Fred - 2021 Painting Bits

[fred.]

Irregular Wars - Royal English vs Mere Irish

As there were just two of us available to play this week, we fell back to the old stalwart of Irregular Wars, which always gives a good game and a quick game (and pretty much all the rules are in my head so is easy to play). Also the small size makes it a good game for a remote game.

I took the English, Stuart the Irish. The forces are quite different, with the English having a good command range, heavy cavalry and cannons available to them. The Irish are generally light and quicker, with high initiative.




The English (defending) deployed on the left (red dice and arrows) the Irish attackers are on the right (green dice and arrows). In Irregular Wars there is quite a lot of randomness in the setup, you have to dice for the number of troops you get for a 'pick' it might be 1d2, it might be 1d6. For this game I rolled pretty low for almost every pick!

Then you deploy, then you roll for disease and mishaps - 2d6, on 7+ all is fine, on a 2-6 bad things happen. For the Irish two units of Kerns were enthusastic and dashed forward (top of photo), a unit of Bonnachts were late, and just 1 unit suffered 1 point of damage due to disease - overall not a bad result.

The English had a unit of shot enthusiastically run forward (towards the Kerns!) and had a unit of Billmen delayed, and rather a lot of disease amongst their troops (4 units, with one suffering 2 points of disease damage).



This is a couple of turns in. One of the enthusiastic Kerns had ended up out of command range, so needed to roll for an impetuous action - getting Retreat - clearly deciding that discretion was the better part of valour they dropped back. Which was fortunate for the English musketeers who would have been rather outnumbered! This unit of Kerns ended up out of command for most of the game, and did nothing much.

The Irish cavalry advanced on the left flank (nearest the camera), and rather quickly decided to get stuck in and charge the English troops. The English were making a steady advance but I was generally happy to do some shooting to start with to disrupt a few units.

When the Irish charged, they ended up rather isolated, which let my troops get in a lot of counter charges. Whilst my Kerns (yes both armies have Kerns available to them) moved round on to the flank to see what mischief they could get up to.


My counter charge against the Irish cavalry put a lot of wounds on them, but not quite enough to break them. But in the next turn I was able to kill one unit, which caused a cascade of routing friends (in Irregular Wars morale is dealt with by causing a unit that has a friendly unit destroyed with 10cm loose a point of resolve (effectively take a wound). This can lead to a cascade of badly damaged units being lost from a single combat. Which is what happened here. The whole Irish cavalry attack has melted away!

The Irish Gallowglass in the centre pressed forward irregardless. I was able to retreat a couple of my damaged units to protect them.



The Irish won initiative again (I think they won every roll in the game, and choose to take the initiative each turn). The Gallowglass piled in - but again they were rather isolated and outnumbered, allowing lots of flank charges, which led to the loss of the whole Irish force, with the English loosing a unit! Brutal.

The Irish seemed a bit too keen to get into combat - they were net +2 on initiative rolls, and therefore were likely to win most - but every turn they choose to go first, which isn't always the best choice, as if you go first, you get your charge bonus, but you allow enemy counter charges on your attackers, which can be deadly. Also the Irish cavalry are light-medium cavalry, so probably better to go in with support, or be used to flank the enemy with their speed.

As the game only took about an hour, we were able to get a second game in (to follow).

[mmcv]

Good wee game there. I have irregular wars on my Christmas list as looks to be an interesting rule set

[fred.]

Good wee game there. I have irregular wars on my Christmas list as looks to be an interesting rule set

Thanks - it was fun. Not least when I remembered just how good my Demi-lancers were. 


Irregular Wars is a great set of rules. But you do have to be careful with the many army lists as these can very easily have you building many forces as they are intriguing and seem small enough to be quick to build. 

[steve_holmes_11]

Excellent report.
I really appreciated the arrows on the photos, showing the ebb and flow of the battle.

It's inspired me to return my 10mm armies to the painting table, and prepare some units.

[Techno II]

Great stuff, Forbes ! 

Cheers - Phil.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice report Forbes. Like it

[fred.]

Excellent report.
I really appreciated the arrows on the photos, showing the ebb and flow of the battle.

It's inspired me to return my 10mm armies to the painting table, and prepare some units.

Thanks Steve - glad you like the arrows. Having owned an Apple Pencil for my iPad for a number of years, I would hope I would remember to use it more often!


And good to hear you have the 10mm back on the painting table!

[steve_holmes_11]

Thanks Steve - glad you like the arrows. Having owned an Apple Pencil for my iPad for a number of years, I would hope I would remember to use it more often!


And good to hear you have the 10mm back on the painting table!

The arrows really help.

A typical after action report tends to be a digest of pictures, without a connecting narrative.
Lots of shots of single units or captions like "The guard rolled a 1" don't do much to tell a story.
Unless you were at the table for the game.

Panoramic shots, with some view of where units are going (or came from), really do convey the proverbial thousand words.
Yours is a great example, fewer pictures, but panoramic views with arrows formovement.

Another handy technique (if units are intermixed) is to underline or outline bases in a distinct colour to identify friend and foe.

Keep up the excellent Irregular Wars work!!

[fred.]

Fewer pictures, because stuff happens quickly, and I forget to take photos! 

Good tip on the colouring of bases in post-production. These are not the easiest units to tell apart, as they are all based by me, and some (Kerns) are on both sides. 

[fred.]

Sashimono 

Got the sashimono added to lots of Japanese figures



For these I have printed the design on normal paper, then folded in half around the cast banners. Then just needs a bit of tidying up on the edges. 

The banners are proving a bit more tricky as they have cast streamers on them. 

[Techno II]

Really nice work, Forbes !

Cheers - Phil

[paulr]

    

[mmcv]

Looking good

[fred.]

Thanks guys!

[Steve J]

Those banners really do look very good .

[fred.]

Those banners really do look very good .

Thanks Steve


Sengoku Overview 

Took some snaps of my painted Japanese Sengoku figures in their storage drawer the other day (pre the addition of banners)





Houses



Lead pile


Not too many left here

[Steve J]

You've got a very good collection there already Fred .

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Impressive stuff

[Techno II]

Wot they sed.

Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps   

Coming along nicely, looks like I need some more cavalry though, I already have lots more peasants ready to paint, mainly bow and teppu armed.