Finished Handgunner

My first Lion Rampant unit is finished.  These handgun-armed Swiss bidowers are a mixture of ex-Steve Briddon Foundry figures and some I had lying around and hastily painted to match.

The chap in the parti-coloured helmet is the finished conversion of an RAFM handgunner reported the other day (work in progress pics here).

Since the previous pics I've applied Green Stuff crosses to his jack and painted him.

The final figure added to the unit is this chap with a lump of wood.  He's an old Citadel figure whose slotta-base tab describes his as a "thug".  He was close enough in style and size to fit nicely with Steve's original Swiss.

One the Workbench - Medieval Miscellany

I've been having a go at resurrecting an old figure and completing a sculpt I began many years ago.

First up is this ancient (probably late 70s) RAFM hand gunner.  I bought a pack of these in Games Workshop in Sheffield back in the days (1982 or so) when they sold non-Citadel models and Pete Berry was the shop manager.  Amazingly enough you can still buy these figures from Keep Wargaming!

The figure on the left is unmodified and painted in about 1990.  The figure on the right is midway through being converted to join my new Swiss force for Lion Rampant.  His kettle-hatted head is a spare from the Perry English Wars of the Roses Infantry box.  He also has a sword (not visible here) from the same source.  I've used Green Stuff to turn his peculiar fringed epaulettes into the puffed shoulders of a jack.  Painted version shortly.

Then we have a mounted bowman.  Having recently bought the Perry plastics light cavalry box I don't actually need this figure but it surfaced from the spares box a couple of evenings ago and I just knew I had to have a go at it.

The horse is, I think, by Lamming; one of a batch I picked up dirt cheap from Games of Liverpool.  This means it's no younger than about 1985!

The body of the figure I sculpted from Fimo and Milliput some time in the late 80s or early 90s.  The head was from a QT Models archer.

To these ancient parts I've added arms and weapons from the Perry WOTR box and sculpted details from Green Stuff.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this one comes out.

Light Cavalry

Transferring the Swiss onto skirmish bases is going well.  I'm taking the opportunity to repair some poorly grasped connections between hands and weapons.

It's slightly frustrating, well more than slightly actually, that in many cases figures cannot possibly hold a pike or halberd without the shaft of the weapon passing through the figure's torso.

This aside I'm getting there and I'll post some photos shortly.

In the meantime I've decided to spend some of my Christmas money on these:

The 12 figures will give me a unit of six mounted crossbowmen for the Swiss and I'll also be able to build  unit of mounted Burgundian bowmen to oppose them.  Again, pics to follow.

A Project in a Box?

When I asked for a copy of Lion Rampant for Christmas, it was a with a view to building up Late Roman / Armorican Bacaudae forces and taking the rules a little further back in time than they were intended for.

When I read the rules, though, I started to think that there are plenty of other, properly medieval periods they would be good for.  I went and poked about in some of my figure storage....

Now when Sheffield wargamer Steve Briddon emigrated to the USA, he sold off a lot of wargames material and among the things I picked up was a boxed Later Swiss army for DBA.

Not being a DBA fan I've never actually used the army at all.  It's just sat in its box taking up space and occasionally demanding to know why I haven't done anything with it.

The army is made up of Foundry figures - 24 pikemen (including officers, musicians and banner bearers), 12 halberdiers, four hand gunners and a gun crew.

I could have rebased the men for Basic Impetus and indeed at some point I did convert the two handgun elements (DBA Psiloi) into a Basic Impetus Skirmisher unit but the number of figures I have is barely enough for two more Basic Impetus units.

So now I'm thinking Lion Rampant.  You don't need so many units to complete a Lion Rampant retinue.

The 12 halberdiers would make one unit and the rules already suggest Fierce Foot as the way to represent them.

Four handgunners isn't enough; you need six figures for a unit of bidowers in Lion Rampant.  That's OK, though, I think I can cobble together a couple of useful additions from my part-used box of Perry plastic Wars of the Roses infantry (or maybe some very old 25mm RAFM figures I have spare).

This just leaves us with the pikemen.  The figures I have will make two units.  But units of what type?

Foot sergeants is the obvious first choice but the rules do suggest that these are well armoured and slightly better in defence than attack.  My Swiss pikemen are mostly depicted as unarmoured and we know that the later Swiss armies were almost foolhardy in their dedication to the attack.

I could make them "Expert Foot Sergeants" but then they lose the "Schiltron" option, which seems daft for pikes.  The justification is that expert foot sergeants have poleaxes instead of spears.

Foot Yeomen is another option but these "lack the staying power of foot sergeants".

Finally there's Fierce Foot.  Is some ways this appeals but pikemen probably shouldn't get the ability to fight as normal in bad going and anyway treating them as Fierce Foot would lose the distinction (in rules terms) between them and the halberdiers.

Checking the Lion Rampant rules lists I find that the problem may have been fixed for me:

• 2 Expert Foot Sergeants* @12pts (presumably the pikes)
• 2 Fierce Foot @8pts  (presumably the halberdiers)
• 1 Crossbowmen @4pts 

So that's what I'll probably try for now. I'll just have to justify the lack of Schiltron ability by saying that this a skirmish and these pikemen would only form schiltron if there were many more of them available to do it properly.

I won't initially have the two units of Fierce Foot and will probably replace the Crossbowmen with two units of Bidowers but I think I'm pretty well on the way towards my first (non-paper) Lion Rampant retinue.

The gun will stay on its current base.  It will do as an objective marker in some scenarios and will also be of use in massed battle games of Basic Impetus or To The Strongest! with my Wars of the Roses figures.

Of course then I'll need to start building Burgundians!

Holiday Gaming 3 - The Beast of Denley Moor

New Year's Eve saw the second part of what is possibly the slowest wargame campaign known to man; The Hunt for Faulkner's Balls.  This is the Pulp Alley campaign that we began exactly a year previously on New Years Eve 2015.

You will doubtless recall that last time the peace of the village of Little Pottering was disturbed by gangs of ruffians in search of the Reverend Featherstonehaugh and a mysterious journal that had come into his possession.

The outcome was that the Rev was returned to the bosom of his friends but that the journal was nowhere to be found.  In Pulp Alley rules terms, no League had control of that Plot Point at the end of the game.

My research revealed that a Miss Potts, former nanny to Gerald Faulkner, the last of the Little Pottering Faulkners, had found the discarded book and, realising its significance (it concerns an old pirate called Captain Faulkner), has posted it to her erstwhile charge.

Gerald, much to the distress of Miss Potts, is now a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War living rough on the moors above the Yorkshire village of Denley.  It were always raining on Denley Moor....

This year's game saw three Leagues (Richard S couldn't make it) converging on the moors with the aim of recovering the journal.

As the pictures show, the terrain is on two levels, sloping up to the moor tops from the road below.

The plain cloth disguises the presence of a number mounds and depressions on the top of the moor but despite this, the terrain was rather open and the game was dominated by long-range shooting.

The Brotherhood managed to find and decipher a map giving the locations of sightings of The Beast of Denley Moor (Plot Point one).

Sergeant Manson of UNIT managed to climb to the top of Mytherer's Crag, from where he could see the whole of the Moor (Plot Point two).

And the Friends of the Rev Featherstonehaugh managed to get some useful information out of gamekeeper Gordon Ollershaw (Plot Point three).  He's got a new shovel you know?

Jamie has the Initiative Hat (a new and very Pulp-y one this year)

And now Gus has the Initiative Hat.

With three Plot Points achieved the fourth, Faulkner's Camp, now appeared.  Sadly, however, none of the Leagues could manage to probe its secrets before a dense mist rolled in and made further exploration impossible.  (In game rules terms we'd reached the end of Game Turn 6 and no-one could/chose to play a card to extend the game by one or more turns.)

So where does that get us?  Well, the three Leagues who turned up will gain a point of Renown and each will have a point to spend on extra resources next time.  And I'll have to come up with another scenario as the search for the Faulkner Journal continues.

Holiday Gaming 2 - Trouble in Vani

On Sunday I organised the main game over the holiday period.  It was a multi-player game of civil disorder set in Vani, the provisional capital of the breakaway Andreivian Armenian Republic.

Following the capture by NATO of Serj Benkian, there is a power vacuum in the Andreivian Armenian leadership.  Our game showed resulting rioting and fighting on the streets of Vani.

Richard Phillips has provided a fine write-up of the game so I'll content myself here with posting a few of my photos.

A lovely surprise at the start of the day was to receive this piece of municipal art as a Christmas present from Richard Phillips.  It provided a fine centre-piece for the small square to next to the old mayoral house (now the residence of the President of the Republic).

I always try to have a new terrain piece for every game I run and in this case I also had a suitably urban pavement area with a tree.  They aren't really visible in this shot but the central planting area with the tree is surrounded by stones made from red lentils!

The game was deliberately confused with eight players representing multiple elements from four factions and some neutrals.  Each player took control of units more than one faction.

In the end, Andy (in the green sweater above) was the winner among the players, having acquired the most victory tokens associated with the winning faction.  The Democratic Union of Armenia are now the dominant faction in Andreivian Armenian politics.  Or at least they are in Vani.  Who knows what might apply in other areas?

The rules used were Arc of Fire.  This continues to be my preferred set for twentieth century skirmish action.

Holiday Gaming 1 - Lion Rampant

Long-time followers of this blog will know that I generally try to get some gaming in over the Christmas and New Year holiday period and this year has been no exception.

I'd asked for a copy of Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant for Christmas and in the hope and expectation that Santa would deliver, I printed off some Teutonic Knights and Baltic pagans from junior general.org.  So the evening of Boxing Day saw what is surely the most old school game ever to appear here.

The Christmas tablecloth and a couple of off-cuts of astroturf formed the battlefield.  Over this snowy expanse fought two units of mounted men at arms and one of foot sergeants for the Teutonic Order against one unit each of foot men at arms, fierce foot, and bidowers for the Lithuanians.

The field of battle.  The Lithuanian knights are off-camera to the right.

 The Teutonic serjeants started with 11 men as one of their number had been eaten by the puppy.

The fierce Lithuanian tribesmen charge the Teutonic Serjeants, attempting
to catch them before they can finish crossing the bad going.

Meanwhile the Lithuanian bidowers enter the other area of bad going.

As the first unit of men at arms approaches.

The foot serjeants roll spectacularly...

... and throw back the fierce Lithuanian warriors...

... with three casualties.

The warriors' Courage Test is disastrous and they rout.

Somewhere hereabouts I lose track of one of the units of mounted knights.  I think they rolled badly after taking casualties from Lithuanian shooting.

Meanwhile the Wild Charge special rule sees the Teutonic Knights charge
the enemy Bidowers.  Not a great idea what with them being
in bad going and all.

Despite the disadvantageous terrain, the Knights drive off the Bidowers
but are then hit in the flank by the late-arriving Lithuanian nobles.

Whilst over the other side of the field, the foot serjeants roll badly when
attempting to rally.  They must rout off the table.

The Bidowers return to the fray and cause some casualties as the Knights
continue to wallow in the poor going.  Alas, though, this is not enough
and the gallant skirmishers rout...

... leaving the Lithuanian and Teutonic knights to fight a final combat.

I'm not going to dignify this little action by giving winners or losers - it was a trivial exercise in getting to know the rules.  

There was more back-and-forth than the above account captures.  I think playing properly designed scenarios on nice terrain, these will be great fun to play.  

I plan to follow David Sullivan's lead and use the rules to play some Late Roman actions when I've recruited the appropriate toys.