For our afternoon challenge we were assigned Ivan Truong and Richard “Uncle Dickie” Foster, and their dastardly Medieval Portuguese. Personally I have bad memories of the latter army from back home in Christchurch in the early nineties (playing DBM 1.1 & 2.0), and my 15mm Minoans & Early Mycenaeans getting regular drubbings by it from Corbon Loughnan! Anyway Campbell and I were a bit concerned by this army, I was actually of the opinion of being prepared to risk our Kn(X) Cataphracts against the Irr Kn(O) but Campbell wasn’t so keen as we would be fighting at a disadvantage due to being graded ‘I’ (inferior) against them. Continue reading “BC’09 Round 2: Medieval Portuguese & English Allies 1385AD”
Category: Rulesets
BC’09 Round 1: Sassanid Persians with Sabir Hun Allies 463AD
First up we drew John Calnan & Lance Knighton running Sassanids – this was exactly the same army that had undone us the previous year in the last round of BattleCry 2008 (BC’08 Round 4: Sassanid Persian with Sabir Hun Allies 463AD)! We endeavoured to congest their deployment area with Marshes, knowing they would have the edge on us with Elephants, so as to then be able to concentrate our Cataphracts where their Cavalry could, with some reliability, be expected to be deployed. Continue reading “BC’09 Round 1: Sassanid Persians with Sabir Hun Allies 463AD”
BattleCry 2009 Introduction
Yet another successful BattleCry has gone by and congratulations to Karen & the AMERICA team for organising another great event, although the usual copious amounts of “loot” were a bit less (to be expected with the current economy) and I didn’t see any T-Shirts available this year! As with last year Benny (Andrew Bennetts) organised and umpired the New Zealand 25mm/28mm DBMM Doubles as well as playing in a team – it’s always a trade off and occasionally a thankless task – and thanks to Mike Campbell in Wellington who vetted the lists pre-tournament so Benny could be free of any ‘prior knowledge’ cloud over his head! The DBMM competition was enjoyable and went pretty well (with lots of exciting tension filled periods in our games), although it had a couple of flat bits on the second day for me personally – mainly because my brain just went into zombie mode and stopped working at a couple of crucial times in tense games! Continue reading “BattleCry 2009 Introduction”
BattleCry 2009
Here in Auckland it’s that time again – BattleCry 2009, the premier Auckland Wargaming Convention hosted (as always) by the AMERICA Club from Auckland University. As always this year includes the 28mm Ancient & Medieval Doubles Competition, New Zealand’s original and first Ancient & Medieval Doubles Tournament – and the only one in 25mm-28mm scale! As with 2008 this year will be played with the DBMM Rules (2007 and previous years having been played under DBM), and Battleline Miniatures will be sponsoring the competition. BattleCry is over the weekend of the 21-22 February 2009. Continue reading “BattleCry 2009”
Building the Quatre Bras armies in 28mm
For a long time I had been musing over what to do about Napoleonics. However now I am back into Napoleonics full time in 28mm, re-enthused by the release of SHAKO II and possibly also LaSalle. I’ll be documenting here the assembly of my forces for Quatre Bras, along with gaming notes and more. Eventually I’ll be hoping to expand my forces to cover a portion of the Waterloo battlefield – Megalomania? What’s that!
It was my intent to include a SHAKO Order of Battle for the forces of both sides – but the new rulebook includes such an OOB in it! However I probably will be doing an expanded OOB at a later date to allow for the expansion of the battle beyond the critical stages as covered in the SHAKO II Scenario – allowing it to be played in a mini-campaign format, and to do ‘what ifs’ covering the possibility that Ney acted sooner and more vigorously…
The Russians Are Coming!
Colonial participation game at CanCon (Canberra, Australia) wins ‘best participation game’ of convention. Depicting the feared Russian invasion of Australia, and generously supported by Askari Miniatures who donated figures to promote the game, the guys involved have done a fantastic job! You can see the photos and read more at the Defence of Melbourne blog.
Fire & Sword Battle 02: The March to Wadi Halfa
Having camped but a days march from the approaches to Wadi Halfa in late September 1883, Sir Henry Frotheringham’s relief column is suddenly assaulted in the early dawn by a large Dervish Force…!
Continue reading “Fire & Sword Battle 02: The March to Wadi Halfa”Fire & Sword Turn 02: December 1883
Continuing from Revolt in the Sudan’s Turn 01: November 1883, the Anglo-Egyptians get a lucky break, the Khedive is relieved to hear the revolt hasn’t spread to Darfur & Kordofan, the breadbasket of the Sudan. Meanwhile in Khartoum the available supplies have actually increased thanks to Bordein’s unexpected, albeit hasty, arrival. However Abu Hamed is not looking so lucky – it has only 2 turns of supplies and the only possible help that might reach them is plucky Talahawiyeh, who, if very very lucky, may reach the garrison by the end of this turn, if she doesn’t they may have to gamble on sallying out to try and drive off the Dervishes long-enough to forage for supplies.
Continue reading “Fire & Sword Turn 02: December 1883”World War I & Related Conflicts
While the origins of World War I (know at the time as “The” Great War) lie back in the latter part of the 19th Century from a wargaming perspective it really begins with the two Balkan Wars (in 1912-13), although the Russo-Japanese War (in 1904-1905) is also nominally part of this period; while the latter saw the first significant use of modern ‘Dreadnought’ style warships with a few large guns in rotating turrets, the former was the immediate forerunner to the out break of WWI and occurred in land warfare terms after the culmination of about 30 years of continuous major improvements in Weapons (Pistols, Rifles, Machine-Guns, Quick Firing Artillery, etc).
Fire & Sword Battle 01: Skirmish before Metemma
Maizoub ‘John’ Pasha despatches Talahawiyeh (with her 9pdr Gun, Nordenfelt MG, & detachment of 6 armed Sailors) towing a Nuggar and transporting the 4/5th Egyptian Company (20 men), down river towards Abu Hamed – to discover the full situation and re-establish contact with the latter; and if possible, Cairo. The expedition is under the command of Captain Wahab El Zahra Agha, officer commanding the 4/5th Egyptian Rifle Company.
Continue reading “Fire & Sword Battle 01: Skirmish before Metemma”Fire & Sword Turn 01: November 1883
The campaign begins with a violent revolt in the North and South, spreading fast like a bush fire. The North had been a powder keg for some time but it had been hoped any insurrection might be contained there. The insurrection actually began at Dongola, and spread North to Wadi Halfa which immediately succumbed and the Xth Sudanese Battalion garrisons in both locations were engulfed by the suddenness of the uprising. Even worse the revolt spread South through Berber and then Atbara fell to the rapidly growing Mahdist cause – it being suggested that most of the troops at Berber (from the 2nd Egyptian Cavalry Squadron) may have changed sides and joined the Ansar rather than fight them! All along the Lower Nile the lesser towns also fell to the Mahdists, and just the strongly held garrison town of Abu Hamed held out, surrounded by a countryside of seething revolt.
Continue reading “Fire & Sword Turn 01: November 1883”Unit Organisations in TSATF
One thing I have done [as of 2008] is slightly tweak the organisations of units to try and more closely replicate the real life historical organisations – while still keeping to the general intent Larry Brom put in the rules and approximately the same number of figures per larger formation (Battalion or Regiment). As we are using the same organisations for our Fire & Sword Campaign I ended up putting together Visio Organisation Charts of them as visual organisation reference for Roundie & Kieran (who weren’t familiar with, my perhaps pedantic, idiosyncrasies over organisation tables) and as a result of an unrelated discussion on the Sword & Flame Yahoo! Group it occurred to me they might be of some little interest to one or two people out there (although I’m sure I’m not the first to do so and many will have their own views different to mine)…
Continue reading “Unit Organisations in TSATF”