Germania libra!

One thing I'd like to do in the coming year is to learn how to run games of Infamy Infamy. This is a  large-skirmish rule set from Too Fat Lardies. You can regard it as the ancients version of Sharp Practice but I need to work through things thoroughly to catch the differences between the two sets.

The commercial success of Infamy Infamy was hampered by its release coming in June 2020 when the world was preoccupied with other matters. As a result we didn't get the rash of demo or participation games at shows that might have built a buzz around the rules (although John Savage did some fantastic games in the couple of years before publication). As a result of that it doesn't look like Infamy Infamy is high up TFL's list of rules to support with new products.

This is a shame. I quite like the idea of gaming small unit actions in the ancient period. The rules as written focus on Rome and its barbarian neighbours in the late-Republic-early-Empire period. I could imagine commanding punitive columns against the Iceni, fleeing through the Teutoberg forest with a remnant of Varus's lost legions, or trying to capture an Othonian supply convoy with troops loyal to Vitellius. I know Richard Clarke had plans to cover Rome's earlier wars with Carthage and, with a little adaptation, I suspect you could push the rules forward in time to fight, say, Picts in fourth century Britannia.

As a step in the right direction, I've painted up the Germans I picked up at a Whitley Bay antique shop.

The Wargames Factory models aren't the best in the world but these cost me practically nothing and they'll work fine as the unwashed mass at the heart of a force of wild Germans. 

The Warriors are organised, as per the rules, into groups of ten figures. I designed and 3D printed some irregular sabot bases for them.

The group of six slingers required a little more work.

The hands with slings were imported from Gripping Beast's Dark Age Warriors set and I used Green Stuff to add pouches on shoulder straps to carry their ammunition. One of the figures had a little surgery to give his left arm a slightly more dynamic pose and another guy got a wolf pelt from a Victrix Republican Romans pack.

I'll need more warriors and some leaders for the force. I'm hopeful of picking some up at Fiasco this weekend.

There's a possibility that next year I'll run some Infamy Infamy at Lardy Days. I have an idea that might just work (though it would require an inordinate number of trees). More on this later!