Irregular Wars Wargaming

Having been re-invigorated by Of Armies and Hordes to expand the household's 10mm fantasy collection. First up are two units of goblin wolf riders from the company that shall not be named. While I generally want no truck with the afore unmentioned company, I've always wanted wolf riders and I managed to pick these up very cheaply second hand. The sculpts are... beautiful. This is the start of a new Steppe Goblin army led by King Snatters on his trusty wolf, Snowy. The remaining units are intended to flesh out my lads Night Elves. First up from Pendraken are his corsairs or adventurers.  Next, also from Pendraken, are a third unit of swordsmen (the unit on the left is the new one). Lastly, from Magister Militum, some Night Elf scorpion demons.

Last week saw me dip my toe in some relatively unfamiliar waters in the shape of Ganesha Games' Of Armies and Hordes . This is the fantasy mass-battle rule set which has been brewing away for a couple of years now, but was only released by Andrea Sfiligoi  in the last couple of months. Coming in the familiar 6"x9" format that all Ganesha titles come in these days, Andrea produced a limited number of spiral bound hardback copies and I was lucky enough to pick one up. It is a fantastic product from a manufacturing point of view and of really high quality. Regular copies will be softback, perfect bound like usual. To start of with, we went for small armies coming in at just under 1,100 points each. My Hearthshire halflings versus my wee lad's nasty Night Elves. Regular games would be double the size. The models are 10mm. The army lists are pretty intuitive. If you've ever seen a Ganesha Game before you'd be familiar with the Quality test mechanism u...

The Shepherd of the Sheepfold of Ur, and The Bull from the Sea, the Great Earth-shaker, got together for a 6mm  L'Art de la Guerre rematch recently. Last time they fought, Lee's Sumerians decimated my Minoans. This time, I was rather hoping to turn the tables. Both armies had a pretty high break point of 27, so there was potential for a massive clash that could last all night. As it was, we did drag it on all night, but mostly thanks to the craic (and my wee lad being allowed to stay up late watching), rather than any grand strategies.  I deployed with my Luwian command (using the Mycenaean list's Trojan options rather than the Myrmidon options this time) on the left, plonked in a marsh and on the slopes of a steep hill. Opposite them were ranged the best of the Sumerians: their heavy chariots and the ordinary heavy spearmen. In the centre was my block of heavy spearmen with a screen of skirmishers, facing the Sumerian mediocre heavy spearmen and mediocre bow. On m...

With the recent release of Ganesha Game's army level rule set - Of Armies and Hordes - my much loved (and, curiously, often victorious) 10mm halflings have received a bit more love and some reinforcements. First up are another two bases of treefolk - treefolk themselves from Pendraken with a Magister Militum halfling ... guide/commander(?!). Next up are some halfling battle hogs/swine. The swineherds and chefs are from Magister Militum, the piggies from Pendraken/Minibits. And bringing up the rear, a wee tribe of allied Moorland Pixies.  Although these are actually 6mm goblins from Perfect Six miniatures, I'm going to be using them as tunnel building little people from the uplands. Treating a 40x20mm base as two 'stands', and a 40x40mm base as four 'stands' (a stand being the generic building block of a unit in OAaH ), I now have almost 3,000 points worth of halfling forces. A standard game size is said to be about 2,000 points, so I can chop...

I have, for now at least, completed my 10mm Early Macedonians. I was prompted by the forthcoming Men of Bronze  to finally build a small force of pre-Philippic reform Macedonians - and army I always wanted but never got around to. MoB only uses a small number of units (4-6ish), but in order to have a range of options, I ended up with 10. By adding two commanders, I was able to make up a 250 point army for Hail Caesar as well - perfect for multiplayer games.   Macedonian 'fast' division consisting of hetairoi cavalry, peltasts and archers.  Macedonian 'heavy' division made up of the hoplites, Illyrians and slingers.  I've previously posted a range of photos and details of the different units. For more information, click on the links:  Hetairoi cavalry Hoplites (and also here ) Peltasts Slingers Archers Illyrians (and also here ) Comanders Breaking the army down into Men of Bronze forces, I am guestimating that I could run a larg...

Following on from the last post , and casually sauntering across the steppe, a small party of outfolk have wandered into the traditional hunting ground of Ogg, Urg, Herc, Frygga and the rest of their tribe. Here you can see Loogi the spearman, Flingi the slinger, and their leader Mumma Mamu, together with their hound Grrr. This second shot is to give a size comparison next to my existing hunters. They are taller than Snogg and Bow, but shorter than Herc. However, they are much more ... robust than the others. Clearly another tribe. It is even quite possible that they're another species of hominid all together.

I have been looking for some additional prehistoric figures for a while now to compliment my existing tribe of hunters, mostly converted from the (now defunct?) Flytrap Factory 'cavemen' range. Unfortunately, these fantastic sculpts are bijou to say the least, only standing about 20mm to the eye, and of course they are also very much caricatures rather than realistically proportioned modern hominids. However, I was particularly interested to see if I could find an additional tribe member who looked a bit shaman-esque. While looking at various 28mm 'pygmy' ranges - incidentally, the most characterful and, arguably, least racist seem to be from EMP Games and Bend Sinister - I stumbled across the awesome Lost Horizons jungle goblins from EMP Games shown above (photo 'redistributed' from their website).  I thought the little mask-wearing chap in the middle might be suitable and, as they weren't too expensive, I ordered a pack on spec. I was really p...

To finish off my small 10mm Classical Macedonian project I have done up one unit of psiloi archers. Much like the Macedonian slingers , there are no literary references that I can think of which mention Macedonian archers. However, as noted with slingers, there is ample archaeological evidence that they were used extensively by Philip II (at Olynthos for example), and it is clear that Alexander the Great also made use of indigenous archers as well as their more famous Cretan colleagues (for example, Arrian Anabasis  2.9.2, 3.12). As with most of this army, the archers are from Magister Militum. The army has been built for the forthcoming Osprey game,  Men of Bronze . However, in order to field the force - now ten units strong - as a small Hail Caesar army (a mighty 245 points no less!), I needed a couple of commanders. These two are standard Magister Militum figures - spares from my cavalry and hoplite units - with head swaps. They fit the bill well and will do if neede...

It is mid-term here in sunny Ireland, and my wee lad decided it was time for another Palaeo Diet  hunt. He's only eight, so we kept it simple, but it was great to be able to game with him. **** Rarr, Ogg, Tark and Frygga looked down into the valley at the small herd of mammoths. Rarr thumbed the blade on his newly knapped axehead, Tark flexed his bow, while the other two leant casually on their spears.  The hunters knew that if they could bring down just one of the shaggy behemoths it would provide enough meant and skins to see the tribe comfortably through the rest of the season. However, they were not alone. There was an old wolves' den in the valley and it was unclear how many occupants it currently housed. As Ogg and Frygga skulked down the side of the hill into the valley, Rarr ambled off down the far slope of the hill - away from the mammoths.  Tark grumbled to himself something about hoping Rarr had a plan, but was then distracted by movement in ...