Back from Scotland

I'm now back from a family holiday in southern Scotland with some pictures of a couple of peel towers.

The first is Hallbar Tower (aka Braidwood Castle) where we stayed for the week.

Then we have a few pictures of the tower within the RSPB reserve at Loch Winnoch. This is only accessible on one side but it has a helpful interpretation board.

I still need to build a peel tower to act as a stronghold for one of my Border Reiver HOTT armies.

Christmas Games 2021

As usual we managed to get in a couple of wargames over the Christmas-New Year holiday period.

The first was a six player Hordes of the Things game played using my collection of 6mm scale figures. Here are a few pictures:

The pic above shows five of the six entry points marked by white cards with dice on them. The sixth is out of shot on the bottom right corner.

The aim was to capture the large tower in the middle of the table but this could only be done after certain other tasks had been achieved.

Mostly Irregular Republican Romans with a unit
Rapier cataphracts

The Wolfkin Goblins have captured the native huts

The players

Cave trolls attempt to capture the castle

The army of the Consulateship of Salydia arrives
to disrupt the Cave Trolls' plans

Opposing forces attempt to capture the Stone Circle

The Wolfkin Goblins, having captured the mud
huts, approach the Tower of the Magician Dukes

Three different armies threaten the stone circle

The action ended when the Wolfkin Goblins, commanded by Odette, captured the central stronghold.

For those who are interested, the forces were all 6mm scale models; mostly by Irregular but with one army composed of Baccus Republic Romans.

Our second game was the Battle of the White Meadows; the scenario Jamie had intended to run at Crisis Point 2020 (had it taken place). It was a To The Strongest scenario sent on sixth century Andreivia. John and I commanded a Byzantine army against a Persian force under Richard P and Gus.

The battle was characterised by exceptionally bad luck for the Byzantines. In virtually the first close combat of the game, the Byzantine commander, Justinian, was killed. This made it difficult to keep the Roman army moving forward.

In the end we decided the day was probably lost for the Byzantines but there was just a chance that John's allied General could lead his heavy cavalry in a last minute charge against the flank of the Shah Khosroe's bodyguard. 

At this point the words of the Roman generals were as follows:

Rich:      Of course, the way things have been going, you'll probably draw two ones.

John:    <draws a chit> Well, there's one.

John:    <redraws a chit as the General is present> ...and there's a second one!

At this point the game was clearly up!

Richard P has an excellent write-up of the game here.

Sun Domers vs Wolf Pirates

Diego and I played another game of inter-continental Hordes of the Things on Saturday.  He again chose the Sun Dome Templars whilst I decided to go back to using my favourite Gloranthan army - the Wolf Pirates.

I'm afraid I didn't get a full set of pictures to document the battle but here are the few I did take.

The Wolf Pirates were defending. Their Stronghold, the beached ship, can be seen above. Diagonally, between the two areas of Bad Going, you can see Argrath (Hero) and a Warband unit positioned to hold off an attempt by some Zebra Riders to threaten the Stronghold.

As with the previous battle, Diego seemed determined to avoid Bad Going. This probably wasn't unreasonable as his force of mostly Spears and Hordes is far better suited to the flat plains of Sun County.

He put his Spears, Hero and Paladin in the centre whilst his Shooters, Riders and Hordes formed a right wing that would advance to threaten my left.

The battle was bloody one. Both Paladins (Vega Goldbreath for the Sun Domers and Gunda the Guilty for the Wolf Pirates) were killed early in the action. Harrek the Berserk(Hero General) killed the Champion of Garhound (Hero) to give the Wolf Pirates what I thought would be a game-winning lead but then a 6:1 roll saw me lose two Warbands.

I thought the battle was won when Harrek managed to kill the Sun Domer General Solanthos Ironpike thanks to having turned the flank of the Spear unit immediately behind him and then forced him to recoil.  

But I'd forgotten that Diego needed to have lost both is General and more Army Points than me to lose the game. We fought on for one more turn before another 6:1 put paid to the one more Spear unit needed to break the Sun Domers' morale. 

That was a really enjoyable and hard-fought game. I think it was a mistake on Diego's part to strand his Hordes out on the right flank where they were always going to struggle to get into the action. 

I took a calculated risk and threw the Wolf Pirates forward hoping for a quick victory before he could threaten my Stronghold. I should have committed fully to that approach and gone with the full two-Heroes-and-a-Paladin front rank but at the last moment I decided to keep Argrath in reserve to keep the Zebra Riders away from my ship. As a result the big fight in the centre went on longer and was more bloody on my side than maybe it should have been.

Quote of the Day come from Diego: "Strongholds are pretty tough, otherwise they'd call them Weakholds".  

    

Intercontinental Hordes

After making contact on the Hordes of the Things Facebook group, Diego Correa and I played a couple of, rather quick, games of Hordes yesterday. We played by Skype; me in Yorkshire and Diego in Santiago, Chile!

Diego's fairly new to the game and although his English is very good, he's struggling a bit with the very precise Barkerese language in which the rules are written. I volunteered to run him through a game. There's no substitute for actual game-time when learning a system.

I thought 28mm was the best scale to use given the limitations of an iPad camera and less-than-stellar lighting. That meant using my Gloranthan armies. Diego chose the Sun Dome Templars (4x Sp inc Gen, 1x Pd, 4x Hd, 1x Sh, 1x He, 1x Rd).

My preferred Gloranthan force is the Wolf Pirates (2x He inc Gen, 1x Pd, 6x Wb) but I decided to make things interesting by wheeling out the Morokanth (5x Wb inc Gen, 3x Mg, 2x Lk).

We played two games and at no time in either game did any of Diego's forces enter the Bad Going. So my Lurkers were wasted? Well, not really, avoiding the Bad Going channelled his army into a narrow space so he wasn't able to outflank me with a Hero/Paladin/Rider strike force.

However, in the first game he didn't need to. The Champion of Garhound (Hero), Vega Goldbreath (Paladin) and the Zebra riders managed to get into close combat with my three elements of Morokanth shaman (Magicians). Diego rolled, I think, three sixes for the combats and I rolled a one, a two, and another one! Three dead Magicians; game over!

Having finished the first game so quickly, we decided to go again starting from the same initial positions. This time there wasn't the early PIP drought that had prevented me getting into any kind of good position in the first game.

Diego had moved his strike force in the beginnings of a flanking move on my left. He would have to go through Bad Going, though, so he would be slowed down from reaching my Magicians. I decided that this game me a chance to take on his Spears with a marginally better-than-even chance if I got in first.

The Morokanth warbands charged forward and managed to hit Solanthos Ironpike and his fellow leaders in the flank while the Morokanth khan's warriors attacked from the front... 

It was only an even chance (+5 versus +5) but if I won Solanthos was dead and the game was over unless Diego could kill my remaining two Warband with a 6:1. 

I think there was a point in it in my favour in the end and Solanthos was sent to meet Yelmalio. General dead and more points lost than the opposition: game over!

So two games played in a couple of hours with time for chatting, eating cheesecake (Diego) drinking wine (me), and a little tactical discussion.  I very much enjoyed meeting Diego and playing my first Hordes in five years (apart from a quick solo session of can-I-remember-these-rules? on Friday evening).  We agreed that we'll definitely do it again sometime.  

 

 

The Two Towers

I've made some progress on the signal tower this evening.  Glued together the main structure, added the entrance steps and generally glooped the base...

... funny, the word "glooped" doesn't seem to appear in my Mac's dictionary.

The second of our Two Towers appeared in the post today. It's the (long overdue but I wasn't expecting it so haven't missed it at all) souvenir gift from the 2016 Berkeley Hordes of the Things Tournament.

I know, weird isn't it?  It rather reminds me of the Unseen University in Ankh Morpork.  I believe it's sculpted by Dreamholme Studio and was kindly mailed to me by Steve Price.  There's also a second one for Jamie but "The Three Towers" doesn't have the same resonance somehow. Thanks Steve!

Looking at the doors I'd say it's just about 15mm scale.  It's crying out for a nice paint job.  I'm thinking of painting it in black and white like the medieval buildings in Chester or Herefordshire.

Berkeley HOTT 2015 Report part 2

Post-sausages-and-hash-browns I was informed by Jane Williams that Sunday's first game would see us playing another Gloranthan game, this time with her Lego armies.  These have Lunars and Sartarites fighting for Whitewall on 40mm wide bases.

Of course given Jane's long-held allegiance to the Sartarite cause, it was inevitable that I would play the Lunars.  Sadly Jane, bless her, had put together armies based on the Lego mini figures she had available.  This left me with any army that could quick kill almost nothing in Jane's army whilst everything in the Sartarite any could quick kill something in mine.

A plan was needed and that plan was to make sure I could anchor my flank on some impassable going and fight a defensive action.  I might get lucky and if nothing else I could play for a draw.

I set up the terrain to represent Dragon Pass with diagonally opposite areas of impassable mountain ending in woods, and a couple of areas of Bad Going.

Jane was slightly freaked when I rolled a six on game turn one and opted to do nothing.  She advanced her Sartarites led by her two-headed eagle flyer.

Turn after turn I remained in place.  Eventually Jane's army arrived within bespelling range but a couple of attempts failed to get me the 6:1 that would see her Hero General ensorcelled.

What did happen, though, was that Jane's Paladin managed to leave her rear edge in the woods.  At -2 to her combat factor the Paladin was suddenly worth attacking with a pair of double-ranked Spears.  Two attempts saw me fail to kill the Paladin but the third time I rolled the number I needed and took out the Paladin and with her the anti-magic protection of Jane's Hero General.

A successful bespelling roll saw me win the battle but the victory was achieved mainly because of the steadfast courage of the Lunar Hero at the right hand end of the battle line.  He held on for several turns despite being flanked and overlapped.

After Jane I faced Chris Pryme and, once more, the Gloranthan Chaos army.  I don't recall a lot about this action except that it was long and intense.  Chris handled the Chaos army well and I struggled to target his vulnerable Beast elements.

Avoiding his Behemoth, I decided to go for a right hook.

But then I veered left and a lot of the action took place on the lower slopes of a hill.

Whilst Amy and Jamie played a 15mm lizards vs Samurai game in the next table.

In the end I think I managed to take out Chris's General for the win.

Two wins on Sunday put me in with the big boys at the top end of the table.  This is where the members of Coventry's Scimitar group are to be found.  They are all excellent players and I usually expect to plummet back to Earth at this point.

Tony Green had a very nice Boudicca's revolt army.

Unfortunately for Tony they were inhibited by Tony's consistent inability to roll anything but a 1 or 2 for PIPs throughout the game.

It came down to a duel between Tony's Knight General and my Hero General.  This situation...

... with Harrek flanked and hit in the rear by Druids resulted in a drawn fight and allowed me to turn Gunda into combat contact with Boudicca's flank thus guaranteeing a kill if I won.

Of course I was dead if Tony won.  Equal factors and who ever threw higher won the battle.  Mine's the blue die!

So with one game to go (against reigning champion Pete Duckworth) I was up among the leaders.  If I beat Pete and Tony beat Steve Price the unthinkable could occur.

Pete fielded a Lord of the Rings army that was as nice as Tony's Britons.

Sadly for Pete his die rolling was as poor as Tony's.  Somewhere along the line I managed to take out Aragorn to finish the weekend with six wins and a draw.  And with Steve losing the last game to Tony  I'd most improbably won the tournament!

I have to say luck played a huge part.  If Mark Fry hadn't had to leave after Saturday to attend a family function and if Tony and Pete hadn't been struck down by the great PIP drought of 2015, I think I'd have struggled to get third.

As always HOTT Berkeley was a joy.  The people are great and, to be honest, the only reason I've carried on attending as HOTT doesn't really excite me that much any more.  My thanks to all concerned and especially to Steve for his continued efforts in mustering us each year.