1st de Ligne completed

I may have mentioned it earlier but I recently purchased Ganesha Games new Napoleonic rules, "Drums and Shakos, Large Battles". Havent played them yet as I dont have any Napoleonic figures done, but from a good read through these rules look like they tick all the boxes that I like, 6x4 table, smallish units (but lots of them) etc.

So fired up and enthused I fired off an order to Pendraken for a 10mm French Division and here's the 1st infantry unit to come off the production line.

Yes I will be adding a flag later on! So dont ask.

So now to get cracking with the other 23 infantry units, the 9 cavalry units and the 12 guns. Depressing thought really!

I called it

here

what happened was, the Roman right once again refused to move, the Roman lefts only contribution was to shoot a few arrows at a passing spear unit. The Roman centre managed one move only which left them in charge range not only of the Punic shieldwall but also 2 heavy cavalry units on their flank. Both charges succeeded and the piccy above shows the result, the Roman centre has dissapeared pretty much, game over in 3 turns, I decided that the legates on either would in fact "leggit" rather than wait around to be chewed up piecemeal.

So far

Well due to real life getting in the way I only got a couple of turns of the ancients try out in yesterday. Given that I made a fairly average roll for game length (a 4) that means that the entire game only lasts 7 turns in total.

Here's the current situation, in the 1st turn the Roman right refused to move, the Roman left refused to move and the Consul commanding the centre blundered, which wasnt as bad as it could have been as the block of Legionaries he was commanding shuffled half-heartedly towards the enemy. The Carthaginians fared a little better, with their left wing cavalry starting to trot towards the Romans then stopping, again the right wing wouldnt budge and the main spear block in the middle making some headway across the table.

Turn 2 saw the Roman right wing still refusing to move ("bugger off, we're still having breakfast!"), the Roman left however made great strides forward with a unit of light cavalry even passing the mountain foothills. The centre made a steady if unhurried advance. The Carthaginian left wing cavaly started swinging round the wood, lights to the fore with the shock cavalry coming up at the rear, the right wing made a half hearted advance towards the mountain withe the centre continuing their march to match spear phalanx against Roman legion.

More to follow tomorrow, that is as long as the dog is ok and can actually hold some food down today, otherwise its gonna be another day of 12 visits to the park.

A missed fight

Well due to an unexpected "curry night" at friends me and Mexican Dave missed our fortnightly visit to the club, which was a real bummer as I was looking forward to our debut outing of Warmaster Ancients. So long story short I've decided to get them on the table and chuck a few dice at them solo.

Even at a very modest 1000pts both armies fill my little 5ft x 5ft table to the point of having to double rank some stuff. This comes as a shock to me as the last time I played with Romans (WRG rules) they were well hard but usually vastly outnumbered, here its pretty much an even match up with the Punics (in units anyway) I'm rather looking forward to this, it might well prove to be a pants ruleset, but I'm hoping not. I have noticed this in the past, that what on first or even second read looks to be a cracking ruleset turns out not to be when you actually try them out with figures and dice. I'll let you know my opinion of these once my legions have crushed the unwashed hordes of Hannibal, or failed to, which with my dice rolling is more than likely.

US platoon finished

Thats me a happy bunny now, the US Armoured Infantry platoon for SOTR is finally finished.

As mentioned on Mexican Dave's blog I started this lot over a year ago, I think I painted up a dozen and got distracted by something shiney, but thats that project done and dusted. Two complete opposing forces, tick, rulebook and expansion, tick, bucket of dice, tick. All boxes ticked so ready to play.

Senetas Populas Que Romanum

Or for the senate and people of Rome, yes finally finished painting my Warmaster Ancients Republican Romans, its only taken 18 months.

A whole load of flocking still to do but I'll get round to it, so why on earth did it take me so long to get these painted? Well literally weeks after I'd ordered these and a matching Carthaginian army, Pendraken released both these and the Carthaginians as resculpted ranges, well to be honest after looking at the new stuff and looking at these I was gutted, but I finally forced myself to finish them and I'm looking forward to thrashing those Punics all over Tunisia.

On a side note as promised a progress piccy of the new Mech

Thats Libby gazing in shock and awe at her new toy. Quite a staightforward build really with only the claw/hand - wrist joint being a bit of a nightmare, but a little milling with a 4mm drillbit and a little bit of pinning and its all built. More piccys as I spoil a good model with my ham fisted painting.

and FINALLY!!!!!!!!

well it only took 5 weeks but Maelstrom finally delivered my US Mech

looks like an explosion in a parts factory, but all in all I'm quite impressed my the big fella. He is big by he way that resin main body standing 100mm tall before I start sticking the metal bits to him. The resin casting also is impressive not an air bubble is sight, take note GW, you might wanna ask Westwind how to cast your shitecast. My bazooka team arrived as well but thats just not nearly as exciting as a Mech is it? I'll post some more progress piccies of him as soon as I can work out how to stick it all together.

Painting shedule has just gone off the rails again.

My intentions for this week were fairly simple, finish off my Republican Romans (well I did buy them 18 months ago) and start on some Napoleonic Austrians for the new ruleset I bought on Saturday. Gamesha Games Drums and Shakos Large Battles, check them out they look awesome, I'll tell you if they live up to the expectations when I finally get a game with them. Well the disruption is due to an e-mail I got from Maelstrom, they have finally dispatched my order, I put it in on the 1st of JUNE, good job guys, 5 weeks and it still isnt here. Well I expect that to land right in the middle of painting the last legion, and we all know I cant resist anything new and shiny, so they'll get priority I expect and my Romans will continue to languish in the land of Nearly Done.

1st SoTR battle done

Well Mexican Dave and I decided it was about time that we chucked some dice at this, so we trucked our forces along to our local club on Saturday. Sorry no piccys but I just plain forgot to chuck the camera into the box. It was a straightforward "capture the tech" scenario, with a large crate plonked into a ruin near the centre of the table. Things started badly for Dave with me winning the initiative (the only time I did btw) and moving my Mech up and taking a potshot at his Mech, a shell through the engine block saw that thing stuck in its start position for the rest of the game. This turn and the next couple saw very little firing, with both sides running at the double for both the objective and any cover they could grab near the objective. What helped the Soviets to get into better positions was the much higher number of activations they had (Dave could have had at least one more by splitting his squad into 2 fire teams) which meant that even after Dave was all done moving I still had 3 or 4 teams to move into a good firing position. In the end the Mechs had very little effect on anything other than themselves with Dave's ending up immobilised and with his HMG arm blown off, mine took a shell through the leg and keeled over wrecked. The main fighting took place at the edge of a scruffy looking village with the Soviets getting into the upper floors just before the German infantry could claim cover from the roadside hedges. Soviet Infantry have a barbaric amount of firepower, its a free upgrade to dish out assault rifles to all the goons in your squad, thats 3 dice a figure. I had 6 guys in that top floor and they let loose a firestorm at Dave hapless guys still running across the meadow, boom 18 dice and 12 hits later I think 3 guys actually made it to the hedge. After that Dave tried to get his Werewolves into buildings next turn, but made the same mistake as the infantry, tried crossing open ground in front of the now dug in Soviets, Red-Mist time as they got pumped full of good Russian lead. He would have been much better going for the RPG team outside the village and working his way from builing to building, but patience in wargames has never been Daves strong suit. It ended up with both side banging away at anything they could see for the rest of the game but with little effect, but in the end the numbers were with the Soviets.

All in all, it was a good game, we liked the turn sequence and once we'd done a couple of turns the shooting was second nature, we didnt get any close combat done, but thats for another game, I suspect that Dave's Mech is getting a tiny red star painted on it, just to remind me that it HAS indeed shot down a Soviet Mech every time I see it.