Warmaster Revolutions

 Warmaster Revolutions is the fan published version of the Warmaster fantasy rules. GW allowed the rights to revert to the author Rick Priestly who in turn allowed the fan community to make them available.

This game is 2,000 points of Brettonians vs Wood Elves. Both armies are almost all 3D printed models by Forest Dragon Studio. My Brettonians were mostly painted with Speed Paints from the Army Painter, over a light grey primer and white undercoat.

 

My Brettonians are deployed at the bottom of the picture. On the left, 1 Bowmen, 1 Men at Arms, 2 Peasants, Knights Grail Knights and Mounted Squires. The hero is mounted on a Pegasus. In the centre more Knights, Grail Knights, Squires and my single unit of Pegasus Knights, with the General. On the right, Bowmen, Men at Arms and Peasants, led by a Sorceress. 

I advanced on the left and my infantry were driven back by bow fire. Alex's Giant Eagles flew into my rear and threatened to cause a major irritation. 

I moved some of my infantry behind them and then charged, then my general sent the Pegasus Knights over to charge the flank. I passed some difficult command roles here and the Eagles were no more. This flank was further broken up by shooting and failed to make any significant movement again until nearly the end of the game.

On the right my Sorceress was busy failing command rolls. I sent some cavalry from the centre over. Seeing bow armed cavalry in the built up area I managed to get the Knights in and soon destroyed them. However one of my units never managed to get out, failing all attempts at command.

 

Alex's other cavalry charged my Knights in the rear but had little effect.

More Knight s that I had moved up from centre joined the fight and destroyed the last Elvish cavalry.

 Alex's infantry had moved across to the centre in a deep formation. My cavalry managed to charge them but did half as much damage as would have been expected and were pushed back.

One unit on my left made a first move but failed the second leaving it stranded in the open. It was charged in the flank and reduced to one base. The archers fell back but the Knight was obliged to charge them and got himself killed.

Back on the right my infantry moved into the wood catching a unit on the corner and then pursuing and destroying most of the archers in the wood.

My last group of Knights and Grail Knights from the centre charged Alex's archers.

This was the seventh and final turn and the Elves had reached their break point. The Brettonian army only counts Knights, Grail Knights and Pegasus Knights for break points. I had been looking safe there but their poor showing in the later combats took me to four out of ten lost.

A Very British Civil War

 A Very British Civil War is an alternative history setting in which Edward VIII refused to abdicate and instead dissolved parliament. It was popular at the club 10 years ago with many players having small forces.

In this game using club rules the Socialist forces are entering a village searching for an agent who they must find and carry off. /Richard has Regular quality troops (left), Brian has Territorials (right) and I have 8 Militia (out shot) and six Territorials, veterans of WWI, with my leader in the centre.

 

We aim to search the buildings. Here Brian's troops enter houses opposite the church. Thinking the enemy are not supposed to be in position yet my militia move accross some open ground and suffer three dead from an enemy Lewis gun.

They re-group in a dilapidated barn. I go through the motions of setting up at the loft windows overlooking the enemy, but in reality I am just checking to see if the agent is there before moving on. As far as we know the enemy don't know our actual objective.

Nick's Royalist forces exchange fire across the road with Brian and come off worse.

Andy's Royalists relocate several times.

 Richard advances under sever fire while my Territorials search some more houses and take up positions to fire on the church.

 

Nick's forces abandon the church and move to the rear of the battlefield. Their manoeuvres were confusing us. We wondered if there was a mine set to explode, perhaps in the oil tanker.

As my Militia pushed into the village to search houses on the enemy side Andy's unit moved away from from them into a wood. We wondered if they were searching for the agent in there or perhaps it was a flanking move.

I expected to fired at from the wood but instead they kept going. In fact they had been holding the agent all along and their mission was to get him off the table by a certain road, which they now did.

 

HotT Barn 2024

 On 9 June Lincombe Barn Wargames Society hosted our annual Hordes of the Things tournament.

Due to several regulars having been at the 2 Fat Lardies event we hosted the day before and some for other reasons we only had six players this time, we usually have 10-12.

We had five games which meant everyone played everyone else.

 

Hot pies were supplied at lunch time as usual

Here my Mycenaean Greeks Spears fight a Flyer from Mad Max Fury Road.

 Amazons vs Mycenaean Greeks.

Spiders vs Sentient Plants.

 

Mycenaean Greeks vs Ebeneezer Goode (an electronic dance song by The Shaman from 1992)

 The Shaman is a Cleric General, Ebeneezer Goode is a Hero, the sound system is Artillery. Smiley faces are Hordes and Beasts.

 

 The results were:

1st Martin 67pts

Joint 2nd Owen & Mark 61pts (both killed 2 generals)

4th Colin 55pts

5th Steve 49pts

6th Phil 40pts  

 

 

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Xenos Rampant: Massacre on Planet X

 Xenos Rampant is a set of sci-fi wargames rules published by Osprey, following on from Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant.

In this game we had a scenario where the humans had to rescue survivors trapped inside an crashed ship on a planet inhabited by fierce monsters.

 

The humans had six squads of heavy infantry with transport vehicles, plus a squad in a lander. 

The Aliens consisted of large single creatures and units of smaller creatures. These were very good at melee and had no shooting.

 

The big Aliens were concealed within pods scattered around the battlefield and we were able to choose which ones when they jumped out.

 

The GM thought the scenario might favour the humans but it turned out be the opposite.

 

 The cover gave the humans little chance to fire before being engaged hand to hand where they were quickly killed.

As the Aliens we opted to deal with the troops near the spaceship first to ensure they couldn't get the occupants out. 

Apart from this cheeky one that jumped onto the enemy and used it's special ability to explode.

This lot ran from one alien into the jaws of another on the same ground where the other squad had died.

The vehicles had guns on so they had to be dealt with too. They were adapted from old toys, which are now collectables.

The VTOL dropped off it's squad next to the spaceship in the hope of evacuating the survivors.

The humans in the rear hadn't had much to shoot at due to the cover and the enemy being engaged with their own comrades. Now the Aliens swept up the board to deal with them.

The last human near the objective went down and there was nothing left for the others to withdraw.

It turned out the humans never had much of a chance due to the dense terrain and the alien deployment rules, as well as a tough objective. We had fun though and after the game we played the Strange Things board game which was also fun.

 

 

 

 

Never Mind the Billhooks

 Never Mind the Billhooks is a set of rules for the Wars of the Roses, mass battle.

In this game we had roughly equal forces. On the Yorkist side Steve had the left command and I had the right. Opposite with the Lancastrians was Bob on our left and Richard on our right. Most of had not played these rules before and John acted as games master. The figures are his, 20mm plastics.

We had the advantage in archery so we aimed to take out their archers first. We held our Knights back out of range of the enemy archers and cannon.

Archers on both sides advanced. Their cannon began inflicting casualties and killed one or two models almost every turn, except for when it was briefly blocked by their own cavalry.

On our left the Lancastrians moved onto the hill in force. We had some Skirmishers there and some Billmen on the other side of the wood.

On the right my Archers were winning and my Skirmishers popped onto the hill and inflicted more casualties.

Lancastrian Billmen (not peasants as they appear) came to chase off the Skirmishers. After evading some charges they were left with multiple disorder tokens and facing the wrong way. I never had enough action points from my leader to spare to turn them around again.

The Lancastrian Knights moved into the centre and were met with very effective missile fire. This was also one of the very few occasions our cannon hit anything. A random event card gave us an extra unit of Skirmishers hidden in the village who joined in. The Knights were wiped out over two turns.

The Lacnastrians advanced down the hill and were intercepted by Steve's Men at Arms in the woods.

The Billmen facing my Archers withdrew after taking some casualties and their Men at Arms advanced towards us. One unit took very heavy losses from our Archers. In the village Lancastrian Men at Arms advanced and were met by a unit of our own.

It was time for some manoeuvering to get my spent Archers out of the way and bring up my Men at Arms on one side and Billmen on the other.

 

Richard's commander joined his Men at Arms charging my Archers and inflicted heavy losses but they stood their ground. My Men at Arms almost pulled off a flank charge but were stopped in their tracks by a special event card played by the Lancastrians. This then left them open to a charge from the other enemy Men at Arms.

On the left another unit of Men at Arms went through the village and charged our soldiers fighting in the woods in the rear. A couple of turns ago it all seemed to be going our way but the situation was now in the balance.

Our Men at Arms in the village broke and their opponents flank charged our Archers who had been about to do the same to their other unit.

Their Archers came down the hill to flank charge our Men at Arms in the Woods, things seemed hopeless.

     
And then the Archers unexpectedly beat their opponents who broke. They ran past the depleted Men at Arms who were in my flank on my side, causing them to rout too.

Our Archers were now free to attack the enemy rear, and on my side my Men at Arms were free to make their flank charge. Our own routers also rallied at this point. With all of their best troops destroyed, routing or sandwiched, and with our own Knights still intact and ready it was decided we had won the battle.