Luttrell's Dragoons

It's been a quiet month because of my back pain and having my God daughter staying with us so no gaming and painting so far this month except for a few conversions of Warfare Miniatures dismounted dragoons to finish of my unit. I seem to be having problems with the blogger system which isn't allowing me to post pics at the moment, which is a real pain but you can see the pics on Barry's forum here. http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightingtalk/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4232

I've now got the dragoon unit finished as well as my first squardron of cavalry plus a game tomorrow night then the Newcastle and Partizan shows on Saturday and Sunday where I hope to take more pics, especially of our display game at Partizan.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Jacobite reinforcements

Just finished another battalion for my Irish Jacobite force.
This unit is the regiment Clanrickarde which at the start of the war was recorded as being poorly armed and uniformed which is why I have made the central unit a pike stand instead of pike support and I've also painted the troops up in a mixture of various uniforms and civilian clothes.  The figure in front on the extreme left is a conversion of one of the lovely Warfare Miniature figures range.

I also tried to model a cannon ball bouncing and taking out one of the unit.

The idea was ok but I'm not too happy with the final outcome, hopefully it will be better the next time I attempt it.

On the painting stocks at the moment is another stand of dismounted dragoons to add to

Colonel Samuel Luttrell's regiment and I've also started the first squadron of

Colonel Henry Luttrell's cavalry regiment.

Otterburn at Claymore

Our mate David Imrie also had a fantastic game at Claymore and as I took so many pics I thought I would give it its own section.  The game was the battle of Otterburn between the English and Scots, so nothing new there and was put on using David's own range of figures.

The English herce prepared to receive the Scots attack.

If it wasn't for the fact that Barry has got me hooked on the Jacobite wars in Ireland

I would be adding David's figures to the hundreds of HYW figures I already have.

If you're inspired by these pics you can get David's figures from his site.

http://www.claymorecastings.co.uk/

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.

Borodino at Claymore 2012

Barry Hilton, Bob'Toggy' Talbot and myself put on half of our Bordino game at Claymore on Saturday and here are a few pics I took.  As usual we never even attempted to fight the battle except for a little bit when Billy Woods couldn't stand the dice withdrawal effects.  As usual at these shows we always spend most of the time talking with all the people that pay us a visit to discuss the battle, forces, terrain, painting and a load of other topics plus it's also a good time to meet up with old friends.

This is the main view of Borodino from the French side of the table.

The goreous Russian church was scratch built and bought by Barry many years ago but has hardly been out on the wargames table which is such a pity for a lovely building.

The famous redoubt from the battle with a brigade of David Imrie's lovely grenadier division.

The French respose to the Russian defences, a 100 gun grand battery.

Bob's Italians and Neopolitans lauch an attack against the Russian Guard Jager defending Borodino.

This was part of the Russian responce, the Guard cavalry about to launch an attack.

This shows the full cavalry wing, only the Guard Cossacks are missing.

But plain old cossacks can ride down the French infantry,

if they are lucky.

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.