, a broad ramp and a small area allowing models to climb up in two stages. I slapped on a bit of left over house paint testers (left over from paining the buildings

Another game of Irregular Wars was played out on our dining table last night. This time the Spaniards were faced by a few ship loads of Dutch merchant adventurers. My Hollanders (the force at the lower half of the table) were attacking and I thought that I had drawn an excellent selection of chance cards. I had a quartermaster general who should have made my army less susceptible to disease and other deployment mishaps. I also had a rain card (allowing for the chance of a rain storm) and the sodden ground card (which means that a rainstorm can turn all open ground into muddy difficult terrain). The poor Spanish drew less well, ending up with a lord who was both uninspiring (penalty when rallying troops) and nauseous (allowing me to take advantage of his stomach complaints and upset his orders once per game). The other card was kept secret. During recruitment, the Spanish predictably recruited a larger army, while my Dutch were generally of much better quality. I had companies

No, no, I certainly can't recall ever saying my Seleukids were finished. I have to wait until someone starts to produce decent Hellenistic Thracians before I'd really consider the army finished - and that is a long way off.  In the interim, and while the Hail Caesar shelf in my warchest gets dangerously full, I decided to paint up a few more bits and pieced. First up, I've added a couple of commanders recently, including an Elephantarch - I'm sure you'll be able to tell which one he is in the photo. I have six commanders now meaning I can split the army into two competing branches of the royal house for a Seleukid civil war. I expanded my Arab units to be able to field an entire Arab division (two light infantry warbands and two light horse units). These guys are, beyond doubt, the finest 6mm figures I have come across. They are from the 19th century Mahdist range but in the absense of a designated pre-Islamic Arab range, the will suffice nicely.

Last night saw an army of Caribbean natives match up against a force of Colonial Spanish using the (almost complete) second edition of Irregular Wars . The table was terrain heavy which should have favoured the natives who do not suffer from movement modifiers, but some statistically unlikely dice rolling left the Caribs lagging in the first half of the game. The Spanish (slowly) advanced their pike militia across the ford while the native scouts went out early to pepper  them with arrows. Unfortunately for them, the dice gods had abandoned them and they had little success. Much more accurate fire from the Spanish across the river started to reduce the resolve of the Carib defenders while the pike continued their excruciatingly slow advance. Behind them, Spanish colonists in a great mass, both foote and horse, crossed the ford. Once the Spanish cavalry were across the river the match became a bit of a forgone conclusion. With pike blocks to their front and horsemen plowing

One of my gaming comrades as been developing his own set of naval rules called  Broadside  - initially focused on 20th century engagements but I believe the intention is to adapt it later to deal with the 18th and 19th centuries as well. After playtesting Broadside I  received an enthusiasm boost to return to All at Sea , my ship-on-ship game set in the 16th and 17th centuries.  My 1/1200 scale galleons were irreconcilably damaged during the big move two years ago, since then I have been using 1/2400 scale vessels for my own play testing. These paint up fine but, admittedly, are really just gaming pieced at that scale.  I looked around for alternatives and kept coming back to the Peter Pig Pieces of Eight range, 1/450 scale 17th century vessels. While being slightly later than my previous forays into naval games (very much the 16th century), I decided to order a couple to see how they paint up.  I also came across the Ral Partha Europe range of fantasy ships in my search. While

The new edition of Irregular Wars is designed to be played with a deck of 52 chance cards. Playing without the chance cards is certainly possible, although we feel that their inclusion will add a little more period flavour to the game. They represent different personal traits of the lord, specialist officers, unusual battlefield conditions and other random events such as the chance of a rain storm to ruin your plans, or the presence of traitors in your enemies camp. Three cards are drawn randomly for each lord after they have decided upon their faction, but before they have begun recruiting their army. Some cards are revealed as soon as they are are drawn; these cards generally effect the pre-game phases such as recruitment, terrain set up or deployment. Others are be kept secret from the opposing player(s) until such time as they are used.  The text for all of the cards will be provided at the end of the rule book. Players will be free to copy the text as they like a