DBA- Alans vs Visigoths

DBA? Yes, you heard that right. The guys have been humouring Kent and I and by playing Impetus so time to repay the favour. I haven't played DBA in a couple of years- I got fed up with "Geometry Wars" and micromanaging angles and play the "game"rather than the "wargame."

Any how, lately the guys have been playing lots of the new version so it was time to give it a try- vs Simon and his Visigoths. I like the visigoths and have had fun using them vs Ian in the past (I've a 28mm version waiting to be 0paitned at present). So the only 15mm army I could find was my Alans so it was light horse + knights vs massed bow, warband and cavalry.


Game 1
I got to defend so made it nice and cav friendly- despite the new terrain rules which  I liked.

 My knights slip over to support my light horse vs the cavalry.

 Blades now follow up- and get into trouble vs warband.

 My light horse have made a hole in the enemy line.

 Can we take advantage? Hell yes!

 From 3 -1 down we come back to  in 4-3.

Game 2: Simon aka "Give me a water feature damn it" living up to his name! My plan? Try to cross the river on the left and see what happens. Okay so not much of a plan. 

 Well, 2 units got across- then his bow kept my reinforcements at bay. MY blades have charged across the ford and follow up into arband- not sure I am used to the new blade follow up rules.

 Simon reinforces vs my badly outnumbered light cav.

 End game- now that is what I call surrounded! 5-1 to Simon.

 Game 3- Simon got to defend again. Hmm, I detect a theme.

 Our war correspondent was killed early on in this debacle. I managed to get 2x knights shot full of arrows before they could retreat out of range then Simon unleashed his warband. 4-2 to Simon. 

Thoughts?
I enjoyed the games. It was fun and less micromanaging than previous versions. I liked the longer ranges for bows and  movement  but think a 30" board is even more necessary than ever before- and I've been a bg fan of 30" boards for along, long time. So I think I might play the odd game in future.

Craig

Carthaginians

The first two stands of Old Glory Libyan Spears for the Carthaginians are done- almost. The sand is drying on the bases so only the static grass and clump foliage to go- once the bases are dry. As I said yesterday, I quite like these sculpts. One thing I do like about the Old Glory is having to drill out the hands to take the spears- it makes for a nice strong fit once glued.

Where would we be without Little Big Man Studios shield transfers? I do like the look of 7 figures per base for these guys.

 The spears are probably a bit long but wanted them to look like 'long" spears.

I've run out of Northstar Spears so until the Crusader order arrives from War and Peace Games I am stuck- I've the Nellies I can get on with though. One is almost finished, the other needs drybrushing and highlighting.

Craig

Terrain- Palm Trees

 My palm trees arrived today- 80 of them for about $NZ25. Can't complain about that for value.

They look pretty good but eventually I'll highlight them a bit to make them look less plasticy. They'll be handy for both FoW and Impetus games.

Next up?

...Carthaginains

The Byzantines will have to wait. I blame Oliclanalad for this next detour. I've been checking out the progress on his demo games and as with his Crusades project it is truely epic in both scope and presentation and it has inspired me to return to one of my backburner projects.

Photo source: Oliclanalad's blog:

How can photos such as this not inspire one?  Of course my force will be much, much smaller! I am aiming at a 300pt Carthagian command to start with- orginally (as with most of my projects?) my aim was to make 4-5 300 pt forces so I can mix and match and combine two allied ccommands for bigger battles. The original intend was to collect:

• Republican Romans
• Gauls
• Numidians
• Carthaginians
• Spanish.

 I already have the Gauls and  Numidians so I'll get started on the Carthaginian's and Republican Romans.



I actually started my Carthaginian force the same time I did my Numidians (2009 or 2010) when I first started to seriously get into 28mm scale- I got some Old Glory Libyan foot, but they came with Roman shields so have been languishing in my to do basket. I also got some Renegade Spanish infantry and Carthaginian Cav to go with them but hate the figures- giant horse riding dwarves anf far too big to go with OG. At the same time I got some of the plastic WG Republican Romans but hated those plastics so the project eventually died. 

I actually did 2x 600 pt starter armies (Romans & Carthaginians) for FoG when it came out using 15mm Old Glory but two games of FoG was enough for me to know the ruleset wasn't for me and eventually sold off the figures to Stephen & Dave- although I proably have a few lying round somewhere still.

Anyhow, so this has been one of those on again (but mainly) off again projects for some time. I loaned Stephen my copy of Impetus so don't have access to those army lists at present so am going off one I wrote a couple of years ago.

For figures, I've been doing my usual searches in TMP for people's thoughts on different ranges and have settled on  Crusader for the bulk of the figures. I'll start with the Old Glory figures though- making 4 stands and will use plastic shields from the Numidian range from WF to repalce the metal OG ones.

Edit- so tonight I've painted up a test base. I have decided I need 7 figures for the close ranked heavy infantry- my hope had been to get 5 bases of 6 figures out of the OG bag but it will probably only be 4 if I go up to 7 figures per base. I must admit I'm not really a fan of OG they can be rather hit or miss and so I tend to avoid buying the if I can help it these days (after getting a couple of dud ranges) but I am happy with the sculpts of these.


A bit blurry but you get the idea. The shields are white as I'll order some LBM transfers and they need a white base colour. I think a 7th figure would bulk out the base quite nicely and add to the illusion of depth to the formation.



It's also funny what you find lying around. Thought I'd better check my boxes of stuff before starting to order and lo and behold what did I find? 2x half finished Crusader Carthaginian elephants from last time I started this project- so I've enough stuff for half the project already.

Craig   

King & Kerr Buildings

One range of 15mm buildings I've been tempted to buy but until now have not done so is King & Kerr. I needed some huts/buildings for Eastern Front games, and also was on the look out for buildings for the club, so ordered one of their Eastern Front City sets and the Lignes North Western Europe one for the club.

They arrived a couple of days ago so last night I painted up the East Front buildings. One reason I decided to go with K&K is that I took one look at the new Battlefront prepainted and thought- yuck. They look like a 12 year old made them. I don't care if they are relatively cheap and prepainted, they look far too simplistic- and by the sounds of it the roofs are a bit fragile too.

Anyway here are the K&K EF buildings. My thoughts on them? I'm a bit unsure really- probably an 8 out of 10. I like the buildings, nice clean moulds with excellent detail, and they paint up well. The only thing I dislike is the size of 3 of them. I like my buildings to be able to hold at least 2 medium sized FoW bases and some of these can only hold one. So at 45pd for 5 (roughly $NZ90) I'm not covinced they are that good value for money- I do like the larger buildings but as you can only buy them individually then you don't get access to the discount for the city sets. A minor quibble I know but that is the only thing from holding me back from sayng I love them and giving the 10 out of 10.

I have not looked in detail at the Ligne set yet but again, and at a glance, did like the look of the bigger buildings, not so much the smaller ones.

 A note on the pictures:  bought an extra building- the one on the foreground of the first picture as I liked the look of it. I'd have given them 10 out of 10 if all buildings were about this size.

Craig

Impetus

    Kent and I have been playing Impetus since it came out and had limited success in gettnng the guys at the club interested in:  1)    rules "written in Italy"
      2)    28mm gaming in general

Jamie and Jason have been carrying the Impetus torch in Christchurch and on the TMP and other sites there has been a steady groundswell of support and numbers appear to be increasing in many places. I’ve absolutely no interest in playing it as a comp game but Impetus is a great game and works for us- the games always seem to go to the wire and both Kent and I like that aspect of the games- as well as the tactical feel and the way battles unfold feels “right” to us.

It looks like Kent and my perserverance is starting to pay off. The guys are diehard DBA 10mm/15mm gamers but Dave and Simon both joined us this week and are considering forces and Stephen is now talking of getting together a later crusades force in 28mm and with Fireforge Games aobut to release their Templars and mounted sergeants it is pretty good time to do so.

Of course they can always play it in 15mm using their current DBA bases if they wished too.

Craig

Impetvs: Seljuks vs Early Crusaders- 300pts

Dave and Simon joined us tonight. Simon and I took the Seljuk forces (Simon commanded the Seljuk nobles, superior light horse, javelins and skirmihers, I took the rest.

Kent had had a cunning plan and fielded:
1x Crusader knight
2x CM Turcopoles
4 or so dismounted knights
4 or foot sergeants
2x crossbows
2x bows

Alas I forgot my camera which was a pity as it was a truely epic game. Simon and I managed to lose our right flank light horse whilst trying to destory a single stand of turcopoles and then the supportingseljks not long thereafter. In fact for a few turns only  single stand of skirmishers was holding up our right (Simon's) flank. Simon managed some truely atrocious dice rolls and even managed to make our poor commander incompetent!

Meanwhile, my light horse had destroyed the turcopoles on my flank and were starting to nibble away at the crossbows and bows. Kent came up with a new tactic of combining units of crossbows and bows together- bows fire for disorder, crossbows (typically more dice) then fired to try to do permanent damage- it worked well.

In the end we managed to keep enough of our force intact to keep a steady rain of fire on the infantry and destroyed the knights when they finally decided to advance. The last few turns we were both close to breaking but in the end Simon and I managed to kill the Crusader general to break the crusaders (16-10) - it was a fun and very close game.

Kent is talking of getting more crossbows to deal with all our cavalry. That doesn't sound good.

Craig

300 pt Seljuk's finished

I've spent a couple of evenings working on my 300 pt Seljuk army. I've painted up another 3 stands of light horse and also a Perry Sejuk command. I've decided to go with 4 figures for the medium cavalry nobles/elites as they too have a VBU of 6.

I've tweaked the list from last week, adding another Sujek nobles and more skirmishers/ light foot at the expense of 2x  unts of light horse. Every unit has a missile wepaon.

300 pt Suljek Turks

• Command: Average (range 60cm)                                                                       
• Commander: Poor (+1 leadership)                                                                                  
• 2x  CM Seljuk Nobles- Comp Bow B
• 2x CM Ghulums-      Comp Bow C
• 2x CL Turcomans (VBU 4)- Comp Bow B
• 2x CL Turcomans- Comp Bow B
• 1x FL Daylami- Javelins
• 3x S  Archers- Short Bow B

VBU: 25 Points: 302           

The new Seljuk general- painted up tonight.

 3x Seljuk light horse painted last Thursday- Perry mini's of course.

 The Cavalry assembled.

 3x Stands of Skirmishers and one of Daylami light foot.

Most of the army assembled- I'm missing 2x light horse stands in this shot.

Bring on Kent's Crusaders on Wednesday night

Craig

300 pt Impetus: Armenians vs Seljuk Turks

Kent couldn't make it tonight so Dave and I had a taining game of Impetvs to teach him the rules- not easy to learn the rules when you leave your rulebook behind- oops. Dave commanded the Armenians and I took control of the Selkuks. My tactics were simple, sit back, shoot and try to avoid hand to hand as long as possible.

Armenians

Command: Average (range 60cm): 12

            Commander: Fair (+2 leadership) : 20

4          CP Nobles *              88

2          CM Bedouins           46

4          FP Infantry                64

2          T Merc Crossbows   42

2          T Archers       22

1          S Archers                  7

Total: 301                                                                                                      

                                                            I managed to old a narrow defile between some rough going and hills, whilst zooming round with light horse- I don't think I used them terribly well, I managed to lose 2 units (out of 6) and had 3 others badly mauled.

 The Armenians held their infantry and missiles troops on the flanks and the 4 units of Cav held the centre. 

  A view from the Seljuk lines as they await the oslaught with their own heavy cavalry.

 Skirmishers stick to the rough going- Armenians skrimishers and meercenary crossbows close in on the flank.

 More seljuk horse archers ride forth to soot the exposed Armenian general but are driven off in turn by bedoin cavalry. 

 The bedouin charge the Seljuk general but are driven off and destroyed in my next turn.

 The final turn- things still hang in the balance but we called time- a draw but another turn or two and my force was in trouble.

A good, fun game. Dave picked up the rules pretty quickly- although there was a fair bit of I think it goes like this involved. Not sure light horse, missile heavy armies are my cup of tea though- probably need another game or two wiith them to get a feel for the way they play.

Hoepfully next week Kent is available for a game as well.