Irregular Wars Wargaming

I'm delighted to say that a deck of 52 chance cards for use with Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End is now available through DriveThru Cards , a sister site of Wargames Vault. There has been a lot more interest in these cards than I ever anticipated, and up till now, the order process has been labour intensive, and the price for the customer has been high. Even after I was forced to put the price up earlier this year, I was still making a loss on each sale. Using DriveThru Cards makes sense in terms of labour and price, and the end product is still first class!

Another game of Galleys & Galleons from the last week's shenanigans. This time we played a straight up two-player game with 350 point fleets. This is a fun size of game for two players and rewards the thoughtful gambling of activation dice much more... honestly(?) than smaller games.  "My Q3 indiaman is within the flagship's command range and gets a +1 modifier to their Q roll!" paraphrases I all enthusiastically. "I shall roll all three activation dice because I only need 2s or better ..." I continues, "What could possibly go wrong?"  Two 1s and a 2 is what could go wrong. And did. Often. I once more took control of the Dutch East India Company fleet (two indiamen, two cromsters, a sloop, a merchant junk and two small merchant junks), facing off against a pirate fleet (galleon, brig, lorcha, jacht, raft, two flotillas of pirate cutters) which also included the steam driven monitor and the drebbel, stretching historicity somewhat in th...

I have previously posted ( HERE , and then later  HERE ) about my quest for some mounted crossbowmen for the 6mm Medieval Scandinavian army I am painting up next for L'Art de la Guerre . Finding myself with a few spare moments last week I finally got around to painting up my two elements of cheap and nasty, yet quite passable conversions. So without further adieu, here they are, painted up in Kalmar Union yellow and red. 

The Galleys & Galleons expansion, Fayre Winds and Foul Tides , is nearing completion with everything written, just needing to be edited, cleaned up, re-written and edited again. To get a load of the different new rules out on the table in a single match we played a five way game this week using the 'Thar She Blows' scenario from the core rules. I took control of the 72 point sea monster in the centre of the table, the other four players took control of roughly 100 points each in their allocated corners: two Dutch cromsters (small armed merchantmen) Utrecht and Haarlem , the Spanish airship Nombre de Dios , the ghostly galleon Bluebeard's Revenge ,   and the steam powered monitor Crocodile  supported by a dinky little drebbel (a prototype submarine) Damp Doxy . At the end of every turn I earned a victory point. They each earned a victory point for every point of damage they did to me (or each other) and a bonus 10 points for being the ship to have killed me within ...

My Greek force continues to grow, however slowly. Here is a new unit of six heroic shades, undead spirits of fallen hoplites. As my force is pseudo-Hellenistic, I felt that some ghostly hoplites would add a little bit of period flavour. The figures were gifted by gaming buddy Jim and painted up in ghostly green. I believe they came from Northstar some time ago.

Last week saw my Artemisian chorus take to the stage once more to take on the vile Hibernians from the far north (and then off to the west a bit). Artemis was accompanied by Atalanta and my heroic centauris, as well as the Kalydonian Boar. In support were my eight hypaspists, four satyr archers and four dryads. We played two games and used the same forces in each. In the first game, set among some Grecian ruins, I put Artemis and her dryads in the wood in one corned, with the hypaspists and Atalanta nearby. The satyrs and centauris were across the stream while the boar was hiding at the back of another woods. Unfortunatley my satyrs turned up to the game drunk and, with a Q5 proved very hard to activate throughout the game. The Irish had a werewolf and a large unit of slingers posted just out side the boar wood, a unit of armoured nobles and two small units of unarmoured nobles by the river, along with a druid and their foul god Lugh. Off in the ruins was Cu Chulainn in his ...

As playtesting for Galleys & Galleons: Fayre Winds & Foul Tides  (for that be what we be calling it now...) enters its final phase, I thought I would post a nice little update on the status of my various fleets. Charon the Ferryman (65) Q2 C0 Boats,Charismatic,Derring-do,Intimidating,Magical: Necromancer,Spectral;; To begin with, here is Charon, Ferryman of the Dead. Charon himself is a Baccus 6mm ancient civilian, in a scratch built boat (my thanks again to JB for the scratch building). Charon counts as Magical in the game, with an obvious choice of Necromancy for his school of magic. The Ghostly Galleon Bluebeard’s Revenge (96) Q3 C5 Galleon Rigged,Ghost Ship,Intimidating,Spectral,Swashbucklers;;   Next up is the spectral ghost ship, Bluebeard's Revenge . Spectral models are harder to hit with gunnery than their more corporeal counterparts. The model is from GW's Dreadfleet with the hull cut away to the waterline. Loath as I am to admit it, it i...