Fred - 2021 Painting Bits

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Great looking game.

On the chariots, don't forget the High Elved in Warband have good chassis but solid wheels.
And don't forget Keira for riders...

[Techno II]

Terrific looking game.

The town, especially, looks cracking !

Cheers - Phil  

[fred.]

Thanks all - the table and buildings (Timecast I think) are my mate Dave's. French tanks are mine, Germans were Jon's. One of the big advantages of playing face to face is that the host doesn't need to provide everything

[fred.]

Sengoku Japanese 

Finally got the next batch of these figures done, some of these have been hanging around on painting sticks for ages!



This gives
2 Priests
1 Ninja
1 Samurai with yari
6 Peasants
2 Cannon
8 command stands
4 individuals (2 ninjas, 2 priests)

[Techno II]

They look very spiffy, Forbes. 

Cheers - Phil.

[mmcv]

Very nice

[fred.]

Thanks both. Next stage is sorting out sashimonos and other banners, some on these but mainly on figures painted previously when i had run out of sashimonos

[mmcv]

Thanks both. Next stage is sorting out sashimonos and other banners, some on these but mainly on figures painted previously when i had run out of sashimonos

I've run out of sashimono a couple of times now. Got a big batch in my latest order but burn through them so quickly! Even just adding to a handful of troops per unit. I am going to attempt making some of my own banners for some of the styles not covered by existing offerings, such as the horo (the balloon style cloak) and the multiple small flags, but hard to beat the standard rectangular sashimono.

[fred.]

I've thought about the horo cloaks - feel they out to be makable from green stuff. But who knows!

Yes sashimono do seem to be needed in large numbers. I've printed the designs for mine which makes adding them very straight forward, but still a fair number of steps to the process

[mmcv]

Yeah I'm thinking green stuff for the horo too. Plan to use them for individually based "messengers" and maybe for some of the hatamoto too. For the coloured flag style hopefully a bit of wire and paper will do the job.

[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.