L'Art De La Guerre two more games (Galatian and Viking)

Two more games of LADG today but not the Medieval period this time 

Stephen has a newly painted Polybian Roman army so I gave this an outing using my Galatians.

And then I used Vikings against Carolingian.

Vikings take on Charlemagne

Celts battle Rome

 

Commands & Colors - one more down and two to go

Another C&C scenario completed with Mike via Vassal and a very narrow win for Rome at Cissa. 

The last unit loss could easily have been Romes. 

Now its onto Iliturgi 215BC the penultimate scenario of our campaign (I only have one other C3i scenario)

Great stuff with this easy to play and fun system on Vassal

The end at Cissa

A tough looking task for Romans at Iliturgi

Middle Earth and its heroes

At Stephens today (who by the way won the Cork competition so practice well worth it) and he decided to play the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game.

I stuck with my favoured Minas Morgul force and he choose two Heroic Fellowship type lists.

My list had usual Witch King on Fell Beast, A Troll a couple of Spectres and assorted Mordor and Morranon Orcs for 34 figures total.

First list Stephen tried was Breaking Of The Fellowship (?) with Aragon, Boromir, Gimli, Frodo and Legolas (very much the movie version) with Eleven support including Haldir.

Second game he used The Grey Company with a mere 9 figures but all being heroes again with Aragon, Gimli, Legolas, a trio of Ranger Captains and Eleven Heroes.

The heroes are just that with a long list of abilities and traits which make them a very potent even in small numbers and able to blow through the Orcs in short order.

But great to see such figures in action and watch them shine 

Against the Grey Company it was a Capture The Flag type scenario with a central objective but random arrival table edges for each Warband

The Company of Heroes trouncing a Warband that appeared behind them (awful pic quality) 

Whilst the Witch King arrived on opposite edge. My third Warband appeared on right flank  but the Company just crushed both enroute to the objective

Against The Fellowship a capture the Supplies type scenario with Legolas, Aragon and Boromir (lots of horn blowing) having a field day killing Orcs. 

Boardgame solo day

Couple of board wargames played solo today.

First up my ever favoured Combat Commander playing a Bulge scenario based on action near Lanzerth.

Small force of Yanks dug in armed to teeth with MGs against a motley collection of Kraut Volksgrenadiers, Conscripts and a couple of Fallschirmjager. 

A tough one for Germans this.

Then it was turn of The British Way COIN system game. 

I managed to play through the Palestine and Malaya games.

I have yet to fathom how to play Brits in Palestine as the sabotage and terror tactics of Irgun just drain Political Will.

Malaya an easier proposition for Empire and they came good at the end.

Disaster in the Holy Land

 

Victory in Malaya

Commands & Colors - on and on we go

Vassal PBEM scenario Agathocles Tower with Mike completed with a narrow Roman win, had my last combats not worked highly likely any Battle Back would have lost my last unit rather than Mike.

Thus onto next C3i scenario I have this one being Cissa 218BC which has rather more terrain than most

L'Art De La Guerre - last two practice games and a personal wargaming nostalgia trip

Stephen off to Cork competition this weekend so final practice session for his Ottoman Turkish army.

I used Catalan and Order of St John against him today so lots of chances to practice evading, shuffling, shooting and generally annoying the enemy that his army relies upon.

Hopefully he good enough practice to do well (he usually does) 

 

Bit of nostalgia now as I came across several images related to old memories from days as a nipper and early wargaming influences.

Action Man (GI Joe) a very early military influence, I had one that 'talked' and had realistic gripping hands no less.

In addition to basic figures one could obtain several specialist uniforms and I had these two as well as several others

Had this beastie 

An early literary influence I got this on 5th birthday

Whilst contemporaries were buying various 'pop' albums this was my first ever LP 

I had of course watched dozens of war films but these two really helped get me into proper wargaming having seen them in cinema and thereafter trying to recreate such imagery in miniature or with board wargames

This led to devouring numerous war related reference books and novels (Sven Hassel) of which this was one of the first

An early Christmas toy that I soon (circa 1969) had to use only inside as 'Troubles' started here in Ulster and deemed too dangerous for young lads to have any gun type toy out in public

I had a ton of these transfer sets all war themed (still some knocking around)

Always lusted over various of these sets which were advertised in US Comics but never took plunge

I had both of these metal Dinky items (still have the cap-bomb that Stuka could drop)

Box set from local model shop from which I still have several of the terrain pieces

Hours spent pouring through this if only to enjoy art illustrations and planning purchases of boxes of 'Midgies' i.e. 20mm figures and kits. Turns out I still have this along with one for Revell and several for Taimya kits.

A very popular kit (still have this) useful for several periods

More Airfix goodness (think just about everyone I knew had this set)

Another Dinky set I also had a 25pdr and a Centurion

One of the cheap as chips low detail models Airfix produced which bulked out many a collection

Another popular kit that has given sterling service still to this day

Another 'play' set a lot of us had

A selection of the intoxicating Airfix box art, what red blooded youth could resist !?

Couple of later Airfix box sets

A big influence in late 1970s was this glossy gem

Which led to reading lots of stuff from these great old school (although they did not seem so at time) wargame types

Charles Grant

Don Featherstone

Peter Gilder in the excellent Battleground TV show. 

Sadly I only got to see a couple of these (no video recording in those days) and especially miffed not getting to see the WW2 episode with Gavin Lyall !!

My first two sets of wargame rules, I played OP Warboard a lot in early wargaming days

In tandem with getting into WW2 miniature wargaming in a big way I also started with board Wargames of which these two beauties were my first purchases around 1977.

First of metal figures I became aware of and kernel of interest in other periods besides WW2

Another very early influence, several early Taimya models built by my Dad whilst a Squaddie in West Germany, photo is from 1972 (I lived in BAOR Paderborn W.Germany for a year)

 

Up in loft other day for better half and found these (which started this nostalgia trip) and I think these are Dragon Models 1/6th figures that my son had when he were but a lad (20+ years ago), several figures but these two only ones I could find almost complete kit for.

A good deal fancier than my Action Men of yore.