Club Night 23rd October

I'm not gone! After the warhammer tournament there was a week away from gaming for Luke's birthday. A group of us took a trip to warfighters, a combat weekend unlike any other. A little weary, we returned home and the following Friday I played three games with Duncan

First up was a Helldorado, using the basic boxed sets of Westerners against Saracens. I won, but narrowly. As this was the first proper game of this I have played we missed loads of things, but was fun and has wetted my appetite for more.

Next was a couple of mangled metal against tooth and claw, Hordes vs. Warmachine games. Its been while since I did any hordes, but was again good fun, even if I lost both games. Warcasters seem to be quite a bit tougher than your average Warlock, so may need to refine my tactics, or get some more Warbeasts!

Warlords Double Tournemant 11th October

On Sunday I headed down to the new shop in Brighton, Wargames Heaven, for Brighton warlords annual doubles tournament. This will be my third year attending, but the first year it has been held in the shop. Located in the Imperial Arcade where many years ago a toy shop used to be. It has a varied stock of products, mostly GW and FOW, but also some Perry and Warlords games as well as other bits and pieces. They also have the full range of Vallejo paints, including model air which I will be getting from there in the future. But this Sunday it was up in the gaming area with Matt as my partner and ready to play some Warhammer.

Our army is pictured here, from left to right, 20 High Elf spearmen, 10 High Elf archers, 5 Dragon Knights, an elven noble with battle standard, Warrior Priest of Sigmar, 5 Empire Knight, 15 Greatswords with detachments of 5 archers and 6 halberdiers, 10 Empire swordsman, 10 handgunners.

Game 1 matched against Grant and Vaughan with Chaos and Dark Elves. This army was a proper tournament list, with the main elements being a frenzied Khornate lord on a massive jugger with the helm of many eyes and the blasphemous amulet, a dark elf noble on a chariot with a 1+ save and the crimson death and a war hydra. And we lost! My knight charged the hydra and won, but it passed its break test and then eat the survivors, the dragon knights charged the chaos knights and the Khornate hero. Despite my use of Van hostmens speculum with my Warrior priest I was slain and our Battle Banner only added 1 to our combat resolution, so we broke and where run down. After that it was just a matter of time. 126vps vs 2497vp meant we were massacred.

Game 2 was against Rik and Jamie with their double chaos army (spotting a chaos theme here, was definitely the army that featured most, followed by dark elves). It stated bad from the off-set, they got the 11 roll on the eye of the gods for their chosen, upped to 12, giving them a 4+ Ward save going up to 3+ with their mark of Tzeentch. By the time the war shrine had given them +1 attack in addition to their banner of rage meant this was an awesome unit we wre going to struggle to take. Under that is exactly what we did, after the dragon princes had fled from a terror causing unit they where trying to charge, and my knights bounced from the uber chosen of doom it was just a case of adding up points. 192vps to 2497vps and we had been massacred again.

Game 3 followed a lunch break where Matt and I reconsidered our plans! We came up against Steve with a pure Orc army, not a gobbo in sight! He was paired with his brother Tony using a beast army made up of Fimir models. This army was quite unique looking and a really beautiful idea. This time Matt and I continued with our usual plan of the infantry in the centre and the cavalry on the flanks, but placed both our heroes in the greatswords to make a really tough unit. And it worked, my knights took out the minotaurs and a herd. Although the dragon knights got caught by the chariot after killing the bestigors, the spearmen behind them took it out, while the greatswords and the heroes munched their way through the Orcs in the centre. With 2395vps scored against 468vps we had finally managed not only to not get massacred, but to inflict one of our own.

Game 4 was against Dan with High elves and Chris with Wood elves. White lines of chrace and a tree man where going to cause us some problems, but again our heroes joined the greatswords and we began our advance. The Dragon knights gain where not successful, but they draw a great deal of bow fire that could have been directed elsewhere. My knights took out the dryads and overran them. In the centre the hochland long rifle and my archers kept a continual fire in the general direction of the elf mage and kept her ducking for cover. A slight mistake from Chris' tree signing moved the wood with its white lion contents to a position where we could charge ti in the flank with our greatswords which after a few turns against the stubborn lions finally broke them. To finish off the game despite the use of two dispel scrolls to stop my prayers of sigmar int he final turn i got off my first and only prayer of the day and used soulfire on the wood elf archers. After the best game of the day we totted up the point and we had narrowly lost and had so much fun I didn't write down the scores!

Although Matt and I didn't place as we expected after our first two games we had a good day and where the only one of our three teams not to win a prize. Rik and Jamie got best army
and Chris and Pete look very disinterested as they only place 3rd!

Club Night 2nd October

One of my earliest memories as a 'proper' wargamer is a DB-something game on Steve K's dining table, pitting Romans against Carthaginians. So this week we got out the vanishing creature of the wargames world, the steel tool box, and extracted the Romans and Carthaginains and set them up in little groups of four and I introduced Steve to Impetus with a couple of games of Basic Impetus.

The fist games saw Steve as the defender commanding the Romans and me attacking with the Carthaginians. I choose the Elephant options as I could not resist using them, while Steve stuck with the standard Polybian Roman list. Steve set up a line of hills, which I then removed one of, and deployed his legion atop them. The velites deployed in front of this line with the cavalry on the left. I deployed my Numidians on either flank, with the Gaulic tribesmen and some skirmishers inside them on my left , the Elephants and some skirmishers on the right, with the centre held by my main infantry, with my general and his cavalry behind them.

A general advance saw me contact the velites with my Elephants but I managed to disperse them and then begin to make good progress against the cavalry with my own light cavalry attacking them from multiple directions.

However as has usually been the case with Impetus games involving Romans, to break them you need to kill, and so engage, the legion, who are a tough nut to crack. On my left the Gaulic infantry charged and initially looked to be doing well, but then where pushed back and beaten, while in the centre the legion charged off the hill into my advancing spearmen, taking the opportunity to overwhelm with with both quality and quantity, destroying the spearmen and breaking my army.

We then took a short recess while we watched the flames of war game in progress between Mike and Rick. They where playing one of the other scenarios from the rulebook and it looked like a proper WW2 game and seemed to be creating some really interesting and challenging choices for them to complete their missions, while maintaining the ease of play that has already attracted me to FOW. If there are more games like this I may have to consider getting an army...

Fortunately before I could get too caught up Steve and I returned to our own table and swapped sides. Steve again stuck with the basic army, while I again tinkered, by removing some cavalry and taking some Italian allies to act as auxillias. But it started going wrong right from the start. I had hoped to defend, but somehow managed to end up attacking, despite being heavily outnumbered in cavalry so again Steve had a hill to put his main heavy infantry on. With his infantry on the hill I had to advance my legion, with skirmishers and cavalry protecting one flank and light infantry the other.

Steve contacted both my flank guards and with shocking cohesion tests my flanks evaporated. I know just had my legion to take the fight to the enemy. As I pushed forward and tried to contact his heavy infantry to swing the battle back in my favour, but it was not to be. The Gauls attacked the legion on my left and managed to push them back, then charge again and sweep them away under the force of their charge, breaking my army while Steve Carthaginians where still quite someway from being broken.

This was another fantastci two games, I am really enjoying the Imeptus rules and Stev was very taken with them. Enought that his has signed up for our Arsuf refight at the start of next month reusing the terrain from our show game a few yeaars ago. It shoudl be quite fun.

matakishi's tea house

This is another great little site/blog with some really nice scratch built terrain on, which I am always a fan on. recently he posted a review of colours and featured some really nice pics of out game. Take a look a here: http://www.matakishi.com/news.htm

03 Oct Link fixed, Sorry!