Black Powder Open Day

Instead of heading up the club on the 27th I drove up to Mike's to spend the weekend, and head with him over to Maelstrom games for the Warlord games black powder open day hosted by the authors, Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson, and the infamous Perry twins lending their figures and running a huge (and very impressive) Napoleonic

Mike and I joined some other visitors and John Stallard and Paul Sawayer on another table, playing the N'tombi scenario from the rulebook. In the first game I played on the British side, with Mike on the Zulu side.

As the Zulus advanced (above) we deployed on the ridge line and opened fire. My Naval machine gun opened up and caused a huge number of hits destroying the Zulus (below). WE then launched our lancers and rampaged through the Zulus beating them thoroughly.

After a short break we resumed, swapping sides and joined by talented artist Peter Dennis. As Zulu C-in-C I sent my forces rushing forward. Mike then co-operated by jamming the Gatling and getting the Naval brigade destroyed. With some unfortunate dice rolling from Peter, losing the lancers, we then had free rein to destroy the rest of the British auxiliaries, leaving just the British line holding off the Zulus. Another victory for me! To read more about this, and for some alternative critiques of Mikes dice rolling, see the warlords review here.

Club Night 20th November 2009

On the 20th, after an eventful shift, Luke finally managed to join us and we played a mid war Italy flames of war game. Luke and Steve K took an infantry based British force against me and Rick with a German reconnaissance force.

With a large ridge between the forces we moved quickly to occupy it, and swept the armoured cars and half tracks round the British left flank. Our decisive force though was our aircraft, with no AA, they attacked as they pleased and pinned down a large part of the enemy forces.

Their 6pdr portees where effective on the other flank, but by leaving them on the ridge, they exposed them to return fire. The Germans managed a slight victory and I really liked the recce forces style of play.

Show game terrain

Luke and I took a few days off to work on the show terrain, We built the base boards and roughed out the terrain layout.

We then took a router to the board and cut the rivers and marsh in, and added the hill to be occupied by the king.

At Reading we then purchased the buildings so we have made some really good progress on the terrain.

Club Night 6th November 2009

Ok, I have been very poor at this. I am going to catch up and try and get back to updating this regularly. So we start by going back to 6th Novemeber when we dusted off the club terrain from a few years ago and got out our DBM armies, paired up bases and replayed the battle of Arsuf with the Impetus rules.

Above is the Crusader forces aligned along the coast line. I commanded the Knightly orders in the vanguard and the rear guard while Steve H took the role of Richard and commanded the centre and the wagons.

Above we can see Ian relaxing behind the Saracen lines on the hills above the Crusaders. They then begun to descend off the hills, as the Crusaders tried to turn their lines to meet them, while keeping their impetuous knights under control.

The Saracens descended on the centre and in one place broke through and destroyed one of the wagons, but the rest were saved.

At the rear I let my knightly orders go and they rampaged through the Saracens, breaking unit after unit under their hooves as they crashed through their lightly armed adversaries. However they then got undone, the lightly armed horse archers surrounded them and shot them (or more likely, their horses) down, destroying the isolated knights. A similar situation occurred at the vanguard. With the destruction of the rear guard and the vanguard, and another break through in the centre, the crusader army was broken and the Saracens victorious.

Considering only 2 of the 5 players had experience of the rules, the game ran very smoothly with the size of forces we used. It ran quickly and smoothly and I am now confident that the rules will produce an playable game for the show game.

WOFF 15

After Arsuf was over, I drove down to Pompey for WOFF 15. I took 1999 points of Kislev, and it did not go well. I lost every game! I could not pass a Leadership test, make a save or get any luck. My closest games where against Luke's Orcs and Goblins and Dave P Dark Elves, which surprised me a little, as I usually struggle against Dave as he is a vary astute player.

My worse game by far was against Darren's High Elves. Always a tough opponent, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but Darren got the first turn, destroyed two units of horse archers with his bolt shooters, causing panic amongst my other archers, and removing half my army from the table before it had even moved. Defeat shortly followed! To add insult to injury, the game was over so quickly, Darren and I swapped sides, and with my Kislev army, got the first turn and proved that my plan was sound, but thoroughly thrashing the High Elves under my command.

Among the better looking items I saw was the painted version of the battle standard I had converted Rik when I stayed down for a couple of days after Luke's Birthday. This is Wolfric's body, with arms and heads from the warriors and the knights box sets. Simple but effective.

The other good looking army was Ryan's Roman Empire army. Built from Warlord games plastics it looked beautiful and the tortoise counting as a steam tank was very clever. He also did quite well with them!

Club Night 30th October

A quick entry as I try to catch up! Luke and I played a practice game against each other in preparation for WOFF 15. 1750 points of Goblins faced off against my Kislev army and I won, but not until after a few hairy moments!

The following weekend I assembled the rest of the Kislev figures I needed (Empire knights had been standing in!) and finished two bases of Teutonic Knights for the show game. Now I just need to get all the rest painted!