Claymore 2012

As we were putting on our Borodino display game and ended up chatting to so many people I didn't get a long time to get round the show, especially with my injured back but I still managed to get a few shots of the games that impressed me.  Sorry to anyone who put on a game and I haven't taken any pics it's probably just that my back had become so sore I needed to sit down.

These two great pics are by our mate Kevin Calder who is part of the

 League of Gentlemen Wargamers but puts on games as the Iron Brigade.

I don't know which club put on this great 28mm WW2 game but it is fantastic use of teddy bear fur.

This is just one shot of a great looking 28mm Vietnam game.

This was the only shot I managed to get of this interesting Russian Civil War game

which was set in Latvia or Lithuania.  Everytime I went to get a shot there were too many

people hanging about, this was the trouble with a number of the displays.

This was a huge game of Platea between Greeks and Persians.

These two pics are of the game that won the best display.

It's a 15mm pirate game and was just packed full of interesting little scenes

like the ship in the dry dock above.

These two shots are of a 54mm AWI game set at Brandywine.

You can find a lot more pics on my mate Bill Gilchrists site.

http://blenheimtoberlin.blogspot.co.uk/

or on the Wappinshaw site.

http://wappinshaw.blogspot.co.uk/

I'm sure there are lots of other sites out there that will have other pics.

Thessaly 353BC

We managed to get another Hail Ceasar game in Hughes house on thursday which I offered to arrange.  I had always looked at the battle just called 'Onomarchos in Thessaly 353BC in Duncan Head's excellent WRG book 'Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars' which pitted Phocians against Macedonians but also introduced artillery into the field for the first time and always thought it would be an interesting one to fight.  There were four players a side with Colin Jack commanding the Phocians with Bart Zynda, Mr Ray and myself while Donald Adamson, Jim Conquer, Dave Patterson and Hugh Wilson took the Macedonian side and the two commanders were given the following briefings.

Phocian brief
Onomarchos you have brought an army into Thessaly, with the intention of attacking Chaereonea.^[38] Under the terms of your alliance, Lycophron of Pherae requested aid from you, so you dispatched your brother, Phallyos with 7,000 men;^[36] however Philip of Macedonia has repulsed this force before it could join up with the Pheraeans and are now marching on to relieve the siege of Chaereonea where your main Phocian army is based.  Phallyos has fallen back with the remains of his force so no doubt Philip will be expecting you.  Your supposed allies the Pheraeans haven’t turned up yet so you are short of cavalry but you are confident that your mercenaries are more than enough to deal with a bunch of Macedonians especially if you set up in ambush for them along the Chaeronea road.

Your force consists of Onomarchos, commander rated 8Phallyos, second in command rated 7Perios, mercenary commander 9 (can only command mercenaries)Aniextros, staff officers rated 7

3 units of Greek cavalry
1 units of light cavalry (small unit) Feigned flight

6 units of skirmishers, two of javelins, three of slings and one of bows

8 units of light infantry

1 unit of Citizen Hoplites

Mercenaries
6 units of Hoplites
3 light artillery pieces, these can be formed as one unit or split up

You can arrange your force anywhere on the road to Chaereonea.
A skirmish unit can be hidden in each of the small farms.
The mercenary hoplites and artillery are hidden until they move or shoot.
Special rules for light artillery, the 1^st time a unit is hit it will test on a -1 on its break test.

Victory conditions
Destroy Philips army.

Macedonian briefPhilip you have brought an army into Thessaly, with the intention of attacking Pherae.^[38] Under the terms of their alliance, Lycophron of Pherae requested aid from the Phocians, and Onormarchos
dispatched his brother, Phallyos with 7,000 men;^[36] however, you repulsed this force before it could join up with the Pheraeans and are now marching on to relieve the siege of Chaereonea where the main Phocian army is based.  Phallyos has fallen back with the remains of his force so no doubt Onomarchos will be expecting you.  Your supposed allies the Thessalians haven’t turned up yet so you are short of cavalry and light infantry but you are confident that your pike phalanxes are more than enough to deal with a bunch of Phocians especially when you saw how easy it was to beat Phallyos.

Your force consists ofPhilip II, commander rated 9
Parmenio, second in command rated 8
Anotheros, staff officers rated 7
1 unit of companions

2 units of Greek cavalry

3 units of skirmishers, two of javelin and one of slings

2 units of Hypastpists

8 units of Phalangites

You will arrange your force in order of march on the road to Chaereonea.
Victory conditions
Raise the siege and destroy Onomarchos’ army.

This was the layout of the forces at the start of the battle.

Phocian peltasts set up

Macedonians march on

Macedonian guard troops advance to their right flank as they suspected some hidden troops.

I threw a blunder at one point which drew my skirmshers out of their hidden positions.

My archers were quickly wiped out but my light cavalry which came on the Macedonian rear

managed to pull Phillip and two units of cavalry away from the main battle for 3-4 moves.

Unfortunately the Phocian cavalry made no advance to take advantage of the fact

that the now outnumbered the Macedonian companions 3-1.

After a series of miss-rolls and blunders Dave's Macedonian phalanx finally got into combat

but we had to finish the night before there was a resolution.

As neither side achieved their victory conditions the game was declared a draw and I also started to have problems with my camera hence the last photo and I never got one of the Phocian artillery.

It was only at the end of the game that I found out that Bart and Ray had new fought

an ancients battle before and Colin hadn't had only fought a few which might have been

the reason there was so little offensive spirit from the Phocians

so I'll need to remember this for the next battle.

I had always assumed that this battle had been a one-off but it was only when I started

to do some research for this battle that I discovered that the battle was part of the

3rd Sacred War which I had never heard off before and was really where the Macedonians

started to form the army that Alexander would eventually lead to glory.

I also after doing more research realised that I had probably over rated their troop qualities

and had only taken their details from the previous games we had fought.

When I started to explain the details of the war all the other guys were fascinated

and we hope to arrange more battles from the war.

Wargames butterfly

As anyone who knows me could tell you I am involved in too many wargames periods for my own good and the trouble is mainly caused by the latest shiniest, tastiest figures just released, reading a good history book, seeing a film or in most cases inspired by other friends and display games at wargames shows.  As an example of my butterfly tendencies here's an example of what I've been working on over the last month.

These are another couple of stands of Turkish troops to add to my Crimean force.

This gorgeous Greek bireme is from Grand Manner which I had kicking about the house

for a few years but eventually got around to painting it up for our

Temple of the Golden Virgin game a few weeks back.

This cemetery is painted up for a game coming up in October

but is generic enough that it will be appearing in many games before then.

As if these weren't enough I have also started painting up a selection of figures from my mate

Barry Hilton's Warfare Miniatures range which I'll post in a separate page but here is a taster.

On top of that I'm already reworking some Macedonians for another up and coming

Hail Ceasar game.

Rescue the Virgins

This game devised by Donald Adamson was a follow on from our previous game 'The Temple of the Golden Virgin' and now that the Macedonian/Athenian force had destroyed the Persian/Greek force and captured the temple they now had the difficult job of getting the ''Virgins' and treasure back to their fleet of ships beached in the bay.  This was my second game using Hail Ceasar wargames rules and felt that I had gotten the hang of them although there are still little subtle rule mechanisms that I still need to get my head around.  Actually owning and reading a set of rules would help.

Are we sure these are virgins???

The Macedonian/Athenian force set up alongside the temple with a wagon train of goodies in the background which had to be transported to the beach using normal HC movement rules.

The Athenian troops guarding their armies right flank

The Persians had been reinforced during the night and this is their right/centre flank and the Spartans previously under Angus' command and now commanded by Hugh were stuck on the left and probably took the huff at this which might explain their abysmal performance on the night.

The Macedonians got off to a flying start and the wagon train managed at least four game turns where they got triple moves whereas the Persians struggled to even get their front line troops to move.  They had planned to mass all their cavalry on one flank facing my two units of Athenian cavalry and fortunately it took them at least 10 moves before they finally managed to combine and smash my poor troops.

As I mentioned before, due to Hugh's bad dice rolling the Spartan infantry and his reinforcement peltasts never got into action but on the other flank the Persians and Corinthians finally got their act together and were slowly pushing back and breaking the Macedonian left flank command.

The wagon train had finally arrived at the beach but instead of only taking one move to load them onboard the umpire informed us that the ships crews had been having a party and made us dice to see how many extra moves it was going to take, fortunately it was only another three moves and we felt confident we could hold off those effeminate Persians, Spartans and Corinthians for that extra time with our final defensive line.

The virgins finally made it on board and the victorious troops could sail home to a heroes welcome.

Temple of the Golden Virgin

This ancients game was played using Hail Ceasar which is the ancients version of Black Powder and as I hate the BP rules I was very sceptical how this game would work out but I have to admit that I was very surprised and the rules seemed to work very well and even felt like an ancient  battle.
All the games I've played with BP from Marlburian, AWI, Napoleonics to Colonial games have all felt the same with no feel for a particular period and it was only the different figures that reminded you which period you were fighting.  Hail Ceasar on the other hand has obviously had a lot of thought and effort put into them and you really felt like you were having an acient battle.

The game scenario was put together by Donald Adamson who also umpired the game and involved a Persian force with Greek mercenaries defending the Temple of the Golden Virgin from the ravages of Macedonian barbarians supported by just as barbaric Spartans.

These are some of my Athenians who were guarding the Persian left flank

This was the main Persian force defending the temple commanded by Bill Gilchrist.

Hugh Wilson commanded Corinthian Greeks on the right flank.

The table was set up with a high range of hills running across the table with 3 passes which the Macedonians had to pass through to get to the temple and just off table was a beach with the Macedonian ships tied up waiting to take home their prizes.

The Macedonian centre was commanded by Martin Gibson

Angus Konstam commanded the Spartan mercenaries on the right flank and Colin Jack commanded another division of Macedonians on the left flank.

Rather than just have a straightforward bash Donald had come up with the idea of both commanders trying to bribe the others mercenaries to switch sides which was done with a dice roll.  I failed the test and decided to fight for the Macedonians whereas the Spartans passed and remained loyal to their paymasters so before the battle even started things were looking bad for the Persians with now four commands against two.  This situation didn't last long as Angus managed to roll a blunder and ended up being forced to charge the nearest troops, which happened to be my Athenians.  At this point Donald decided that Angus had changed sides and now joined the Perisans.



Athenians and Spartans clash

Centres about to clash

Right flank combat

The fighting on both flanks remained bloody but inconclusive whereas in the centre it was a different story and Bill lost his army commander and virtually all his troops only having left his new replacement commander and a unit of temple guards.

The new Persian commander

Temple guards