The Best Laid Schemes.....

We've had a lot on our plate over the last few months, its been one thing after another with the whole household being burned out and the hobby has had to take a massive back seat. I've been very slowly doing a bit of painting and a rare test game of home brew rules but I haven't had the time or energy to keep up with social media side of the hobby, keeping up with my favourite groups/forums/blogs or Blogging. While things have improved a bit of late its still not plain sailing and time to concentrate on hobby stuff is very limited. 

I've been getting the odd moment to paint here and there  over the past few months and I've finished the Moria Goblins and some Carthaginian veteran spearmen. A conversion of African armoured spearmen into Hellenistic Thorakitai is almost painted to completion. The Veterans are ready to post up, I haven't done any photos of the goblins yet, I was contemplating having a suitable Moria-esque background but I'll eventually get them dug out and photographed on one of my usual backdrops. I had also been preparing a post about painting Wargames Atlantic Les Grognards so another upcoming post at some point.  

On the gaming side I got the Strength & Honour Supplement as well as Command and Colors: Ancients printed off with view to getting to grips with them. Strength & Honour's Reversal of Fortune system in which failures in combat and movement switches the active player provides enough friction and chaos to make a great soloable game. With Command and Colors the fog of war provided by the limited stock of card actions seems to have potential for soloing and by all accounts its a fun system. However as mentioned above I haven't had the time or the mental energy to sit down, digest and get more familiar with the texts but I'm hoping that will change in time. 

In the mean time I needed something that could fit onto a page or two and provide a plausible and fun game, even my 2d6 Ancient rules were feeling too clunky and taxing for my tired mind. I once again looked at One Hour Wargames, the base rules leave much to be desired for me personally but the core mechanics and the scything simplicity provides a great base to build a more expansive game. The trick is to build up slowly and I found the first attempt while providing an entertaining game I added too much too quickly. I went back and began to strip back unnecessary rules and took the main message of the book in that does it NEED that rule and does it add anything substantial to the game? 

Invariably because I'm focusing on Hellenistic era specific troop types and roles need to be added, as well as command and control to some degree. Unit stats became more of a thing within this expansion. On the One Hour Wargames Facebook group I came across a post about using to hit dice instead of a damage roll also known as the "More Chaos" modification, just what a set for mainly soloing needs so it was quickly adopted. Where I have kept movement and combat as simple as possible, and added in a simple activation system I ended up adding in rules for flight and pursuit. 

I've tried to keep them simple also but its more rules to add and to follow, more complexity and I'm not sure if they're truly necessary but I feel that when a unit breaks, according to Professor Sabin, is when the casualties would significantly mount up and why they would be so lop-sided and I feel that would take up quite a bit of time. While the victors pursue and cut down the fleeing enemy they aren't turning any flanks unless they are finished chasing their foe or their commanders have enough control and awareness to stop the pursuit and break the next formation. This harks to Total War games where the pursuit and chasing down units can mean the difference between destroying an army or letting it escape to continue to be a thorn. That along with wanting to basically have a Campaign context for table top battles made me want to include such a thing in the rules. If a unit is caught and cut off it reduces army morale further and if its part of a campaign a loss of a unit. As like with most of my ideas its very untested.

Eventually I set up an impromptu battle, the aim was to see if I could have a quick, satisfying game that was easy to set up, play to a conclusion and pack up within an hour or two. I did a classic Carthage vs Rome in Iberia (Iberian Allies on both sides) Rome had better infantry with four good legions. Carthage had more and better cavalry, Elephants and two units of Veterans so skewed in their favour unless the legions get stuck in.

Carthage moved the whole army without issue, Rome advanced their skirmish line and main battleline but the cavalry were hesitant, but the worry was being driven off the field early. Unlike my previous rules or because of them the skirmish clash has been written to be quick and decisive while having a small chance to inflict hits on the main battle units. 

Not long after the Punic cavalry started engaging the Roman cavalry and began to drive them off after a few turns the Roman cavalry melted away and the Punic cavalry began to organise themselves to threaten the Roman rear. Once the Punic cavalry stopped pursuing the Romans they were able to chase down fleeing Iberians running from Elephants. The Roman allied Iberians were struggling with the Elephant unit and the African infantry and Gauls never really got into it with anyone by the time the battle came to a dramatic finish.

The main lines began to clash in places the legions opposing the Iberians began to push them back, but the opposing generals lead their respective veteran units to decisive conclusion. The Roman legion had already took a hit from dealing with Carthaginian skirmishers. In this battle both the African veterans and Legions get 3 attack dice (if the Legion was at full strength it would get an extra die). Both leaders committed to the attack adding a further die but this die came with a risk of death or injury. As you can see below it was an intense fight, both units required 6s to lose strength points both generals were injured and would have missed their next phase. However after taking 3 hits the legion were sent into flight losing their general in the chaos much to the relief of the now battered African veterans!

Overall it gave that quick satisfying game I was after. It had chaos and unpredictability but not to the point of frustrating and generally playable. I think these ones are just about ready to post up with a bit of cleaning and tweaking.   

     

Numidian Skirmishers

Again I've been finding time and energy to write blog posts difficult to acquire. These 20mm Newline Designs Numidians have been complete for some time. It didn't take a great deal of time to paint up by keeping the colour scheme simple and they are based individually to act as skirmishers markers. I have made more than needed no doubt but they can be used as a unit in their own right for gridded games. 

They're for Strength & Honour ready for the new Conquest: Alexander & Hannibal Supplement. I treat myself to the PDF as I've been looking forward to this booklet! The supplement provides more army lists and with them more unit characteristics, for example, Phalanxes in these earlier armies can be classified as "Professional Phalanxes" making them a bit more formidable. The legions are not as tough as the professional legionaries of the later republic and I'm looking forward to testing the classic legion vs phalanx match up. Before tackling the scenarios I think I'll do a few basic set ups to try out the various traits, especially since I don't often get a chance to play. Hopefully things will settle after Christmas and I'll have some time to get to know the rules better as I still hope to play campaigns. I will also make another custom movement dice as now troops can be classed as "hesitant" meaning they will be a little less likely to advance.

The Moria Goblins are finished also they are just waiting for their photo shoot! I've made a start on some more armoured Hellenistic and African infantry. For some reason also my eye has turned east, I'm not sure why, but it might be a combination of watching Onimusha Netflix and the new Wargames Atlantic Grand Scale Samurai and Ashigaru sets caught my eye. After some inner struggle I resisted the urge to embark on a new scale thanks to a stash of 1/72 Samurai of which I did a few of test figures a couple of years back.  

Iberian skirmishers

 

An assortment of skirmishers from Iberia based individually to be used as skirmishers markers for Strength & Honour, which has a supplement due out soon covering the Punic wars. I've probably made far more than needed but they can quite easily be used for other systems along with my usual bases being mainly a grid based player. 

I painted these Newline Designs 20mm Ancient Spanish during a painting slump. It took quite a while to get through them all, painting so many at once and trying to make them individually styled slowed down further by the infrequent visits to the painting bench! In the end by chipping away at them they eventually made it to completion and now they have finally made it to a post. Again my motivation to mess about with the blog is also low so its taken a while to get them uploaded and write up a post. 

With this general on going malaise, I've lacked the inclination to set any games up. I've recently completed all the troop types required for Lost Battles Magnesia scenario and despite having the odd chance here and there I opted to paint instead, I couldn't quite face the set up and brain power needed to play! Overall its the lack of plenty of free time, not having much of it, setting up a game is a large investment of time so its best saved for when I fancy such an endeavour.

As is my custom, at this point in the year I tend to fancy a change in project. I've been eyeing up some Victrix sets again, due to the release of early Saxons and I've been getting inspired by Middle Earth once again. Between Rings of Power and Games Workshop's previews of upcoming War of the Rohirim starter set anticipating the new animated feature I picked up my Moria Goblins. 24 ready for varnish, 23 ready to base, and 24 ready to basecoat. As ever a change of theme has been refreshing.

Meanwhile the 20mm Ancients have many Hellenistic and Punic chainmail clad infantry to paint up when I'm ready. They're mainly headswap conversions so I'm quite excited to paint these unique figures up! The pictures below show all what has been painted, the picture featuring the multibases of Balearic slingers features 3 bases of older paint jobs with the colourful ones being the new ones. Next up will be a short post featuring Numidians which were painted within a week. 

 

Caetrati

Balearic Slingers

2D6 Ancients 2nd Playtest

 

Recently my friend and I undertook the second playtest of my homebrew rules. The pictures are a few quick snaps and are in no particular order. The real challenge of the rules was whether they could be played with multiple distractions namely in the form of a demanding and fussy child as well as a puppy. In that regard I think they were good.

I opted to set up a Punic War fight set in Sicily with Rome gaining some Sicilian Greek allies. The armies were fairly equal with Carthage having more cavalry and Rome having better infantry (see the list below). This time we tried out some deployment rules. We diced off and the highest roll had priority, then each player alternately placed units by type, firstly light infantry once both players deployed all their light infantry would they move onto the next troop type. It was simple and it worked well.

I tweaked the rules in an attempt to make the initial skirmish clashes more decisive. They felt right but in the context of the full battle they could be even more decisive. I'm considering allotting "Hit Points" to units and removing the 4 step status of each unit so skirmishers may have 2HP and cavalry 3HP, it can also be an indication of troop quality. 

Eventually the heavies came to blows and we came to the conclusion, after quite a bit of successful combat that was being rallied away by Generals, that rallying needs to be riskier and limited, either by per turn or per battle. To wrap the battle up we called that the generals had exhausted their rallies.

In the first playtest the morale tests for units breaking was punishing especially for levies, while I stripped them back for this test, I will bring them back next time and just do a single morale roll when units are lost to combat results to prevent too much cascading as there was not a lot of sympathetic routing resulting in a mutual bloodbath.

We did begin to find that quite a few combats were starting to break both opposing units, this is probably due to me changing the turns to simultaneous phases rather than each plyer completing a full turn. so I have been since working on a mechanism to prevent that so each combat will have a "winner". Of course this will bloat the rules a bit and will require testing.  

I am also thinking that command and control is too "easy" currently armies can pretty much do what they want with a few to quite a few spare commands to spend on attack bonuses. Perhaps the command points should be more restrictive since all opposing units will combat or restrict combat to individual units that can be activated, more to mull on.

There was a bit of fun with the Elephants, one unit went berserk and prompted me to tighten up the rampage rules a bit, but in game with some excellent battlefield marshalling, the elephants and the infantry units nearby managed to avoid each other before the elephants found a route away from the battle without trampling anyone! 

There was no clear winner, as the Carthaginian cavalry began to make serious progress the Legions began to make theirs. So some kind of morale or army break point is needed to discern a winner of the field. There was some great suggestions provided in the comments of the last play test post that are being carefully considered. However the game survived the stress test of many distractions, played relatively quickly with lots of figures and raised points that needed worked on for the rules to progress as well as providing entertainment. 

On the painting front there's been barely any progress. I'm working on individually based skirmisher marker bases for Strength & Honour which seems to be just about ready to release their new supplement. I'm also ready to have a solo re fight of Lost Battles Magnesia, just need the opportunity to set up and play through!

Cretan Archers

Since finishing the Iberian Scutarii I've been busy chipping away at the next large batch of troops. I've been doing mass clean up of the projects I'll be working on, roughly 8 unit packs, including head swap conversions so it's been slow going. Once all the metal was filed, drilled and washed, the conversions finished and the light troops sprayed, I gathered this lot to paint up first.

The main thing that's new here are the Cretan Archer conversions, I wanted to create the type that carried and shield and helmets. They are based on Newline Designs 20mm Cretan Archers bodies and all have heads from the Newline African Veterans, who have great Hellenistic type helmets. Having new heads attached allowed me to have some poses to have their heads at different angles adding a little more variety. Finally I got hold of Macedonian shields from Xyston to complete the skirmishing archers not afraid to get close to the enemy. These shields may be useful for other Newline Hellenistic pikemen if I wanted to use LBMS transfers as they seem to produce some that are made to fit these shields.

They were painted alongside the Greek Archers and Slingers. The Greek Archers had a couple of head swaps just to give a slight variant in the form of adding a bandanna wearing Greek head to the pose that lacked one originally. All three unit types were broken down into tunic colours so I could batch paint the various units in this way I slowly chipped away at this substantial chunk of the prepared figures. 

One of the things I have done to cut a corner is to selectively highlight some parts of the figure. With these it was the tunics, faces and helmets, everything else received a base coat and wash. The shields have water-slide transfers from Veni Vidi Vici but I had some trouble getting them to lie flat without creasing. In the end I used many layers of varnish to mitigate this best I could.

Some are based as usual on 80mm frontage and quite a few based individually to represent skirmisher markers for Strength & Honour. I have quite a few Iberian Caetratii and Numidians to paint up that are entirely for this purpose, furthermore if they are needed for another system since I tend to use grids the different format won't impinge on the game. There's also an option to make a movement tray for them. 

I managed to squeeze a game of Strength & Honour in with my friend and concentrating on getting the rules right to teach them. The game went as well as it could and was a testament to the play-ability and beginner friendly nature of the rules. We were both able to focus on our tactics with only minor rules checking for certain situations.   

Cretan Archers:

Cretan Archer Skirmish Markers:

Head Swap Conversions:

Greek Archers:

Greek Archer Skirmish Markers:

Greek Slingers: