Imperator! - WAB Campaign Day

Today's fun down the club was our Roman Civil War campaign day - I took my Parthians, but as we had an odd number of players and one of them was late, I only got to play in the first game, which was a doubles game which saw me across the table from Grahame of our club. Grahame knows WAB inside and out, and the ins and outs of almost every rule in the book (although I do have to keep reminding him that skirmish cavalry don't fear charges from foot!). Hence I was pleasantly surprised that our half of the table was pretty much a draw.

For a gallery with a few more photos, check the club's post.

Our thanks to Grahame and Andy H for organisation, and to Pen and Sword Books and PE2Collectables for generous donation of prizes.

The charity dice-off raised £51 (+ gift aid) for Battlegames' Combat Stress appeal.

WAB tournament update - Nov 23

For those interested in the club's WAB tournament on Nov 23, the sign up form is now available here along with permissible army lists etc..

WAB Tournament - a date for your diary

We'll be running the club's annual WAB campaign day on Nov 23rd this year. The theme will be the Year Of The Four Emperors, featuring four teams of players representing Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and their allies. We'll be publishing a list of permissible army lists soon, but pretty much anything overlapping AD69, and probably most of the 1st century AD, will be allowed.

We can promise the usual madcap fun, prizes (including a book donated by Pen and Sword), a charity dice off in aid of Combat Stress, and we're going to see if we can persuade Andy to wear a toga to make the announcements!

Battle Report - 12 May 2014 - WAB Age of Warlords

Another game in the club WAB Dark Ages campaign, protecting Britain from the invading Picts and their allies...

It didn't go well (stop me if you've heard this before). My opponent was Tony, with a non-Raider Saxon army (shieldwall, close order), and his mission was to kidnap (my story)/rescue (his story) a fair damsel from a hut on my side of the battlefield.

First contact was between his Gedriht (mounted) and mine (not), which was brief, and bloody, and ultimately didn't go well for me. Shortly after that, my Duguth and his collided, in a to and fro battle which took a frustratingly long time, and even my Gedriht wading in on a flank didn't tip the balance for several rounds of combat. By then, my Warlord had been incapacitated in single combat (for the second time this campaign), and the resulting test drove my mounted Duguth off the table...

By which time, Tony had the girl, but hadn't read the victory conditions, so spent rather too long escorting her around the table with his whole cavalry unit... I did, in the end, break his Duguth, but by then I was down to two units, neither of which were in a state to take on his two surviving units.

That aside? Great fun game, as always.

Battle Report - 14 Apr 2014 - WAB Age of Warlords

Round one of AndyH's campaign. The battle at the ford... against AndyM2 (not to be confused with AndyM, AndyB or AndyMac, either).

It opens with two champions duking it out at the ford - three rounds of combat, and Wulstan, son of Wulfhere (yes, that Wulfhere) lays the Angle Atheling low. And it all went downhill from there.

Winning the duel means I get the advantage of deployment, and get to sit two units on the ford while sending my cavalry forward on one flank.

What are we all forgetting here?

It's a Saxon army.

It's a Saxon Raider army, which means all its major foot units are warband.

Failed warband test for the Gedriht sitting on the ford, who have already been taking slingshot fire, and now charge headlong into two units of Duguth.

I think what's most impressive is that they lasted three rounds of combat, even with help from my Geoguth, despite being outnumbered.

Needless to say, the end result was Wulfstan got trampled (and wound up with a head wound) and the rest of my army fled.

On the good side - while Andy won the battle, Wulfstan did get the Glory - 5 points worth for killing the Angle's Warlord in single combat!

Battle Report - 7-Apr-2014 - WAB Age of Warlords

Monday night saw AndyH and I playing a small-unit WAB game as a warmup for the club's Age of Warlords game, starting next week.

Which did mean I got to spend an hour or two fixing an awful lot of spears and shields first.

The campaign works with 1000 points a side, made up of a minimum of 550 points of troops and the rest from characters picked from a retinue of 9 worth up to 750 points.

 I went for a bunch of small units. There's a campaign rule that basically says you get to keep the core units from your first battle, but can tweak numbers/equipment, so I could in subsequent battles go for larger units and fewer characters.

The scenario was simple - capture the hill and be holding it at the end of eight turns.

Deployment went pretty much as expected - we both sent our cavalry down the road, I attacked the hill with my Gedriht, with the Duguth and Geoguth to their right.

It's worth noting that the other variant rules in this campaign that make life interesting - units of 5 or less don't autobreak, and Army General's leadership applies to all units, even skirmishers.

This did make for the interesting sight of my lone surviving Geoguth driving away Andy's unit of bowmen, despite taking some withering incoming fire!

Unfortunately, that was about my only success. My dice clearly recognised that I was playing WAB, and barring one combat, spectacularly refused to cooperate (except right at the end). Even to the extent that my cavalry, which outnumbered Andy's AND had a character to boot? Completely failed to do them any damage whatsoever.

Ah me. Such is my life when playing WAB.

In the end, Andy had the hill, and my one surviving unit had no choice but to charge his hearthguard, in a vain attempt to drive them off the hill, or at least contest it and reduce his win from a Mighty Victory to a Close-run Victory... Needless to say? I lost the fight...

...needed a morale roll of 4 or less on 2d6 not to break...

...fluffed it...

...remembered my one surviving character in the front rank was the Army Standard Bearer...

...and made the reroll. Result. Ish :D

Dark Ages gaming Facebook group

Brief post today, as I'm scurrying out to day 1 of the real reason I'm over in the US...

For those of you on Facebook, Heer Browne has just created a new group for folks interested in Dark Ages gaming, "Wall of Shields". If the group he runs on the historical uses of Flames of War is anything to go by, it'll be worth a look.  You can find me there.

A date for your diary...

For those who enjoyed our previous WAB tournaments, Bretwalda and Carve Out A Kingdom, the club have a provisional date for this year's. Theme as yet undecided, but the date will be Sunday November 23rd, 2014.

We're subject to confirmation with our venue, but you may want to pop this date in your diary.

Also watch this space, as we've also got designs on Dreadball and Bolt Action tournaments.

2013 Year In Review - thoughts

Mmm. An interesting year. The major things from a change point of view I think concern WAB and Chain of Command.

With regard to last year's comments, I'm still torn over WAB. To be honest, I think it seems to be very opponent-dependent. It does suffer badly from special-case rules that potentially interact in complex ways, not least because it attempts to cover every possible army before 1500, pretty much. Of course, the other issue with special-case rules is that unless you're bloody good at your job as a game designer, and you do analyse every single possible interaction, somewhere down the line you hit a problem with the interaction of two army lists' sets of special-cases that cause nasty balance issues.

Which of course takes us into the realms of point systems, which I'm not going to steal Neil and Henry's thunder and discuss... yet :D Perhaps part of my issue with WAB is that it is point-driven for "balance", and thus we tend to play 'a 2000 pt battle' rather than a scenario per se.

I'm kind of interested in exploring the 'real-world' version of Jake Thornton's "God Of Battles" - I picked up a copy at Foundry last month, and I do have to reiterate - the man can sure design game mechanics. In fact, I'm turning into a big fan. Someone else suggested taking a look at Impetus last time I brought the future of WAB up, as well, which I may well do. Dux Bellorum has some nice touches, and there's also Phil Hendry's "Augustus to Aurelian", which takes a similar approach of not trying to be all things to all men (and all periods).

Now, of course, if you want, you can argue that Chain of Command, which is the main thing that cropped up new in 2013 for me, has a points system - after all the approach it uses to generate platoon supports is generally designed around adding up numbers. However, I think the key thing with CoC is that the 'points' are akin to how you spend your last, say, 500 points in a 2500 point WAB army where your core army is already decided for you. It also has the advantage that the army system doesn't kick in until you know a lot more about the terrain your fighting on and the opponent you're facing, and you can happily pick and choose (as would a real-world platoon CO) what supports will best help you deal with the problem at hand.

"Carve Out A Kingdom" WAB Campaign day

Here are some photos from today's excellent WAB campaign day down at the club. Huge thanks to Andy and Grahame for organising things, and to everyone who turned up and proved WAB is still alive. We had enough players for four teams of four, the Italians, the Byzantines, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Berber, each a mix of 'native' forces and Norman or Italo-Norman mercenaries.

I certainly had a great time - pretty sure everyone else did, too.

Carve Out A Kingdom - reminder

A last reminder for our club's WAB tournament day on Sunday 24th November. It's not too late to sign up if you're interested.

More details here! Note, if you'd like to come but aren't sure if you have an army, do get in touch as we may be able to help.

Battle Report - 14 Oct 2013 - WAB

As you are probably aware, we're running a WAB tournament at the club next month (Nov 24): as usual, we're putting together a number of scenarios for the day, some of which need a good playtest for balance etc.

Tonight Carl and I tested out a rearguard action scenario, with AndyH umpiring: Carl took Italo-Normans, and I took Normans, having to defend with my rearguard until my main force showed up. With hindsight, I should have dropped one unit, and spent the points on heavy armour for the rest, since a couple of my units of knights proved somewhat fragile! Having said that, though, it was a close-run thing that started out very chaotic and surprisingly evolved into two battle lines by the middle of the session. Carl won by a short head on VPs by virtue of one of my fragile units containing my army standard bearer.

I'll withhold the details of the scenario, since I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, but here's a few pictures - the guys with uniform colour schemes through each unit are generally mine.

Carve Out A Kingdom - reminder - Nov 24 2013

Just got back from a planning meeting for our WAB tournament on Nov 24th here at the club.

You can find more details in the previous posts, and a signup form here. The list of Army lists to choose from is here. There will be fun, inter- and intra-faction strife, prizes, and a charity dice off in aid of Combat Stress.

And if anyone wants Grahame, Andy and I to work out and create the branding and materials for a tournament for your club, like Carve Out A Kingdom or our very successful Bretwalda campaign day? Leave us a comment here and we'll be in touch :D

Ch...ch...ch....changes...

I've been back in wargaming for about three years now. It's quite interesting to look at the things that have changed in that time.

First up, from my viewpoint, the demise of Warhammer Historical (and specifically WAB) as an entry point to non-fantasy/SF wargaming, is a biggie. I've gone on enough about this and the policy decisions round it that I don't need to do so again, but if any of my newer readers want to give me more page views by catching up on my opinions, do feel free :D

GW's confessed business model - to sell figures - isn't actually that dumb, if you step back and take a look at it. Rules are a one-off purchase (unless you go with the 40K approach): if you're a full-time business, the real money is in enticing people to get their lead and plastic pile from you.

There have been a couple of attempts to replace WAB, of which the obvious three are Clash of Empires, War and Conquest, and Hail Caesar. None of them have really taken off as much, as far as I can tell, as WAB did in its heyday. I find the first too close to WAB with the serials filed off, from the couple of games I've played. I'd like to get a better look at WAC, as it's probably the closest in spirit to what WAB 3.0 could have become, and the army lists are pretty comprehensive.

Hail Caesar has the advantage that WAB had, only in spades: not only do a major games company (Warlord) back it, they actually produce figure ranges for it! My issues with it, though, are twofold: it seems to generally require rather more figures than a corresponding game of WAB, and I still find the command activation system slightly flawed.

Next up, the rise of Dark Ages gaming. Specifically, obviously, SAGA, which has been a flash of genius on the part of Gripping Beast and their partners since they've got figures to go with the rules. I still find it a bit beer-and-pretzels: it's a great game, but it's not exactly a simulation (Mike Hobbs and I are recording another podcast with Neil tonight: that should give him a chance to have a go at me :D). But of course, in addition to that, there's the Duxes (or perhaps, the Duces?) Britanniarum and Bellorum, which set out to do different things and both do them pretty well (you know where my preferences lie, though :D).

In WW2, we seem to have seen the steady fall of one big ruleset backed by a massive range of figures, and the rise of another in a different scale, while smart rule makers happily ride in on the availability of minis in both scales. Man at War tried to emulate the former in the Napoleonic period... the jury's kind of still out on that one: they're still going but slowly.

Then there's the (re-) rise of games at the skirmish/RPG-lite scale (I could give you a list, but I don't have all day :D) The likes of Judge Dredd, In Her Majesty's Name spring to mind.  They do sort of hark back to Mordheim/Necromunda, but they do seem to be growing in popularity as a ... if you like, form-factor... for gaming. These do seem to come as 'rules with figures' packages - brilliant if the setting and the rules work, and the figures are up to scratch.

The real biggie, though? Kickstarter. I mean, just... wow. Things are happening in the gaming world that just weren't possible before as a result. As long as people can get their heads round the concept that Kickstarter's raison d'être is advance funding and a clearer idea of the market for the vendor, and not purely loads of cool free swag RIGHT NOW for the buyer, we're in with a shout of some great things coming through it. But it's clear from a couple of notable events such as the withdrawal of the Beyond the Gates of Antares Kickstarter, that not everyone seems to 'get' how best to use it.

That said: wargames? The hobby's rockin', man, as the guitarist in a band I used to be in would say. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Battle Report - 17 Aug 2013 - Axes WAB tournament

The Rushden clubhouse - it's the local scout hut.

Back from the Rushden Phoenix club's annual Axes WAB tournament. Took my Parthians, hastily rebadged as Palmyrans (which has always been a plan, and one of the reasons I went for that army) - basic force being two units of catphracts, two units of horse archers, a unit of foot archers and a unit of allied elite Roman legionaries.

Got there (thanks to a ride with Carl from our club) in good time, so grabbed tea and got set up for my first battle against Paul Tysoe's Late Imperial Romans. The running joke was that several of the LIR armies had fewer actual Romans in than mine (as they were basically packed with Foederati, which to be fair isn't that unhistorical). I felt this scenario was a bit contrived, as it had a river running the length of the table, and deployment zones that were basically 4'x4' triangles. I basically deployed my heavies on one side, and sent the missile troops up the other flank to deal with Paul's bolt thrower. Paul, very sensibly, having units packed with missile weapons, just waited for me to get to him, and shot me up while I approached. It almost worked - the cataphracts are sufficiently slow that juggling things to make sure I could charge him and he couldn't charge me is quite a fine piece of manipulation, and I got it fractionally (by 1/8" or so) wrong. Result, my general's cataphracts got smacked around a lot, and ran away, causing one of those unpleasant cascades of failed morale tests that resulted in most of my army running away.

One to Paul.

Next up, I drew my chauffeur(!) Carl, who had brought an Ostrogoth army: lots of cavalry, a couple of units of foot and some skirmishers.

I basically got outmanoeuvred in this one, resulting in a capaphract sandwich: the cataphracts really do move like an ocean-going tanker, once you've set them on a path, they even wheel at a penalty. General's unit broke, cue tests all round. Cue some absolutely dreadful dice! No unit in my army has leadership less than 7. Of the five units that had to test, all but one rolled 11s or 12s on 2d6. Arrggh. Cue mass panic, army break point.

Ah well.

Last battle: Martyn Hill from the Rushden club's Gallic army - lots of warbands and skirmishers.

This went surprisingly like the previous one, including getting outmanoeuvred and rolling appallingly bad dice!

Conclusion? Mostly - this particular army is somewhat brittle - most of its firepower is concentrated in three big expensive units, two which are difficult to manoeuvre and really do not respond well to being charged. That and I suck at both dice rolling and tactics! :D

All that aside? I had a great time: the WAB crowd (as I think I've mentioned before) are in general a very friendly bunch, and most of us play the game in a very sporting and friendly manner.

Apparently, so do I, as (while coming dead last) I came away with the Best Sportsman award.

Huge thanks to Simon and the guys at Rushden Phoenix for organising and running the tournament, and congrats to Andy Beer of our club for coming a well deserved overall second!

Battle Report - 12 Aug 2013 - WAB

My horse archers avoiding the Ostrogoth's heavy cavalry.
Wise move.

I think I've clearly been playing too much Lard :D

Last night was my first night down the club after getting back off holiday, and Carl and I had a warm-up game for the Rushden club's Axes 2013 tournament on Saturday.

I lost.

It's not, I don't think, that I don't like Ancients, or even WAB. It's that I really miss at least one, and preferably both, of rules that have Command and Control features, and scenarios that actually have some context in the larger scheme of things. You'll still catch me at the campaign-themed tournaments that the likes of Scrivs and Tom, or Andy, Grahame and I run, as they're just... awesome fun with a great bunch of people, and enough thought goes into them to provide some context without contrived scenarios.

I may, though, be giving next year's WAB GT a miss.

Terracotta Warriors

Another Epcot goodie. Admittedly these are 1/3 scale replicas, but even so... I confess to being a wee bit tempted by a Chinese army in 28mm. 

Actually? Stuff that! Anyone fancy WAB in 600mm scale? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terracotta_Army

"Carve Out A Kingdom" - recommended reading

For those interested in joining us for our Normans In Italy WAB campaign day in November, here's some light reading.

Grahame from our club happened on these in The Works for a fiver - they're of the historical fiction-based-on-fact genre, and are Jack Ludlow's Conquest trilogy. I'm about halfway through book one as part of my holiday reading (before I start my way through the Kindle books), and they're actually pretty good.

Enjoy :D

[PS: please excuse typos for a few - on wife's MacBook Air, and it's taking a while to get used to where the keys are!]

"Carve Out A Kingdom" - save the date!

Wearing my committee hat, I'm happy to announce that Peterborough Wargames Club will be running another WAB gaming day on Sunday November 24th 2013. 

This will be:

An introduction and army list details will appear on the club site in the next week or so. Rest assured that if your immediate reaction is 'but I don't have an army for that', this may not be the case. Grahame from our club has been working on the lists starting from Armies of Antiquity 2 as a basis, and the details will include a lot of suggestions for how you can pass off an army as one of the lists, especially if you have anything El Cid or Age of Arthur related. Also note that next year's WABGT's period is 600AD to 1249AD, so it's not unlikely you can put together an army for both.

We're aiming to live up to the standard of last year's successful Bretwalda gaming day, with a number of believable new scenarios, good looking terrain and a friendly, laid-back atmosphere where taking part and having fun are as important as winning.

Watch out on the club site for more details and a signup form, and I'll make sure it gets mentioned here and elsewhere.

Review - Agema Miniatures 28mm Roman Velites

I'm usually pretty on the ball on the world of 28mm plastic ancients, as I have five WAB armies (which are probably 90%+ plastic in total) plus the makings of a sixth (Greek), but I have to confess that the arrival of the Agema Velites had completely passed me by until Grahame mentioned them in the car on the way to Salute. Of course, I don't actually need another ancient army, but they had to be worth a look, right.

Agema Miniatures is a husband and wife team, Greg and Rita - as far as I can tell, he sculpts, she draws - and the Velites are the first of a range for Punic Wars Romans. So, let's have a look!

Smaller than the typical Warlord etc box - you're getting 16 miniatures for £9.60 (plus p&p if you order from their site). Lovely box front art, though: very striking. The back has some shots of painted minis, as well as some close ups of the unpainted plastic - if I have a gripe here its that the shots of the plastic look a little soft, and don't do them justice.

Inside, there are eight identical sprues, made, perhaps inevitably, by Renedra. Each sprue has two figures, with separate arms and heads.

What you actually get, in fact, is

• two torsos, 
• two helmeted heads,
• one wolf-skin head
• one wolf-skin cloak
• two left arms
• one open-handed right arm (throwing overhand)
• one right arm carrying small gladius (stabbing underarm)
• two shields, one with javelins
• one empty gladius sheath, one sheathed gladius
• one javelin, which unlike a LOT of plastic javelins doesn't look like a scale tree trunk.

Detail is nice and crisp, and the proportions are much closer to actual normal humanity than quite a lot of the other 28mm plastic ranges out there (Warlord's Early Imperial Romans particularly leap to mind). Also, full marks for providing an empty scabbard for the guy who's stabbing with his gladius.

Of course, the upside to having only two figures to a sprue is this has probably been much quicker for Agema to sculpt. On the downside, it makes the number of poses a bit limited - there are only effectively two poses - throwing a javelin or stabbing, but you can have subtle variations by swapping arms and torsos, and some (the more 'elite') can have the wolf pelts.

I had a quick chat with Greg (in fact, I came back after I'd bought a box and got rid of a large pile of purchases to the car) during the early afternoon. It sounds like they've been selling well, and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out. Next up are going to be a box of Legionaries: I hope this will have enough diversity to produce hastati, principes and triarii. They're considering a Kickstarter to get the Legionaries out a little quicker - I'd definitely be tempted.

After that, apparently, the plan is (and I quote):

to progress through Legionnaires, to Carthaginian Citizen and Liby-Pheonician troops, to Spaniards and Celt-Iberians. Who knows, we may even release a plastic elephant set in the future if the range proves successful!

Sounds promising!

To conclude: I really like these, and I'm very tempted to put together a Republican Roman army - if nothing else, I know I'm good for a couple of years before the WAB GT comes round to that era again!