Irregular Wars Wargaming

Continuing (slow and steady!) with my Baccus 6mm Austrians for Bataille Empire , I have finished the first of my white-coated line regiments - I will have four in the main infantry division in my 1809 corp. I have used infantry wearing the 1798 pattern helmet for this regiment for a couple of reasons. Partly as a way of distinguishing the veteran regiment from regular and conscript line, but mostly because I love the look! These are nominally the Deutschmeister Nr 4 regiment which are generally describe as having light blue facings in modern sources, although Knötel seems to show them with a darker blue.  

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...

Continuing the great green march, I managed to finish off two companies of goblin madcaps and a goblin hero for my 10mm army. Mostly GW Warmaster figures, with a drop of Polar Fox for good measure.

Photo courtesy Andrea Sfiligoi With social distancing and self isolation becoming the new normal, it is worth remembering that there are a number of great games out there written specifically for solo gaming.  Some of them were even written by me!😉 Four Against the Titans , and Four Against Ragnarök are game books for sandbox adventures in worlds inspired by Greek and Norse mythology. Based on the highly acclaimed Four Against Darkness series of RPG-lite dungeon-delving adventures by Andrea Sfiligoi, they are standalone solitaire or co-operative pen-and-paper games for 1 to 4 players. You don’t need any other books. No GM is needed! All you need is a pencil, two regular dice, the book, and the luck of the gods! For a more traditional high fantasy dungeon-delving experience, you shouldn't look past Andrea's   Four Against Darkness . Now with 20+ expansions (and counting), 4AD has something to offer everyone. If you prefer your solo games to have miniatu...

The Utterley-Barking Time Travel (& Landscaping) Company loses millions each year, but still pays all its bills and stays afloat, it’s aura of mystery, adventure, and romance undimmed. As a (very) private family firm it’s books are not open, and dark rumours abound. Slave trading? Black market wildlife sales? But the truth is simple: treasure. Nic, the current CEO, is a wiz at locating long lost treasure and organising expeditions to recover it.  This year his target is the wreck of the cruise liner  Victoria Imperatrix , which was inward bound from Antares in 1891 when it fell out of earth orbit, for reasons unknown, and literally disappeared before it could burn up in the atmosphere. Utterley-Barking has discovered the wreck, fallen back through a time warp quite a long way, and now at the bottom of the Tethys Sea. His team will attempt to recover the large quantity of Antarean gems that were aboard. ************** The photo below shows the tabletop set...

*Another report on the Grey Wolf clan - last seen dining well on mammoth steaks - by Mark.* ____________________________________________________ The winter snow has mostly melted, though some renegade areas persist. An advance party of the Grey Wolf clan is on the move. These are the most capable hunters. Their destination is a marshy valley a few days away from the wintering caves. The rest of the clan including women and children, is following a days march behind. The clan will make their summer base here. ************* For this first game, the party of four hunters (2 spears, 1 club, 1 bow) and a hound (belonging to Blondie, the club-armed team leader) must kill at least 4 bulk before nightfall (8 turns) so there is enough food for the main party when it arrives tomorrow. Here is the tabletop layout and the starting positions. The tabletop is 900x900mm more or less. There are two areas of bushes (thickets), two hills, three marshy areas, and various patches of resi...

Not to be outdone by the recent halfling reinforcements, the extra goblins that I was supposed to paint over the weekend did get some colour while I was off for St Patrick's Day. Above are all four companies I have so far - led by their chief Snatters riding the ferocious white wolf, Snowy. All are Warmaster goblin wolf riders (beautiful figures!). The photo below just shows the two new companies.

Over the weekend I had plans to paint up a couple more units of 10mm goblin wolf-riders that I have recently bought. However... the mission didn't quite survive contact with the enemy. In other words, I opened a bag of leftover Magister Militum halflings that I had no intention of ever painting up. Two days later I have two more halfling companies and a new sheriff to lead the Hearthshire militia. No painted goblins to be seen though. The full unit of halfling yeoman pony riders. The new company is on the right. I find that units painted up years apart are never quite the same, but I'm happy that these mix well enough. A large unit of three companies of militia archers. Again the new company - in the middle - actually fits in pretty well.  The Sheriff of Hearthshire! This little conversion uses all Magister Militum parts (except for the shield which is the top of a Kallistra rat-man standard). The two shield bearers are  both halfling command figures. The chap on...

It all seemed so evenly matched. The Coureur de Bois army had mustered a decent strength and traveled south down the coast to confront a large force of Carib Indians heading north. ... but then we rolled for disease and mishaps. One of the only capable melee units in the Carib army was bought off, the chieftain's Cacique headhunter's own company was revealed to be afflicted by a virulent disease, and a couple of other Carib units had lesser strains of the same disease.  However, for all that the Caribs were afflicted by disease, the Coureur des Bois army was riddled through and through with their own variety of pox. Three companies rolled for virulent disease, while still others suffered slightly less, but were diseased none-the-less. In the first turn, the Coureur des Bois moved to form a line along the front of the woods, discourteously keeping all of the sick and demoralised units together in the centre. The Caribs formed a loose line within shooting range. In tu...

Somewhere off the coast of Africa, Capitane Cadieux's Breton adventurers sailed directly into the path of a squadron of Barbary corsars. The 200 point Breton flotilla was made up of the frigate,  La Fricatrice ; the fluyt,  La Flûte à Bec ; and the sloop, L'Antelope . I am reliably informed that the first is a dirty pun on frigate, the second is the French word for a recorder (woodwind) and the third is a French translation of the name of the sloop in the Stan Rogers song, Barrett's Privateers. The Barbary Corsairs (also 200 points)were sailing/rowing in the galley, Sultana ; the galliots, Emir and Pasha ; and the xebec, Zenobie .  As the Emir and Pasha rowed straight towards the Bretons, the  La Fricatrice opened fire at the Pasha , causing noticeable hull damage. Unimpressed by taking fire, both galliots surged forward, firing from their bow guns before launching successive savage boarding actions. The Pasha  received further damage in the a...