6 x 6 - Tomb Raider

Sorry, no Angelina Jolie or even the video game version of Lara Croft. This is my latest game of Song of Broken Legions, featuring the fearless men of the Republic up against the villainous undead of Ptolemaic Egypt.
The year is 33BC and relations between Marc Antony and Octavian are not at their best. The former has been bewitched by the Eastern Queen Cleopatra (true story - read the Roman propaganda errr... histories). Deep in Egypt a tomb of some long sleeping greater demon is guarded by Cultists of Set and a Liche Lord. Should the demon be awakened Octavian fears that he may not have the power to defeat Antony in any future civil war. A party of intrepid and loyal Caesarians are dispatched to find the tomb and destroy the sleeping enemy before it can be awakened.

The Romans arrive near the tomb.

Bird's eye view of the table and the labyrinth of jungle the Romans had to navigate

One group heads right and activates 3 Cultists.

For very failed activation dice the Romans rolled, a die was rolled for the Egyptians. On a 4+ d3 Cultists would appear within 1 medium of the Roman that rolled the failure.

On the left only 2 Cultists were activated.

The Romans on the right struggle against their adversaries.

And the same issue plagues the Sons of the Eagle on the left.

Hidden in the bushes an Egyptian archer misses every shot...

... but the Roman response is far more effective.

The Roman legionaries start to get the upper hand on the right.



While a long drawn out hand to hand fight ensues on the left.



The Frumentarius takes the opportunity to slip away and head towards the tomb.

Having dealt with their enemy the Centurion and his trusty guard chase the last of the Egyptians back to the tomb.

Followed by the missile support.

After far too long the Praetorian takes down the last of his opponents.

The rest of the Egyptian crew comes spilling out of the tomb to face the Centurion and his men. Note the Frumentarius stealthily making his way around the side to the front entrance.

Battle is joined and the Romans find themselves outnumbered but holding a limited frontage to avoid being encircled.

And knock down more of the enemy than they lose themselves.

The Praetorian and the last Cretan Archer start heading towards the tomb.

Ad arrive to help their comrades. The Frumentarius takes the opening and heads into the tomb.

Surprise, the Egyptians left a guard!

The Romans start to get the upper hand in the battle with the eternal warriors.

And it is only the Liche Lord left now.

The Frumentarius kills his opponent and manages to set fire to the tomb.

The Roman expeditionary force won this scenario. Song of Blades and Heroes proved to once again be an excellent system to use. The only downside was that I began to forget which figures had been knocked down and which had been killed. Usually you just remove the casualties, but as I had a necromancer, you are meant to leave the dead on so that they can be brought back by a spell. I think in future when I play with the Cult of Set, I'll use red counters to mark where people have been killed.

I've rejigged some of the stats now, powering up the Romans to account for their mail, tower shields and their skill with the gladius. This will mean less troops to provide missile support, but to be honest, that was pretty useless in the last couple of games anyway.

Next up, Antony will try and unleash the Argonauts on a mission to reach a sacred relic and get it away before Octavian's men take it for themselves.

Nate

6 x 6 - time to get moving

After a roaring start to the 6 x 6 challenge, I have fallen well behind in getting my games played. So this month my aim is to play out all of my DBA and Song of Broken Legions games.

Having just finished marking a whole pile of essays on the Aeneid and Roman art, all of rather variable quality,  I felt like I needed a break. I was inspired to head back to ancient Rome for another crack at the Gallic Wars. The first game was over rather quickly, so I was able to get in two battles.

GAME 1 (or 2 if we count the first encounter from a while back)

The Romans and Gauls face each other again. What would the outcome of this engagement be? The Gauls were at 1 nil before this fight.

The deployment. The Gauls went for subtlety with their patented 'Gallic steamroller'.  The Romans matched them in the centre with their infantry including a second reserve line for any breakthroughs.

Within 2 turns the lines were at each others' throats.

In the first turn of combat the Romans pushed the Gauls back all along the line.

But then it turned to custard. Roman legionaries began to get bowled by the Celtic comeback.

The Gallic Chieftain ploughed his way through the Romans (no pun intended)

The end of the game and the Romans have lost 5 elements to 1.

 GAME 2 (or 3)
Two games in a row had been won by the Gallic steamroller. This time I was determined to see if I could come up with better tactics for the Romans.

Deployment, and the Roman lines look a little different.

As the steamroller moves forward the Romans deploy their flank columns to allow an overlap. They also send the Light Horse forward to seize control of the flank.

Battle is joined and immediately the overlap yields results, while the Roman cavalry in the centre falls back in front of the chieftain, rather than being auto-killed as a blades element would have been.

The door is closed on the Gallic left and the Psiloi deliver a lesson to the Gallic warbands before it. In the centre the legionaries outfight the warband element before them.

The battle is won by the Romans 4 nil. The Roman general didn't even get into combat. 

This was a great game because I worked out how to take down the Gallic steamroller, and it was very simple really. The Romans were also helped by the terrain, most of which was 'good going'. All of the terrain in these games was chosen at random by dice rolling. Next game I will look at trying to choose terrain specifically as if I was playing the Gauls as 'my' army. This way I aim to develop the tactics to play to the strengths of both sides.

In other news, with the release of Star Wars Legion next year, I'm going to take Star Wars off my 6 x 6 list, and replace it with Pikeman's Lament. My Marlburian armies for Spain are almost complete and I already have one game completed. I figure this will spur me on to paint the last half dozen units I need, as well as being a dedicated set of rules as opposed to Star Wars where I was going to need to adapt rules or write my own stats etc.

Nate

You may be cool...

...but you'll never be Napoleon conquering Egypt on the back of a camel cool!

'Avance, mes enfants!'

In between setting exams and marking assessments this week I sneaked a couple of hours with the paintbrush to paint some of Lancashire Games' Napoleon in Egypt range.
In my last order I picked up the pack of French generals and the French archaeologists vignette pack. When they arrived I just couldn't wait to get paint on them, and stopped doing my job, and also interrupted painting Craig's German grenadiers, to get them done.

Napoleon on said camel, led by a local entrepreneur.

A better view of the camel guide

'Dig there, my good man.'

'Why don't you try picking up a shovel?'

'I just dug this up. Want to make a sketch?'

'Why not? I have no idea what it means though.'

Not hot enough to put up the parasol yet.

The archaeologist pack. Missing is a French Grenadier that acts as a guard, but I just wanted the archaeologist bases for my plans.

I loved these figures, and they were very easy to paint and are full of life. My decision as to whether to invest in the Italian campaign or Egyptian campaign has been finally sealed. I just have to save up the $200 to get the figures that I need for the project!

Nate

Project Management - can we get something going?

I think that the extent to which Facebook has replaced blogs in the wargaming community can be seen through the lack of draws, memes and other community events, and it is a bit of a shame. I don't know if we are going to ever recapture that period a couple of years ago when it seemed every man and his blog (see what I did there) was having a giveaway or nominating someone else for an award of some sort. The six by six challenge is fun, and it has brought my attention to a number of new blogs. I'm hoping that I might be able to spark the blogosphere into life again by getting people that read this (am I being too presumptuous to use the plural there?) to post a project management list. This originally came from Prufrock over at 'Here's No Great Matter', and I thought it would be interesting to look at what people's ideal 'realistic' project list would look like. He explains the list thus:
'Looking at all of my unpainted or half-painted stuff, I've been trying to think what I would be satisfied with. By satisfied, I mean feeling that I would never need to paint another thing again, except perhaps to replace something that broke, or to get an extra unit of something here or there for a particular occasion.'

Picture blatantly taken from here

So what will this involve? Well, quite simple really. You make a Project Management blogpost which includes a list of projects you have / are working on / one day realistically intend to be working on. In the post you link back to the blog of the person that you got this idea from, like I have with Prufrock, and these instructions. That way we might get a chain effect of people discovering new blogs that they hadn't been following before. Or maybe just a bit of community bonding like the 'good old days'.

So, to keep the ball rolling, here is my project list:

Ancients:
15mm  Peloponnesian War: Spartans and Athenians
15mm Fall of the Roman Republic: Marian Romans (x2), Spanish, Gallic, Parthian

Renaissance:
15mm Great Italian Wars: Spanish and French
15mm Samurai
28mm English Civil War
10mm Dutch Wars of Louis XIV

Horse and Musket:
15mm Marlburian: English, Hanoverians, Hessians and French for Blenheim era
28mm Marlburian (skirmish): Confederate and Bourbon for Spain
15mm Seven Years War: Prussians, Austrians and Russians
28mm French and Indian War (skirmish)
15mm French Revolutionary Wars (currently not yet purchased and a toss up between Napoleon in Italy and Napoleon in Egypt)
15mm Great Paraguayan War
15mm Franco-Prussian War

Moderns:
15mm 1914 WWI
15mm 1985 WWIII

Sci-Fi/Fantasy
28mm Weird War Rome skirmish
28mm Superheroes
28mm Star Wars

1/2400 Naval - WWI

This is a long list, but as many of the armies will be DBA or skirmish, the whole lot can realistically be completed in the next few years. Well, assuming I get back behind a brush sometime soon. It's been over a week since I was getting some consistent painting done! Interestingly, none of the above are currently 'finished', although there are a number that I have enough painted figures to play games with. I think if you have finished a project, you should probably indicate that.

Nice-to-haves that don't make it to the list would be Napoleonics, Vikings and 1918 WWI.

So will you take up the Project Management blog challenge?

Nate

Excited

Just as I thought I was almost over my 'oooh shiny!' addiction. This looks like the most important wargaming item in my 2018 calendar! More here.

And while I'm at it, I figured I might as well share another couple of recent things that have been completed since getting over my illness.

First of all - I completed my collection of Practical Wargamer magazine. The last four missing issues from my collection were filled in by Caliver Books. I loved this magazine when it was going, and I still love it today. An endless source of inspiration.

I was going to lay them all out, but they wouldn't fit on the table, so here is the stack.

And from the side, which gives a better idea of how many there are.

A few extra units for the Great Paraguayan War have fresh new coats of paint:

Brazilian regular 2nd infantry unit

Brazilian Voluntarios.

Argentine National Guard battalion.

These guys are all from the Freikorps 15mm American Civil War range. The Confederates in gum blankets make great volunteers in ponchos for the Brazilians.

As I am about to receive my 15mm Seven Year War Russian army from Old Glory 15s, I thought I would buy a few bits and pieces to finish them off. Now I needed some Cossacks, Horse Grenadiers and generals, and only 1 gun each for the Prussians and Austrians, but by the time you factor in postage and the extras that I didn't really need from the US (no point buying a pack of 6 guns when you only need 1), I couldn't really go with OG15s again. So I thought I would try some Eureka minis. These duly arrived nad they are beautiful sculpts, but...

My Old Glory general next to a Eureka general.

Old Glory dragoons next to a Eureka Horse Grenadier

And another shot from the front.

 The Eureka horses are HUGE! Now I could justify that the Horse Grenadiers are heavy cavalry mounted on big horses, but I still think that it would bother me. And the argument doesn't work for the Cossacks riding ponies that tower over the other cavalry. The generals won't necessarily be on the table right next to other horses, but I just can't bring myself to have them on the table with the difference in size. It offends my OCD.

Old Glory artillery on left side, Eureka (not finished yet) on right.

On the other hand the foot figures are a perfect match, the Eureka figures being maybe a little thinner.
So I've now ordered the same mounted figures from Irregular Miniatures - generals, horse grenadiers and cossacks. They may be a tad smaller than the OG15s, but if their 7 Years War figures are the same size as their Great Northern War figures that I have, they should actually fit together very well. I've also ordered limbers for the Russians from Irregular as well, and was always going to, so I should have just done this in the first place.
Let me know if you'd like the Eureka mounted figures - free to a good home.

Nate

I didn't think they'd have the Gaul!

The flu refuses to remove its claws, but I am feeling a bit better. Well enough to finally go back to the paints and complete my Gallic army for DBA. I've been beavering away at the matched pair of Marian Roman and Gallic armies for a while behind the scenes, in order to play out the last four DBA games in my 6 x 6 challenge.

Family picture

I set the table up in the lounge this afternoon and deployed the two sides. The Romans were invading Gaul - no surprises there, and so the arable terrain was selected without a built up area but with 2 plough instead. These were good going for the whole game, as was the gentle hill, and in fact, only the difficult hill presented any rough going. There was a woods, but it didn't make it onto the cluttered table corner that was rolled.

 The two sides lined up facing each other, the Gauls with three two-deep elements of Warband, the Romans with a second line which included the general.

 Both sides advanced in a fairly standard way - the Gallic cavalry sensed an opportunity on their left and charged into the Roman lights holding the hill. The Cretan psiloi were removed, but the Numidian Light Horse stayed stubbornly fighting on.

 In the centre the Gallic chieftain burst through he Roman line, although the rest of the Gauls were all pushed back.

 The Romans advanced their reserve to pin the Gallic chieftain while the rest of the Roman army continued to push the Gallic Warbands back.

 On the Roman left, first blood was drawn, and the legions prepared to close the door on the Gallic flank.

 The Gallic cavalry which had attempted to do the same to the Numidians were surprised with some extraordinary fighting skill, the light horse recoiling its surrounding elements.

 Now the Romans decided to deliver the coup de grace, charging into the Gallic chieftain.

 But the Chief has his blood up. Another element of legionaries goes 'poof' and in the other promising Roman attack where they had closed the door, the Gauls fought off their attackers! And totally out of no-where, a fourth element is lost to the Gauls on the right flank, where all previous combats had been going one way.

 VICTORY!

 The casualties.

The damage to the Romans was mostly done to their legionaries, which is quite different to where they used to lose casualties in DBA 2. In that game the aim was always to try and take out the supporting elements. I have to say, I am impressed with the ability of the Gauls to fight in DBA 3.0. I can't recall ever seeing a game where they were able to carve their way through the Roman line so effectively in the previous edition. The double element +1 and auto-kill on Blades makes them lethal with just a little luck. I probably should have held the Roman reserve back a little and moved it so that the centre element, which also happened to be the general) was opposite the Gallic Chieftain, so they could have got a 6 vs 3 match-up, but that is all learning. A rematch goes without saying.

 'The blood of this chicken has brought us victory!'

'Come on Porcius, let's get out of here.'

Nate

More pics of French troops holidaying in the Med

Again, just painting. I've been hit with yet another illness in the space of a month. Can't wait until this winter is over!

 This time it is some regular infantry. First up, the 18e ligne in their red jackets and yellow facings. I have to admit, the black pouffes are a bit boring though. To give you an idea of size, the bases are 30x20mm. You can make out the level of caricature on these guys, which makes them very easy to paint, and as I said in the previous post, gives them some real character.

 I'll be adding a flag when I can get back to work and access the printer.

These marching figures are from a different regiment, the 85e, with blue facings this time, and much prettier pouffes on their hats. I like the neck curtains on the chap on the right and the drummer, they serve as a good reminder of where these guys are meant to be operating.

Right, I'm going to crawl off and resume my role as an invalid.

Nate