Irregular Wars Wargaming

Before the age of pandemics and lockdowns, all-time-good-fellow Andrew and I placed a joint order with Cibo's Little Dudes, a independent sculptor/manufacturer in Switzerland. While the order arrived months ago - and Andrew has long since finished painting his ratman army - I only managed to get my hands on my little bit of the order over the weekend. Behold Skrotrot the Great Goblin on his wyvern, Skittles the shaman, and a goblin battle-wagon. Technically sold as an orc warlord, I don't have any orcs in my army, so Skrotrot will have to assume the guise of great goblin in an 'under the Misty Mountains' kind of way. The model comes in several parts: the wyvern body with rider are all one, the rider's right hand and axe are a seperate piece, as is a feather for his helmet, along with the wyvern's head and wings. All pretty easy to assemble, although I added a little greenstuff around the wing joints as a precautionary measure, and some more around the h...

To compliment my Norse 'tribe' for Palaeo Diet , I wanted to pick up a draugr (undead warrior) as a tabletop predator - I will use the 'Mummy' profile to make him truly terrifying for my hunter adventurers. As my Norsemen are actually Viking dwarfs from Macrocosm, naturally, I needed a zombie dwarf as my draugr. Looking around, I found this splendidly computer rendered chap at the Secret Cat Shop. The detail was amazing and I figured that as a one-off purchase, I could overlook the rather high price tag - £5 for a single miniature would normally make me cry a little on the inside. I also thought it would be a neat way to purchase my first 3D printed figure (printed by the manufacturer and posted to me, not a file to be printed by me). Sadly, reality didn't quite equal my expectations. I'm not sure if it just shows my total inexperience with the new technology, but the figure that arrived showed far, far less detail than the render advertised on the w...

What follows is part 2 of Mark's latest report from Pattayavium. Part 1 can be found HERE . *** Turn 4: Cicero now roused his faction to a pitch of anger against the iniquities of grain hoarding, and deftly pointed out that one of the leading offenders - Aulus Spiculus, the Civic Pontiff no less - had an opulent villa practically next door, bound to be  full of barns bursting with grain. With that, they were off (triple roll group activation). In the excitement of the moment they clean forgot to check for the rope trick distraction. The mob brushed past the doorkeepers and confronted Spiculus in the Gardens of Mus. Spiculus could be in trouble. The contingency roll to see if one of his household slaves slipped away to summon Brasidas & Co was negative. No help is in the offing. Meanwhile Brasidas and his men are enjoying the delights of the Eros: listening to a reading of Homer, comparing Falernian with Cyprian vintages, and discussing the Concept of t...

I'm pleased to be able to share another cracking game report from Mark in Thailand - this time we return to Pattayavium, the apocryphal Greco-Roman outpost in the Indies. Its a bit report, so I've split it over a couple of posts on Mark's request. Part 2 can be found HERE . ***  The prologue: In this remotest outpost of the Graeco-Roman world, where we set our stage, the year of the Squirrel is not going well. The southeast monsoon is late and maritime trade (the raison d’être of the settlement) is at a standstill. The harvest has been poor again. Grain prices are rising with the temperatures. Those who can have left the town, for their country villas or their family villages. Those who have nowhere to go are in a dangerous mood. The times suit rabble rousers who know an incendiary grievance when they see one, and Pattayavium is not short of either ... The principal players: Octavius Catiline  (politician) Q2 C2 Demagogue, Dynast A leading slave trade...

So... I over the past couple of years I have fallen in love with goblins (those cheeky chappies). And more recently, I have been rather taken with green stuff and all the creative possibilities inherent therein. And then my wee lad was going through a bat phase for a few weeks there. One thing led to another, and I now have a company of goblin bat-riders!  The bats are both 28mm giant bats from Northstar Miniatures - yet more of their Frostgrave range. The fatter rider on the bigger bat got his head and right arm from a spare Warmaster wolf-rider. The rest of the body is prosthetic green stuff. The smaller bat needed a smaller rider. He is a completely new sculpt whom I nicknamed Dobby for absolutely no copyright infringing reasons. 

A work-in-progress teaser from the Fantastic Battles front cover. I'm delighted to be continuing my working relationship with Greece's foremost wargaming rules illustrator (and a most talented artist despite it all), Orestix Ermeides. 

This awesome terrain piece was posted in a wargaming group on Facebook yesterday. Aside from the fact that it is a lovely, and very flavourful (pun) landscape piece, I was also thrilled to see it was built for Palaeo Diet Eat or be Eaten . Then I read the comments... brilliant. 😁 

The last of my three planned factions for swashbuckling games, I finished up my generically indigenous pulp native war party this week. Although I took  inspiration  from the indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, northern South America and the Caribbean, there is nothing intentionally specific about these gentlemen and no cultural disrespect is intended. The figures are all from a single plastic sprue of Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago natives, so they have more than a touch of fantasy about them.

In this second post introducing Irregular Wars: Fantastic Battles , we will look at two of the fundamental aspects of any game - the basing system and unit profiles. Unit basing and measuring distances The basic unit in Fantastic Battles is the company; companies may act independently or be grouped together into larger formations. Each company is represented on the table by a number of figures on a single base. Companies are an abstract representation of a large body of men (or orcs, or lizardmen, or elves etc ad nauseum), perhaps numbering in the hundreds or thousands. There is no figure removal to represent casualties, the exact number of figures per company is unimportant – players should base their units in the way that looks best. We recommend square 40x40mm bases for companies of 6mm-15mm scale figures, or 60x60mm for larger scales. However, the actual base size used is irrelevant to the game mechanics as long as the same base widths are used across all companies on the table....

In February 2011, I released Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World’s End . Originally inspired by the Elizabethan wars in Ireland, the rules were written to be suitable for all asymmetrical clashes around the fringes of the European world in the 16th and Early 17th centuries. A 2nd edition followed in 2014 which streamlined many of the rules to make the turns flow more smoothly and which earned fan-made supplements to cover ancient, medieval and fantasy genres. Since then, I have written 10 further rules sets and expansions, all published through Ganesha Games. As I approach the 10th anniversary of writing rules fit for public consumption it feels like the right time to return to the Irregular Wars system. Rather than releasing a 3rd edition of Conflict at the World’s End –which still serves its niche admirably – I have embarked on a more broadly applicable set of rules for fantasy mass-battles, Fantastic Battles . The title is a play on words do you see, ‘cause the genre is fan...

The final part of my swashbuckler diversion will be five 'trope' natives. They are all built off a single plastic sprue (again from Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago), and are not overly historical. However, they fit the bill for generic natives as featured in in the likes of George MacDonald Fraser's The Pyrates , and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I got as far as finishing the cacique above, and started to feel a twinge in the back, so am going to have to pause painting for a few days. For less culturally insensitive inspiration I conducted a quick search for Arawak, Taino and Carib images. I can't guarantee which of the images below genuinely show these peoples (I suspect some show indigenous people of the Amazon), but I know the first one at least is an 1813 painting of a Carib family by Stedman.