Author: Jeremey

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s Wednesday and we have another bunch of pictures showing what club members have been up to.
Above Tony has painted up some archers from Blackfoot Vale to add to his Lord of the Rings collection.

Next up Andy is painting more of his Polish Vistula Regiment.
Andy has also started painting up some more vikings and a wizard.
Eric has been busy again on some Games Workshop Marauders and something wonderfully named a Slaughter Priest.
Next up John has painted up some more galleys.

Stephen has been working on some fatigue markers to better match his Saga Crusades games, Stephen has also thrown in a converted miniature as a priest.
And finally for this week Marcus has started on a new project, here is a first attempt at some 15mm sci-fi terrain.
See you next Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this week with a wonderful piece of work from Eric. This is apparently Wulfric The Wanderer in all his glory.

Another view of Wulfric

Next up John has made progress on his Japanese houses.

Andy is next up having finished some of his 10mm Polish.  There a lot more colourful than I imagined they would be.

Meanwhile Stephen has finished his skeleton cavalry and added a bolt thrower.

A rare treat for me this week, I’ve finally made a start on the last of my trees. These were from a store called ‘The Works’. Every year they have various sized christmas trees available very cheaply.

They come covered in snow and so following recommendations from other club members I sprayed them green.

Tony has also been working on some trees from ‘The Works’, but he still has the snow on his.

But Tony has also painted up a bear miniature to act as Beorn for his Lord of the Rings armies. Here Beorn is with the finished versions of Deorwine we saw in a previous WIP Wednesday.

That’s it for this weekend, see you next time.

 

The Bloody Field – Wars of the Roses Battle Report

After the disasterous dice rolling displayed in the previous battle Jeremey offers Tony the chance to get even.

A victory entirely down to how bad your opponent rolled isn’t much to celebrate and so I offered Tony the chance of a rematch to banished those dice rolling demons. This was a smaller battle, mainly because I had to provide both armies. I made the sides identical with 12 units in each army. As before I took charge of the Yorkists and Tony the Lancastrians.

Tony deployed his forces in the traditional way of archers out front with billmen and men at arms behind. He also positioned all of his cavalry on the Lancastrian left flank. Although Tony’s set up was more in keeping with the period, I decided to deploy in a single line with my archers interspersed between my other infantry. I did this because we were using the Sword and Spear rules which do not allow general infantry units to move through each other. Tony scores a point for taking the historical high ground and I lose points for playing the rules not the period. I also split my cavalry up with a unit on each flank.

Much to my surprise given the last battle we fought Tony advanced with his cavalry straight at my archers despite them having a number of billmen units in support.

Meanwhile both sides advanced their frontlines to begin the archery duel. Initially this looked like it was going to favour Tony’s deployment because more of his archers were lined up against my billmen and men at arms, giving the chance to cause the Yorkists some damage before the infantry came to blows.

At this point Tony’s cavalry crashed into my archers but did not do enough damage and so the melee continued. Despite not getting the result Tony expected from the charge (partly because of the billmen support of the archers) they would end up locked in combat for quite a while.

As with the previous battle the Yorkists won the archery duel but this time the Lancastrian archers did at least cause some damage on a number of Yorkist units.

With the archers once again wiped out Tony began moving up his infantry units to get to grips with their Yorkist counterparts.

On the Lancastrian left flank the mounted men at arms finally managed to destroy the Yorkist archers but were locked in melee with the Yorkist billmen. I was surprised to find the cavalry still intact after this combat, I was hoping to have destroyed the cavalry who are tough when charging but not for prolonged combat.

With the destruction of their archers and the loss of some other units the Lancastrians were on the brink of breaking after just three turns. It was at this point that Tony’s now legendary bad dice rolling returned. A bold charge across the road with enough dice to provide a bonus produced nothing higher than a 3! This saw the destruction of the billmen and the breaking of the Lancastrian army.

We didn’t have enough time to refight the battle on the day, so instead Tony and I decided to ignore the army break point and continue the battle to the death.

Clearly that’s all Tony’s Lancastrians needed to suddenly start rolling dice like they meant it. A ferocious clash took place on the Yorkist left flank  as their billmen and men at arms charged across the road.

On the Yorkist left flank the cavalry were maneuvering into position to prevent either side from outflanking the other. In the background you can see the Lancastrian cavalry still trading blows with the Yorkist infantry.

With the Lancastrians new found successes punching holes in the Yorkist front line, drastic measures were needed to stop the advance. This ended up with the generals of each side supporting their men at arms.

The fight continued and despite the Yorkists getting more men at arms into the fight the Lancastrians overwhelmed the Yorkist men at arms but failed to kill the Yorkist general in the fight.

Realising the danger the Yorkist general moved to reinforce the other men at arms unit. But this move also abandoned the hard set Yorkist billmen on the Yorkist left who were quickly destroyed, leading to the collaspe of that flank.

With the Yorkist Archers now in danger of being overrun, the Yorkists had some good news with the cavalry duel out on the Lancastrian left. This allowed the Yorkist mounted men at arms to rush to the aid of their general.

Despite this last minute charge and the final defeat of the Lancastrian men at arms by the cavalry, the Lancastrians still had enough men under arms on the battlefield to declare victory.

This was an interesting battle. By continuing to fight on after the standard victory conditions were met (rather quickly I might add) the battle flowed back and forth. The Yorkist cavalry proved superior on the day (with credit given to the Lancastrian mounted men at arms that lasted three round of melee against some billmen). And the initial archery duel clearly went to the Yorkists. But the Lancastrian infantry proved unstoppable on the day.
This battle did make me question the Sword and Spear break point rules. Maybe there should be a sliding scale to represent historical battles where armies break early on to those where armies fought to the bitter end.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Back to Wednesday after a slight hiccup last week.

First up we have an undead dragon from Stephen and below the start of some undead cavalry.

Next up Marcus has started on another toy sub model for his underwater adventures.

Next up Tony has painted yet another Lord of the Rings miniature. This time Déorwine, Chief of the King’s Knights and a sneaky addition of the Brigadier miniature from Brigade Models.

Now we turn to the progress Andy has made on his Polish forces.

And an assortment of Dwarves and Vikings.

Lastly for this week, John has returned to building some more Japanese houses.

That’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s been a quiet week at the society but we have a couple of things being worked on.

Above we have some more Chaos Marauders from Eric and below an interesting start to what is apparently a Games Workshop Culexis Assassin.

Next up I’ve finally made some more progress on my Napoleonic balloon project. Managed to get the netting onto four more balloons. Only five more to go!

And finally for this week, Marcus has added some foliage for his underwater games with some aquarium plants.

That’s it for this Wednesday, see you next week.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another Wednesday and a selection of what the society members have been working on.

First up above Tony has some interesting looking miniatures. They are actually Chaos Screamers from Games Workshop, but we agree with Tony that they make good alien space monsters.

Next up Mark has made a bit more progress on his cold war brits.

While Felix has been busy painting up the figure given out at the last Salute wargames show.

And he’s also been painting up some 6mm dark age picts. Nice use of colour on these.

And lastly this week, Marcus has finished some of his WWII planes. Here we have a selection of Spitfires and ME109’s.

That’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Wellcome to another work in progress Wednesday. Above we start with a close up of Tony’s 1980’s Canadians, Tony said these were “in their 3-colour camo’ scheme (plain olive green for the tanks). The infantry have had a base coat of Army Green – the Canucks had plain green uniforms with US Vietnam-era helmet covers, so relatively easy to paint.”

This is swiftly followed by Mark’s progress on the opposing forces of some Cold War British forming the 7th Armoured brigade. Mark says the paint scheme is “abandoned Berlin camo scheme and have done black disruptive”.

Next up Stephen has added to his sci-fi collection with an interesting miniature he’s named “Captain Selwyn Froggit of the good ship Magic R Morris”

And last but not least this week, Marcus gives us a window into his current work desk and resident projects of planes and various vehicles and terrain for more scuba action.

See you next week for more work in progress.

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this week with some great paint jobs from Eric. Above we have a Chaos Cultist and below a nice close up (sorry Eric, I thought it deserved it) of his finished Custodian Guard Shield Captain.

Next up Mark has made a bit more progress on his British 1970’s infantry, as well as quite a debate among members over the length of the recoilless rifle.

Mark’s son has also painted some impressive Polish from the Napoleonic era.

And speaking of Polish Andy has made some more progress on his 10mm versions.

And last but by no means least this week Stephen has painted up some mutants, he may have a plan for these but they will work nicely for Stargrave.

We will see you next week for yet more progress from club members.

Homemade Fantasy Game with a Difference

Jeremey takes us through an unusual wargaming project from many years ago (2009 to be precise!)

I like a bit of Fantasy wargaming but never really enjoyed the most popular rules Warhammer Fantasy. I tried 2nd and 3rd edition, but soon gave up. I tried a few other fantasy systems but nothing gripped me so I ended up mainly playing Science Fiction games, Space Marine, Full Thrust, Dirtside etc.

But then Warmaster was released and I like the look of the massed battles in 10mm. Rather than buy the Games Workshop Warmaster miniatures i went instead for the 10mm Fantasy miniature from Pendraken Miniatures. I bought enough miniatures to field an undead and barbarian armies.

However on reading the rules I just didn’t feel like I wanted to play a system with rigid rank and file units, needing to move around according to dozens of rules. I hadn’t encountered those kinds of rules and at the time was looking for something extremely simple.

Others would have at least given Warmaster a fair crack of the whip but my twisted approach to wargming meant I came up with my own set of rules and in a radical move decided to base the units on round bases!

Although I really liked the end result and with the round bases meaning units were more mobs and so didn’t need complicated movement rules, basing miniatures in this way was hard work. I had to poke the brush with glue for the flock between the legs. In fact after the first few bases I instead stuck a few on, flock that bit of the base, then stuck on the next group and so on until the base was completed.

But I persevered and completed two complete armies. At this scale it was easy to represent monsters, along with the usual spearmen, archers and cavalry for the barbarians i also had a couple of woolly mammoths and for the undead I converted a couple of 28mm skeletons to act as undead giants.

I took the game to one of the society meetings where a fellow member and I gave the rules a go.

Each unit had a number of hits it could take before being destroyed. To represent this I created a series of flags that were stuck on each base with a number of skulls representing hits remaining. I made lots of flags so that as the unit suffered hits you could replace the flag as appropriate.

The rules worked well enough (Sadly I’ve no idea what I’ve done with them), here the woolly mammoths are attacked by undead cavalry after charging in against the undead giant. The games worked on a fairly basic roll to hit, roll to save using D6’s.

I still have all of the forces I painted up but even if I could find the rules the idea of people rebasing their armies onto round bases was a bit of a non-starter. Practically every set of wargame rules from 15mm down to 6mm are based on rectangular bases which appears to have come from the original DBA/DBM rule sets. Still I thought it was a good idea and still think it looked cool on the table top.

I may yet dig the forces out again and see if I can recreate the rules for another game.

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this week with a great looking truck for Gaslands from Eric. Eric has also painted another Chaos Marauder.

Next up Marcus has somehow acquired yet more fighters, although he claims this selection of 1:200 Spitfires and Me109’s are for his son.

Now we have the start of 15mm British and Canadian forces from the 1980’s.
Mark is painting up the British and Tony the Canadian’s for a future game they are calling ‘Blue on Blue’.

Next up, I’ve been busy replacing the wound/hit dice that I integrated on the bases of my Wars of the Roses units. The tiny grey dice I originally went for has proven to small for the standard wargamer size fingers. Luckily I’ve been able to replace them with a slightly larger dice.

And last for this week, we leave you with an intriguing start from John for his new scratch built radio mast for a planned Zona Alfa building.

That’s it for this week, see you at the next one.