Irregular Wars Wargaming

Playing out ancient naval warfare (ναυμαχία or naumachía in Greek) on the tabletop is a tricky biscuit (if ever there was such a thing…?). It is a niche within a niche; naval wargaming has always attracted a smaller crowd than land battles, and among naval players the Age of Sail and 20th century gaming are the most popular theatres. Why the lack of engagement with naval warfare from the ancient period (and here I speak of the ancient Mediterranean in particular)? I’m not sure there is a single answer, but I’ll posit a couple of suggestions. The 20th century is within living memory (some of us were even born in the late 1900s!) and the engagements of WWI and WWII are firmly entrenched in our collective memory – at least in the West. While the Age of Sail (and here I mean the broad sweep of the 16th-19th centuries) is slightly more distant, it heralds romantic notions of swashbucklers and empire builders. This is especially the case in the Anglophone world where the cultural psyche has ...

Andrew and I, supported by Jim as an impartial drinking companion, met for learning game of Burrows & Badgers on St Patrick's Day. As this was our first play through of B&B , we decided not to start a campaign, but just to run through the mechanics using my rogues vs Andrew's royalists. The two warbands played quite differently; at least at the start before I forgot to play to my strengths and just made a beeline for the developing scrum in the middle of the village. I tried a couple of ambushes - one working and one being foiled by an overly aware badger. Shooting from the mouse-archers on either side was quite effective, while my otter leader with the quick shot skill failed to do very much at all. We discovered that Andrew's mouse nun (read: magic user) was a very effective support unit, salving his big hairy beaver after the pounding it took. On the other hand, my badger healer was much less effective as a result of marching his right up to join the melee in t...

Another dispatch from the antipodes as Mark returns to his Galley's & Galleons narrative campaign: The price of dried trepang has shot up to unprecedented levels on the Canton Futures Market. It’s worth twice its weight in silver taels. Clearly this is no longer a resource that can be left for the local primitives to exploit. The Ming court orders An-te Hai (Admiral of the Tribute-Bearing Fleets) to intervene in strength to ensure Chinese control of the supply chain. Don Marco da Pattaya (Captain-General of the Indies) likewise decides to place the fishery under Portuguese protection. No-one knows what the Makassans and other traditional harvesters think about this. The two squadrons met in the Arafura Sea off the northern coast of Australia, the most productive source of trepang. The Ming Chinese (348) bring - 4 x War junks (3x42, 1 x72*) (Hakka Merchant*, Conch Shell, Green Eyebrows, Lucky Breeze) Q3 C3: Drilled soldiers, Flagship*, Lateen rigged, Reinforced hull 3 x Pirate (...

Finishing my dirty-pawed side quest into Burrows & Badgers , I now have the maximum ten members for my warband of furry rogues ready for a campaign. I wasn't planning on painting more than a starter warband just yet, but then things escalated... Here are the five newest members of the line up - this photo was supposed to be the header for this post, but I just couldn't get my phone to focus on everyone at once. The five original miniatures painted for the warband can be seen HERE . Robyn Longtooth, the fox Knut Twitchtail, the squirrel Edwin Lightweight, the happy stoat Dafydd mab Petroc, the mouse Seren Pipistrelle, the bat

Bedtime's Children - also known as "those onesie-wearing wastland weirdos" - finally have some pets! I have been looking for suitable warbeasts for my growing  This is Not a Test  tribal warband for a while. After a couple of false starts, I settled on these crazy 3D printed mutant bunnies from Yedharo - sold as 'Crazy Rabbit Troops'. Given the Onesies are led by a young teenage psychic, and most of the tribe wear onesies in a variety of unflatering pastels, I figured that some sort of bunny-squigg-soft toy hybrid creatures would work as pets. It is unclear whether the tribe has specially bred them or if Poppet has imagined them into existence? Perhaps they are merely a natural reaction to the end of the world...?

Sarge looked over the shanty town from his rooftop vantage point. After a gruelling campaign, his veteran squad had never been physically stronger. But mentally they were tired - worn down by the endless waves of mutants trying to break their thin blue line. Now they had the mutants on the back foot, but a beast is always most dangerous when cornered. One way or another, the ongoing grudge match would end today. Four their tenth mission, and the last in the FMRC campaign, the stout stunted rangers from Flores Minor faced off against Andrew's Mutants for the final time with the cold vengeance scenario. The FMRC were buoyed from their previous victories and were able to field 10 rangers, a dog, a depend-o-bot, and their two remaining tame hill folk. There were less mutants, only 11 in total, but they had caught the FMRC flat footed. Demo III, Snake Eyes III, and Pup were away on a side mission and would arrive late to the skirmish. Andrew also took a whole lot of luck, and bum rush a...

On wee side quest which has been both enjoyable and adorable in equal measure, I have recently picked up Michael Lovejoy's skirmish game of anthropomorphic animals - Burrows & Badgers . The Dirty Paws are my starter warband of rogues, chosen purely because I liked the models - all from Oathsworn Miniatures and, as I understand, sculpted by Michael himself. I'm looking forward to trying out the system which reads very well. In the meantime, here are the first members of the Dirty Paws (the rest of the warband can be seen HERE ).  Their families dispossessed and slaughtered by corrupt lords acting in the name of the king, the outlaws known derisively as the Dirty Paws have embraced their new life of roguery in the dappled sanctuary of Chestnut Glen. Hunted for blood money, they have taken up arms to seek justice and take back what is rightfully theirs. Osgood Broadwater, the otter Sgian Dhubh, the polecat Old Broc, the badger Tibbot Thornberry, the mouse Gypsy Thornberry, th...

Another of Mark's Utterley-Barkinge mad adventures using his underwater variant of  Palaeo Diet: Pulp ! **** The Utterley-Barkinge Time-Travel & Landscape Gardening Corporation led another safari back to the marine environment of the Cretaceous era. Rather than the usual big game hunting theme, this year the aim was to search for the giant pearls known from rare fossil examples. These would be the largest, highest quality pearls ever found, with the added lustre of being snatched from ancient seas in the face of terrors innumerable. Sells itself, what. As usual the limited places available were greatly oversubscribed despite the astronomical price. The Final Cut of 6 intrepid adventurers comprised entirely Hollywood movie stars. Three are armed with glaives (counting as clubs) and three with spearguns (counting as guns)  The expedition guide was Boris Utterley-Barking (speargun). Here are a couple of views of  the area the expedition will explore. It’s a 900x900mm clo...