Irregular Wars Wargaming

Time for another dispatch from Mark who has returned to his Galleys & Galleons narrative campaign, bringing Don Marco da Pattaya back to active service. He hasn’t appeared since failing to prevent the Ming Chinese from capturing the KhiNok islands , three years ago, when he ended up clinging to the same piece of flotsam as An-te Hai. ***** Now Don Marco commands a Portuguese squadron conveying ambassadors to the Siamese court at Ayutthaya. Expecting trouble from the militantly Islamic Prince of Songkhla, the Portuguese are ready to fight their way through. They have 414 points. 1 x Galleon (Sa Caterina da Goa) (106) Q3 C4: Chaser guns, Drilled soldiers, Flagship*, Galleon rigged, Master gunner, Trained gun crews. *Don Marco scored the coveted “Dashing Commander” rating for today. 3 x Fragatas (Sa Barbara, Sao Jorge, Sao Martinho) (60) Q3 C3: Chaser guns, Galleon rigged, Master gunner, Trained gun crews) 1 x Submersible ram (Baderna) (58) Q3 C2: Ramming, Submersible, Unarmed, Unorth...

It would appear that the good folk at the Aberdeen Wargames Club have been at it again, hosting another participation game of one of my rule sets, this time  Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End at the Targe Wargames show (hosted by Kirriemuir Wargames Club ). The game was based on the Battle of Craibstone, fought in 1571 between the Forbes and the Gordons, part of the Marian Civil War. Craibstone was just outside medieval Aberdeen (since completely built over). One spectator at the battle was a certain Elizabethan courtier and his associates. No doubt he was visiting his Aberdonian fish-salesman cousin when hostilities broke out ... Not only did their table look amazing, but Aberdeen only went on to win both of the show prizes! The Targe : awarded for the best club display. This was the result of a vote by all the attending clubs and groups. The Crann Tara Targe : awarded to the best Scottish themed game or game with Scottish figures. This was the result of a vote by memb...

Andrew and I got together this week for another instalment of our  This is Not a Test  campaign. Once again, his mutants and my peacekeepers - the Flores Minor Ranger Corps - clashed, but this time, in the verdant green lands north of the wastes. This time we played the Pest Control scenario: the mutants advanced from the left, the FMRC from the right, and both sought to irradicate what were supposed to be rad-zombie nests (the thickets within the blue circles). My son took control of half of the FMRC for the game, commanding BT29 the depend-o-bot, Hotshot (the hot shot sniper), and two rangers with shotguns, the veteran Snake Eyes, and rookie Buckshot. Hotshot was ranging out ahead, hidden under the tree on the central hill, while the rest were aligned top right. The remaining rangers, Sarge, Doc, Demo and Heavy were deployed bottom right. Andrew's mutant band had swelled to 11 members for this match, spread evenly along his board edge. The muties were closer to three of the ...

The Onesies warband continues to grow with the addition of Sven, the unicorn-onesie-wearing-heavy-hitter. Equipped with a sledge hammer, a cigarette and a heart of gold, Sven will add a touch of brute force to my crew for This is Not a Test . Like Vixen, Sven was designed using Heroforge and then bought as an .stl file which I had printed by Crisis Actor Minis . Some of the detail in the sculpt is a touch soft, but as Sven's face is mostly in shadow anyway, it is no problem at all. The print quality was again superb.

My 10mm goblins were the first army I built specifically to playtest early drafts of Fantastic Battles back in 2019/2020. Here are my wee unreliable wretches ready to test out the new horde rules.  Rules for hordes - playtest version below - will be part of the version 1.2 update that should be available soon (over the winter). The update will initially take the form of a supplementary pdf - free from myself, and hosted on the game's  Facebook group . There will be no need for anyone who already owns the rules to pay for an update - the core rules remain in place, v.1.2 merely clarifies a few rules, and introduces a small number of rule amendments as well as new relics, traits, scenarios and sandbox rules for sieges. The same updated content will then be incorporated fully into the existing rule book file. Everyone who has bought the rules as a pdf from Wargame Vault will get that updated file automatically. As a last stage the hardcopy rulebook on Amazon will ...

Continuing to gather together the onesie-wearing post-apocalyptic/sci-fi crew for This is Not a Test , we have Vixen, sporting a daring orange fox onesie and equipped with sniper rifle, wakizashi, flack vest and climbing gear. Vixen was designed using Heroforge and then bought as an .stl file which I had printed by Crisis Actor Minis . I have bought from Steve at Crisis Actor before, so I knew the resin and print quality was going to be top-notch. However, as Steve warned me, it appears that polygon-count on Heroforge files is much lower than other 3D sculpts as you can see below (comparing Vixen with Bingo, scultped by Imitation of Life Miniatures). Given I wanted her printed at a reduced size as well, it meant that some of the detail in the final miniature was a little soft, but still more than adequate for my needs. 

This week Jim and I got in a game of Fantastic Battles  using our bigger toys - 28mm armies on 60mm bases and a 6x4 table. I took my Baccahe out for another spin - actually there first pitched battle at full strength (1000 points), and Jim controlled an army of Swamp Orcs built from miniatures collected over 40 years and painted and based (or sabotted) as an Orctober project - possibly over the last two Orctobers... The battlefield was littered with rough terrain fields, a swamp, and a couple of woods. I knew that Jim was taking the Ambush strategy, so weighted my left flank for some early game shenanigans in the woods - completely forgetting that the ambush could have been in the fields to my right. Thankfully, my hunch was correct, and a two-company elite unit of angry orcses popped up inside the woods, about 2.5bw in front of my waiting satyrs. During mishaps, the orcs were clearly keeping bad company resulting in a couple of large units suffering from various orcy diseases. One...

I've been sent a quick update from Aberdeen Wargames Club (previously posted about HERE ) which they have said I can share. I love recieving feedback like this! I think you'll agree that they have done a smashing job! We ran the [ Faustus Furius ] Pod Racing game at Edinburgh's Claymore show in August (pictured) and again at the Aberdeen Modellers' Exhibition in September. It proved very popular both times, every time a race started we gathered spectators and people asked to play in the next race. At the Modellers' exhibition we were the only stand not displaying a "Do Not Touch" sign, in fact actively encouraging participants to move the models round the track, which went down very well!

Another missive from Mark in Thailand. This game of Song of Shadows and Dust was actually played over the summer, but I forgot to share it at the time! **** Hi all I set up another multi-thread game in Pattayavium, my Graeco-Roman trading outpost on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Siam. The action takes place at night, on the first full moon night of the summer solstice.  Here are a couple of shots of the tabletop  showing part of the town near the Battambang gate. It’s smaller than some previous games (only 900x900mm) so the various groups of players are more likely to cross each others paths, with more or less unpredictable (contingent dice driven) results. The relatively open area at top L (of the first pic, mid R of the next pic) is a marketplace, but no business is happening at night and only a couple of stall awnings have been left standing, near the little cult shrine to Artemis (square thatched roof). The building at top C (below) is the entrance wing and front garden...