Irregular Wars Wargaming

Andrew and I brought our Ilium: A Game of Heroes campaign to a close last week with a gripping playthrough of the Trojan Horse scenario. Andrew, once more reprised his role as the wiley Achaeans, while I led the heroic defenders of Troy. Diomedes was the first Achaean hero to descend from the belly of the horse, catching the Trojan defenders scattered and in disarray. All three Trojan heroes (Aeneas and two generic heroes leading the remnant Paionians and Amazons) were concentrated in one area (top right of the photo), but their contingents were widely spread out. As Agamemnon and the men of Mycenae dropped from the horse, Diomedes and his Argives made a dash for the gates, cutting down an Amazon promachia, but failing to wound the remaining defenders. As the Trojan promachoi warriors tried to rally to their chiefs, the archers scattered around the square mostly turned their bows on the exposed backs of Diomedes' followers. Two archers decided to try and regain their contingents r...

Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles ... After ten years and a lot of spilt blood, Troy is about to fall.  Ilium: A Game of Heroes  officially releases on Saturday 1st of August, available at both irregularwars.com andWargame Vault as a digital download, or as a hardcopy from Amazon. Ilium: A Game of Heroes  is a table-top miniatures game inspired by Homer's greatest epic. Players take on the role of mighty Trojan and Achaean heroes, each supported by a contingent of followers, as they compete for Kleos (κλέος) – deeds of renown that will have their names remembered through time. Played on a 2'x2' (60cmx60cm) table, each player will normally control between 12 and 28 models whose management at key moments will be crucial in securing Kleos. Glory, not survival, will dictate victory. It's the Trojan War played the way Homer wrote it. However, if you're keen to sneak in under the cover of darkness and seize a copy of Ilium for yourself before the 'official'...

Here are summaries of two recent playthroughs of the Trojan Horse scenario for Ilium: A Game of Heroes . The scenario is modelled on book 8 of the Odyssey , the  Aeneid  book 2, and books 12-13 of the Posthomerica . Note that both games were 'ahistorical' because we were using heroes and contingents we had on hand, some of whom are generally regarded as having died before Odysseus has his great idea to shove a bunch of lads into a wooden horse. ***** In the first of these games, I was playing the heroic/party-befuddled Trojans, with three contingents spread out across the table, while Laura ran the whiley Achaeans, silently waiting inside the belly of the horse and beyond the gates.  Idomeneus and his Cretan promarchoi were the first to descend from the Trojan Horse. While the Trojans slowly became aware there was an issue, the Cretans rushed towards the guards at the gate. After a brief scuffle, the guards were dispatched, and the Cretans wrenched open the gates. Ba...

Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, the accursed anger which brought uncounted anguish on the Achaeans and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes, making their bodies the prey to dogs and the birds’ feasting … Homer, The Iliad 1.1-4 The final - and arguably most famous - contingent that I'll be painting up before the release of Ilium: A Game of Heroes hails from Phthia in southern Thessaly. Led by Achilles, the only son of King Peleus, here are the Myrmidons. All are splendid 28mm sculpts from Lucid Eye Miniatures. The sculpt chosen to be Achilles is actually one of the regular Myrmidons from the Myrmidon 2 pack from Lucid Eye. However, all the Lucid Eye models are sculpted to the same high quality and he utilises the fancier armour and kilt body that was originally sculpted to be Achilles anyway, but with what I felt to be a more commanding presence. I used the figure named as Achilles (on the left) to be my Patroklos. He too has fancy armour, and h...

Fine tuning the Ilium rules for various scenarios, we returned to the Night Mission last week with the Trojan cousins, Helenos and Aeneas, sneaking into the Achaean camp to steal the horses of the Cretan king, Idomeneus. The Trojan heroes arrived at the edge of Machaon's campfire (top right). Having the good fortune to activate both heroes before an Achaean so much as coughed, they stealthily killed three of Machaon's sleeping promachoi and his sentry, ensuring that no warning could be raised in the first turn. They next sprang on Machaon, taking him by surprise and wounding him before he had even stood up. The Thessalian lord tried to fight back, but it was to no avail and he fell to the combined attacks of the Trojan princes. As Helenos finished off the last of the sleeping Thessalians, the cautious Athenian sentry from Menestheus' camp caught sight of the Trojan prince. Helenos fired his bow, but it was a very literal shot in the dark and went wide. Idomeneus' sentr...

This week we were putting the settlement raid mission through its paces again for Ilium: A Game of Heroes . The Achaeans were once more on the offensive, raiding a small Trojan-allied settlement somewhere in the Bosporos. The game was set a couple of years before the fall of Troy, and would see Penthesileia and Hektor fight side-by-side. We rolled for the attacker/defender, with the Trojans and their allies being the defenders. The Trojans began with Penthesileia, queen of the Amazons, holding the centre of the village, with the Achaean kings, Menestheus and Idomeneus, already on the outskirts. With the weight of numbers in their favour, the Achaeans pressed forward. Menestheus personally killed two of the Amazonian promachoi next to the village well, while the Achaean bowmen focused their fire on the Amazonian archers on the roof tops. Soon, the nearest two houses in the village were alight, with only Penthesileia and a single Amazonian warrior standing the way of the Achaean flood. H...

Reprising the night raid scenario for Ilium: A Game of Heroes , this week my Trojan heroes (Aeneas and Penthesileia) snuck into the Andrew's Achaean camp (the sleeping Ajax, Achilles and Odysseus). The Trojans approached Ajax's contingent first. Aeneas slit the throat of one sleeping shield-bearer, before pouncing on the sentry who'd been staring off in the opposite direction. Despite hitting the sentry square in the back of the head, Aeneas' axe must have caught in the sentry's crest, and the hit failed to cause a wound (i.e. I rolled a one!). The sentry called out in alarm, waking Greater Ajax and all of his contingent except Lesser Ajax who continued to snore. Penthesileia now engaged the bigger Ajax, but failed to land a hit on her first attack, but then pursued her death-wish and converted her next failed attack into a hit by taking a wound herself. This allowed her to cause a savage three wounds.  While the Trojans were mired in combats that were far less one-...