Wednesday 26 February 2014

AWI - The Battle of Roark Farm

We fought a wonderful game of Muskets and Tomahawks the other day, and I actually got a few good photos of the action to show.

The Americans consisted of -

Regular Officer.
14 Regulars.
14 Regulars.
16 Provincial Militia.
6 Riflemen.

They had the mission Raid, with the side plot Rancour (The Officer was to send one of the units to their death). We decided it would be better if I, as the British player, did not know which unit The Americans had selected to be destroyed.

The British Consisted of -

Regular Officer with the Authoritarian Trait.
12 Regulars.
Ranger Officer with rifle.
6 Rangers with rifles.
10 Light Infantry.
8 Light infantry.

They had the Defence mission and A Hateful heart side plot.

We decided that the game would be the Americans trying to burn down a farm (most likely the actual home of the British Regular Officer too) that the British were about to occupy as it sat on high ground and would provide an excellent vantage point over the surrounding area.

The British had two units on the board, accompanied by their officers, The Regulars and the Rangers. I elected to deploy the Regulars as if they had just marched up the road into the main farm building area they were about to occupy, the rangers had pushed through towards the big farmhouse, obviously scouting slightly further ahead.

Suddenly the area ahead was full of American troops...The first card drawn in the activation sequence was the American forward boys card. So with a shout the game started with the American Officer ordering his men forward...Very apt.

The Americans head to the buildings

The Rangers march up to the farm house

The British regulars stroll up the road to the farm.

Ready for the off.

Rangers hunker behind a wall and engage
the enemy formations

The Regulars face off.

The start of the second round.

The face off continues

The rangers are looking to be outnumbered

The British try a different approach, but are shot
 down due to a bad leadership decision.

Fortunately the Lights appear to reinforce the flank,
gunning down the riflemen. 
The first building starts to catch light though.


The other Light section arrived and reinforced the crumbled left flank. 

The Ranger Captain plinks the odd shot off annoying the regulars in the center still.
See his smoke by the Farmhouse.

The barn burns.  The regulars turn their attentions to the Lights.

Who flee into the cover of the woods

The Lights in the centre keep the Militia pinned down in the middle of the board.

It was at this point an event happened. It caused the turn to end. At this point the British rolled a double 1 and the game officially finished. 

It was a Minor Victory for the British, but at a great cost in manpower.

They had kept the majority of the farm safe ready for their main forces to use it as a camp and observation point of the surrounding area.

Interestingly, the American Officer had decided that the Provincial Militia were fated to die in this game. Clearly not a fan of their particular state. Sadly the British had failed to help the American out here, killing about two of the fellows only.

We played an extra round after this, just to see if the event had changed anything in particular, It had not. the result was the same, albeit with a few more casualtys on the British forces. The Militia just failing to totally get the farm house on fire, though it was very scorched. (they needed one more action to set it ablaze....)







Sunday 9 February 2014

Dark age figure scale picture in 28mm

Here is a picture of some of the different figure sizes available for the dark age lines now. Maybe someone will find it useful -


Manufacturers are from left to right -

Gripping beast plastic on a GW base (to allow compare to the Bretonian on same base size)

Games Workshop plastic Bretonian (old one piece pose) on GW base.

Gripping Beast Plastic on Renedra base

Gripping Beast metal on Renedra base

Conquest games plastic on Renedra base

Westwind metal on Renedra base (with GB head grafted on)

Crusader metal on Renedra base

Artizan metal on Renedra base






Saturday 8 February 2014

Activity unabated

Well the cold front is just hanging back making the garage still bearable at the moment down here in Kent.

Still getting Saga games in with my friend David on Monday nights, so the die are still a rolling, which is great. Very good warm up for the Wyvern Wargames Saga tournament we are going up to at the end of February too. Had a great time there last year, so am looking forward to this a lot. We also get to make a pit stop at Gripping Beast HQ, so I expect an empty wallet may be heading my way .... and if I don't clear it there, I have a trip to the Cavalier show  on the Sunday to totally finish me off. A whole weekend of gaming goodness, lord knows how I snuck that past the wife.

In other news I also announce a day of Saga Goodness myself and my good friends of the Friday Night Fire Fight Club are putting on in Canterbury on Saturday the 26th of April 2014.

More details of this can be found here -

http://studiotomahawk.freeforums.org/canturbury-kent-saturday-26th-april-2014-t4415.html

With this in mind I have been beavering away making some rocky ground markers for the terrain on the day.

Simple idea - a flat marker board or cloth goes down with moveable rock pieces to show what it is.

Easy in use and to build - here is what I have so far - also on show are two of the markers for one of the missions (Holy Icon) I am making too.



A good start, few more bits required though.

While I am at it, here is a shot of the rest of the painting bench. An army slowly being worked up there for Saga (if you ignore the Vikings lurking in the middle, and the 8 scot levy javelin men, and the 4 conquest platic flems I am making). Guess what it is....


Finally, a picture of two old plastic GW Bretonian bowmen. I said I would show someone on a forum how I painted mine, to make them more generic looking for many games, so here they are. Very nice figures for silly cheap costs these, hard to not recommend them really.


 Cheers, John.