Novgorodians 1

Here is the first unit of my Novgorod force for the Baltic Crusades project – a unit of mounted Novgorodian druzhina led by their Prince. (Or maybe it's the druzhina of a lesser Prince sworn to Novgorod, I haven't decided yet.)

The druzhinas were the medieval Rus/Russian Princes' retinue. They were in some aspects similar to the western knights, and in some very different: e.g. they were influenced by the Mongols and other steppe warriors, and were sometimes equipped with bows when mounted (although they probably didn't use the traditional "hit and run" tactics usually associated with mounted bow units). They were also free to leave the service of the Prince and seek new employment.

Sometimes I just seem to struggle with certain miniatures, redoing and repainting all of or parts of them again and again. I have no idea why, but these mounted druhzina were definitely some of these. I think I've redone most steps on most of them – basing, posing, painting – until I was happy with them. Consequently they have taken a long time to finish. Of course, being cavalry it's like painting two models in one which also adds to the time.

Originally I was going to do them using my prefered "big army" painting method of base coat, wash and using the base coat as a highlight. However, I thought the models looked too dark (ages) and so I added another highlight to make them look a bit brighter. After this, they came out all right I think. I would have liked some more kite shields, to again make them look less dark ages, but I ran out of suitable transfers.

Despite my thorough testing of techniques for doing snow bases, thanks to Dalauppror's good advice I ended up using the much simpler method of applying a good splash of wood/carpenter's glue in patches on the bases and then just dunking them in the snow flock. Great result with a minimum of work – what more could you want?

Anyway, here are some more pictures:

The miniatures are all from Gripping Beast's Early Russ range, but with some models mounted on barded horsed from their Medieval Russians range to show their status as "senior druzhina". The shield transfers and flag are from Little Big Men Studios.

As we're using this project as an opportunity to playtest the upcoming Lion Rampant rules by Dan Mersey, due to be published by Osprey next year, unit sizes are from these rules: Mounted units are composed of 6 models, and most foot units are 12 models strong.

I'm working on the second unit of druzhina for my initial force, and it should be finished some time next week.

Finally I would like to welcome a new follower: David Brits. Thanks for joining, I hope you'll like the blog

Thanks all for reading!

Snow Bases

Right now I'm working on the first unit for my Novgorod force for the Baltic Crusades project. Yes, they've been a long time coming for sure. As Dalauppror has already done both his armies with winter bases, of course I'm going to do the same.

There are a lot of tutorials out there for snow bases, as a quick search will show you, but most are variations of a few different recipies. Having never done a snow themed army, I wanted to test a couple of techniques and find the one that suited me best in terms of minimal work (I'm lazy ...) and best look (... but also want my army to look good).

So, armed with some glue and Army Painter's snow flock I set to work. I decided to try out 5 different techniques, and in the picture below you can see the results (click for a bigger view).

The "recipies" for the bases were:
A: Snow flock sprinkled over Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement.
B: Carpenter's glue and snow flock, mixed 1-1.
C: Carpenter's glue, snow flock and water, mixed 1-1-0,5.
D: Carptenter's glue, snow flock, water and light grey paint (Foundry Arctic Grey A). When dry drybrushed with white.
E: Carpenter's glue and snow flock, mixed 1-1. When still wet, snow flock was sprinkled on top.

Here you can see some close ups of the bases (click for even bigger close ups).

The verdicts?

A: This is great for that light, freshly fallen snow look. However, as the flock is not secured it will fall/rub off easily. A drop or two of Scenic Cement will take care of that though.
B: Looks good with a slightly "icy" look. It was a bit hard to apply the mix, as it would rather stay stuck to the cocktail stick I used than stick to the base.
C: Looks a lot like B, but maybe a bit less "icy". The addition of water made it easier to apply than B.
D: This one didn't come out the way I thought – it doesn't look like snow! Also, it's the most time consuming method of the ones I tried. Not a winner.
E: This is perhaps my favourite. It combines the best bits from A and B – it looks convincingly like a thick carpet of freshly fallen snow. Nice.

My idea for the look of the army, was that the novgorodians are on a campaign in the middle of the winter, and so the bases should have lots of snow and not much (if any) vegetation. Thus I will probably use the E variant, but will add some water to make the mix a little easier to apply and also secure the top snow with a drop of Scenic Cement.

Hopefully the first novgorodian unit will be finished soon, and I can post some pictures of it here.

Finally, a warm welcome to my new followers Christopher(aka Axebreaker) and Sean. I hope you'll like the blog!

Have a great weekend everybody, especially those of you going to Salute! I'm not at all jealous of you, oh no ...

Loki's 2nd Blog Birthday

Fellow blogger Loki is celebrating his 2nd blog birthday over at Loki's Great Hall by hosting a giveaway. The prizes are very generous indeed.

Pop on over and join the fun!

5 000 hits

On Thursday last week, this blog passed the milestone of 5 000 hits. Despite a nagging feeling most of these are Russian spambots, it made me a little happy that my small corner of the Internet has managed to scrape together these numbers. I know 5 000 hits are nothing compared to the "big boys" out there, but still.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "thank you" to all the visitors and followers, especially those of you who take the time to comment, for your support.

I thought about doing something special for this occasion but I think I'll save that for the 10 000 mark ... Stay tuned, as they say.

Muskets&Tomahawks Second Game – AAR

We had our second game of Muskets&Tomahawks on Monday. Once again it was my French against Dalauppror's Mohawks and we used the same forces as last time. The Indians got the Raid mission while the French had another go at Scouting.

This time we added in side plots to maybe even out the game a bit, as our last game was fairly one-sided. Dalauppror rolled "I'll prove my worth" – his Sachem had to charge an enemy unit of at least 3 models, and survive the melee. I got "Usurpation", which meant none of my units could move within 4 inches of my Officer. Tricky stuff indeed.

The board seen from the French side.

Just like last time we both started with all of our units on blinds, which led to some tentative first activations. The Mohawks moved with the majority of their units on their left flank, towards the buildings, and a small detachment was sent to stop the coming French advance on their right flank.

Meanwhile the French more or less mirrored the Mohawks by splitting their forces between both flanks.

The Mohawks set up a couple of units in the deep wood to try to halt the French coming their way, while two units moved out of the woods towards the settlement. The French didn't want to risk anything by revealing themselves before they had a good opportunity to shoot and so stayed in the woods. This meant the Indians arrived unopposed at the settlement and could set fire to the first building.

The Mohawks set fire to the first building ...

... while the Canadian militia opens fire on them.

With the Indians now in the open, the Canadian militia swept round the settlement and traded shots with the Mohawks who had set fire to the building. However, the shooting proved ineffective for both sides.

The compagnie franches de la marine advancing cautiously,
spying some Mohawks (or is it?) up ahead.

Meanwhile the compagnie franches de la marine advanced cautiously on the left flank – they had seen something in the woods up ahead that made them wary to get too close. Finally they decided to move up only to find it had been a bird or an animal (eg it was a dummy blind). Instead they fired off a few shots at the Mohawks near the second building, across the field, but as usual the French shooting was ineffective.

The compagnie franches de la marine true to form – no hits this time either.

The Mohawks now set fire to the second building, which spurred the compagnie franches de la marine to speed up their advance against the fourth and final sector to scout. However, they were keen to stay in cover and so choose the longer way, going around the deep woods.

Back on the other flank the French officer together with the Huron Indians (fashionably late to the party) moved back and forth, scouting the third sector while trying to get a good shot at the Mohawk forces camped in the woods. Some uncoordinated movement while retreating saw the Indians getting too close to the officer, which unfortunately meant the French side plot was spoilt. After some more, largely ineffective shooting by the French, the Mohawks saw their chance and charged their enemies, cutting down most of them.

I now had made a series of mistakes which would cost me the game. Up until now I had had the victory, not within grasp, but certainly within sight. My mistake was not being aggressive enough with my compagnie franches de la marine, while being too aggressive with my other forces. Had I advanced faster up the left flank (although I couldn't know the blind was a dummy, I had superiority in numbers and morale and probably could have stood up well in a fight) and then taken the shorter route in the open it was very likely I would have reached the final quarter of the board to scout. Meanwhile, the Indians and the Officer should have stayed in the safety of the woods and then begun to retreat, together with the militia, to the edge of the board were they could exit when the compagnie franches de la marine had done their scouting work.

It probably wouldn't have been that easy, of course the Mohawks would put up a hard fight and chase my retreating forces, but maybe I could have pulled it off!

Look out boys, the Indians are coming!

Well, it was too late now and instead the Mohawks could hunt the retreating French unopposed – cutting down both the French officer and the last Huron, before closing in on the militia – and also move up to block the advance of the Compagnie Franches de la marine. We had to end the game earlier as the time was up, but it was clear the Mohawks were the winners and the French once again had failed.

The goal in sight!
But those pesky Mohawks will soon thwart the French plans.

This game was much more uncertain than the first, and as such much more fun. Still, there certainly are some things to mull over ... After the game we discussed my force composition. We both felt the Mohawks, who had 2 more units than the French, were a more flexible force. It's possible I could take better advantage of the large 10 man squad of the compagnie franches de la marine, but I'm now looking at alternative forces which would give me more but smaller units. I haven't cracked that one yet though ...

We will take a break from Muskets&Tomahawks for a while now – our next scheduled game will be another playtest of Lion Rampant. Dan has done some significant revisions of the rules, and I'm looking forward to see how they change the game.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers Dave B and Rodger. I hope you'll like my blog!

Muskets&Tomahawks First Game – AAR and Some Thoughts

So I played my first game of Muskets&Tomahawks against Dalauppror's Mohawks on Monday night. It was both a fun and a little frustrating experience. This is a short AAR, unfortunately with just one picture as I was too busy playing the game to remember taking photos, and some general thoughts on the game at the end.

We started by setting up the terrain according to the rules. After some discussion we decided that all areas – except some which we clearly defined – not covered by terrain were "light wood" and counted as difficult terrain. This would have no effect on the movement of our troops as all units had the Scout trait, but they would of course still benefit from the cover.

We then rolled for Missions: the Mohawks got the Slaughter mission and the French a Scouting mission. This meant we had to scour up some civilians for me to defend. I then made a stupid mistake when choosing which table edge to deploy on (or rather enter from) and this more or less cost me the game. The civilians were deployed behind one of the buildings, as far away from the indians' edge as possible. Unfortunately, this meant I had to place them on the edge of the forest with the only clear area on the other side of the building (nearer the indians).

As this was our first game, and we were concentrating on learning the basics, we didn't include weather or side plots.

All units started on blinds which lead to a very tentative first activations. The only unit without a blind were the civilians who tried to flee into the forest. Well, that didn't go too well as the -2 penalty to movement in difficult terrain meant they could move just 1 inch each activation.

Here is picture of the board after a few activations. The French entered from the left and the Mohawks deployed on the right table edge. The civilians started just to left of the building in the center. The inside of the area marked in red counted as open (except of course the field and the buildings), everything else was either light or dense wood, or difficult terrain. Instead of blinds markers we used single models and put stickers under the bases to show if they were units or dummys.

The battlefield. Click on the picture for a larger view.

The indians in the bottom of the picture moved silently and swiftly through the woods, charged the slow moving civilians and slaughtered every last one of them before the French could stop the Mohawks. Here we struggled a bit with the rules, as it's not very clear how you handle the end of a melee with troops still alive on both sides.

Looking at the remaining number of cards it was now clear that the French had no chance of winning the game, but we played on anyway. I was keen to at least get my troops into some action, as they effectively had yet done nothing but move.

The Compagnies Franches de la marine were forced off their blind and then opened fire on the indians. However, a rather disorganized placement meant the shooting was quite ineffective – and made worse by my bad dice rolling.

The Mohawks answered by charging the nearby militia unit and again cutting down all of their enemies without getting so much as a scratch in return. My bad dice rolling continued, and this was beginning to get very frustrating.

The saviours of the French honour came in form of the allied Hurons. On the left flank (top left in the picture above) they had crept up silently and now opened fire on their hated foe the Mohawks, a group of which was lurking in the forest ahead of them. And at last the dice were with me – one Mohawk fell down dead.

And that was the end of the game.

So in summary, an interesting game but very frustrating – first the misstake in deployment and then the very bad dice rolling. Still, some good lessons to ponder for future games, and some questions about the rules.

• Deployment! Think carefully about how you deploy and if you can choose which side to deploy on, choose wisely.
• Do not get into melee with indians. Better to stand back and shoot as they will break rather easily when shot at.
• Placement within the unit is very important as friendly miniatures block line of fire. Or so was our understanding of the rules anyway. Can anyone please confirm this?
• The 180 degree "seeing arc" means it's pretty easy to spot and get a line of sight to the enemy and therefore (or so it was in this game at least) facing is less important than placement within the unit.
• Despite re-reading the rules, it's still not clear how you handle the end of melees when there are miniatures left on both sides. The general view on the M&T forum seems to be that the melee ends if the side forced to take a reaction test gets a Flight or Recoil result.
• One other thing which isn't clear in the rules is if Officers are a blind on their own or if they "hang on" to another unit. As they normally count as unit by themselves this would indicate they are on their own blind (this is how we played it), but a confirmation would be nice.

After some reading on the forum, it seems this particular combination of missions (Slaughter vs Scouting) can lead to some very one-sided games, just as we experienced.

Anyway, we have our next game planned for tomorrow and hopefully it will be a more even match this time. And I'll try to take some more pictures this time.

Finally, a warm welcome to the new followers David and Monty. I hope you'll like my blog!

It's steam, punk!

(Sorry for the bad pun in the title.)

I've been looking to get into some skirmish steampunk gaming for a while now. Nefarious villains, rooftop chases in the fog and weird inventions – what's not to like? It would be cool with a small scale game, say about 4–8 miniatures a side, maybe with some crazy machinery added. I've never taken the plunge though. Until now.

As I'm sure you're aware there are two Kickstarters (or rather one Kickstarter and one "Nickstarter") going on right now: West Wind Miniatures is doing one for the expansion to their game Empire of the Dead, and Northstar Miniatures is doing a special preorder campaign for the official miniatures for the upcoming Osprey game In Her Majesty's Name.

I'm certainly going to order the IHMN book when it is released, but I must admit the current factions and miniatures left me a bit cold. No "Nickstarter" for me then.

Before Empire of the Dead was launched last year, I was very interested in the game, but in the end I held off on investing in it due to the miniatures. While they looked good, they were too much horror oriented and "rural looking" for my taste. Vampires and werewolves didn't do it for me, as I wanted something less supernatural and more urban. However, the Kickstarter seems to address just that issue: many of the miniatures are less horror and more neutral looking. Although admittedly, there are still quite a lot of  supernatural and horror stuff in there – but this time I like it!

So as an early birthday present I splashed out on one of the medium pledge levels, which should give me more than enough models for a couple of smallish forces and some fun extras.

I envision this as a fun little diversion from my usual stuff, were I paint a miniature or two in-between projects. As such it's certainly a long term plan – if I have enough miniatures for a game at the end of the year I'm very happy, otherwise they'll be finished when they're finished, no hurry.

I've also read rumours that some manufacturers of pre-cut mdf terrain are looking into this period, which should solve the problem of how to get an entire board covered in Victorian buildings. Still, it'll be a while before I have to worry about that.

Dark Ages Welsh

While I had the background for photographing the French already set up, I took the opportunity to finally take some pictures of my Welsh army. This was the first time I had them all lined up together, and the first time most of them were out of the cupboard since finishing them back in December. I really should get some games with them!

The thinking behind this force was to make a three-in-one army that could be used for Saga, Dux Britanniarum and Dux Bellorum – more about that in an earlier post.

The center is made up of the lord's hard-fighting Teulus. As always, the champion is in the front taunting the enemy in the traditional way ...

On the left we have the Combrogi, ready to rain a deadly hail of javelins at the enemy.

And a unit of bow armed skirmishers to harass the enemy even more.

The less experienced Pagenes are placed in the back, were they can hurl javelins at the enemy without getting in the way of the real fighters.

More Pagenes. It seems I've forgotten to make enough square movement trays so the Pagenes was mounted on my new skirmishing trays for this photo op.

Some mounted Combrogi make up the right flank, along with mounted skirmishers.

All miniatures are from Gripping Beast, except the Pagenes who are from West Wind.

Finally, let me say a big welcome to the new followers Alfons Cànovas, Andrew Saunders and BrummyLad. I hope you'll find something of interest here, please drop a comment if you have any questions about any of my projects.

Have a great weekend everyone!

FIW French

As promised, here is a group shot and some detail pictures "in character" of the entire 200 points French FIW force for Muskets&Tomahawks. For more closeups, take a look at the earlier posts.

Huron Indians ready for the dirty work.
Miniatures from North Star.

The log cabin is a prepainted model from Pegasus. Prepainted? Yeah, to make a long story short, I ordered one of the unpainted Pegasus kits along with some other stuff from a certain pretty well-known Internet retailer. The other stuff arrived after a while, though some of it was out of stock and took more than a while to arrive. However, the log cabin was nowhere to be seen. After a long, long, looong wait (and a couple of gentle reminders) they finally sent me this. I couldn't be bothered to send it back so I kept it. I will probably repaint it at some time – those blue windows are pretty hideous – and make a new roof.

Compagnie franches de la marine with an officer lurking in the background.
Miniatures from North Star.

Canadian militia.
Miniatures from Galloping Major.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this bunch. Hopefully they'll perform nicely on the tabletop as well.

Have a great weekend everyone!

FIW French 8

Well, here they are – the final (at least for now!) unit for my French FIW force for Muskets&Tomahawks.

I struggled a bit with the war paintings, trying a couple of different patterns and redoing some before settling on the ones you see here. At first I wasn't too pleased with them but now I think they turned out alright. The Hurons apparently used purple, as well as red and black, for their war paintings but I saved that colour for potential future reinforcements ...

Anyway, here is a shot of the group from behind.

The miniatures are all from North Star.

As always it's very satisfying to complete a project, even a small one such as this. I have some work left on the movement trays, although these are a bonus and not really part of this project. When those are finished, I'll take some snaps of the assembled force.

Our first game is booked for Monday the 18th – I'm looking forward to the French's first outing!