Irregular Wars Wargaming

Continuing to give my Fantastic Battles halfling burghers more options - and working towards 1200 points - I am pleased the showcase the brave archers of the Honourable Company of Mercers, purveyors of silks and other fine cloths. They can be fielded as a two-company unit, or be brigaded with the Tailors' Guild to form a four-company unit.    I suspect many readers will immediately recognise the figures in this unit as being Games Workshop's halflings from the 1990s. It was these halflings which first drew me to fantasy wargaming as a child and in my hotch-potch Warhammer 4th ed. Empire army, I think my halflings were the only unit I ever completely painted. They were sold off towards the end of the 90s with all my other GW stuff, but I always held them and their ridiculous clothing close to my heart. Jump forward 25 year, and after several weeks scouring eBay, the unit is re-born in the form of the Mercers' Guild.  I have a mixed relationship with nostalgia, but this year

What's this?! What's this?! More Beerenburgers? Sometimes 1,000 points worth of halflings just isn't enough. Here we find a merchant adventurer, a stealthy gentleman of fortune with a marvelous moustache; in short (pun intended), a rogue. This wee gentleman is made up of a spare TAG halfling body with a head from the TAG halfling command - I had intentionally avoided the head because I don't like halflings with moustaches! A greenstuff ruff hid the gaps around the neck, while the hands were pinched from assorted other minis in the bits box. The dagger is a cut down Mycenaean sword, and the coin is a bit of greenstuff, as is the bulging bag tied to his belt. No one is quite sure whether the moustache is real or some sort of ridiculous disguise. Scurrilous rumours from the darkest corners of society suggest it might even be made out of excess foot hair!

After the recent performance of my early Macedonians against the vile western barbarians , I took the notion to have a dig through my bits box to find whatever 10mm Magister Militum Greco-Macedonians I had left unpainted. This post shows the very last bits and pieces I had, now complete and ready for action in games of  Fantastic Battles ,  l'Art de la Guerre  or  Hail Caesar .   First up, we have two more companies of unreliable Macedonian hill levy; not great fighters, but they really bulk out the army. A new company of Cretan archers. These include simple head swaps and shields made out of greenstuff. I attempted wee dolphins on the shields - not overly happy with them, but they are passable. I painted up a company of Thessalian cavalry but the photo went missing somewhere between the act of taking it and the blog, so I'm afraid this blurry image will have the stand in... I found a 28mm Herakles in the Etsy store of KitBashBox and the owner there, Dave Perry, was happy to sc

This week's hobby time saw a 1,000 point negotiation between the halflings of Beerenburg and a mercenary force raised by a trade competitor to discuss the price of pike-staves. Beerenburg's reluctance to buy at the price demanded had led to a bottleneck in the supply chain and a surplus of pikes sitting around un-wielded - a fact the mercenaries obviously chose to rectify. Andrew's landsknechts were the attackers, deployed in accordance with his linear tactical doctrine. My halflings were the smaller army and made use of the defender's deeper deployment zone to form up in two lines with flanks protected by a wood on the left, and fields on the right. Note the plague doctor (rogue) off by himself at the bottom of the picture. Both those rounded hills contained troll-hoards and I planned to make the most of them. There were relatively few mishaps following deployment with just a touch of disease here and there. The halflings' giant was overly enthusiastic, and the mer