Irregular Wars Wargaming

For the last game of the year, Jim and I were hosted by Andrew for the seventh game in our This is Not a Test campaign. Having captured my tame hillman, Snogg, at our last engagement, Andrew's mutants had him caged, just challenging me to come and free him. But that was only a secondary objective...   Andrew's mutants had taken over the market area of shanty town, stashed some water bottles there, and then gone off to raid further afield. Jim's mutants and the FMRC were attempting to sneak in and 'redistribute' the water, just as Andrew's crew returned. In the image below, the water stashes are circled in blue, and poor Snogg's cage is outlined in red. Two victory points for each water bottle in a warband's possession at the end of the game, one VP for wounding or taking out an enemy, and two VPs for taking out a leader. Jim chose Night Attack as his balancing ability to bring his warband value up to Andrew's level - I took A Little Bit of Luck.  Ho...

Having started Project Württemberg back in August, I have finally finished the first full battalion of the fancy buggers. I love the result, but hate the process. I will need to work out a better/faster approach to painting the rest of the brigade.  These have been painted up as the 2nd Battalion (von Bruxelles') Württemberg Light Infantry; the 1st Battalion (coming next) are identical but for button colour which will be gold rather than silver. Based up for  Black Powder  (2nd ed), the two flank companies can be deployed as a skirmish screen out front, or pulled back into line. von Bruxelles' brigade at Borodino consisted of both Württemberg's light infantry battalions and the two jäger battalions. At this rate it will take me a while, but at leat I now have at least one useable unit!

The Flores Minor Ranger Corps carried out their sixth mission this week in our  This is Not a Test campaign. Once again they took on Andrew's band of mutants - this time in a very seasonally appropriate winter wasteland setting. We played the 'Cold Vengeance' scenario with no additional frills.  The mutants deployed within the two abandoned buildings on the left, while the bulk of the FMRC (Snake Eyes, Heavy, Buckshot, Pup, and the three hill-folk Ogg, Snogg and Frygga) deployed behind and old liquid storage tank (lower left). The three snipers started on roof tops: Sarge on the tallest building on the FMRC right flank, Hotshot in the centre of the table, and Doc on the FMRC left, above the liquid storage. Early in the skirmish, Sarge advanced and took up a position overlooking one entire side of the table - but a side of the table with no mutants. Activating first, both Doc and Hotshot went into overwatch, while some of the front-line rangers advanced along the ground. T...

This week, Andrew and I settled down for a learning game of Black Powder (2nd ed.) with our 6mm Napoleonic forces. It was a long time coming - I've just looked back and seen that it was January 2020 that we decided on 6mm Naps as a project and this is the first time they have seen the tabletop. We only ran two brigades each - Andrew running a French line infantry brigade supported by a brigade of dragoons, while I ran my large Austrian line infantry brigade supported by a small vanguard brigade - 1809ish. We also only used basic formations and just tried to get a handle on the rules. Andrew has played a couple of group games in the past, but the closest I have come was playing loads of Hail Caesar many years ago. Playing in 6mm, with 80mm as a standard battalion width in line formation, we used cm rather than inches. We also tried halving movement and musketry ranges. Deployment was a bit throw-down. The French (on the left) had the infantry on their left and dragoons on the righ...

I'm very pleased to say that  Fantastic Battles version 1.2 is now live! The new version makes a very small number of rule amendments and clarifications, and introduces two new relics and ten new unit traits to help you build your fantasy army. There are also four new asymetric scenarios included, as well as rules for playing out seiges on your tabletop.  Even though the example armylists in the original release were only ever intended as guidelines, they did prove popular, so they have been updated and more lists have been included in this version, bringing the total up to 36 different factions. *YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY THIS BOOK* I can't abide the thought that players need to fork out more money for updates that I have decided to make to the rules - so they don't. If you previously bought the digital copy of the rules from Wargame Vault, you'll find that you now already have the updated files there waiting for you to download. If you bought the physical copy from Ama...

Roger made his way up into the hills this weekend to lead his Ghostly Pirates against my vampire-led Night Stalkers on their first outing as a completed army. Both armies had taken Night March as a strategy, but when Roger saw how far forward the Night Stalkers deployed, be chose to deploy back towards his base edge to make the most of his shooting capacity. I was hoping to get in fast and make the first bite count - the pirates wanted to shoot me down before I made contact. Mishaps were negligible on both sides with only minor outbreaks of disease. By the end of the first turn, the pirate cannons had blasted away scoring hits on my ghouls with every attack dice! Regardless - or perhaps because of the hammering in the shooting phase - the Night stalkers raced across the table. The impulsive ghouls managed to cover 5bw in one turn, while the ghost-pirates - almost to a man - stood still and waited. Only the behemoth/ghost whale on the ghostly left moved slowly forward through the woods...

Generally known as the Onesie Wearing Wastland Weirdos, they call themselves Bedtime's Children. Survivors of the Great Fall, they are ever prepared for the inevitable long sleep that comes to everyone in the end. With the completion of the last of the onesie-wearers I have at hand, I thought it was time to do a group shot and make a start on the backstory for, what I think you'll agree, is a rather colourful tribal warband for This is Not a Test . The photo above shows all nine in the collection. I am aware of at least three or four other suitable miniatures out there, but I really need to push on with other projects, so this will do for now. Here are the two newcomers - Yuki and Nando, adding some more melee punch and flaming goodness to the tribe. Nando is the third of the figures I designed using Heroforge, and then had printed by  Crisis Actor Minis . He's a big lad with an unnecessarily large flamethrower (and a pistol strapped to the back of his pack for good measure...

The Flores Minor Ranger Corp were out in the wastelands again this week, this time seeking to ambush Andrew's mutants as they escorted a caravan through an abandoned settlement. Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones. Mike joined in the campaign bringing a fourth warband into the mix; sadly, also mutants. So now it looks like a thin blue line of the FMRC (vainly) attempting to hold back a wave of mutant warbands from destroying what remains of humanity.  Following on from the skirmish in the northern woodlands , the FMRC were accompanied by a new K9 - Pup - and the three hill folk adopted by Buckshot - Ogg, Snogg and Frygga. Andrew's muties were now a veritable horde, especially when seen alongside the trade caravan. They started on the central road through the settlement, the FMRC were waiting in ambush on the right, while Mikes muties were in ambush to their left.  Having to deploy on the very board edge was a bit disadvantageous to the FMRC given three of them ...

I made my way down to Lisburn Gaming Club this week to lead my goblins into battle once more, taking on Roger's mighty ogre army for a game of Fantastic Battles . Now, my goblins are not the ideal army to take on something as monstrously tough as an ogre army, but I wanted to try out the new optional horde rule, so goblins it was. The armies were very different in composition: my goblins had 23 companies - so a breakpoint of 12; the ogres had only 15 - so a breakpoint of 8 - but clustered in a few large units. The centre of the ogre force was a unit of four elite companies with the monstrous, doughty and heavy melee weapons traits - so 32 Resolve in a single company! My hoard of six irregular companies only had 18 Resolve! Mishaps were negligible for both armies - one of my two units of wolf-riders enthusiastically moved forward, and the spider-riders and a giant on the far right were diseased. Among the ogres, their unit of cannoneers were delayed (behind a cyclops). Roger also ke...