Steel Lard 2026

Saturday was a long and tiring but very satisfying day. Dex McHenry having taken over organising duties, I was able to arrive at Steel Lard and just run my own game. This was definitely A Good Thing!

I ran Ambush or The Princess Bride (Not That One) twice during the day, in the morning for Tim,  Clive, and Malcolm and in the afternoon for Mark, Steve, Alister, and John. Both sessions were played in a splendid spirit, generally with players who had little or no experience of the rules but who wholeheartedly bought into the spirit of the game.

The scenario comes from one of C S Grant's Tabletop Teasers, in this case one published in Military Modelling magazine in July 1979!

Although I was using Infamy Infamy straight from the tin with Roman and German unit descriptions (I had to make up my own cataphract stats) I used as much as possible of the fictional background from Grant's article. Thus the Princess Zenobii of Kali was being escorted to her wedding as the 79th wife of Emperor Osbosis of Dubris. All of the escorting Leaders had names derived from members of the 1970s "Dover Coven" of wargamers.

Infamy Infamy games can turn into slugfests with both sides ignoring scenario objectives and concentrating on driving down the opposition's Force Morale. In this case I attempted to counter this by applying time pressure. If the escort party couldn't get the princess and her dowry across the ford in time, they would lose the game. Similarly, the ambushing tribesmen could still lose the game against a defeated escort as the princess and her dowry would continue moving even if the escort's Force Morale was exhausted.

The morning session began with Tim's tribesmen charging out of the woods into the flank of Princess Zenobii's cataphracts and routing them. 

Malcom observes the scene while
Tim records the rout for posterity

More tribesmen charge out of the woods

A battle of slingers developed on the convoy's flank

Time was pressing on this game with the players wanting to get lunch before the afternoon session began. The legendary queues at the café doubtless being in their minds. 

When we called time, the princess and her dowry were still two or three turns from the ford which was held by a unit of enemy slingers thrown forward by Tim in his role as chief ambusher. The ford was six game turns from becoming impassable. We called it a draw and I think that was a fair result.

Tim, Malcolm and Clive anxious to queue for lunch!

To avoid the queue, I'd brought my own lunch and so went straight into setting up for the afternoon session.

This featured two players (Mark and Steve) who had to leave early so I made sure to put them on opposite sides. Fortunately I'd designed the game to work fine as a one-on-one event.

This time the ambush was triggered early with the escorting Dubrisian cavalry still off-table. You can see them in the top right corner of the picture below, which illustrates the distance the convoy needed to cover to reach the ford (bottom left).

This game began with two End of Act events in the first three turns. This meant that the ford module was replaced almost immediately. Already units moving across it would be rolling 2D6 for their movement distance and dropping the higher score! 

From the front of the column: Allied slingers, two units of 
Dubrisian legionaries, the carriage carrying the princess,
the waggon with the dowry, Princess Zenobii's cataphracts,
and the allied light cavalry

Alistair and Steve prepare to sell their lives dearly
in the service of Princess Zenobii

As the first enemy skirmishers appear, things are looking
good for the escort; the ford is not far away!

With Mark having to leave early, command of the ambushing tribesmen was left to John and he did a fine job of throwing his warriors into the fray at the key point.

He also did a fine job of throwing armour saves. With his lightly armoured men needing sixes to save, he threw three dice for three sixes...

Before then throwing two dice for two sixes in the following turn! Steve was not pleased.

The tribesmen, although they never built up much fervour, were staying in the fight and gradually wearing down their legionary opponents.

At this point we were interrupted by the arrival of the Lord Mayor of Sheffield or as we know him at Stately Counterpane Manor, Andy (last seen storming Hachigata Castle in the guise of Honda Gozaemon).
Here we see him being shown around by Dex.

We got back to the game but with only a few more turns played, Alistair, our Dubrisian commander, became convinced that victory was impossible and conceded the day. In fact he was about two turns from the ford with enemy warriors still in the way. He had only three turns left before the ford became impassable to wheeled vehicles. A draw was possible but only with the kind of dice rolling John had demonstrated previously!

Sean, Alistair, John and Steve - friendly enemies!

From my point of view the event was a complete success. Both games were great fun and played in the best spirit. Huge thanks to all the players and to Dex for organising.

In a future post I may discuss the other games and the event as a whole but for now I'm happy and knackered. Where's that bottle of whiskey?

Steel Lard at the weekend

Saturday morning will see me heading off early to Patriot Games for Steel Lard 2026 where I'll be running "Ambush" or "The Princess Bride (Not That One)".

Last night I did a final terrain test.

The river marks the boundary of the Dubrisian Empire. The escort players will need to get Princess Zenobii and her dowry across the ford before the ambushers can stop them.

The game uses a small proportion of my recent terrain production...

... including, as one of the ambush points, a dead Roman base I created for The Iron Hand of Mars...

I also had a go at laying out the princess's escort.

I'm hoping to get set up quickly enough on Saturday that I can add scatter material to help the road and river sections blend into the table top.

Air support in TacWWII - part one

I was asked some time ago to do an air-support version of my post on artillery fire in TacWWII. I think I'll break it down into at least two posts. Note that this will be how I do it; not necessarily how it's written in the rules.

Let's start with the basics: how do you get air support in a TacWWII game and how does basic air-to-ground combat work?

Well, there are three basic approaches; your air support may be pre-planned, on-call, or determined randomly depending on the scenario. I tend to use the last of these except in longer games like Stary Boleslav where players had plenty of time to plot out their airstrikes using either or both of the other approaches.

Note that I'll refer below to "the aircraft" but we should remember that at TacWWII scale one model represents a flight of maybe three real aircraft.

Typically the random approach will be something like, "Roll a d10 at the start of every turn. On a 1 or 2 the Soviets get air support. A second d10 shows the available support: 1-3 a LaGG-3 fighter, 4-8 an Il-2 Sturmovik, 9-10 two Pe-2 light bombers."

Whichever of the approaches you use, you're going to need to specify the aircraft's altitude (low, medium or high) and its flightpath. 

For altitude it's player choice. As regards flightpath, if not pre-planned I'll usually ask the player to place the aircraft  model on their baseline facing in the direction of the straight-line path it will take across the table.

You'll also want to determine if the aircraft is to use fixed armament (guns or cannon) or dropped ordnance (bombs or rockets). In the case of pre-planned or on-call air support I'd allow the player to choose. In the case of random air support I usually roll a die and say, "Odds it's fixed armament, evens it's dropped ordnance". 

So let's work through an example.

Near Remagen, early 1945

Fritz, our German player, has rolled for random air support and got a flight of Arado Ar-234 jet bombers. The Americans have been caught with their pants down and there's no fighter cover or anti-aircraft support available. 

Fritz places the model (on a medium altitude stand) on his baseline pointing towards the American player's brigade headquarters. 

Tom, the US player, immediately queries such selective targetting and the umpire agrees, requiring that Fritz make an additional Tac roll to go for an HQ out of all the possible enemy targets. (This is typical of the kind of ad hoc use of the Tac roll that makes highly-trained forces more effective in TacWWII.) Fritz rolls a 10 and tries not to look smug.

Fritz moves the Ar-234 model up to menace the US HQ...

Tom again complains that he should get to make AA fire as there's an M-16 GMC modelled on the HQ base but the umpire points out that at Medium Altitude the Arado is too high for even a quad HMG to engage.

Fritz must now make a Tac roll (at +4 to the die roll) to determine if he's identified the right target. Our scenario states that Luftwaffe elements in this game have a Tac value of 6. To his horror, Fritz rolls a 1! 

He must now make another Tac roll. If he succeeds the pilot abandons the mission. Unfortunately he fails so the attack will go in on the nearest friendly element! A check of the table reveals that the closest friendly element is a Panzer IV platoon just the other side of Windmill Hill. He will attack this element in error!

The Arado has no fixed armament, relying on its speed to escape interception, so we're straight into dropped ordnance for the attack.

A medium bomber covers a beaten area equivalent to two artillery batteries. Centred on the Panzer IV platoon we see that the adjacent Tiger platoon is in trouble too!

First, though, Fritz has to check for deviation with yet another Tac roll (with a -2 modifier as he's bombing from Medium Altitude). Sadly this time he makes the roll and the bombs fall on-target!

As we said, the Arado is a Medium Bomber so its Ground Attack factors are 5/3 (5 against soft targets, 3 against hard). The armour values for the Tiger and the Panzer IV are 3 and 2 respectively so the modified target numbers are 6 and 5. 

Finally, luck turns slightly in Fritz's direction as he rolls a 4 for the Tiger and a 5 for the Panzer IV. The Panzer IV platoon is Neutralised but things could have been a lot worse. A puff of dust marks the Neutralised platoon and an explosion marker reminds us that the end-of-turn morale test will be at -3 for "under air attack".

We'll call it a day at this point with Fritz pretty miffed. Next time we'll look at AA fire and maybe fighter cover.
 

From the workbench

I'm really enjoying making terrain at the moment, particularly inspired by thoughts of using Infamy Infamy to follow Germanicus into the woods on the trail of the lost legions of Varus.

I've just added four more marsh scatter pieces:

Which added to the three I made last week gives:

And with the addition of some I made earlier in the year using offcuts of PVC board we getr a quite substantial area of boggy ground:

I may have a go at making some small trees on matching bases to give the option of swampy forest.

One of the Romans-in-Germany games I have in mind involves the need to guard a party of engineers working to repair a causeway. First of all they'll need some materials to work with:

As with the previous pieces, the base is a 3D printer raft. The timber is cut from left-over balsa wood. The shield and pila are from Victrix and are held in place by being embedded in a small amount of Green Stuff. I've carefully cut away the hands that were holding the pila. 

The causeway the Romans are working on is still on the workbench. It'll be another swappable module, this time with pre- and post-repair versions:

The base this time is a cheap floor tile from Poundland. I cut out the first and then used it as a template to mark out the second. That way I can be sure the repaired version can be slotted in directly when the engineers have done their job.

Lolly sticks, coffee stirrers and scraps from an old wicker basket have played a starring role here.

Finally for now, I've also made some "Battered Unit" markers for dark ages/early medieval Lion Rampant games:

The Late Roman chap is from a box of assorted figures that's been back and forth between Richard P and myself on a couple of occasions. I now have uniform-specific "Battered" markers for three of my Late Roman units.

That's all for now. Look out for finished causeway pics soon, I hope.

Scatterlings

A couple of days ago I went off on a creative fugue about a possible future Infamy Infamy game that, were it ever to happen, would demand lots of marsh and bad going. As always the thought triggered a rash of concentrated modelling and I ended up with some new scatter terrain pieces.

These late Roman bow-armed skirmishers are behind a couple of flat bad going markers. The bases are cut from 3D printer rafts coated with wood filler. The rocks are cat litter (unused!), the grass is static grass over fine flock and the tall tufts were made from some static-grass-type fibres I bought years ago.

The Picts are picking their way through a marshy area. This is made in much the same way but with some commercially made tufts. The areas of standing water are irregular shapes cut from old business cards and painted glossy black.

Finally, the Turcos are passing through some generic broken ground. Same approach but with the addition of some stones from the garden.

Mixed in together we end up with about a square foot of cavalry-unfriendly countryside. Total cost - a couple of quids' worth of flock, static grass and tufts?

I don't know what it is but I like it

The Baroness and I were in York yesterday to take our son out to lunch. Beforehand we popped into a branch of The Works: it's always a good place to look out for crafting bargains.

We found this:

It wasn't entirely clear what it was but at £3 for a pack the size of a bag of icing sugar it seemed rude not to give it a chance.

I figured that if it was individual particles it would serve as an alternative to clump foliage and if it was in sheets it could be glued down to basing material to make fields.

It turns out to be an elasticated mesh material that, when removed from the bag, expands out to maybe the size of a handball. Sorry, I seem to be choosing odd size analogies today.

It looks like it should cut easily with scissors, maybe to form the canopy of homemade trees? 

The "bobbles" along the individual threads are not stuck on but are part of the threads themselves. As such I think this would be significantly more robust in transport than lichen or rubberised horsehair with glued-on flock.

The pics below show the whole pack with some 28mm Pictish skirmishers for scale.

As the title above suggests, I've no idea what this stuff is called aside from "Artificial Moss" but I think I might pick up another pack or two if it's available from my local branch. It will do for pretty much any job you'd use lichen for and looks more realistic in my opinion.

 

I have a peel tower!

I've always fancied owning a peel tower and now at last I do!

Back in 2012 I took a matched pair of Border Reivers armies (The Reivers and The Warden's Men) to the Berkley Hordes of the Things tournament. HOTT armies need a Stronghold that they have to hold onto if in the role of defender.  At Berkley both armies used a Stronghold in the form of a group of stolen (or recovered) animals. 

The Reivers with (at rear) the old Stronghold

I'd always intended that The Warden's Men should have a peel tower or bastle house as their Stronghold. The Reivers force includes a Sneaker element that includes a guy with a ladder and another with a burning torch - both handy for attacking enemy buildings.

Although I cut out and began scribing the walls for a peel tower at the time, it was only recently that I went back to it and finished the thing.

There are two doors, one leading into the ground floor space where domestic animals are kept in the event of an attack, and one to the first floor accommodation that's accessed via a ladder (now pulled up into the building.

The tower's made from foamcore and thin card on a hardboard base.

At last The Warden's Men have their own Stronghold to defend...

A couple of years ago we stayed at Hallbar Tower near Lanark and I think the experience may have been in the back of my mind when I finally undertook this construction job.