Action at Sackville Creek

 Hi all,

Stop the presses, hold the ketchup, and pass the parcel, because an honest to gum, real-life, against a human with miniatures, HISTORICAL game just went down in Monkeyland.

Early stages.  Royalists attempt to seize the bridge.

Jura (with whom I've been playing C&C online, among other things) came over and we played a 20-point game of Pikeman's Lament.  It was particularly fitting, in that the bulk of the ECW stuff I have (all the Scots, and about half the Royalists) came from him in The Big Trade last fall (?  I'm losing track of time . . . ).  Having spent the winter beavering away, and finally finding a day that was both conducive and sunny, we set to in the back yard.  He took the perfidious Royalists, whilst I took the staunch defenders of Kirk and Covenant, i.e., the Scots.

Another angle of the early stages.  That one unit dragging behind just would not move.

While the Cavaliers are facing a fair whack of angry Scots.

We played the river crossing scenario, which I tweaked a little by adding a second crossing to our river (more of a creek, really), so we ended up with both a bridge and a ford.  Hills and forests made up the rest of the terrain, and I appropriated the Cub's house for the look of the thing.

Their first time on the table painted, however, so you can't blame them for being eager.

A certain amount of back and forthing left both units of horse somewhat battered.

We deployed in opposing corners, and set to.  The objective was to get as many units across the river as possible, whilst preventing the opponent from doing the same.  Forces were more or less mirrors, except that the Scots traded a shot unit for a small unit of commanded shot and a frame gun.  Game ended when one side got all of their surviving units across.

The Scottish right pushes on to seize the ford.

On the other side, the Royalist foot pushes to the creek.

There's a fair amount of "command friction" in PL, in that each unit must dice to activate, and any failure end one's turn.  This leads to a certain amount of predictable, if amusing (for the opponent) frustration, as that one key unit you need to do one key thing won't.  Persistently.  Case in point, one of Jura's Shot units simply would not advance for the first several turns of the game.  We eventually decided they were drunk.

The mid game had the two of us ranged across the creek from each other.  Basically, whoever pushed into the creek was going to sacrifice a couple of turns of offensive action for movement, and leave themselves open to shots or attack - the latter at a disadvantage while crossing.  Much maneuvering took place, along with some shots fired, as we jostled about looking for an advantage.

Scots horse got bogged down in the creek, and ended up being cut to pieces.

Eventually, I forced the ford, and Jura got his boys across the bridge and creek.  We each more or less lost a flank, and though I ended up getting some reserves (lucky result on a very good activation roll), they were too late to affect the outcome.  We had each gotten three units across, but Jura's Royalists had the edge on points, and that, plus a few extra his officer had picked up along the way (again, a lucky roll, but we attributed it to his rather fancy hat), the Royalists won the day.

It was great to get the minis on the table and get in a game of Pikeman's Lament.  It's the first time I've been able to play against another person (as all games to date have been solo), and it's super fun.  Jura and I had a chat about how the different units performed, and we'll likely try another game soon-ish.  I the meantime, I'm feeling quite charged up to paint, and with a few points remaining for a "normal" sized game, I've got some Royalist Dragoons in the queue.  We'll see how they turn out.

FMB

Progress

 Hi all,

The semester is over, grades are in, I have several months to look forward to in which I can focus on revamping courses and writing . . . and we've gone into lockdown.  The main impact in Monkeyland is likely to be a few weeks without the Cub, as he's at his mom's, and we're not bringing him up into the lockdown zone.  Skype and email will serve for now..  He's shifted well into teenager mode at this point, which means we generally have to lure him out of the basement with food, but still, I'll miss him.

In hobby news, I finished up the bases for my first unit of Scots cavalry.  Cav units in Pikeman's Lament are six strong, so that's where I started.  I figure as the collection grows, I can either supplement existing units, or combine them into larger 12+ bunches.

Pics are a little dark, I'm afraid - I struggle to get decent ones in the office, despite my best efforts.  Next time I get them on the table, I'll see about some glamour shots.

I've based them on the Pike and Shotte standard of 25x50mm per figure.  Double basing for some, single for others (and casualty removal).

In addition to finishing off the cavalry, I made a start on a few opponents for them, and broke open the warlord box I received at Christmas.  A couple of stands of shot and one of pike were enough to get a feel for the figures, and how they compare to the Old Glory figures that make up the Covenanter force.

Generally speaking, the warlord figs (all plastic) are a little taller and slimmer than the Old Glory.  Not enough of a difference to matter on the table, certainly, and the varying height seems well within the kind of range you'd normally see among humans.

The Warlord plastics seem to fall somewhere between "old school" GW, and their newer plastics.  They're more refined than the old plastic kits (I'm talking about the old multi-part, mix-and match), with fine details generally well picked out.  They do require a bit of fiddling, however (I've found arms especially so), and there's a limited amount of mixing and matching you can do without breaking out the hobby knife.

You get quite a bit of variation in head-gear, and my sense is that's one's greatest option for customization.  I'm sticking to a majority of floppy hats, and some Montereo and stocking caps for variety for the Royalists I'll put together.

While I'm generally a fan of plastics, for reasons of durability, storage, etc., I'm finding that the figs are already getting a bit "same-y" to paint.  While metal figs can be a paint, I found the OGs to have a ton of character, and like most of their range, they "take paint well".

That said, they'll do just fine as opponents for the Covenanters in Pikeman's Lament.  The nefarious plan is to get a couple of forces together by summer.  That will give me the opportunity (weather, plague, etc. permitting) to have some folks over for games in the backyard, and perhaps spur some local interest in the period.  I'm reliably informed there's at least some folks out there with the makings of 28mm ECW armies, so anything to get folks out and interested would be great.

FMB

Allies

Hi all,

Finished up some more bases for the Spartans, in this case, allied hoplites.

Front rank hoplites.  Leader is converted from a guy holding a sword.

Packed a couple extra figs on the front.  These guys are less disciplined than Spartans.

Impetus Unit Type:  FP
Base Size:  8cm x 3cm
Manufacturer:  OG15mm

In contrast to the rest of the Spartan army, these guys are Old Glory, part of the big batch of OG15 figs I picked up a while back.  I've painted up some of these before, as Lykian hoplites in my Antigonid list.  In contrast to that first batch, however, with this gang I stuck with a more restrained palette, and limited myself to the same colour scheme as on the Spartans themselves.  Shields are a mix of city and personal icons, and I repeated a few from the Lykians, including the octopus, because it's fun.  With this lot done, all that's left for the Spartans are skirmishers and light troops - the beginning of the end (or possibly vice versa) is in sight!

Rear rank.

Rear rank rear.  Which seems redundant, somehow.

These guys will serve as allied hoplites in my Spartan list.  In Impetus, and to be honest most rulesets, "pure" Spartan lists are actually pretty rare, in that most have mandatory non-Spartan hoplites (not just periokoi or armed helots, but non-lacedemonian hoplites).  This does, as has been pointed out to me (see Ross' comments on my Spartan cavalry post), reflect the historical record, but raises the question of why have a dedicated Spartan list at all?

Sword and Spear handles this with a generic "later hoplite" list, in which is included the option to take "Spartan" hoplites as a core choice, but the Spartan hoplite profile is identical to that of "elite hoplites", which are non-core.  So, Spartan armies are basically just hoplite armies with elite hoplites as the core of the force, which makes sense at one level, but also has me chewing over a larger set of ideas about rules and lists.

All together.

Hopefully an angle the opponent never sees.

Like a fair number of people out there, I came to historical gaming via fantasy / sci-fi games, where predetermined lists intended to allow for balanced pick-up games were the norm.  I've found, over the years, however, that I am increasingly drawn to rulesets with more flexibility in army selection, or which are based on scenario-based play, even to the extreme of the Warlord / Black Book rulesets, where you can pretty much do what you want.  What seems to be really grabbing me these days are "what if" scenarios for historicals, things that might have plausibly or possible happened, even if we don't know that the did.  Given how most historical "army lists" are based on a fairly narrow interpretation of the few things we know about ancient battles, they can become a little restrictive for this purpose.

A rule system that offers some guidelines on what might have been available, but leaves room for players to decide what to take (and what factors to consider when deciding what to take) is probably the sweet sport for me right now.  There is, of course, nothing stopping me from doing this with pretty much any set of rules out there, but I've definitely noticed that I'm becoming aware of what "stock" rulesets allow and discourage.  Don't know if that means I'm maturing as a gamer, or just becoming an old crank ;)

FMB

Persians. Not the cats.

Hi all,

Finished up a toe in the water for a possible later Achaemenid Persian list.

Feeling so-so on these guys.  Some worked, I think, some less so

Impetus Unit Type:  FL
Base Size:  8cm x 4cm
Manufacturer:  Old Glory 15mm

These are Kardakes, and were an interesting paint for a couple of different reasons.  First, the unit type is one of the most confusing and contested that appear in Achaemenid lists, and one that effectively illustrates some of the foibles to which ancient games (and gamers) are susceptible.  Second, they represented an effort on my part to produce the odd combination of both "colourful" and "muted" in their clothing.

Same with the shields.  The pseudo-Achaemenid crest I "borrowed" from Madaxeman.

The thing about ancients is, we really don't know an awful lot about them, which means there's a tendency to both over-emphasize the "correctness" of what we do know, and a tendency to wildly extrapolate from the same.  You see this a fair bit in army lists.  Achaemenid lists are generally broken up into two eras, early and late, with the former representing the armies that fought against the greek hoplites at Platea or Thermopylae, and the latter against Alexander at Issuus or Gaugamela.  Lists from both eras are extrapolated from not very detailed, if roughly contemporary documents, and often from the work done by the WRG in the 70s.  The thing is, those two periods are something like 150 years apart, and in between, the Persians did a heck of a lot of fighting, against other neighbors than the greeks, each other, and who know what all else.  But because we really only know a little bit about them, mostly from greeks, and from periods where greeks paid attention and sources survived, this is where wargamers tend to focus, and even, I think, obsess.

Basing works, though.

Which takes us to the Kardakes.  There's a few references to these guys, and they're confusing.  We know they made up a chunk of Persian forces in a couple of battles, we know they formed an identifiably distinct group to which the "Kardakes" label meaningfully applied, we know they were in the line of battle next to mercenary hoplites, and that Greek / Macedoniann horse were able to break through their lines.  That's about it.  From that people extrapolate that they were armed with hoplite panoply, armed like peltats, that they were a distinct class of troops, that they were a distinct culture group, and so on.  And oh, do they argue, with fervor, vigor, and spite.  After much perusing of both source material and derived opinion (as well as some consultation with my personal expert on Persians, JJM), I decided the hell with it, and painted up the figures I have.

I picked up these guys up as part of the same swap that got me into ancients, and got me started on my Antigonids.  They're OG15 Kardakes, which only come as this kind of light foot / peltast type, so that's what I'm running them as.  Kardakes as light infantry in vaguely Persian dress is certainly plausible, so why not?  I'll have a few units of them in the projected list, along with lots of cavalry, etc. (one of the things that distinguishes "late" from "early" persian lists tends to be the de-emphasis on foot bow in favour of masses of cavalry).  My plan is to loosely base my force around the Persians that fought at Cunaxa, so nominally "later" Persians, but not the ones that fought against the Macedonians.  It also gives me as close to a blank slate as one gets, in that we know there were a chunk of mercenary hoplites, some greek peltasts, a good chunk of Paphlagonian cavalry, and lots and lots of Persians and levies, both on horse and on foot.  The vaguely designated "Persian" contingent covers a pretty wide sweep, and give room in the list for plenty of choice.

FMB