Danish Cavalry

Here are a few illustrations that I got off the web sometime ago, I can't remember where I got them so if the owner of these objects to me posting them then please get in touch and I will remove them.

Both these illustrations seem to show cavalry wearing breastplates

although they only seem to be on the front

I've been informed by Dan Schorr that these illustraions come from a series of articles on the Danish Army in the WSS by Torstein Snorrason that originally appeared in the Danish magazine Chakoten.

Dan had been given permission by Torstein to use the illustrations on his fantastic Northern Wars site which sadly is no longer available and I probably copied them from there so I hope Torstein doesn't object to me using them here, if he gets in touch and objects then I will remove them.

More Warfare Miniatures

King James II (VII of Scotland) in pensive mood.

Comte de Lauzun commander of French troops in Ireland.

Irish officer from the Kings Guard.

Individually these figures are superb but it's when you combine them into vignettes

with some nice basing that they really come to life.

I think this vignette sums up James' trouble,

he was surrounded by 'advisors' all offering differing advice

and he couldn't make up his mind what to do.

I'm sure a couple of near misses like these might sharpen up his ideas.

This base is the first of Colonel Simon Luttrell's Irish dragoons defending a forward position.

Simon Luttrell and Lauzun will probably stay well apart following a fight between the two of them

at a Congress meeting in Dublin, Luttrell was the Governer of Dublin at the time

and had his ears boxed for disagreeing with the Frenchman.

All these figures and the rules we use Beneath the Lilly Banners are available from this site.

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/

Warfare Miniatures

This section is to show off the first of what will be many figures from my mate Barry Hilton's wonderful range of figures for the late 17th century and the flags are by the equally talented Clarence Harrison.

These figures have been painted up as the Earl of Antrim's regiment

who fought in Ireland in the 1690's for King James II.

This light gun is also fighting for the Irish.

This is what I've painted so far but King James and a stand of dismounted dragoons

are already well on their way to completion.

I've also painted up this cemetery to represent the one at Donore at the Boyne.

The Bhoys are back in town and thin Lizzie is there with some whiskey in the Jarro.

This shows a nice shot of Clarence's flags and some Irish hovels I built.

All these figures and plenty more along with Clarence's flags and rules

can all be bought online from Barry's site.

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/

There's also a great online forum where can find lots of other gamers pics

and plenty of information on this period.

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightingtalk/index.php

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.

Sino-Japanese update

You can read another account from the Chinese point of view on Bill Gilchrist's
great little blog at this link. http://blenheimtoberlin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/sino-japanese-war-1938.html

Sino-Japanese War

Managed to get in another game this month along at my mate Colin Jack's wargames room along with Bill Gilchrist and Mr Ray made a rare appearance from over the pond.  As usual with Colin very few of his games are mainstream and this one set in Manchuria in 1937 was no different with Bill and Mr Ray commanding a motely mixture of Chinese and Colin and myself commanded the Japanese.
The scenario was set at the river mouth of a Manchurian peninsula where a train commanded by Colin packed full of Japanese infantry were attempting to make their way down to meet up with a naval landing party commanded by me.  Unfortunately the Chinese didn't intend to let things go quite so smoothly so a mixture of regular troops and revolting students had blocked the main line and set up a series of ambushes.

My landing force at the other end of the table was a mixture of Marines and sailors backed up by a light gun, an Hmg and a tank.  There was even a chance of the airforce making an appearance.

Unfortunately I only had one bridge to cross over from my landing position which meant that I was unable to fully utilise the full strength of my force which already had a few units of Chinese bandits supported by artillery and an Hmg facing them.

Under the Triumph and Tragedy rules we use the high quality Japanese troops should have had few problems facing the poor quality Chinese troops and especially the students, unfortunately we forgot to explain that to Mr Ray who lauched his students in a series of charges against the halted train.

My troops managed to cross the bridge and clear away all the bandits facing me but just couldn't get to the train in time as Mr Ray captured one carriage after another.

To make things worse a Chinese plane made an appearance but fortunately it was too far away from my troops to affect them.

The Chinese final assault went in and managed to capture the whole train

and basically winning the game.

The final highlight for me was my Japanese plane finally arriving and shooting down

the Chinese one in a dog fight but it was too little too late.

Apart from the result it was a great game and good to take part in such an unusual period.

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.