Author: Brigadier Tony

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Outremer: Faith & Blood

Stephen gives us his views on the Osprey rulebook and follows up with a battle report.

I am a big fan of the Osprey ‘blue book’ rules. They’re the right physical size and just the right price that they’re worth taking a punt on. I bought Outremer: Faith And Blood when it came out but it just sat on the bookshelf for ages. This weekend I finally managed to have a game of it. What follows are my thoughts and a battle report.

Like all the blue books the rules can be a bit patchy in places. That’s no bad thing, but it is something to be aware of and you have to realise that player input may be needed. Some are patchier than others, and I’m pleased to say that Outremer was less patchy than some. Though some bits were unclear and did need a bit of improvisation (mainly terrain – but I’ll come to that below).

The game is designed so that each player controls about 6-12 figures. Activation is done by drawing cards. Since each figure is likely to have slightly different stats and a few extra traits I decided to cobble up some character cards. I made them business card size so they could be put in a plastic wallet. The rules suggest using a pack of regular playing cards and you assign a card to each figure. What I did was knock up a bespoke card with the character name and picture for this.

Character Cards

I did a simple game – seven a side with the French versus the English. It’s worth saying here that though Outremer is set during the crusades it is really just a generic set of medieval skirmish rules. So that’s how I’ve used them.

View from the English side

It seems to me the key to these mini-games (‘mini’ because they don’t have many figures) is to ensure there’s LOT’S of terrain. So I had a large ruin in the middle, all of which counted as rough terrain and hard cover, and some wood – which also counted as rough terrain and soft cover. This is where I had to do some improvisation. The rules say nothing about shooting into and out of terrain. So I adopted a Saga approach – you can fire into and out of terrain but you cannot shoot through terrain. Since there were a lot of ruins I had to think about how that would affect the game. The rules don’t really help. The choice is either count the terrain as a piece of rough terrain and is symbolic only (so if there are high walls then you can still move through that, etc) OR figures can only move around the ruins through gaps or climb over walls and high walls block line of sight. I can see pros and cons with either approach. In the end I adopted the former.

The game started with both sides either side of the ruins. The French were led by Sir William le Bon with his squire Luc Brecon. The English were led by Sir Walter de Marsh and his young squire Henry Wilton. Luc took up place with the French crossbowmen in some woods overlooking the ruins whilst Sir William took charge of the spearmen and moved up to the ruins.

The English longbowmen advanced to the ruins, with Walter Fletcher taking a particularly advantageous position behind a wall.

With all that rough terrain movement was slowed down. When a model’s card is drawn it can make two actions. Most actions cost 1 point but some cost 2 points. A model completes all actions before the next card is drawn.

French Crossbowmen led by Luc

The French crossbows let fly nice and early as the English tried to cross the ruins. But the combination of long range and hard cover meant the English took no casualties. Models have a series of stats and, depending on how good they are, the better the die type they roll. I like that game mechanic. It’s nice and simple and does the job well. Thierry, a French crossbowman, had the ‘corrective shooting’ trait, which meant once per game he could re-roll a failed shoot roll. He took a pot shot at Sir Walter, missed, and decided to re-roll. Fortunately he missed again.

Luc spots the English archers

Sir William and one of his spearmen, Louis, moved into the ruined chancel. By now Henry Wilton and Adam (an English spearman) had also made their way into the ruins. The two sides faced off against each other. However, an English longbowman, Peter Ashdown, had also moved in to the ruins and decided to see if he could bring it all to a quick end by taking out Sir William. He missed.

Sir William with Louis and Jean

Realising they couldn’t afford to wait, both Sir William and Louis advanced against their adversaries as soon as they could. In the game it’s not just a matter of moving models in to combat. They have to make a Faith Test to summon the courage to go in. The charger rolls his die and he has to beat his opponent’s Presence score. If he fails then he stays where he is. If he passes then in he goes!

Walter takes position

Walter Fletcher’s sniping position was paying off. The French crossbowmen had to advance to shorten the range so they could get a good shot in and as they did so Walter started picking them off. Squire Luc could see the only way out of this was to cut Walter down – he had no choice but to charge the Englishman. Not this time though. He dithered and before he could summon the courage he was taken down by Walter’s bow skills.

William and Louis in the ruins

In the chancel the fight was coming to a conclusion – Sir William and Louis had defeated both Henry and Adam. Sir Walter had now advanced through the ruins toward the chancel. There was only one way to sort the matter out – the two knights would have to square off.

William takes on Henry and Adam

It wasn’t to be though. Walter Fletcher drew his bow, took aim, and…there went Sir William.

Carnage!

Game over.

I enjoyed that game. I wasn’t sure what it would be like with such a limited number of models on the table. I think it works best with a bit of role-playing and players investing a bit of character into the models.

There’s also a campaign system in the game whereby after each encounter the models gain experience and can improve. Oh, it’s also worth saying that models that are ‘killed’ in the game aren’t necessarily dead. Being ‘taken down’ merely means they are out of the game. At game end you make a roll and see what’s happened – they could be dead, could be a slight scar, or something more inhibiting.

Red Alert

Marcus sounds the alarm!

Having played in a demo of Red Alert from PSC games at Salute 2019, I was really taken by the design. I had often toyed with the idea of playing Command & Colours Ancients, and eventually bought Memoir ’44 for one of my boys for Christmas, but it has never been a favourite. However, the theme of Space fleet combat and the dynamics really seem to work. They certainly seemed to reach a sweet spot for me.
However, I didn’t buy the game at Salute. Despite some very good offers, I just didn’t want the miniatures. I have some space ships of my own, plus the aesthetic didn’t really appeal. Soon afterwards though PSC released most of the components separately.

Unfortunately, due to building work at home, the game was consigned to storage after just one play won by Son “Tzu”, who can’t get enough games (Or should I say winning games…). Now in lockdown, it has made its reappearance.

Having played through the first scenario for a second time, we set up Declaration of War, the second introductory scenario. Like all the scenarios, the introductory scenarios mark both fleets’ starting positions. However, they also mark the exact deployment of each unit. In later scenarios you choose where to deploy your fleet, which is chosen by drawing a card for your core force and having some additional points to choose additional units.

In this scenario the objective was simply to destroy 13 points worth of the enemy. The initial set up is shown above.

I had to cobble together some fleets as I am still repainting some old models (from Zandris IV). We played a Star Trek inspired game (despite the fighters), Federation (Son Tzu) versus Romulan (Me). Still, I didn’t have enough figures for all the units in this game, so the number of units was often displayed on a dice with the unit. The Federation was particularly short on Cruisers, so the Intrepid’s (Voyager) represented three ships, and the groups of two Nova’s (destroyers) also represented three ships. Three ships is the default strength for most units (all in this game). A hit will normally result in the loss of one ship.

The earth-like planet is at the centre of four hexes and the gravity well extends through these. This inhibits movement but it is more difficult to hit another ship inside it from outside the gravity well. Asteroids and planets block line of sight, as do ships. We also missed some markers only available with the core game. I used blue counters for “star” tokens. These are order tokens used in addition to the command cards. Also there are Red Alert markers. These are a combat result which can occur on the custom dice, illustrating “when bad things happen” during combat. They will require a retreat. I had a couple of these from an expansion, but that was all, so I used additional red counters.

Early contact and Son Tzu’s fighters take some damage while the Romulans move up on their left and…

…in the centre, the Romulan fighters also suffer some damage, but nearly knock out a federation unit.
But a very different picture emerged after the next moves.

Son Tzu moved up his fighter on the Federation right and used a “fighter swarm” combat card against my Battleships. With seven combat dice, he rolled five hits, turning my warbirds into a cloud of incandescent gas. If we had some debris tokens, they would be on the table adjacent to the two “yellow” fighter groups. One of them suffered a loss minor loss as a result.

Things did not look good for the Romulans at this point. 6 – 0 down. However, the Romulans also struck back with a concentrated fighter attack forcing back the battleship group in the centre marked with a Red Alert (which probably saved the group from destruction at that point), causing the remaining Federation battleship to retreat two hexes. One of the Romulan fighter groups was also badly damaged and retreated. However, The Romulans are still 6 – 0 down, with the Federation cruisers moving up into the centre.

Son Tzu could smell victory, but it was to prove elusive. The remaining Romulan fighters and destroyers picked off the remaining battleship to take revenge and even things up, despite taking some damage. While Son Tzu waited for the perfect card to launch his final assault, the Romulans deftly vectored their strike classes, the destoyers (again) and cruisers onto one cruiser group as it moved up in the centre…

…and then the other.

Although the second Romulan battleship group took some severe damage from long range fire (just out of the picture), they held up while the strike craft gave the Feds a hammering.

Those cruiser groups were worth three points each. Just before taking down the last one, the Romulan Cruiser group on their left, moved up for an easy kills on a crippled fighter group (revenge for the earlier battleship swarming loss).

The single point for that fighter, and the three points for each cruiser group gave the Romulans seven precious points. With the earlier six for the battleship, that made a game winning 13 – 6 to the Romulans. Doubtless the federation could have taken out a lot of heavily damaged ships if there had been a next turn, with their undamaged destroyers and second battleship group, but that was not to be.

Nimzo’s Crew

John Lambert goes into the Zone.

I had a good look around for a suitable crew for Zona Alfa and chose figures from Empress Miniatures. I wanted a good mix and chose one pack from their Chechen range and one from their insurgents range, I also bought a set of heads with gas masks to covert a couple of figures. I was really impressed with the casting quality and they were a joy to paint. I used mainly hobby shop acrylics and of course, the figures needed to be named.

I really liked the RPG figure with tank crew hat – I think my favourite. The next three I painted in Urban winter style camouflage and did a head swap on Kovacs, the piping on the track suit bottoms I added with a fineliner brush.

(l/r Blokin, Zeitsev, Nimzovitch (Nimzo), Sashlik)

The second set I painted a forest digitised camouflage adding extra dots of paint with a cocktail stick.

You need a sniper called Zeitsev – the Stalingrad hero!. Stay tuned to Radio Pripyat for the next instalment.

Somethings Mythic This Way Come

Andy puns as Shakespeare rolls in his grave…

I’ve had these figures for ages, I probably bought them when I was at university 40 odd years ago, and indeed first painted them back then. They had surfaced from the depths of the loft for some reason and as they were looking very tired, I decided they needed sprucing up. I’ve no idea who manufactured them. They may turn up in in a Dragon Rampant or Broken Legions game at some point. All paints are Vallejo unless otherwise stated.

The first figure is a minotaur, his (human) body was painted with Medium Flesh and heavily washed with Army Painter (AP) Flesh Wash, his head was painted Matt Black with German Black Brown eyes and Pale Sand horns. His tunic is Deck Tan, washed with AP Soft tone with Bronze fastenings. His axe has a Beige Brown shaft with Gunmetal blade and Bronze metalwork.

His base has some flagstones, these were painted London Grey, dry brushed Light Grey and washed with Army Painter Dark Tone, the remainder of the base was covered with Basetex and painted with a couple of shades of green.

The second figure is a demonnette of some foul dimension. Her skin is Metallic Copper, with MIG Rot Braun creases and an AP Red wash. Eyes are Golden Yellow and horns Black. Her snake is Luftwaffe Camouflage Green with an AP Green wash and the orb in her right hand is German Camouflage Bright Green with a mixed wash of Silver and AP Green wash. Base the same as the Minotaur.

Armoured Bears

Mark J (also known as Mark2), who recently joined the club after being away from the hobby for a while, paints some Germans.

Latest addition to my 20mm early/mid Russian Front 3rd Panzer Division army. Back in the 90s I played a lot of Rapid Fire and I have a fairly large collection of tanks and vehicles, mainly Matchbox and and SHQ, with a couple of aircraft, assault boats and a pontoon bridge thrown in for good measure. Recently recovered this collection from an old mate up north, however the infantry were missing, probably KIA!

Planning to adapt this collection to use Chain of Command rules, and have started to paint some 20mm Eureka miniatures. They are a little on the tall side, but nicely cast with plenty of detail. These guys are Panzer Grenadiers in great coat, there’s one rifle section and a command section with a radio operator.

I used the Vallejo Flames of War German infantry paint set and GW Nuln Oil wash and Adminstratum Grey for the uniform highlights and general battle field look. For the bases I used small gage grey gravel
and dry brushed light grey to white with a Nuln Oil wash for the snow effect.

I’ve recently been reading about the 3rd Panzer Division and their exploits around Kharkov during 1942. These guys are part of Kampfgruppe de Beaulieu, this group was formed around March 1942 and consisted of 12 Panzer IIIs and a panzer grenadier battalion, its orders were to push back the Russian advance to the east of Kharkov and to take back the Babka River line which they did, despite freezing temperatures and poor supplies. I have another 5 rifle sections to do and a couple of heavy support sections, if anyone has some Russians it would be good to take them on some point in the future.

Eadmund the Moon

Stephen bares his soul (and more besides).

This one has been in the bits bag for ages. It’s an Irregular Miniatures figure which, it’s fair to say, aren’t among the best. That said, Irregular do paint up better than they look in bare lead. That’s not saying much though.

So, this is Eadmund The Moon. I painted him up for SAGA as a Personal Champion. We don’t use the Swords For Hire and other bits in the Age of Vikings book that often. Not sure why.

I based Eadmund up on a larger, Hero, base. Irregular’s stuff is quite old and their 28mm stuff is more like true 25mm. To hide this lack of stature I made a miliput stone and plonked him on that to lift him up a bit. I also filed off the shield, which looked…well…poor. I stuck on a spare Gripping Beast shield (looking at the size of the shield on him will give you an idea on how slightly small he is).

And that’s Eadmund The Moon. Coming to a battlefield soon to give Andy and Jeremey a good taunt!

Building the Rammas Echor

Tony F takes us through a Middle Earth scenery build.

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy made a few diversions from the original books – some of these were forgivable changes (although some were a bit more puzzling and unnecessary). One of these was to turn the Pelennor Fields, scene of the largest battle of the War of the Ring, into a fairly barren, scrubby plain, instead of the area of fields and farms described by Tolkein. I get why it was done – the massed ranks of thousands of CGI orcs, trolls and other beasts looked far more impressive lined up outside the gates of Minas Tirith, which wouldn’t have worked so well had they been broken up by barns and oasts. He also omitted the Rammas Echor, a defensive wall many miles in length which surrounded the whole of the fields of Pelennor. Situated along the wall were a number of forts where the garrison was stationed.

Phil and I thought it might be fun to game out the initial assault on the wall, when the defenders were thrown back to the city (Sauron’s forces however made the mistake of not leaving a small force at the gates of the wall when they advanced on Minas Tirith, giving Theoden’s Rohirrim unimpeded passage).

The closest historical equivalent to the Rammas Echor is probably Hadrian’s Wall. I used a milecastle as the basic model for my small fort, with gates front and back and a small courtyard. The wall was made from 2″ thick high-density insulation foam, of which I had just enough to make three 2′ lengths, each around 3″ high, plus the fort walls. The centre wall section has an arched gateway leading into the fort with a smaller gate at the rear of the courtyard. The basic cuts were made with a fine-toothed handsaw (ie a carpentry saw), the gateways were cut out with a hot-wire cutter which I traced around a card template. The other two wall sections each have a small bastion for archers. The faces of each wall section were scribed with a ballpoint pen to represent stone blocks.

I wanted to mimic the design of the city walls in some way, particularly the distinctive shape of the battlements. I drew out a short section of battlements and had this 3D printed; I then made a mould from silicone rubber and proceeded to mass-produce them in resin (I needed about 80 sections in the end) – the resin also happens to be almost exactly the same colour as the foam. These were attached to the walls using a No More Nails-type industrial adhesive (a solvent free version – a solvent based one would probably attack the foam) which has proved to be pretty robust.

The walls were painted over with a mix of pale grey emulsion paint, PVA and wall filler, then drybrushed pure white. I ran some thinned-down black paint around the bottom of the battlements for shading.

Wooden parts (the gates and a couple of firing platforms) were made from balsa and/or coffee stirrers with plasticard for any ironwork, then painted with cheap Hobbycraft acrylics. The firing platforms also helped strengthen the sections of wall over the gates, which were fairly weak once the gateways had been cut out.

Inside the fort I placed some thatched buildings (from Caliver Books) along with odds and ends such as barrels, carts etc. The fort was garrisoned by a couple of dozen warriors of Minas Tirith – can they hold out until the cavalry arrive …?

This post was also supposed to cover the game as well, but we’ll leave that for another day…

In Her Majesty’s Name Supporting Characters.

Andy creates a cast of thousands (nearly).

I picked up these figures at Cavalier a year or two back, together with some German Jägers, I sold the Jägers on but kept these two; originally sold as Feldwebel Krieg and Mad Mick McFarlane as part of their IHMN range they can now be found on the Northstar website as The Count’s Bodyguard and Ruaridh McGowan.

They’ll probably fight under nommes de guerre as I don’t use their “official” IHMN companies. Tony and Marcus have suggested the one on the right looks like a young Doctor Nefario.

Both figures were cleaned up to remove any mould lines and then washed in soapy water to remove any release agent. They were then stuck to their bases, which were built up with 4Ground base render, and undercoated matt black. All paints are Vallejo unless otherwise stated.

Exposed skin was given a base coat of Brown Sand, a top coat of Medium Flesh and Army Painter Skin tone wash.

“Feldwebel Krieg”’s jacket is, appropriately, Dark Prussian Blue with Flat Red trim, trousers are London Grey. Belts, holster, boots and hair are Matt Black. Buttons and belt buckle were painted Gunmetal Grey.

His main weapon is a portable flame thrower, the tank, connecting hose and projector were painted Gunmetal grey with a black handgrip on the projector and red and copper dials and indicators on the tank.

“Mad Mick McFarlane” is wearing a white lab coat with a Red Leather apron, Brown Sand gauntlets and German Camouflage Black Brown boots. Buttons were painted Bronze and the boot buckles Gunmetal grey. His somewhat unkempt hair was painted Mahogany Brown.

He has a selection of tools strapped to his apron which were painted a variety of browns with Gunmetal grey metalwork, and probably has more in his bag which was painted German Camouflage Medium Brown.
He carries an arc pistol and arc generator, both of which were painted Bronze, with Red and copper dials and a Copper connecting cable. The pistol has Beige Brown woodwork.

Apron, bag, gauntlets, pistol and arc generator were given an AP Dark Tone Wash. Both figures bases were finished off with Basetex.

And finally, “Mad Mick McFarlane” testing his arc pistol:.

A Modelling Miscellany

Here’s a few things I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks.

First up is a tower.

Actually, I did this earlier in the year. It’s made from two tubs of healthy snacks – cheeselets (the wider, shorter, tube) and a Pringle tube (smokey bacon flavour – lovely!). The stairway is made from balsa that was skinned with miliput and then scribed to make it look like stonework. Then a few barrels and sacks were added to make it looked lived in.

Next up are some wall bits. I bought these at Cavalier from Debris of War. I already had some walls, bought many moons ago, so I had to paint these to fit with what I already had. Either that or re-paint the whole lot. I’m not a big fan of stark grey stone. It looks artificial and most stone is actually a brown colour of one sort another. Certainly the stone someone builds a wall out of, anyway. Back when I did the first walls grey is all I knew. So these had to be done like that as well.

Another purchase at Cavalier (this time from Scotia/Grendel) was a dragon. I ummed and ahhed for quite a while about what colour to paint it – I prefer to steer clear of bright red or green fantasy dragons. My preference is for a more believable colour (given it’s a dragon). I already have a brown dragon so I couldn’t do that again. Instead, I decided to go with green but a more drab variety like you see in nature. Once done, though, it looked too green, so I decided to add some patternation to the scales – some brown stripes. I’m not entirely happy with the result, to be honest. I think it may get a re-paint at some point.

And yet another purchase at Cavalier, and another from Debris of War – a ruined…thing. Church? Building? Something.

The tiles were a print out of a medieval tile texture I found on the internet. This ruin is going with other ruin bits that can be put together to form a ruined church or abbey complex.

Last up is a scratch build. I’ve tentatively called it a ‘Templar Hostel’ because that’s what it was made for. I don’t know what they would have really looked like, so it’s quite speculative. It was built for this year’s Open Day (presuming that still goes ahead).

The Beasts of War

Andy reconnects with his inner animal.

A couple of years ago I got a druid figure free when I renewed my Wargames Illustrated subscription, you can see him, and how I painted him, here.

He’ll be a magic user in one of my Dragon Rampant armies, but he needs an escort, and what would be better for a druid than a collection of animals?

I picked up a pack of Reaper Bones “Companion Animals” at SELWG (I think), these comprise a bear, wolf, puma, wolverine and eagle.

These are made from a type of polymer, and there is a warning on the Reaper Bones website that they may not respond well to some spray undercoats, so these were undercoated with a couple of coats of brush on acrylic matt black.

The wolf was painted with London Grey and then dry brushed with Dark Grey. The other animals were painted with various shades of brown, part of the eagle’s feathers and the other animal’s muzzles were painted black. Teeth, where visible, were painted Pale Sand. They were then given a generous wash in Army Painter Soft Tone or Dark Tone washes.

The bear’s base had a few sections of stone so these were painted London Grey, dry brushed Light Grey and washed with Army Painter Dark Tone, the remainder of the bases were covered with Basetex and painted with a couple of shades of green.

In addition to the Reaper Bones animals I had a couple of others, a nominally 10mm Giant Ape from Magister Militum who stands around 33mm foot to top of head so fits in OK with 28mm figures and a small wolf, manufacturer unknown.

The wolf was painted in the same way as the Reaper Bones wolf, apart from the mane which was painted black and dry-brushed Black Grey.
I decided to try and paint the Giant Ape as a silverback, so he was given a second coat of matt black, and his lower back was then dry-brushed Black Grey and London Grey. Teeth were painted Pale Sand.