RAFM $1 Figure Sale II - How I Think It Works

How the deal works seems a little unclear.  Below is what I posted over on TMP - I think I have it right. ;)

My understanding and the way I did my order: A "pack" is a SKU – basically the RAFxxx number. For non-1889 lines that usually means 3 Cav with riders or 6 foot figures.

Space 1889 figure SKUs are per figure. A "pack" then is 6 foot figures of the same SKU or 3 Gashant (remember riders are separate).

I do NOT think it reasonable to expect RAFM to honour the 20 figure SKUs – canal martians, high martians and soldiers of the queen as a "pack".

Ok now we know what a pack is we can move forward. You go to the special sale page and select the package of 4,8,12, or 16 packs that you want. Pay for it through the usual methods. Then you open up your email and create an email stating the name and shipping address you just used in your order. Then you list how many packs of each SKU you want. e.g. RAF1817 x 1 will get you 6 Canal Martian Infantry figures and RAF1817 x 2 will get you 12 Imitation Legionary figures. Send that email to onlineorders at RAFM.com and you are done

I hope that helps. :)

$1 Figure Sale at RAFM!

RAFM is having a $1 per figure sale on all their historical lines. This includes the Space 1889 figures - always high on my list but also their Ancients, ACW, French Indian, Colonial and other lines.  Well worth looking at.

Follow this link for details

For the love of it.

When the women are away, the boys will play. With both our fair ladies off on a camping trip, Marc came over on Friday night for a little DBMM to break in the new table.  We each managed to scrounge together a little over 200 points of Britons for me and generic barbarian types for Marc. We did the whole rigmarole of dicing for terrain, skipped over weather and time of day then got stuck in. It has been a while for both of us so it took a couple of turns to clear the cobwebs out. We missed rules, messed up move rates, forgot about uphill advantage and a host of other little omissions and misinterpretations.

But boy did we have fun! And isn't that the whole point?

Flocking Day

Last Saturday was Flocking Day. Given the lingering cold weather, I worked inside.

Everything laid out before I begin. In the recycled (and thoroughly washed) meat tray is my standard flocking material - spent tea leaves. These are collected,  dried out and stored in the blue tin in the background. The texture is fairly coarse but it works well with a little dry brush.

A soldier of the Queen gets glued up. I use a good quality PVA glue to stick the leaves down,

And into the tea leaves he goes.

Also due for some attention are some 15mm Ancient Britons. In either scale, I take care not to get glue where it shouldn't go. I am not too worried about getting flock on the boots or legs as it comes of very easily while the glue is wet and is still fairly easy to to remove once dry.

And onto the leaves they go. I don't press the flocking material down at all just give the base a good dunking. That helps keep the coating light and natural looking - well as natural as massively over-scale tea leaves can look.

And part one is complete. The Martians got the same treatment but using sand instead of tea. Once the flock is dry, I knock off any loose bits. Then using a brush or dipping, the bases get a dollop of PVA thinned with water to which a very, very small amount of dish soap has been added to break the surface tension.   This soaks easily into the basing material and locks everything in nicely. Once this is dry, all that is required is a quick dry brush and you have a serviceable base for your soldiers.

A short game of DBMM

A while back, two of the guys of the club scheduled a game of DBMM for last night. They were kind enough to let me take over one of the commands on fairly short notice. The battle saw the Abbasid Caliphate defending against the Ilkhanid horde of which I commanded one wing.  The Caliphate forces cowered in a fortified town and oasis, leaving their their pathetic horsemen to defend against the oncoming horde. The glorious Mongol army swept forward in a double envelopment their vastly superior steppe bred ponies charging around the unprotected flanks.

Sadly the game had to be called when one of the players fell ill. As always, it was good just to get out of the house and game. I learned a little bit more about how to use horse - always a weakness of mine and I got a much better handle on march movement.

Preserve yourself in pewter! New 25mm VSF figure competition

RAFM of Canada is running a competition to create a new steampunk character for their Space 1889 line.  Full details here. Submit a picture and see yourself immortalized in shiny, shiny metal!

CanGames Day 3 Part Three - DBA and Wrap Up

DBA Tournament
I was really looking forward to this tournament and I was not disappointed.  There were 15 players altogether giving us a solid four games each. The tournament organizer, Tod, did his best to create reasonable match ups.

Game 1 Ancient British vs Macedonians

My first game saw me up against Macedonians. I managed some generally good match ups but the dice did not cooperate and the centre folded. Facing double ranked pike didn't help either. My second game was against Patrician Roman. This went as expected with fate tipping to the other side - but my opponent Ben is a very good player and definitely gave fate a hearty shove.

Game 3 Ancient British vs New Kingdom Egyptian

Game 3 against New Kingdom Egyptians  went a bit better with the foot sloggers on both sides hanging out while the chariots got to it - again I came up short. Game 4 saw me against Ayyubid Egyptians. With three straight losses I was a little rattled, I allowed myself  to be distracted by a kibbitzer and didn't put down enough terrain. I lost yet again.

Some of the other games

Crunch!

Burgundian Ordonnance vs some flashy eastern chariot army

Burgundians again

I have been holding off on this post for a while because frankly I was a little disappointed in my performance. I made a study of the rules, tried for good match ups, developed a set of contingency plans and still placed dead last. Ancient British has a reputation for not being the best tournament army but still I should have been able to pull off one victory. In the end, my scores were something like1:4, 3:4, 3:4, 2:2+General  which frankly isn't that terrible a performance for my first big tournament. My one lasting regret is that I let the kibbitzer distract me in the last game.  My opponent deserved my full attention.

So will I give up on Ancient Brits and get something more tournament effective? No - while a win would have been nice, just playing was the highlight of my weekend. When my boys do come out on top - I will relish it all the more.


Wrap Up
CanGames is a gamer's convention. Apart  from the small vendor's area there is nothing to do but game. This appears to be by design or at least tradition. During my volunteer stint we did regular headcounts including people not at the gaming tables. One of the committee remarked that if people weren't gaming, what else were they doing? I also saw one couple cancel a couple of Sunday games on Saturday afternoon because they had been gaming since Friday opening and were burnt out. I am not sure if the venue is big enough to effectively offer other activities and the formula seems to have worked well for the last couple of decades. It is certainly very well run with no major problems left visible to the attendees. 

Apart from the food situation mentioned earlier, my one complaint was the noise level. It is entirely due to the characteristics of the building and thus unavoidable but still I found it very difficult to hear even across a 2' table.

Would I go again? Without hesitation.

CanGames Days 1 and 2

Day one for me - the Friday was something of a non-event as all I did was go and pick up my package. I did take a shot of the outside of the venue. Being a bit too clever, to save batteries, I used the viewfinder on the camera instead of the display screen and didn't notice the camera strap across the image.

CanGames is held in a down town curling club, with the main playing space on what is normally the ice surface - about 20x50 meters. This gives a large unobstructed playing area but also means there is no sound absorption so it can get very noisy. There are about 37 tables in the main area for the most part each hosting one game. For larger tournaments, tables can be combined or multiple sets of tables used. There is a small dealers area in the back and board game and RPG  areas in the off-ice club section of the venue. A big plus is that the site is licensed - beer at the gaming table! (I only saw a very small number of people partaking though.)

Day 2, Saturday began with a walk around the dealers area. It was small with the majority of the space taken up by a local comic book/game store. There were some interesting things on offer but the prices could be wildly variable. For example a copy of Panzer Blitz was on sale for $15 at one booth and for $45 at the booth next door.  I nearly came away with some 20mm WWII Japanese but forced myself to be good and stuck to my plan to buy some more 15mm Ancient Brits. The convention price wasn't  any better than retail but I saved shipping. The bring and buy had some good deals and also some very "hopeful" prices. From one bring and buy, I picked up a 1/72 kit for VSF conversion and might grab a couple of 1/32 kits today for the same purpose.

My brief shopping trip over, I went to do my stint behind the awards desk.  I will not go into detail on the next five hours I spent filling out certificates, assembling trophies and filling in stats. The end of my shift does highlight one interesting event.  The food. The curling club provides on-site food services as well as the bar mentioned earlier. They also strictly enforced a no outside food policy. I can't really disagree with this as it allows them to pull in some extra money and provide a service to the convention goers as well. All well and good if the average war gamer had the same spending habits as a curling club member. A very basic hamburger with French fries was $11 and a hot dog with fries was $7.50. In the neighbourhood are a couple of pizza places and some of the best Vietnamese and Chinese food east of British Columbia. For contrast a bowl of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) big enough to feed any war gamer for day or a small village for a week can be had for about $6. The uptake on the curling club offerings was minimal. Towards the end of the day, the prices had been dropped twice down to a much more reasonable $3.50 for a burger and $1.50 per hot dog with fries extra. Being especially cheap, I left the venue and supped on my home made lasagne in a serene curbside environment.

I chose to do the right thing and asked about the photo policy - no faces in frame without permission. As a result, I wound up shooting many tables with terrain but no players. This is a tiny small sample of the participation games that ran on Saturday.

Heavy Gear

28mm Sci-Fi Rules unknown

Another 28mm Sci-Fi - rules unknown

Fields of Glory

Computer moderated WWII

The gentleman in shot is Gordon one of my room mates from my early days. He is a very skilled gamer and used to run battalion+ level Squad Leader games on a ping-pong table set up in the middle of our apartment. Unfortunately in this game, the first of his tanks on the bridge was shot up leaving the rest of his armour trapped on the wrong side of the river.

Dr. Who 1812

Dr. Who 1812

This game was run by one of our club members Brian H. I would have participated but it was in the same time slot as my first game ever of Saga. I don't have all the details but The Dr. was on scene to thwart an invasion of my fair land by the forces of eeeevil and some Americans.

Saga - Normans vs Scots

This was the main event of the day for me. My first game of Saga! After hearing and reading all the hype from the other side of the pond, I was a bit concerned, but it did not disappoint. The historical scenario saw Norman and English forces descending on Scotland to lift the siege of a castle (Yes, I forgot the battle name - call me old). There were four war band per side with a young gentleman and lady  splitting one of the Norman commands.

My valiant troops - about turn 4.

I was on the Scots side. I had two units of hearth guard, a unit of levy and a warlord. My levy were mauled turn one but managed to stick around for the rest of the game. In return, I wiped out a unit of mounted warriors only to see more horse come around my flank. I moved my hearth guard out to inflict another mauling leaving my warlord unsupported. Unbeknownst to me they were mounted hearth guard who using some fancy Norman trickery galloped around my spear men and smacked into my warlord.  In the shot above, the banner is that of the Norman warlord and the greasy smear on the grass to the right of it is the remains of my mine.

I made more than a few errors including putting saga dice on abilities I couldn't use but on the whole I think I did fairly well taking out a good chunk of the Norman mounted on my wing and still having a strong force on the board at game end. A great experience I intend to repeat as often as possible.  In the end the two youngsters did the best decimating the Scots forces on their flank. A great performance that bodes well for the future of war gaming. The young man gallantly gave the trophy to his co-warlord.

That's it for Day 2. Today - Day 3 is 1812 and DBA!

Next Section

CanGames Day 0

Operating since 1977, Cangames is one of the longest running conventions in Canada and I suspect North America. For the first time in 30 years (you do the math - it has been a while), I simultaneously  have the time and money and interest to be able to attend. Unlike the British and European conventions I have heard so much about, Cangames is almost purely comprised of  participation games with a small vendor area at the back of the hall. It is spread over two and a half days and runs from 2 p.m. Friday afternoon with the last games ending at 11 p.m. on Sunday evening.

The schedule features approximately 180 games with the possibility of a few more being added to open tables. Each day is further broken down into five time slots to allow players to plan out their gaming weekend. Players have four options to play a specific game. For the nominal charge of $2.50, players can reserve a slot when they pre-register on-line, through a participating game store or via post. At the door, players can purchase game tokens at the registration desk for $3.00 then use a token to sign up for a slot on the game sheet at the tournament desk. The third option is to wait until 30 minutes before game start when the sign up sheets are placed out in the sign up area for free to all sign up.  I am told that the press of gamers to get at these sheets resembles gladiatorial combat. Each sheet has a cut off for number of players but extras can sign up as alternates. Finally, each game master has a small orange traffic cone they can place on their table to indicate they have slots open to walk by traffic.

After perusing  the schedule, I settled on three games. The first was the Sunday DBA tournament - my first outside of a small club event, the second was the Saturday evening Saga game  - I am excited because I have heard so many good things about this system and the third was a 1/2400 coastal forces game on Saturday day because I like the period. With a lot of extra time to spend and not a lot of spare cash to drop in the dealer's room, I thought I might as well volunteer and see the event from the other side. Each volunteer shift is 5 hours long and can be used to count toward the weekend's admission fees or toward the mandatory volunteer hours (yes that is an oxymoron) high school students have to perform to graduate. I will be assembling trophies, printing certificates and handing these out to the lucky winners. Unfortunately due to an oversight on my part or a last minute schedule change, my shift conflicts with the coastal game. Slightly annoying, but not the end of the world.

Last night was spent setting up tables and taking the needed of training (No WHS warnings about the glue guns though). For some reason the amount of lifting done seemed to be proportional to the age of the people doing it with the young 'uns standing around waiting for direction while the grey beards got stuck in. I have nothing on tonight other than picking up my badge on the way home from work.   I will post updates and pictures as the event progresses.

Next section

Magnesia in DBMM

The Soldados Viejos blog has post on an amazing game of DBMM they played a while back. I love DBA but 12 elements doesn't compare to the beautiful ranks on ranks of figures on this table. 

SOLDADOS VIEJOS: MAGNESIA en DBMM

Reinforcements

With some acting pay in my pocket, I was able to place another order with Baccus this morning. I have been smitten by the look of pikes since I first discovered 6mm so I ordered up some extra cavalry for my Marians and the 25mm GS DBA Macedonian Army - Pikes, Pikes, Baby!. This will give me two DBA armies to field with support options for the Marians and a start on DBMM as well. Marc has the opponents but I'll let him post about that.

Hordes of fun

This Sunday past, I was able to get out to the local club for a Hordes of the Things Tourney. I have been a bit reluctant before because the majority of the games played are either with rules or in periods I am not really interested in. But I ponied up my membership fee and got stuck in.

Well let me back track a bit. Friday I realized that I didn't have a stronghold to put on the table. With a DVD coaster, a re-purposed paper clip holder and some Das clay, I made up a burial mound that I hoped would suitably impress my opponents. After the clay dried I added a base coat of brown then acrylic medium and flock. Sunday morning I awoke early to do the final dry brush and found that I had used gloss acrylic medium. What was meant to be an imposing barrow was in fact a sparkly fairy hill. The only matte varnish to hand was an ancient pot of Tamiya flat base - which has a tendency to go white when applied with a brush - but I was feeling lucky so on it went. Half an hour later I had a barrow that while no longer sparkly was now suitable for deployment on the Siberian steppes in winter. Several fast washes and some dry brushing later, I managed to get something not entirely laughable for the table.

So to the tourney. Today was to be a relaxation day and that means a Kilt day! I topped my camo kilt with a Hobgoblin t-Shirt and Marc was decked out in his Hung like a Norse T and jeans. The club (Ottawa Miniature Gamers) recently moved its game space to a local Freemason's Hall. The building is quite beautiful and well maintained. To keep up with the costs, the Masons rent rooms to many different groups. This being our first time there, we went through the front door and right into a Charismatic Christian Church service. I don't know what they made of us but we were definitely in the wrong place.

We went around the back where ruffians such as we are more likely to be welcome and found the proper place. We were given a hearty welcome by both club members and a couple of Masons there to observe a Poland 39 game. There may have been a raised eyebrow or two at the kilt but s*d 'em - the Celts are here!

There were 5 of us playing:

• Mike - High Elves
• Brian - Undead
• John - Undead Hordes
• Marc - Gallic Behemoths
• Me - Ulster Cycle Irish

A quick set of rolls saw me facing Marc and his coffee-ground monsters. This time he managed to get his god on the board and pummel Cú Chulainn to a pulp. In return I managed to rack up a pretty good body count though. As one of the losers, I was tagged to sit out the next round but was able to see the other games and act as a floating ref. This was actually pretty cool as anyone who wasn't playing stuck around to help out rather than wandering off.

Lunch was called after the second game. Not knowing the protocol, I had packed a lunch (bacon sarnies and a thermos of tea) but others bulked ordered pizza at $7 a head - a pretty good deal I need to remember in future.

Lunch eaten, it was back to the fray. Next game was against Mike's Elves. We had more or less stopped rolling for terrain placement. The board we were on had a river on one side and as defender, Mike had set up his Elven spear on the other side of the river from his stronghold. I took advantage of this split and massed everything on one side with Ferdiad my hero general on the far flank. The centre locked pretty tight with the Elven spear slowly moving up toward the ford so they could get into the fray. Ferdiad ran out on the flank until he was menaced by some Elves in a small wood. I left him there while we contested the centre - me grinding down the Elves while Mike hurried his spear up. I got a 6 for pips and moved Ferdiad towards the Elven stronghold then another 6 getting him into contact. My first attack on the stronghold failed with a stick result. Mike rolled very poor pips and couldn't intervene. The second attack went through ending the game.

My third and final game was against John's Undead Horde army. He had chosen an alternate list wherein all
his troops except for the necromancer general were at -1 to Magicians - Cathbad the druid in my case. We got stuck in pretty quickly and my double depth warband ground away at bone while Cathbad sniped away at undead knights. John's list allowed him to bring back any undead lost in combat on a six, but he failed to retrieve a single casualty in the whole game. I moved a hero general into overlap which combined with the warband's impetuous follow up was enough to punch through the undead lines. John tried repeatedly to ensorcel my hero but again the dice were against him. In the end I killed 12 AP for the win.

At the end of the day, despite only playing three games and losing one of those, I won on points for casualties caused. They may not be flashy but those warband really grind away at the enemy. However, I didn't get to face Brian's undead with fliers - that would have been a very different fight.

Having some time left, Marc and I hung around to watch some of the Poland game - very tempting and the Lardie's rules have some very interesting mechanics.

A good day.

A good weekend

Friday started with a game of classic Talisman. Back in the day, I bought all the expansions but one and while we have one of the new versions, we much prefer to play the old one. Sadly, youngest got to the crown of command and flipped the random ending card to reveal the Demon Lord. Youngest had the Holy Cross so defeated him on the spot. As I suspected, poking around on the internet later revealed several interpretations that the holy cross  cannot defeat the Demon Lord. It was late so I gave youngest the win anyway.

Saturday saw Marc come over with our friend Drew who has expressed an interest in DBMM. We played a game of 100 with my Britons facing Marc's Gauls. I set up first, with warband centre fronted by Ps. Chariots on the left wing and light horse on the right. Marc lined up his cav with the chariots, his warband (O backed by S) in the centre and his Ps(S) on his left opposing my Lh. As described in the list, I pushed the slingers out to disrupt the Gallic line. while holding my main line in reserve. The Lh and Chariots went out on the flanks to harass his rear. The Lh got into a shoving match with Gallic Ps(S) and the chariots with the cavalry. I lost one of each to Marc's usual dice rolling skills but the flanks settled down into a shoving match.In the centre, the slingers did an ok job of disrupting the Gallic line. I got a little impatient and threw a couple of blocks of warband into gaps on either flank. This was to be my undoing. In time, I lost those blocks too and was forced to commit my main line. That, and poor rolling, lead to some more losses and I became disheartened. With a disconnected general and a pip roll of 1, my main troops went impetuous.  Not a huge problem as the Gauls went impetuous too when Marc fumbled a pip roll (for once - this guy is magic with dice). What killed me was the -1 combat penalty. A good game to Marc.

Lessons learned: don't get impatient let the skirmishers do their job.

Next up was HotT since Marc and I wanted to test our armies before the tournament in November. We ran two games back to back. Drew appeared to have enjoyed watching the DBMM game so I gave him my HottT Army to command less Cathbad the Mg who I kept control of. Youngest was pried off the computer and brought out to play 1/2 of Marc's Gallic army.  The Ulstermen setup in a central block with the heroes on the wings. The Gauls were divided between the Wb run by youngest and the Archers run by Marc. In both games, this separation of commands proved to be the Gauls undoing. The heroes were able to move quickly across the board and engage the Wb block pretty much unsupported by the Bw. Cathbad did nothing but run around scowling, the pip costs to move him up quickly proving too expensive. Drew handled the defeat in detail masterfully winning both game for our side - need to be careful playing him in the future.


A good couple of games but the Mgs did not get into play. The speed of the Heroes was a major factor in both battles. The lack of fliers and other interesting troop types means more testing will be needed.

A couple of Quick Games

My mate Marc and I were at festival this week past. We wanted to get some gaming in so though Marc was vending, we set up a small camp table at the back of his stall. We had less than a square metre of  space to work with and no terrain so we went with DBMM 100 using the old 1.1 rules as I am waiting to get a copy of 2.0. Because we were in the wilds of Canada, we used top downs pasted to MDF bases.

For game one we went with a fairly standard Marian Roman vs Gaul battle. Marc took mostly Wb(F) with a supporting unit of archers. Unfortunately, he thought they were Bw when in fact they were Ps.  I took a block of legionaries supported on each flank by bolt shooters. It was a pretty straight up fight. The Gauls charged across the field suffering some disruption from the shooters. The romans opened up into two ranks one base width apart to receive the charge. The inevitable crash took place and there was much tooing and froing with the Gallic Ps getting into hand to hand with the left flank bolt shooter and the main lines well engaged. In the end, the Romans survived the assault, cut down the Gallic Chieftain and took the field.

For game two, I stuck with Romans as that is all I had but went with the EIR list instead with a line of auxilia supporting a line of legionaries. The general was horse mounted this time and had a single mandatory Cv(O) to accompany him. Marc went with Vikings. He had a main block of Bd(O) supported by Bd(I) on his left and Bw(O) on his right. Again the Vikings charged forward for a couple of turns. I marched the auxilia through the Bd and executed a left turn into column and headed off to prevent the Bw from shooting at my Bd. As it turned out, I left this move a turn too late and wound up taking archery in the Ax flank. The Roman general went out on the right to harass the Viking Bd(I). The Ax - Bw fight was a mess with Marc consistently rolling good pips and combat dice. The (S) grading helped the Ax survive but not to push back. A big frustration for me was that I was able to double the Bw when shot at which allows the target to advance on the shooter in the targets bound but only in the enemy bound, so my troops cowered beneath the Viking bows rather than advancing. In the centre there was another shoving match while on the right, the Roman CinC was pushed back fitfully by the far more numerous inferior blade. After a turn or two, the mess on the left flank began to cost me as I couldn't get enough pips to shake out the Ax into line. I wound up losing 3 Ax on the left and a couple of Bd in the centre disheartening my entire army. When the lady wife appeared looking for dinner, I was about to pack it in when she said she would cook. I decided to play it out and was very glad I did. The next few rolls gave me enough pips to form up the Ax. Marc's formation in the centre had broken up giving me some overlaps which were soon converted into flanks. The Ax finally got in contact with the Bw and the S began to tell in hand to hand. Some flank double kills, one or two single kills and a dead Viking General and I had won by the skin of my teeth. Marc made me fight for it to the last roll.

An excellent pair of games in a small space and proof that you can game while camping

I am sorely tempted to pick up some of Peter's 6mm Romans even if they would be dwarfed by my 15mm Britons but then there is Kadesh with all those chariots and the local club is having a Book 1 DBA night I might actually be able to get out too. Decisions....

First project(s)

For my first contribution to the pimping promotion of DBMM, I am working on an article on austerity miniatures wargaming. When I was involved in 2mm model railways, I was amazed at the creativity of depression era and post war modellers. They created rolling masterpieces out of scrap tin and cereal boxes. We can do the same with miniatures. Since I intend to submit this for publication, I won't got into details here yet.

The second project I hope to feature here. When I first picked up DBMM, I had a general historical understanding of what troops performed what roles. In actual play though, I always wound up with pitting my troops against the exactly wrong sort of enemy. George's skill had something to do with that too though.

What I plan to do is to write a series of articles each focussed on one troop type and discuss who the predators and prey of each type are. I want to keep it high level to avoid the legal and moral implications of re-printing the rules in a blog.

Done (almost)

This morning I epoxied down my last chariot model leaving only a handful of singeltons rattling around the leadpile. There is some base painting to do and a lot of flocking but otherwise all my lead is in a playable state.

The forces to hand:

• 22 Warband Fast. I have them as Britons though they could be any generic Celts
• 11 Pike Fast. Some new Welsh spear along with some very old Picts. They can be mixed in with the warband or used as a pike block. I'm looking forward to experimenting with the Pk(F)'s unusual characteristics. Heavy spear who waltz through bad terrain - I like it.
• 6 Slingers. Mostly used by southern British tribes and graded an un-inspiring Ps(O), I became very fond of these guys while painting them up and gave them all woad tattoos. I have a premonition they will be interesting if not necessarily very effective.
• 5 Light horse (O). My "comtemptable little ponies". Two are actually Welsh but they'll pass in a pinch.
• 6 Chariots as Cv(O). Four are from the old pack and represent line chariots. Two are pretty little models from Essex and carry the Battersea shield command figures mentioned earlier. A third general remains on foot for the moment.
• 4 Warband (S). Three are general stands painted to act either as foot commands or as dismounts for the chariot generals. The fourth is an old stand of naked crazy Celts. I'm not sure about the generals. Superior makes sense historically with all the affluent hostage king's sons clustered into one command but they will not be able to keep up with the fast warband. I expect command and control issues if I am not careful.
• 2 Javlineers. Graded as psiloi(I), these are DBA level filler for some lists. Made from Wb(F) with the centre figure removed after the Great Pict Pike Rebasing, they may return as Wb(F) command groups given the number of Battersea Generals I still have. This would allow me to dismount the chariots as Fast or Superior.

And that's the lot. Enough for DBMM 200, 100 or DBA using British, Scots/Irish, Caledonian or Pict lists. I really need more chariots for everyone and foot archers for the Picts but I'm off to a good start.

Re-Rebasing

Ok - I'm cheap I admit it. I have been holding off on buying the DBMM army lists because I have a perfectly good set of DBM lists.While my intent is to play primarily Ancient Britons, the old pack of miniatures I am refurbishing also contained a Pict option and I have acquired a handful of new Essex Welsh spear who could pass as well. Under DBM, the Pictish spear were graded Irr Ax(X) a grading that does not exist in DBMM. So off I go to the errata in the 1.0 DBMM rules looking for an update. Naturally I find that Ax(X) are now Pk(F).

When last I based them, I wanted to keep a generic warband feel so I liberally mixed the round and square shield Pict spears in with javelin and sword armed figures thinking that irregular auxilia could be a mix of types. Now pike, at least to me, are a different beast with spear men standing close together presenting a hedge of points to the rampaging horse - an image not well supported by one spear on a base with two javelin. So, off the bases come the spears to be re-mounted as spear only groups. Thank the gods the base depth and width didn't change. These new all spear groups should still be usable as warband when sprinkled into a larger formation.

Now where's my glue gone?

200 points

With most of my remaining warband based up last night, I can just make 200 points worth of Britons if I put every piece of 15mm lead I own on the board. The distribution of troop type is off but I won't let that bother me.

Painting and Basing

The 39 odd 15mm ancients I now have based up are due to a need to work out a triplet of British chariot generals. Under DBx, chariots  Cv(O) can dismount as Wb(O) or in the case of the Britons, Wb(F) with chariot general Cv(S) dismounting as Wb(S). The Britons, Scots/Irish and Caledonian lists all have chariot generals, so I thought that getting the mounted and dismounted pairs based up was a good place to start.

In my purchase from George, I acquired a largish number of figures with the Battersea shield - a singular ceremonial artifact. Some were armed with spear and some with sword. Beautiful figures for sure but it's rather like having a handful of Napoleons at a Waterloo battle. I took three pairs and painted each pair identically. The sword armed for the foot commands and the spear to go in the chariots. I based up the foot commands as Wb(S). Getting four figures onto the 15mm deep DBMM bases involved some careful figure selection. I use five minute epoxy for final basing mostly because it's what I have and secondly because it is very solid bond yet will peel off if I need to re-base. I made up too much and scrambled to select the best of the remaining painted figures and base them up as well. I now have very nearly a DBA's worth of based warband. That left the chariot generals.

My four current chariots are Minifig - I think - and not wide enough to handle the Essex generals. This leaves me with two unpainted Essex chariots to work on and another to purchase. Oh. Dear.

Another Crushing DBMM Defeat

George was back with his toys again last night but this time we had my friend Marc along for the ride. It was 325 points of Macedonians versus the same of Persians again with me taking the Persians this round and Marc and George splitting the Macedonians.

I set up with  a spear block on the left slightly ahead of centre, cavalry in the middle and light cavalry on my right. All my troops were in blocks of columns to allow for rapid movement and deployment.  George set up with the companions on his far right, pike centre and light horse left. However as he does everytime, he managed to slide his troops to line up his pike against my spear.

I didn't have much luck with the pips and as usual found George's pike stomping across the board to hit my spear before they could deploy. The box formations of columns coupled with the low pip die and poor rolls made it impossible to deploy the spear properly before the pikes hit. and who was supporting the pike? The Companions of course. The middle and right flanks were better with my horse pushing forward. Pip starvation didn't help speed things along and Marc was able to form a ragged line to block.

As expected the main combat was on the left with pikes, elephants, and Companions grinding my spear to a pulp. Some piss poor rolling on my part stopped my cav from crushing the right wing and that decayed into a series of inconsequential fights. With the left flank crushed, my baggage was exposed. It bought a little time by running away from the Companions but that doesn't work for long. With the baggage gone, it only required a few horse casualties to break the army.

I always enjoy playing but I am consistently missing something. Last night I actually got angry - not just ticked at bad die rolls but angry enough to want to chuck the game. I just can't seem to get tempo in any of my games. I will not blame it on bad pips or dice rolls - there is something I'm just not grasping.