We had a very good turn out at the last meeting, 5 games in progress with over 20 members present.
First up, John and Alex were play testing John’s Border Reivers game.
Mark ran another Dungeons and Dragons session, taking his adventurers to sea and then deep into the dungeon depths.
Paul ran a 6mm FoG Ancients game, Late Bulgarians vs Ottomans.
Stephen and Jeremey continued their refight of the War of the Roses, using Sword and Spear rules, this time recreating the Second Battle of St Albans. There will be a write up of this game shortly.
Finally, Mark H ran a War of the Spanish Succession game, using his own fast play rules.
A photo round up of a couple of recent(ish) Society meetings- August 27th and September 10th
Here’s the second of our catch up posts for a couple of our recent meetings.
24th September
A good turn-out for this meeting with 5 games in progress.
We start with Pete’s 10mm Vietnam “Charlie Don’t Surf” game.
Then on to some 3D printed and scratch-built Galleys & Galleons, part of the Mediterranean Galley Campaign being run by John.
Then on to a 6mm Napoleonic game, Poles and Saxons vs Austrians 1809 using Mark’s Home rules. (Forgive any errors in troop attribution).
Andy and Steve had another SAGA Crusades bash:
And finally for this meeting, Alan ran a 28mm WW1 Blood & Valor game:
8th October
More games but fewer periods for this meeting.
We start with a BattleTech game, a bit of an introduction for thee rules at the Society, only a couple of photos of these I’m afraid.
Six members contested the Trevor Pearless Memorial DBA Tournament, we managed to run five rounds of three games. There’s be a write up of this in due course, but for now here’s a few photos.
We’ve been remiss and not posted a photo round up of several of our meetings held over the last three months. Here’s the first of these covering the first two of the missing meetings.
August 27th
Three games ran at the meeting, first up a 6mm Ancients game using Field of Glory rules.
Alan ran an Eastern Front WWI game in 15mm using “Battles with Brusilov” rules.
And finally for this meeting, Stephen ran a very wet Stargrave game, Waterworld. We should have a more detailed write up of this game soon, but you can find an article about the boat building endeavours of our members here.
September 10th
We had another three games at this meeting, firstly a 2mm Strength & Honour game.
Stephen and Jeremey ran another game in their refight of the War of the Roses, using Sword & Spear rules. There’s a full account of this battle (written by the victor, of course) here.
And finally, Eric ran a series of Gaslands races.
We’ll round off the other two missing meetings, September 24th & October 8th in the not-too-distant future.
It’s been a while since we posted any pictures of society meetings, but here are some from our latest meeting, which had a good turn out with five games in progress and around 20 members present.
First up we have a 2mm Ancients game using Strength and Honour rules, Republican Romans vs Germans.
Our second game was a clash between a 100 Year’s War English army and some Ottoman Turks, this time in 6mm using Field of Glory rules
Slightly later historically we turn to the War of the Roses, and a game based on the Battle of Wakefield, this time in 15mm using Sword and Spear rules.
In the background you can see Stephen’s representation of Sandal Castle, you can see an article on its construction here.
Our fourth game, chronologically, takes us to the East End of London, where things go bump in the night. A Victorian Gothic Horror game using “A Fist Full of Lead” rules in 28mm.
And finally, we go to Vietnam, with a 1:600 scale Air game using Thud Ridge rules. Only a couple of photos of this game unfortunately.
Stephen reports on a solo game using Song of Blades and Heroes
Apologies from the editorial team, we messed up the publishing schedule.
It is the year 1266. The Baron’s War, led by Simon de Montfort, is at an end – de Montfort and his supporters were beaten decisively at Evesham the previous year.
Since then, not all has been lost. Many of those still devoted to the cause, though dispersed and leaderless, still resist King Henry’s rule.
We find ourselves somewhere in the hills overlooking the Wye valley, early autumn, 1266. A young and idealistic knight, Sir Hugh Bolton, a loyal follower of de Montfort’s, has been lying low on the Welsh border, as have so many of the rebels.
Sir Hugh has received word that another rebel knight, Sir William le Bleu, is also in the area.
Together, they have decided to meet at an isolated traveller’s inn – Woodfell Hall – high above the Wye valley. As night falls, the two knights and their accomplices make their way to their secret rendezvous.
However, what Sir Hugh does not know is that Sir William is not all he seems. His real name is Sir Peter of the Wash, and he is a loyal retainer of Prince Edward! Sir Peter has been sent on a mission by the prince to seek out rebels hiding in the marches and either arrest them or, better still, kill them!
With Sir Hugh is a knight companion, Sir Aymer, plus four experienced men at arms and another four archers – all veterans of Evesham. Sir William/Peter is also not alone. Prince Edward has sent with him two other knights, Sir Fulkes and Sir Gilbert, plus a troop of five spearmen led by a man at arms, and three crossbow-armed sergeants.
The first couple of turns were quite quick, with each side only managing to activate one or two models. Sir Peter gave an order to the crossbows to advance up the road, but then the spearmen (presumably tripping over something in the dark) failed. Similarly, Sir Hugh attempted to get his retinue to head down the road toward Woodfell Hall, but only the archers made it.
It was a slow initial advance.
Things changed for Sir Peter though – he made a group activation of the crossbows again, and they rolled three successes, meaning they could take three actions. They double-timed down the road, coming up to Woodfell Hall, and seeing Sir Hugh and his men further down the road, raised their crossbows and let fly!
This obviously took Sir Hugh by surprise. But fortunately for him (well, those who had been targeted) the shots had no effect. Two can play at that game, thought Sir Hugh, and he ordered his archers to return the gesture. But since the archers, like the crossbows, had been shooting at long range the effect was the same – no hits.
The pace soon picked up.
One of the crossbowmen climbed up the side of the inn to take position on a veranda where he could snipe.
Meanwhile Sir Peter tried to give more group orders to the spearmen to bring them up in support – his encouragements worked this time.
Sir Hugh’s men also started pouring into the battle. The archers came up to the road junction, formed a line, and let loose. This was a much better tactic – one of Sir Peter’s crossbowmen was struck, and not only struck, but hit with a gruesome shot! Down he went with blood shooting all over the place from the arrow that had severed his jugular. This caused a morale check amongst Sir Peter’s men. The knights held firm, but the tardy spearmen all fell back a little, not wishing to be the next ones to suffer such a terrible fate.
The remaining crossbowmen showed they could do just as well. Raising their weapons, they took aim at two of Sir Hugh’s men at arms. Both bolts hit home – one of the men at arms fell down dead, and the other was knocked down with a bolt sticking out of his thigh.
Sir Hugh got the rest of his men going, urging them to advance through the scrub and bushes that ran alongside the road. The archers drew their arrows again and had another go.
And the same thing happened!
Down went the crossbowman hiding on the veranda, another gruesome kill! This left the remaining crossbowman feeling nervous and, with his morale faltering, he made a run for the rear before an arrow found him and left him a messy, bloody, heap like his friends.
All this missile fire was well enough, but both sides were keen to get stuck in with sword and shield and sort this out the honourable way. Sir Hugh and one of his men at arms had been using Woodfell Hall for cover as they advanced, and the others had moved through the bushes, which meant they had the drop on Sir Peter, whose retinue had stalled under the effectiveness of the longbows.
By the horse troughs outside the inn is where the two sides finally came to blows.
The archers tried to stand back and get in a shot where they could, but in the darkness it would be reckless to shoot into the melee. Sir Peter barked out his orders to the spearmen to urge them forward into the melee, and his knight companions also came into the fight.
It was turning into quite a mess. Sir Hugh’s force was split into three – Sir Hugh with one of the men at arms coming down the road, Sir Aymer with another man at arms coming through the bushes, and the archers waiting to take a shot at any target that presented itself.
Meanwhile Sir Peter’s troops were more consolidated, though this had been more by accident than design. But what this meant was that one of Sir Peter’s men knocked down one of Sir Hugh’s men whilst another was able to come up and finish them off as they rolled around on the ground.
Then the telling blow happened. Sir Hugh and Sir Peter faced off against each other, and in only a brief exchange Sir Hugh was knocked to the ground and then Sir Fulkes came up and struck Sir Hugh the killing blow!
The fight continued for another couple of rounds, but it was obvious the rebels had been beaten. Realising their cause was lost the remaining rebels made a break and ran.
Sir Peter and his retinue had come out the winners. They had earned their blood money.
This building project is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while but never got around to it.
That’s mainly because I didn’t know what I wanted for this model, how much effort to put into it (in relation to how often it would be used), or how to go about building it with the above restrictions in mind.
But recently two events occurred that focussed my mind – I achieved painting backlog nirvana (I had nothing outstanding to paint!) plus, in our War of the Roses refights, we had the battle of Wakefield coming – the backdrop to which is Sandal castle.
With hobby time and motivation on my side, I decided now was the time to commit!
With any terrain building project the first thing to think about is storage. It’s easy to get carried away on a big build, but where are you going to store it? I made up my mind the model would have a footprint no bigger than A4 so I could store it in a box a ream of A4 paper came in (at this point I should add that it’s going to be used with 15mm miniatures!).
Right, decision made on that one.
Now for the actual build, and construction decisions that need to be made. I knew I didn’t want this to be just a tower, I wanted the bailey included. That’s going to be a potentially fiddly build, because I need to think about all that brick work. I thought about the Wills Scenics embossed sheets, but they’re really scaled for HO/OO railway models, so would be too big, plus the cost of buying all those sheets would make the model expensive for how often it would get used. I thought about a paper model, because all the other 15mm buildings I use are paper models so it would fit in stylistically. But the paper models I found on the internet were either too basic or too complicated.
However, after my recent build of lots of skyscrapers for a Stargrave game where I used simple boxes covered in printed textures, I thought that’s what I would do.
So, I scoured the internet for stone textures I liked the look of. I re-sized them, so the stones looked about right for 15mm miniatures and printed out loads of sheets. I also used MS Paint to put some arrow slits on them as well, and some sheets had doors, of various sizes printed as well.
First thing was to lay out the design of the castle. A piece of A4 modelling ply was cut and on that I drew the design of the castle – a keep on a mound, plus walls and towers. A classic (later) motte and bailey castle.
I cut a piece of expanded polystyrene for the motte and stuck that down. When that was dry (and PVA takes a while to set when gluing EPA) I carved the mound, keeping in mind that I had to leave enough space on top for the keep.
I started with the keep. I wanted to make it a round keep, but I couldn’t find a tube the right diameter. Oh well, this particular castle would have to have been originally built in the 12th century – square it would be.
Construction proved remarkably simple and remarkably quick. The main structures were built from foamboard and then lagged with the printed sheets. Once that dried it was a matter of cutting out the battlements.
I was keen to get the first bit done so I could get an idea of how effective the printed textures would look on the model. It was hard to say when I saw it, and I think this was because it was just the tower in isolation with the rest of the model completed to give it context. When I looked up-close I was impressed with the effect, so I decided that once complete, en masse, it should look alright.
The rest went up a lot quicker than expected. This was mainly due to simple shapes and also because once up, they would be done – there would be no painting required (beyond the edges of the battlements where the foamboard and white cut edges of the paper showed).
To give the model some semblance of being an organic structure that would have been built over time with improvements and changes, I made the towers slightly different sizes. You will also notice that one of them is round (a toilet roll insert!) – perhaps early in the castle’s history it was attacked and a tower was brought down, only to be re-built in latest round style? (Ed: Shades of Rochester Castle?”
Yes, using printed textures was a good idea because, at scale, it looked like stone, but also because there would be no painting required which meant the model was finished much quicker than if I’d made other modelling decisions.
To finish the base was given a coat of khaki paint and then covered with model railway ballast. And when that was dry some static grass was added – I didn’t put so much in the castle yard since that’s where it would have been trammelled by feet.
And that was the model complete, ready for Wakefield, and ready for any other games to be a backdrop for a proper medieval setting.
Oops, a bit of a scheduling snafu today, but, better late than never, Stephen describes his latest project:
Like a lot of projects, this one started off small and just grew.
Originally, all I wanted was half a dozen elves for games like Song of Blades and Heroes. I looked around at the different options and I saw that buying half dozen metal miniatures was more or less the same cost as buying a box of 30 placcy Oathmark elves, and the extra numbers may give me a few options.
So inevitably this grew and I made them into a Dragon Rampant force.
Because you do, eh?
I like my fantasy to have that ‘alternate history’ vibe to it. You know, what if the ancient Greek heroes really had existed, what if elves and dwarves had existed.
That just sits better with me.
And given that my historical interests lie in the early medieval period (13th century is where my real interest lies) then I thought to myself, ‘let’s imagine the elves as if they were present in 11th century Britain’.
So that’s the aesthetic I’ve gone for, rather than Tolkien or (horror of horrors) the GW look.
In the Hexham Chronicle, under the year 1138, it is recorded, ‘…after payment then did the aelfson unwrap their bows and they stood with the king’s men and brought upon the Scots a deadly rain of arrows’. This early reference to elves suggests it was they who brought to the English armies the battle tactic of a large body of formed archers that was to prove so popular in later centuries. However, the earliest reference to elves can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the year 855 we find this cryptic reference: ‘And so did Milean, lord of the elves, bring to the king a white horse for his journey to Rome, as was the custom of old for the elves to pay honour to their lord.’ What this suggests is that elves had been known in the country for a long time. A later ASC reference says, ‘King Henry was reminded that Epping had been held by the elves since time immemorial and so the king rendered unto the elves that which he owed’. We also know that in 1322 the elves were no longer present in Britain since Chaucer, writing in 1381 says, ‘he was named Robyn of the Hode / and of Epping aelf he was sired / and with Thomas of Lancaster / he fled with kin and off they all rode.’ – interesting that he has Robin Hood as an elf!
We know that in Britain there were two main elven settlements – one in the forest of Dean, and another in Epping. Both of these were royal forests so it is unknown exactly what the relationship between the elven communities and the crown was. Undoubtedly the elves would have sworn fealty to the English crown as sovereign, and it is known they generally supported the English throne on matters (the exception being in 1171 when the elven court were signatories to a papal letter for Henry II’s involvement with the Thomas Beckett affair).
The elves that I have collected represent those from the Enclave of Dean (as the elves referred to the forest). This can be seen by their preference for red trimmings – those from Epping preferring blue. It’s not known if this was a fixed coloration (because there are many exceptions) or if it was just a general trend.
The Lord and Lady of Dean
These two form the main leaders of the elven force.
The Lady is a single-model hero and I have her as Light Foot with the short-range missiles upgrade (to represent magical flurries of thorns and brambles) and also the full spellcaster upgrade. She is a Ral Partha model.
The Lord is also a single-model hero and I have marked him up as Elite Foot with the missiles upgrade.
Forest Guardians
These are the minor nobles – well-equipped and armoured. I have John Lambert to thank for these because he kindly donated some chainmail clad torsos from one of the Gripping Beast sets, which I then kept themed using the spare heads and arms from the Oathmark box. The shields came from the spares box and I went with 11th century Byzantine shield designs because that way they would both be period specific but also different.
They are Heavy Foot – with no other upgrades. I was desperate to avoid the elves as ‘super humans’ because it’s not a trope I like, so I resisted giving them the offensive upgrade.
The Company of the Glade and The Company of the Gloom
These are two archer units made from the Oathmark box. This is pretty much as they come. I decided not to put them in a uniform, because I don’t like that look. So they got random colours but I worked from a limited palette to help tie them together.
In deciding what these are I was again in a dilemma. They’re elves, so they must be expert archers, right? Well, yes, I suppose so. But I decided the elven reputation for archery would come from their preference for large numbers of archers rather than being a horde of Robin Hoods. So I have them as Light Missiles, and bravely fought off the temptation to give them the sharpshooter upgrade. However, that remains an option if I need to up the points cost.
Oak, Ash and Thorn
These represent the elves’ main allies – the forest itself. I have called these Treekin and they represent the spirit of the forest. The phrase ‘oak, ash, and thorn’ is a description that was given to ancient woodlands, so it seems right. These are also from Ral Partha.
I have these as a reduced model unit of Elite Foot. I decided against Lesser Warbeasts because I felt that troop type was too brittle and didn’t reflect the nature of the troops. I almost nearly made them a Greater Warbeast unit, but the Elite Foot stats seemed right.
Lightfoot and Kin
Forgive me, a moment’s whimsy. There’s not much to say here. They are faeries, pixies, sprites – call them what you will. Again, sourced from Ral Partha.
What they are is a unit of Scouts with the invisibility upgrade.
So that’s my new elven force.
The problem is that there’s still room in the box for more. And we all know what that means…
For our next instalment in this series Tony starts with a couple of submissions:
Our title image is a scene from the film “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”, the Charge of the Rohirrim, with Théoden at the fore during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Figures from Tony’s extensive collection.
Returning to history, Tony says: “I thought I’d have a go at recreating some WW2 historical photos for this. I dug out my copy of “Blitzkreig in the West” from After The Battle publishing, which specialises in showing contemporary photos and then retaking the scene as it was in the 70s (when the book was published…)”.
We can’t reproduce the photos from the book for copyright reasons, but here are Tony’s reconstructions.
On May 10th, 2nd Panzer Division was moving through the Ardennes – the original photo shows a PzIII passing a Protze truck. I used a Pz.III and a Horch field car – I didn’t have a Protze with crew figures, the Horch just looked better. In hindsight it needed a backdrop of some sort to hide the garden fence.
In the early hours of May 15th 1940, the French 26eme BCC (heavy tank battalion) encountered units of the 7th Panzer Division near Flavion in Belgium. After heavy fighting the Char B1s were stopped by German artillery. I found a fully painted B1 in my collection that was still awaiting its tracks, so I thought it would make an ideal stand-in for the disabled vehicle on the road.
Moving from WW2 to the Hundred Years War, Stephen gives us the Battle of Crécy
And finally for this submission, a couple of scenes from the Original Top Gun film (1986!) provided by Marcus.
A short photo round up of the society’s last meeting.
Our opening salvo (above) is from Alan’s 15mm War of Spanish Succession game using Maurice rules.
Now on to World War Two, John ran an introductory game of Chain of Command, Germans vs US.
Our next game(s) are naval actions using the Galleys and Galleons rules, run by the other John and Colin.
The first of these games was set in the Mediterranean sea, and uses 3D printed ships.
Their second game was set in the South China Seas, using John’s scratch built ships.
And finally, off to Middle Earth with Tony & Andy playing a couple of Dragon Rampant games, both set in the Shire.
In the first game Tony’s Hobbit militia, with some help from Aragorn and some Dúnedain Rangers defended Hobbiton from Andy’s Goblins and Warg Riders.
Tony successfully defended Hobbiton in the first game.
In the second game Tony turned to the dark side (sorry for mixing film tropes) and fielded Saruman and his Orcs, while Andy fielded a Dwarf contingent. Somehow we only got one picture of the victorious Dwarves.
Honours were even on the day, one game each (although the “Good” side won both games)
Four periods/genres were staged at the last meeting.
First up, a couple of games of Field of Glory, using 6mm figures, Early Alans vs Selucids.
Stephen, Tony & Andy played three, three sided SAGA Age of Vikings games, using the Battle Royale scenario from the Book of Battles. Victory is normally decided by Survival points in this scenario, and that’s how we played the first game. In the second game we decided to use Slaughter points, and in the third reverted to Survival Points, but with 5 points for controlling the central objective (the building) and for each charge made.
The first two games finished with the same result, Stephen won, Andy came second and Tony came third. The third game was a tie between Stephen and Andy, with Tony bringing up the rear.
Finally, Peter ran a 75mm Lord of the Rings skirmish game. This is a participation game set in the Mines of Moria, with players controlling one main character and one Hobbit each. They must buy time for the NPC Gandalf to cast a delaying/blocking spell on the escape route – before the Balrog turns-up! There will be a more in depth report on this game in the near future.
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