The Ultimate Historical Gaming Thread

Fair assessment.

On the note about certain factions lacking options and having few model kits, when it comes to my Ancient British collection for WHAB, I'm limited to at most 8 different unit types, three of which being characters, and I typically only use 6 of them (High Chieftain, Chieftain, Standard Bearer, Warriors, Skirmishers, and Noble Chariots). While there's not a lot of variety I can do with that within the confines of their composition limitations, it is still viable to make an effective list using just those unit types. Again, as to how it could be implemented in, say, a Fyreslayer army is still up in the air.

 

Ah, your magnificent Samurai armies! Have you played many games with them all together yet? Which rules do you use for mass battles? Pike and Shotte? (I know you're a Test of Honour fan regarding to skirmish)

Fireforge have excellent Bretonnian proxies as well as historical knights. I take it you'd be more interested in the 'Age of Crusades' version of Saga than the 'Age of Vikings' Dark Age version the rules were most famously developed for?

Those are certainly in the works (currently going to be on Kickstarter), but I'd like to think they'd release the range of Dwarves for their fantasy range they've been currently working on for the past year on Kickstarter first, and the Samurai after that. I would hate to see that project scrapped.

 

I've gone with Ravenfeast to start with as a Dark Age ruleset, and have stuck some of my 1:72 Saxons and Vikings onto 25mm round bases with white-tack to use just to get familiar with the rules (in time I'll get some 28mm models, and I personally intend to play Welsh, but might as well use what I've got first). At the moment I'm using the rules for skirmish play as they were intended, but will be introducing some of my own addenda to spice up gameplay once I've become seasoned with the basic rules.

The rules certainly have a fair few similaries to the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, so I wonder if @Imrahil would be interested in getting into it? The army sizes are similar and some rules such as scenery being in the way of missiles are direct carbon-copies. However the game is still unique in its own right, with the profiling system being different and players simply needing to roll under the Warrior's Missile, Melee and Armour ratings to hit with a missile, melee weapon or make a successful armour save respectively. Two particularly significant mechanics are the Death Worthy of Song (where if you roll a 1 to hit and your enemy rolled 6 to save, i.e. the best possible hit and worst possible save failure, the enemy model suffers a particularly brutal death and all friendly models within 6" of it have to take a Morale test) and the Shieldwall (models with shields can form a unit that can only move straight forward at half speed or backwards quarter speed, but they all gain a +2 bonus to their Armour ratings) that really amp up the Dark Ages feel to it.

The first couple of games I have played have been featuring two warbands of equal size and points in differing structure:

Vikings:
Jarl (75 points) = 75 points
2 Berserkers (30 points each) = 60 points
6 Hirdmen (18 points each) = 108 points
3 Bondi Archers (18 points each) = 54 points
Total: 297 points

Saxons:
Lord (75 points) = 75 points
3 Hearthguard (36 points each) = 108 points
3 Veteran Fyrd (18 points each) = 54 points
5 Fyrd (12 points each) = 60 points
Total: 297 points

The first battle went very badly for the Vikings, as the Saxons bunched all their lightly-armoured Fyrd and Veteran Fyrd into a Shieldwall to increase their Armour ratings from a meagre 2 and an average 3 to a mighty 4 and 5 respectively, while at the same time sending their super-tanky Hearthguard and Lord to cut down several of the Hirdmen early and pin down the Viking Jarl. It didn't help the Norsemen that their three archers achieved very little during the fight, failing to shoot a single foe and two of them failing both an initial Morale test due to the Viking force falling below 50% strength and their Rally test the following turn, fleeing the board in shame. One of their two Berserkers had terrible dice luck despite being the only model on either side with two attacks and failed to kill anybody before being run through with a Fyrdman's spear, but the other helped to stop the Saxons by getting everything their own way by getting round behind the Shieldwall and killing several of the Fyrd in it over many turns, until a Hearthguard attacked him from behind and beheaded him spectacularly to inflict a Death Worthy of Song. The Viking Jarl was the last to die, having held the Saxon Lord and a different Hearthguard since the early stages of the game. He managed to cut down the Hearthguard toward the end, but by then every other Viking was dead or had fled, and the remaining Saxons piled into him with the aim of killing him, only for the Lord he had been fighting for ages to deal him the final blow. In the end the Saxons had 6 of their 12 original models still standing, but for much of the game they had lost far fewer and 4 of the 6 casualties were cheap Fyrd (the others being a single Veteran Fyrd and the Hearthguard killed by the Jarl).

 

Not trying to specifically advertise, but if anyone is interested in single sprues of wargames atlantic to try out the various historicals, I now sell single sprues in my webstore.

 

@Killer Angel that is excellent! Is that from this year's Adepticon?

Hope I can go to one of those in the next few years!

 

beautiful board. I hope my Aztec army looks half as cool.

 

Forgot to tell you all, a couple of weeks ago I found a great new model shop I hadn’t visited before that sold boxes from all the historical greats, Warlord, Victrix, Perry and Gripping Beast, plus North Star and Wargames Atlantic, and bought some more Roman Legionaries for SPQR:


This will take my Roman Force up to 1 Hero, 39 Legionaries, 16 Auxiliaries (which my Caesarian Roman Legionaries I got a while back will be used as) and a Scorpion catapult, which is most of my planned 2000 Denarii army, which is probably the biggest most SPQR games will get.

 

Nice! Roma Invicta

 

With the Wargames Atlantic Goths now in stock, I'd like to spotlight the Decline and fall range as a whole.

The wargames Atlantic decline and fall range covers the later Roman empire, and its enemies.

The first two kits released by Wargames Atlantic for the Range were the Late legionaries in lorica Hamata, and then subsequently the Goths.

Both of these kits are highly detailed AND feature parts with the same joint types, so they are interchangeable.

This means even a collector of the roman legions can use the goth set, because the unarmored torso's will pair well with leftover heads from the Legionary set to make Unarmored troops.

Assuming an excess of extra head bits from constructing your armored legionaries, the enterprising hobbyist could take two sets of Goths and make 3 units of 20 unarmored infantry.

If you favor sacking Rome instead of defending it, you can use the armored legionary set to make armored or noble infantry for the Gothic horde.

Both kits are in stock and available from McDougall Designs at

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/collections/wargames-atlantic-kits

 

@ChapterAquila92 has started an SPQR Campaign with his gaming group - top man!

Here's a report of his most recent battle, as Britons, against one of the Greek factions, from another thread:

Well done on the win! Cunobelinos, Caratacus, Venutius, Epaticcus and all the other great British heroes would be proud!

You were lucky there to only lose 5 of your Warrior unit and 2 Tribesmen, you should be able to replenish the cost of those you couldn't afford after the next fight. Who's your next unfortunate opponent?

 

As there's become a significant amount of SPQR discussion in the 'What are you doing today hobbywise?' thread, I will continue it here as this is the correct place for it.

@Killer Angel @Tk'ya'pyk would you be interested in starting SPQR? Because if so then that would take our SPQR playerbase to 4!

 

Hmm, I doubt there is a local group I could game with, but I do most of my gaming through Tabletop Simulator these days anyway. Honestly, I would possibly make an army just to have one. You have to realize that (somewhere around here) I have a Bachelor's degree in History from the U of MN. History and Fantasy are both kind of my jam.

 

https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/sumerians-akkadians-3000bc-1793bc Mind you, I would probably order from Wargames Foundry instead of Warlord - I'm not a fan of Resin.

 

If anyone else happens to be geographically near Orlando, I'll be probably attending hurricon as a hobbyist in mid September

 

Make this warm jello in a jello mold.