Irregular Wars Wargaming

I was really pleased to be handed the last of my custom-made fortifications from Jim at Dark Architect Terrain this week. The set has more that 40 fully modular lengths, corners, towers, gates and breaches to allow all sorts of combinations. Here they are thrown down in a pretty random castle set-up; do excuse the board and decking. It was too nice a day not to sit outside! Over on the left you can see an assortment of breaches to be used when walls collapse due to mines, artillery, or direct assault. ... and to top it all off, the structures are all robust enough to be stored in a single box file (along with some resin buildings). Brilliant job Jim!a

After something of a hiatus - not quite a year - The Flores Minor Ranger Corps had their second outing this week, pairing off again against Andrew's Mutants in a snipe hunt. Once again, we were scrabbling through Andrew's absolutely amazing shanty town terrain. Sarge led seven 'men' into the wastes including the rookie, Demo. Doc, the squad medic, was ironically banged-up from the previous engagement, but otherwise the boys were rearing to go. Opposed to them, the psychic escaped slave girl commanded her warband of fellow mutants - also sporting a new member in the form of the winged Stumpy. Hat Boy, the sniper, had become reckless from his injuries in the last match - not a great state for a sniper...  The scenario called for the rival warbands to search six areas of difficult terrain - rusted out cars - looking for clues to pre-Fall relics. The FMRC are scattered along the bottom of the photo. Demo, Point and Heavy on the left, Hotshot ranging ahead in the centre-mos...

The Night Stalkers are the latest of my armies to to be completed for Fantastic Battles . With a theme of all-things-bitey meets Gothic Noir, the army is led by stylishly aristocratic vampires and uses the 'feast' trait as a racial trope. A small army, the Night Stalkers will depend on speed (and the ability to night march) to compensate for their almost total lack of shooting factors. Get in under the enemy's arrows and ripp out their throats! The Night Stalker leadership - the Countess (mounted) flanked by two Barons and a tame Necromancer. Vampiric knights. Ghastly ghouls. Dire wolves. Were-wolves. Giant vampire bats. Succubi. The Death Coach driven by the rogueish Coachman. 

The completion of a unit of succubi 'finishes' off my army of all-things-bitey Night Stalkers for Fantastic Battles . As with most of this army, the figures are 3D prints from Forest Dragon. The figures are first class; I only wish there were more victims/meat-puppets like the one in the photo above. The plan is to use these as a single three-company unit of elite very fast fast fliers - with feast as a racial trope of course. The army's lack of shooting capacity means that all my units are going to want to get to grips with their victims as quickly as possible. Being a large unit will negate some manoeuvrability, but give them substantial staying power.

Against better judgement... I became excited recently by the prospect of a big group 28mm Napoleonics project. As the project is being inspired by Borodino and the 1812 campaign and I didn't want to do either of the main protagonists, I am aiming at Von Bruxelles' Württemberg light brigade (part of the French 3rd Corp.).  This is the first company completed for the 2nd Battalion - figures from Front Rank. This will be a slow burning project, but I wanted to get something complete and up on the blog to start building a little momentum.

Another vampiric baron, and two companies of giant vampire bats - both from Forest Dragon, for my all-things-bitey Fantastic Battles army.

Andrew, Jim and I met for another playtest of the Fantastic Battles siege rules this week. The changes implimented as a result of the earlier testing (compressing the attrition into a modified mishaps roll and focusing on the assault itself) have certainly cleaned the game up a lot and led to a much more dynamic experience.  The game saw just over 1,000 points of ratfolk besieging just over 500 points of goblins. The goblins bought various siege strategies to aid in their defence, and the rats built siege machines, a mine, and paid off a traitor to open one of the fort's gates. The traitor, true to his nature, proved treacherous, and failed to unlock the side gate to the fort, and the mine was equally poor, meaning that the left flank of the fort was still secure at the start of the assault.  However, two turns of artillery shooting away meant that the gate was blown off its hinges, and the ratfolk giant wheel careened inside, to attack the defenders while the giant rat-god a...

More hobby time from Mark: I’m adding two galeasses to the navy of this regional power in my imagi-nations world of mid-C16 South East Asia, for use with the  Galleys & Galleons  naval rules. Inspiration came from Alan Saunders, who’s comment on an earlier shipbuilding effort pointed me to something I should have known - there were South East Asian vessels broadly comparable to the galeasses used in European waters. These vessels were used in the Aceh region (northwestern end of Sumatra), during the C16-17. The Wikipedia entry (“Galeass”) says they seem to have been intended primarily for boarding fights, though with heavy bow guns. Here’s construction at an early stage. The first vessel,   Banda Aceh , has the superstructure largely complete. The pairs of balsa wood beams on the top decks will support awnings, to be added after painting. The second vessel,   Hat Yai , is still only a hull blank. I’m not sure yet if it’ll be a close copy of the first, or signifi...

In recent weeks, Andrew and I have been dabbling with Barons' War . We both read the rules cover to cover, and have played two games with the same 500 point forces. This post has been a long time coming, because our short-form conclusion is that the rules are ok. And that is a little disappointing. In both games - one a straight clash, and one a scenario from the back of the book - we used the same retinues themed around Anglo-Normans in Ireland, but using the standard retinue raising rules. I have to say the flexibility in building retinues in Barons' War is great. I really appreciate the freedom to create a band of veteran sergeants, militant monks, green levies, and everything in between. However, not all things are created equal, and it feels that the points values are not necessarily well balanced. Indeed, although the game is only recently released, there have already been official errata circulated to start correcting some of the imbalances. Spear and bills seem very ef...

This week, seven of us sat down at Lisburn Gaming Club for a game of Fantastic Battles with 3000 points a side. The photo above shows the game early on. To the left, the Unholy Alliance consisting of (top to bottom): 1000 pts Undead, 500 pts Vampires, 500 pts Goblins, and 1000 pts Undead; to the right, the other Unholy Alliance of (top to bottom) 1000 pts Wood Elves, 1000 points Celts, 1000 pts Dark Elves. At the left of the Undead line, Neil's skeletons were bested by Roger's Wood Elves. The massive ripple of resolve loss caused by the Undead mage-lord's death (should that be his most recent death?) meant the end of the reanimated legions.  In the centre, my new Vampiric force along with a small body of Goblins commanded by Brendan took on Dave's Celts, generally getting the better of the wild and hairy ones, but suffering badly at the hands of the Celtic ogres and their heavy melee weapons. The vampires and ghouls performed well, and feasting on the corpses of the s...