Irregular Wars Wargaming

The Bacchae took the field for the first time this week, facing off against Joel's nasty orcses. Joel had been part of the original Fantastic Battle playtesting group but hasn't not played since. We played a 750 point game on a simplified battlefield (just two large woods on an otherwise oven field) to get re-acquainted with the mechanics.  The Bacchae's stimulant racial trope proved interesting, with the centaurs completely uncontrollable, the maenads and one unit of satyrs becoming berserk and proud, and the other gaining +1 melee and +1 movement. The orcs more-or-less avoided any mishaps during deployment (just a little disease, but what do you expect from orcs), while both the centaurs and the goat-chariot deployed late on my side of the table. The table was a tad narrow, so we deployed closer than we should have. That meant that units closed faster than they normally would and reduced the benefits of both my shooting and my many magic-users. Bakchos (mage-lord with le...

Over the weekend I managed to paint up the first unit for my 10mm Beastfolk army. The miniatures are digital sculpts from Warploque, printed by Small Scale Prints (via Etsy). These wee guys - sold as 'vermen' which I thought was quite hurtful - consist of squirrels, mice, shrews, newts and frogs. There are only a couple of unique sculpts for each species, but they are some of the most charismatic miniatures I've seen in a while. They stand about 6mm to the eye, so they're quite wee; on par with my halflings, and noticibly smaller than my goblins and dwarves. Here they are beside the Red King for scale. Of course, for that to be useful, you'd need to know that he stands 12mm to the eye. For my beastling levy I've mixed together the spearmen and archers into a single unit. For  Fantastic Battles I plan to run them as either irregular or formed companies, with the long spears, shieldwall and shooting traits. I'm at something of a loss to come up with a suitab...

This week, Roger’s Wood Elves and my Wyld Elves took on Mike’s Undead and Andrew’s Ratkin in an epic 2000 point clash of Fantastic Battles . We played on a 180x80cm battlefield, littered with woods, a few fields and a settlement. Roger deployed facing Andrew (to left), and my forces faced Mike’s (to right). Andrew’s rats used the night march strategy to start forward of his default deployment area. He survived the mishaps rolls with barely a scratch, while Mike’s mishap rolls meant that his large units of mummies and skeletons were enthusiastic and deployed forward (in lone with the rats to their right). Roger’s wood elf spearmen were likewise enthusiastic, while one of my tree shepherds was late. Otherwise, there was little disruption in the deployments. Roger’s wood elf war-dancers were on stimulants and proved to be completely out of control (he rolled a 1) meaning they would be treated as out of command range throughout the game. The battle opened with both the undead advancing on...

Inspired by/jealous of Roger's wood elf chariots (seen at the time of, but not used in our last battle), I resolved to build one of my own. The chariot and deer are from Cromarty Forge - kindly donated by Roger - and the crew are Forest Dragon archers and a war-dancer with his huge sword removed. I wanted to have two archers as crew, so used the dancer as a charioteer, running along the shaft in hommage to the charioteers of the Britons (according to Caesar anyway):  " They can run along the chariot pole, stand on the yoke, and get back into the chariot as quick as lightning."  Caesar,  Gallic War , 4.33

Captain Smithwicks rallied his militia and dished out a third serving of Hearthshire's finest travel-stew. The lads at the front of the unit were pre-occupied with the elven shieldwall bearing down on them but, sure, at least the rear ranks appreciated the sentiment... This week I met up with Roger to run him through a game of Fantastic Battles . Over recent months he has amassed a huge army of wood elves and it was time some of them meet their doom against the finest halfling regiments of Hearthshire. The photo above shows the intended deployments before rolling for mishaps. The halfling battle plan relied on guarding the riverbank and using it to disorder the elven attack. ... and here are the disastrous dispositions after mishaps. The elves (top from left) had some bow armed glade riders and ents who were slightly late, a unit of rangers, massed archers, stag riders, a shieldwall and finally a wild hunt on the flank. The halflings (bottom from left) had some hyper-enthusiastic t...

With the 1000 point mark of ProjectBACCHAE fast approaching, here are a couple of companies of 28mm centaur archers from Eureka Miniatures.