Category: <span>Periods</span>

Wars of the Roses – Battle of Wakefield – Battle Report

The fourth battle in our long standing campaign to re-fight the Wars of the Roses (details can be found on the campaign page) brought us to Wakefield. Going into this battle the Yorkists were 2-1 up but with Wakefield being a historical disaster for the Yorkist cause there was every chance that lead was about to end.

Stephen takes us through the battle from the Lancastrian point of view with additional details from Jeremey for the Yorkists.

Battle of Wakefield
Wakefield was a decisive battle in the Wars of the Roses – Richard of York would be killed, thus blunting the Yorkist pretensions to the crown. Well, it would, wouldn’t it.
It was a very decisive victory for the Lancastrians, whose army greatly outnumbered that of York. Richard of York found himself encamped in and around Sandal castle, just outside Wakefield.

Queen Margaret led the Lancastrian army and as they approached the castle the Duke of York led his men out to meet them in battle. Estimates have the army of York at around 5,000 and the Lancastrians at about 12,000, with the Lancastrians fully surrounding the Yorkists. The inevitable happened.
Arguably, given that situation, it might not make much of a game, so to give the Yorkists a fighting chance we increased the ratio – the Lancastrians had 925 points and the Yorkists had 750.
Turns out they didn’t need them!

Let’s say it right at the beginning – the shame of this one lies on my shoulders. No excuses.

Anyway.
Since the Lancastrians had a numerical superiority we split them up into three commands – myself with the Duke of Somerset and all the cavalry – 4 bases of mounted men-at-arms, 2 bases of currours, and 2 bases of border horsemen. The flanks were split between the Earl of Wiltshire (Andy) and Lord Roos (Tim). Wiltshire and Roos had the same: 1 dismounted men-at-arms, 3 retinue billmen, 4 retinue archers, 2 militia archers.
Jeremey would take sole command of the Yorkists.

Jeremey deployed his troops in a very orderly U shape. I deployed the cavalry in the middle, with Wiltshire and Roos on one flank each. The plan was simple – the classic Zulu battle tactic of the horns of the bull attacking first, followed by the bull’s charge in the middle.

Seeing how surrounded he was, Jeremey immediately tried to re-deploy some of his troops, notably his currours swinging to face Wiltshire with the hope of driving off the archers.
(Jeremey – at the start of the battle I panicked, I was already facing an enemy on three sides and had screwed up my deployment, I started deploying my units as a block decending from the centre line but a quick check of the ambush deployment scenario in Sword and Spear said all of my units had to be closer to the centre line. I hadn’t even put my archers facing the flanks or front! So thinking the battle already lost I thought I might as well see if I could catch out the archers on my right flank by surprise).

I’d strung my cavalry out, directly facing Jeremey’s men-at-arms. Both the Yorkist and Lancastrian mounted men-at-arms are equal in ability, so realising that any contact between the two of us would be a 50/50 chance of winning, and since I had twice as many mounted men-at-arms, I started moving my cavalry into a double line – thinking that if he broke through one line, the chances are he wouldn’t break through the next. I could take the loses, he couldn’t.
(Jeremey – seeing I would be outnumbered if Stephen charged down the middle of the field, especially now that I’d moved some of my cavalry out to the flanks, I tried to move up some infantry units to support the centre).

Out on the flank, the archers moved forward and sure enough engaged Richard’s army. First blood went to the Lancastrians!
Jeremey continued to sort out his deployment, realising (quite naturally) that he had multiple fronts to deal with. He seemed to have a few commanders in the army, which would help since an attached commander means a unit can manoeuvre with a lower activation dice. It still looked very messy in the ranks of Richard’s army.
(Jeremey – It was a mess, I wasn’t getting the activation dice I needed and my initial deployment was looking like a fatal mistake. I had a general and two captains and started attatching them to units to reduce the activation score needed to get my units moving).

Wiltshire and Roos seemed to be falling into the trap of giving too much attention to those units engaged, and not enough attention to moving up their second line. I think there’s a good reason for that, and I’ll address that at the end. This could prove crucial, because at some point the Yorkists would have to charge the Lancastrian archers rather than just take the arrows, and without that crucial second line of billmen, the archers could suffer.

That said, at this point, it wasn’t looking too bad. I felt confident of a victory – we had the numbers and the position.
(Jeremey – my initial cavalry charge out to the flanks did not prove as successful as I’d hoped for, trying up some of my cavalry in a protracted melee. But the fight was also drawing in other Lancastrian units which meant they were not attacking my disorganised flanks).

I think Jeremey could see I was preparing for a cavalry charge. Truth is, I wasn’t. Like I said, our plan was for the flanks to hamstring his army and then the cavalry to charge in. But I think I made them look too threatening. So he swung some archers around who started to shoot at the mounted men-at-arms. It was tempting to launch my charge at that point but, like I say, that wasn’t the plan. So instead I moved up the border horsemen, who were quicker, and perfectly capable of dealing with that threat.
He was obviously unconvinced.
(Jeremey – I honestly didn’t know what Stephen was doing, my greatest fear was facing a cavalry charge at the same time as an attack against the flanks. I just didn’t have the units to cope with that).

My first mistake – I’d moved my cavalry just within charge range. I didn’t mean to do that. So on his turn he decided to take matters into his own hands and, with the impact bonus, launched his mounted men-at-arms at mine. Can’t say I blame him.
I was secretly happy about that – let’s get it over with sooner than later, I thought. I was fairly confident my multiple lines would stop him and if he lost his mounted men-at-arms then that would probably be it for the rest of his army, having lost their back bone.
(Jeremey – this was my first lucky break in the battle, with Stephen’s command divided into three it meant his cavalry were often left with few activation dice being drawn compared to mine. As such I found myself facing his cavalry without any activation dice. So I loaded up my cavalry with dice and charged).

Now, at this point it’s worth saying that I truly don’t think I’d done too much wrong with the Lancastrian tactics. Yeah there’s always one or two things that could have gone better. But, as any commander will tell you, no military plan lasts longer than the first contact with the enemy.
There was one other, very important, factor to this game. Jeremey seemed incapable of rolling anything other than 6s. He could roll four dice and three of them would come up 6 with the other one a 5 or 4. No matter how good the plans, how many troops you have, it’s hard to fight against that. That’s not an excuse (like I said at the start – I take responsibility for what happened, and I will address that at the end), but it is a simple fact that I am sure Jeremey will be gracious enough to admit.
(Jeremey – to be fair I did have a good dice game, but I wasn’t having it all my own way. After all my initial cavalry charge against the archers failed, I had suffered the lost of most of my own archers at this point and if I hadn’t retreated some of my billmen units I’d have lost those as well. Part of what led to the idea I was getting lucky with the dice was due to the destruction of Stephen’s cavalry. But when you consider I was able to place activation dice on my units giving them a bonus, plus getting the charge in first and against enemy units with no activation dice. The result was truly in my favour).

So, the cavalry charge.
It didn’t go well for the Lancastrians.
He hammered through the first line, pulverised the second line, and was finally stopped (somehow) by the third line. Although on the next turn the third line would also go!
There, I’ve said it.
The entire Lancastrian cavalry wing destroyed, without taking any of the enemy with it. Even as I type this I’m still not sure how that happened. Two units of Yorkist mounted men-at-arms, took out 8 units of Lancastrian cavalry, without loss.
Such are the fortunes of war and the stories that history is made of.
(Jeremey – see my above point. Having played a fair number of games of Sword and Spear, the golden rule is to get your cavalry charge in first. Preferably with a bonus dice as well. My cavalry charge was as good as it could have been in game terms).

So let’s turn to the flanks, because that was the end of the centre.
Both Roos and Wiltshire continued their pressure. Andy had realised it was time to move up his second line, and put Wiltshire in direct command of them to get them moving. Tim succumbed to the temptation of allowing himself to funnel too many men (and activation dice) into small scraps, so I sent the Duke of Somerset (who had miraculously survived the Yorkist cavalry) over to him to lend some command and control initiative.
(Jeremey – on my flanks I’d lost my archers and so while the cavalry battle raged, I had started to try and consolidate my infantry units. This didn’t work as planned but actually led to a similar situation as the cavalry. Some Lancastrian units got close enough to charge and therefore I again decided to act boldly and charge).

Jeremey had tried to charge Wiltshire’s archers, but Andy had supported his line with billmen and dismounted men-at-arms, and Jeremey’s currours were bounced off (one unit routed and the other ‘re-deploying to the rear’). It was looking strong on Wiltshire’s flank and, so long as no more serious loses were incurred by the Lancastrians, they could still scrounge a slight victory. Then something surprising happened – Jeremey advanced a unit of dismounted men-at-arms against Roos’ militia archers. OK, so that sounds like a good match for York, but the Yorkists had little support for this charge and the militia had other archers, billmen, and men-at-arms, in the immediate area who could help bolster them. Not sure what Jeremey was thinking – was it hubris, was it spontaneity, was it something else? No idea.
(Jeremey – I spent most of this battle just waiting to lose, I was fighting for pride and the chance to give a good account of myself given the points difference, and poor deployment. As it was the lack of coordinated attacks from the Lancastrians gave me the opportunity to take some risky moves).

What did happen is that the militia manage to stop the charge (Jeremey – I thought I was only rolling 6’s?). This would prove vital, because now both sides started funnelling units in to this fight to offer support. What had started as a whimsical charge, a simple fight between two units, promptly escalated into a fight for that wing! With Somerset now lending Roos a hand, Tim managed to push some archers and bills forward, slowing down the Yorkist cavalry that had destroyed the Lancastrian cavalry, from charging into that flank.
(Jeremey – this is the point that the battle started to turn against me. Despite winning the cavalry fight I now needed the activation dice for the melee on the flanks. Which left my surviving cavalry strung out across the battlefield and out of this crucial fight).

With some relief, the Yorkist casualties started mounting up. However, so did the Lancastrians. In fact, the Lancastrians were the first to reach their morale point – an army wide morale roll was needed. But only a turn or two later, this was also the case for the Yorkists.
Over with the Earl of Wiltshire, and Andy could see the Yorkist mounted men-at-arms making their way over to him, so he started to straighten his lines, ready for a charge.
(Jeremey – I’d managed to recall some of my cavalry and the battle had reached the end stages. Despite their loses the Lancastrians still outnumbered me and so I decided I’d done enough to leave with my pride intact. As a last gesture I tried another charge but this time I was checked by my opponent).

Meanwhile, over on the other flank, the fight between the Yorkists and Roos’ men reached a climax – a unit of Lancastrian bills charged into the flanks of the Yorkists, finally routing them. This had been a desperate fight indeed and the loses that Richard of York’s army took helped prevent a humiliating Lancastrian defeat.

It was now more or less over. On the same turn both sides had reached their broken level.
We sat back and it was declared a draw!
Well, a tactical draw it may have been, but in reality it was an overwhelming moral victory for the Yorkists.

So what went wrong?
Two things really.
Firstly, Jeremey was doing some cracking dice rolling. There’s not much anyone can do about that. It’s simply the case that he was just rolling 6s all the time, and we weren’t!
(Jeremey – as I’ve mentioned the Yorkist ‘good’ rolls have disguised a fairly even fight in other areas).
Secondly, I must take responsibility for not thinking about command and control. I gave the Lancastrian army just three commanders – three generals. Each command had one general to take full responsibility for command and control. Now, that was actually adequate for the cavalry, the smallest command, and closely deployed in supported lines. But the two flanks would be more strung out, meaning it was hard to keep them all in command range (actually, both flanks often had troops out of command). This made it difficult (nigh on impossible) for the Lancastrian flanks to keep their second line of billmen up with the archers to respond to any Yorkist charges. Ideally, each flank needed two commanders – a general and captain. This would have meant the Lancastrian battleline would have been stronger to repel Yorkist charges, meaning fewer loses.
I have to take full responsibility for that. Any successes the Lancastrian army had to force a draw rather than utter defeat are to the credit of Andy and Tim, not me.

Anyway, a draw it was.
(Jeremey – I was expecting an early bath on this one. My initial deployment stiffled any attempt to take the battle to the enemy. Archers in the wrong place, slow moving infantry stuck in the middle and an initial cavalry charge that went no where. But the Lancastrians just didn’t press the attacks on the flanks. Maybe by splitting their command into three meant each commander was trying to preserve their own small force? Whatever the reason I’m glad I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and took some very bold moves and effectively won a draw).

Yorkist Loses
4 Units of Longbows (12 points)
2 Units of Militia Longbows (6 points)
3 Units of Billmen (12 points)
3 Units of Currours (12 points)
Total loses 42 points (Army break point 39)

Lancastrian Loses
4 Units of mounted men-at-arms (16 points)
2 Units of currours (8 points)
2 Units of border horsemen (6 points)
1 Unit of dismounted men-at-arms (4 points)
3 Units of retinue archers (9 points)
3 Units of militia archers (9 points)
Total loses 52 points (Army break point 49)

Battle Declared a Draw

Society Meeting, October 22nd

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.

Marcomanni & Suebi Warbands clash with the Auxilia

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

Men at arms punch a hole through the line of Archers

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.

Battle of Wakefield, starting positions. Jeremey feeling somewhat surrounded.

In the background you can see Stephen’s representation of Sandal Castle, you can see an article on its construction here.

Yorkist Archers, the small dice show the remaining strength

Uneven archery duel, all units started at strength 3.

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.

Hello, hello, hello, what’s going on here aaarghh

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.

SAM-2 site protecting a vital bridge as a Skyhawk attacks.

Close up of the Skyhawk, pursued by MiG-15s

Ill Met At Woodfell Hall

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.

Lying In A Pool Of Blood With An Arrow In The Neck

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.

One Knocked Down (face down) One Killed (face up)

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.

An Englishman’s Home

Stephen guides us through a big build.

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 12^th 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 Keep and the steps to the keep door.

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.

Wars of the Roses – Battle of Northampton – Battle Report

This is the third battle report in our long standing campaign to re-fight the Wars of the Roses. Details can be found on the campaign page. Three battles into the campaign it’s become a tradition for the winner to write up the battle report. Which is why Jeremey takes us through the battle of Northampton (spoiler!)

Battle of Northampton
History tells us this was clearly a defensive battle for the Lancastrians, however history also tells us that due to the treachery of Lord Grey the battle apparently only lasted about half an hour. So we dispensed with that aspect and went for the Lancastrians taking up a defensive position. The Lancastrians were allowed enough stakes to cover their front line at no extra costs, but to provide the attackers with a chance this battle was our first game of unequal sides.

Given the Lancastrians static defence Stephen decided to take on full responsibility of command. I as the Yorkists had originally divided up my force to accommodate a guest commander but ended up dividing the army in to three battles to accommodate an additional commander!
Therefore for this battle both Andy and Tim joined my Yorkist forces. For this battle the Lancastrians had 520 points to the Yorkist 700 and we played using the Sword and Spear 2nd edition rules.

The start of the battle saw the Lancastrians in their defensive position with a front line of archers and two artillery units. Andy took command of the Yorkist left with Tim in the centre, I took the Yorkist right near the abbey.

The first couple of turns were all about the Yorkists getting their units moving. The initiative system in Sword and Spear makes it tricky to get everyone moving at a steady pace. You can do a group move of units but that is still dependent on drawning activation dice from the bag and rolling enough to start the group move. It was soon clear some units were being left behind.

Meanwhile the Lancastrians had little to do but wait for the enemy to come within range of their guns and archers. The Lancastrians also had a camp which would allow them to increase the reach and potency of their missile fire through the Resupply strategy.

I advanced my force at a break neck speed outdistancing my subordinate commanders and setting a fine example of how a real commander should lead. Although a pause was required to allow some of my units to catch up. While I did this Tim also managed to advance in the centre, but Andy had the furthest to travel so was somewhat behind.

Realising you can’t make an omelette without breaking any eggs I advanced my archers within range of the Lancastrians taking the chance that they could withstand a volley (or two!) and return the complement, to try and create some holes in the Lancastrian line.

However it was not to be. Some good dice from Stephen and poor dice from me saw both my archer units wiped out before they could even loose an arrow! This made me pause in my advance fearing that I’d have no chance of reaching the Lancastrians with my slow moving billmen and men at arms.

In the centre Tim decided to just go for it and continued his advance. Stephen thought it was worth trying a few ranging shots, but didn’t quite have the distance.

A turn later and Tim and Stephen were able to exchange fire. Tim’s forward units of billmen and spearmen took a bit of damage from the Lancastrians but in return they managed to destroy some of the Lancastrian guns and open up a hole in their defensive line.

Spurred on by this Tim adavanced his units even further. Unfortunately this proved costly with the spearmen succumbing to more artillery fire. Luckily Tim’s captain attached to the unit survived to be able to support the remaining units in the continued attack.

Tim’s bold advance saw the first of the Yorkists units reach the Lancastrian defences. For Tim this was his dismounted men at arms. Unfortunately Stephen had plugged the gap left by the loss of his artillery with some dismounted men at arms of his own. With a supporting unit for the Lancastrians and their sharp stakes taking away the Yorkist impetus, this turned out to be a tough fight that would last for a few turns.

Being slightly embarrassed by one of my subordinate commanders getting into melee first, I decided I’d spent enough time regrouping and launched an attack with my billmen. I had some rather useless cavalry and so I put them out front as cannon fodder to at least take some of the incoming missile fire away from my heavy infantry.

On the Yorkist left flank Andy had finally got his forces in range and was able to start making holes in the Lancastrian defence thanks to some good archery. This forced Stephen to think about plugging more gaps, but he held off this time fearing Andy could just stand off and continue firing on the defensive line.

Meanwhile in the centre Tim had managed to get a unit of billmen into melee to continue the assault. This added much needed support to his hard pressed men at arms.

Following this change in momentum, and thankfully because I rolled some good activaton dice. I managed to get my men at arms and billmen into melee against the Lancastrian archers. Even with the stakes taking way my impetus, the archers were no match for my heavy infantry. These Lancastrian loses pushed them over their Morale threshold forcing Stephen to make tests for each unit. Unfortunately for the Lancastrians this resulted in the loss of a few more units.

Andy was still causing trouble on the Lancastrian right flank, forcing Stephen to move up his billmen to prepare for an assault from Andy’s infantry.

With the Lancastrian line crumbling and more Yorkists arriving the battle reached a final stage. Although the Yorkists were at this point only one unit away from their own morale test point.

But there was to be no last minute Lancastrian revival, Tim’s billmen broke through the Lancastrian defensive line and engaged a unit of militia archers. The blue dice shown are Tim’s Yorkist scores against Stephens black Lancastrian ones. This lost unit pushed the Lancastrians over their break point with the remainder of the turn seeing enough other Lancatrian loses to make the battlefield look like a resounding Yorkist victory. Truth be told there was a moment it was clearly in the balance.

That leaves the campaign at 2-1 to the Yorkists, but Wakefield is up next.

Yorkist Loses
3 Units of Longbows (9 points)
1 Unit of Spearmen (4 points)
2 Units of Billmen (8 points)
Total loses 21 points (Army break point 35)

Lancastrian Loses
2 Units of Dismounted Men at Arms (8 points)
1 Unit of Billmen (4 points)
5 Units of Longbows (15 points)
4 Units Militia Longbows (12 points)
2 Units of Artillery (4 points)
Total loses 43 points (Army break point 31)

Yorkist Victory

The Elves of Dean

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 (13^th century is where my real interest lies) then I thought to myself, ‘let’s imagine the elves as if they were present in 11^th 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 11^th 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…

Messing About in Boats

For our recent Stargrave jaunt to the planet of Aqua Sulis, the five players were required to bring a boat. It could be anything that floated in, on or above the water, there were no design rules. Here we run over the various tubs, buckets and hulks that were served up.

Eric

Eric went for a laser-cut survey shuttle from Blotz that could obviously float on the surface of the sea. He should have done a little better with the security features, since it turned out to be very easy to break down the back door, shoot the pilot and steal the boat.

Andy

A few months ago, Stephen said he would run a Stargrave scenario based on a Waterworld location, and asked us to build some form of maritime transport.
I did a web search for 28mm boats, and amongst the hits was a Special Operations Craft-Riverine (SOC-R) from AnyScaleModels.

The main hull is around 7” long and 2.25” wide. Plenty of room for my crew I thought.
I needed to make it look a bit more Sci Fi than modern, so I asked Tony at Brigade if he had some suitable engine nacelles I could scrounge, he came up with some from their 15mm Perseus VTOL. I also had a few other bits and pieces from Brigade in the bits box: some Sensor turrets and some Heavy Laser guns from their Mercenary range.

Both the boat and engine nacelles had a few air bubbles that needed to be filled, I used some Humbrol Model filler for this. After drying and sanding down, the boat components and nacelles were washed in soapy water and allowed to dry.
The wings attached to the nacelles were quite thin, 2-3mm at most, this required that I drill and pin the short wings to the boat hull, as a glue only joint wouldn’t be sufficient.

I decided to mount the engine nacelles roughly amidships, in line with the pilot’s seat and control panel. I drilled a hole for the sensor turret in the front deck. On reflection I might have offset the pilot’s seat to one side rather than have it central.

Once the superglue had dried, I primed the boat with Halford’s grey primer, and then gave the boat a coat of Warpaint Soviet Green.

Once the Soviet Green had dried, I painted the sensor lens, engine intakes and exhaust matt black, I painted some of the boat’s hatches Gunmetal Grey.
I then painted the detail on the control panel, matt Black dials and Crystal Blue screens. The pilot’s seat was painted Khaki Grey. The final touch was silver on the wing leading edge lights and red and green navigation lights, touching up any errors with Russian Uniform WWII, which I found to be almost an exact match for the Warpaint Soviet Green spray paint
Once the model was dry, I gave it washes, Military shader on the green areas, Dark Tone on the metal hatches and engine nacelle grills and Strong Tone Wash on the seat.

I then had a hunt through my transfer box and found some very old decals from a couple of Airfix kits; some registration numbers from a Swedish Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight and name plates “Apollo” from a Churchill Tank kit. I also found a couple of DANGER decals from another helicopter kit.
I painted a layer of gloss varnish over the areas to which I intended to apply the transfers, which, considering their age, went on easily without breaking up.
Once the decals had dried, I gave the boat a couple of coats of matt varnish, and here she is, the Apollo, ready to venture forth in Waterworld.

Phil

When Stephen suggested the Waterworld game I thought that I would pass just because it involved building a boat and I really wasn’t sure I could be bothered. Then with a couple of weeks to go he asked me I was up for the game and I agreed.

Bum, now I needed to come up with a boat.

Fortunately this proved to be a fairly simple affair. Hidden away in a corner of my cellar were a few Games Workshop kits that I had been bought as presents many years ago. Combining bits from a couple of these gave a simple boat / skimmer that could fit my entire ship’s company.

The main part of the hull came from a 40K Tau Tidewall floaty thing. The exact model doesn’t seem to be available anymore but a couple of similar ones are still on the GW website. The dome at the back game from an Age of Sigmar Grundstock Gunhauler – another floaty thing. By chance the dome piece fitted precisely on a flat part at the back of the Tau model. Nice and easy.

Painting was also straight forward. A spray of GW Zandri dust and some complementary reds and browns from Wargames Foundry. And of course the obligatory GW washes to finish. It only took a day to make which was better than I expected.

Tim

Tim was the only one to go fully scratchbuilt, with a cross between a canal barge and a WW2 landing craft made from foam card. The cogs and wheels were ‘liberated’ from his wife’s craft supplies (we wonder if she knew ?). Looks like a bit of a pig to steer, but it was a cunning move to make it this long since the prow of Tim’s boat started 6″ further into the table than anyone else !

Tony

Finally, Tony went down the Don Johnson/Miami Vice route with a full-on speedboat. It started out as an accessory for a 6″ action figure – origin unknown. It was purchased from a bootfair for 50p, so who’s complaining ? I ripped out the existing cockpit, fitted a new plasticard floor, jump seats, engine and other bits and pieces from my spares box and gave it a quick respray complete with go-faster stripes. Only it didn’t go any faster since it spent most of the game being boarded by giant frogs or dragged down by a sea kraken.

Lights! Camera! Action! Take 2

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.

Char B1s of the French 26eme BCC (heavy tank battalion)

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.

Scene from the original Top Gun, F14 and “Mig-28”, Watch the Birdie!

Scene from the original Top Gun, F14 vs 2 “Mig-28s”

Society Meeting August 13th 2022

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.

Chinese treasure fleet intercepted by pirate rowing boats

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.

Aragorn flees after an encounter with some Goblin Light Foot

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)

Populating the Desert

At our recent Open Day I ran a 6mm sci-fi game using the Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible rules. I created a lot of new desert terrain for the event and thought I’d write up some of the methods I used to create it. If you want to read about the game itself, there’s a report on the Hammer’s Slammers website with lots of photos of the game in action.

Sacred Sands
One major component of almost every item of terrain is the ground texture. I used a mixture of sand (bird cage sand from a pet shop), household emulsion paint and PVA glue in a ratio of roughly 3:2:1. I had a litre of paint mixed by my local B&Q to match Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone spray paint (I sprayed a small square of plastic card which they stuck in their scanner) for a very reasonable £18. I made up batches of the ground texture mix in an ice-cream tub so that it was always ready to go – and after building all of the terrain below I have about 2/3rds of the paint left.

Once dry, the ground was washed with a decent coat of Citadel sepia shade, then drybrushed with Citadel Tyrant Skull. This pretty simple method gave me a quick to apply, good looking and consistently repeatable ground texture.

I scoured eBay for suitable grass tufts in various sizes and shades of dry grass and found a good pair of sources in Boontown Metals and Serious-Play. These were used sparingly, the desert was supposed to be arid.

Happiness is the Road
The roads were made them from Busch model railway roads, which are a sort of very thin self-adhesive foam with markings printed on in white. The two-lane roads were 40mm wide, maybe a little overscale but some sci-fi tanks are pretty big so they look fine. As a base I used 3mm sheets of black Foamex – this is less likely to warp, as card or MDF is prone to. The edges were roughly bevelled with a knife and textured. I made some T junctions and crossroads by butting up sections of road surface and drawing in the road markings with a white acrylic paint pen.

2-4-6-8 Motorway

I had visions of making a big four-lane highway for a couple of reasons – firstly, it would be an impressive large terrain piece, which 6mm scenery can sometimes lack, and secondly it would cut down lines of fire and prevent heavy tanks dominating the battlefield and being able to fire from one side of the table to the other (heavy tank guns have no maximum range in Hammer’s Slammers). The motorway was mounted on 2″ thick insulation foam – I used normal white polystyrene, pink or blue foam would have been better but I already had the polystyrene to hand. This was cut into four 8″ wide, 18″ lengths with a hand saw – do this outside, it makes one heck of a mess! The edges were then bevelled at a 45° angle with a hot wire cutter resulting in a 4″ wide plateau. I ran two lengths of Busch roads down either side of this plateau, leaving a narrow central reservation. The edges and centre were textured as normal, and I put in a small piece of tiled plasticard in each section – the intention with this is so I could put in road signs at some point, although I haven’t done that yet.

One length was cut in half, and one end of each short length bevelled to match the sides. I scratchbuilt a simple bridge from plasticard and Plastruct girders, which was long enough so that one of my normal two-lane roads could pass underneath. The bridge was made so that it could be lifted out – this was for two reasons; firstly, I thought that attaching the bridge to the two end pieces would be too fragile, and secondly it gave me the option to add a destroyed version later.

I’ve learnt in the past that linear obstacles need more than one crossing point, otherwise you end up with a nasty bottleneck and the whole game ends up revolving around this one point. So I used the hot wire cutter to make two tunnels under the roadway – one larger one which is big enough to take a road, the other smaller one which is big enough for infantry on foot or small vehicles. For the larger one I used a piece of plastic cable trunking to make the concrete tunnel, the small one was made from plasticard. This left three crossing points so gives the attacking side more options. The sides of the embankment are rather steep, too much for heavy vehicles, but I allowed light vehicles (jeeps and infantry skimmers) and infantry on foot to climb them as if in bad going.

Houses in Motion

All of the buildings are from Brigade Models’ various desert-themed resin scenery ranges. I stuck them on more 3mm Foamex with Uhu glue and textured between them with the usual mixture. The buildings were sprayed with Army Painter’s Skeleton Bone, washed with Agrax Earthshade (GW) and drybrushed with Terminatus Stone (GW again). To add a splash of colour, doors and details were painted using GW Contrast Paints which give a decent effect in one coat.

One of my main sources of inspiration for the look of the buildings was the various Star Wars stories set on Tatooine. One standout feature of these is the fabric awnings across the entrances and frontages of many of them. I tried to replicate this using pieces of textured paper hand towels (some nasty thick industrial ones that don’t so much dry your hands as redistribute the water…) which I soaked in watered down PVA and strung across paperclip wire supports. Once dry I used Contrast Paints and drybrushing, often matching the awning colour to the other spot colours on the buildings.

I put some buildings on sections of road which allowed me to do some more interesting things such as a footbridge that passed over the road, or parking bays/side roads. The obelisk outside the tower below comes from Brigade’s 2mm range.

The objective of the game was to capture a series of radar stations that controlled the approach to the nearby starport. These all came from the Brigade range including several with ‘golf ball’ style radar enclosures and another tall tower with a radar on top. I added extra small buildings to the bases of some.

The Temple of Doom
I had a ruined ancient temple that had been cluttering up my office for ages – it was an aquarium ornament picked up from a pet shop. This was stuck on a small polystyrene hill with ramps and steps up to the summit. I repainted it in the same way as the other buildings. I discovered that the resin was rather fragile – it had an accident that lowered the heights of all the columns at one end…

Hanging on the Telephone
I scratchbuilt some simple telegraph poles using lengths of cocktail stick and short pieces of plastic strip for the crossbars superglued together, based on 20mm wooden discs from The Works. Ground texture, a single coat of brown contrast paint and a quick drybrush and they were done.

We Got the Power
In a box in my shed o’ stuff I unearthed three 3D printed power pylons, bought back in the days when they were still a sensible price on Shapeways. These were duly stuck on Foamex bases, sprayed with gray primer and drybrushed – again, job done and some welcome height added to the board.

Blood on the Track
A monorail ran across the town, made from Brigade Model’s elevated track and a selection of freight wagons. The pylons were based on 30mm wooden discs and the track was painted in the same way as the buildings. I initially painted the track silver and washed it but that made it too dull, so I went over the rail again with a silver paint pen to make it brighter.

And finally, a few shots of the game on the day. The Slammer’s Regiment (silver hovertanks) were mostly painted by Jon Roche, the Zaporoskiye Regiment in their superb green/white/brown urban camo’ were painted by Mark Johnson. The blue tracked vehicles are Guardforce O’Higgins, painted by me.