Painting Report: Shieldmaidens and Orruks

I've kept myself busy from the start of the year in the painting nook. Mostly cleaning and organizing the painting nook, especially transferring pot paints (Citadel and Privateer Press) to dropper bottles, though some my P3 paints are so old and chunky it may not be worth the effort... However, I've accomplished one of my quarterly goals already: the Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens are complete to a tabletop standard!

such professional photo

I feel the shields could be fancier, but that's a matter of finding decals I like that fit them - freehanding skill is one of the things I want to work on this year, but for now I'm happy they're done. I hope to add some boys to the warband to bring it up to a quantity that can play in Lion Rampant or Kings of War, and some fantastical creatures (especially giants) for various fantasy games. But right now, they're good to go for Saga.

At the end of 2019, I splurged and bought an Age of Sigmar army: the comically and terrifyingly destructive Ironjawz. Since I enjoy assembling more than painting, they're all set for playing, if you don't mind gray plastic:

I do mind gray plastic, but I've come to realize I'm a lot more motivated to paint models that I'm actively putting on the table, or are part of armies that are seeing table time, so I'll forgive myself for it. These guys are on the painting table as a speed-painting project after I finish my Grymkin... and figure out a color scheme. Green skin, of course, but I can't decide on an armor color. Leaning toward weather steel.

Long dry summer

It's been a long hobby drought since Lock & Load, both in game time and painting time. Family activities have kept me away from the toy soldiers, but now that school is well back in session and we have less going on... well, at least I'm back at the painting table.

At present I'm working on some Gloomspite Gitz (i.e., goblins with trademarkable names from GW), some Bad Squiddo Shield Maidens, and some Adeptus Titanicus stuff. The family schedule prevents me from getting any weeknight gaming in, but I was able to drop in to the monthly Saga day in October and field the shield maidens in a quick match against some Normans.

Warlord titan, two Warhounds, and three Questoris Knights with basecoats done.

Shield Maidens face off against Normans in October

Weekend Report

This past weekend saw a nice bit of gaming: the monthly Saga get together, a game at Andrew's, and a trek through a very foggy Portland to play some Warmachine at Rune & Board.

Saga: Normans v. Normans!

I figured I'd play my Crusaders as Normans this weekend, as everyone else is playing Age of Vikings and the figures are close enough. Dropped into Bob's (better-painted, better organized) Normans and pulled out a very bloody draw.

Deployment. My knights on each flank, crossbows, longbows, and spearmen in the center. Bob has two full levy longbow and three fat units of mounted warriors waiting for me.

Some initial shuffling on both sides; I backed out of longbow range, which was probably a mistake. Should have pushed more aggressively.

A scrum on the right results in horrible casualties; I lose four knights to seven of his serjeants. While I can't afford to lose a lot of men, at least I take away a Saga die from him.

Finally, I start pushing up. My archers kill a bunch of his central levy unit, while my sole remaining knight on the right bravely rides away. Over on the left, my knights are suffering bowshot.

Longbows reduce his center levy to under Saga die level, while my spearmen rush the other archers...

And a bit later, at end of game, we see that my spearmen were run down by the rightmost mounted serjeant unit. What unit, you ask? Why, the one I dedicated all my shooting to and then used my Warlord to finish off. Had this game gone another turn, I think Bob would have carried it with those undamaged warriors on the left, though....

Russian Civil War: What's Red and White all over?

Nothin' civil 'bout a civil war... This was a test game Harry's running for Enfilade, so I'll try not to spoil any surprises, but it was pretty fun. We've got the Reds straddling a railroad trying to capture a VIP on the armored train. Lots of cavalry, some armored cars and tachankas, and a rather quick-moving system (1914, by Great Escape Games). I ended up as high command on the Red side, which, as any student of the Soviet Union can tell you, is a rather dangerous spot to be in. (Nonetheless, we won...)

Table layout prior to deployment.

Brave Revolutionary naval artillerymen.

My cavalry pushing up the field....

The train approaches!

Though the front (artillery) car is disabled, the train chugs on... oblivious to the cavalry scrum on the line.

Game end, more or less.... my center and left are just about broken, but the train has been stopped...

 The system wasn't bad at all. I'm not sure it's suited to a convention, but it moved quickly and we started getting into combat right away, and the results didn't tweak my suspension of disbelief. I'd play it again.

The mat and tracks, btw, are apparently from Cigar Box.

Masters' League Game: Grymkin vs. Skorne

After much scheduling hassle, I was able to get the first game in our local Masters' League (think tournament, but stretched out over a month) in at Rune & Board with Jeremiah. He brought a Xekaar beast brick, a classic titan herd; I brought the Wanderer with my own beast brick. He won the roll and opted to go first.

As this was Jeremiah's second or maybe third game with this list, he managed to clock himself top of three, giving a result of (if I recall correctly), 2 control points and 17 army points for me, 3 control points and 9 army points for me. (I failed to write it down quickly, so that may well be off.) We then played out the rest of the game off the clock, and I won with an assassination. As usual with Wanderer, it's all Star-Crossed for the money and not much else. So, pictures!

Xekaar's second turn just beginning.

Beginning of Xekaar's third turn.

End of game by clock; Xekaar on the left hiding behind a building. I've used the Shadow Arcana over on the right with the red Cage Rager. One thing that isn't obvious is that Xekaar has cunningly applied Dead Weight to the center Skin and Moans.

End of game by assassination. The center S&M was able to kill off the blocking Titan Gladiator, and then the left-hand S&M walked around the building and just chopped up Xekaar. Over on the right we see the effects of the Shadow arcana - very cold dice meant that Cage Rager accomplished nothing.

Et sans Resultat! Napoleonic grand battle, and Saga report

2017 turned out not to be a great year for my gaming, almost entirely due to scheduling issues. I hope 2018 will be a bit better.

Last night, we did a test game of Et Sans Resultat! It's a grand battle game for the Napoleonic Wars, and to be honest probably a bit too fiddly for my taste. But it did look very pretty on the table, with rank after rank of 25mm redcoats and line infantry clashing in the middle. Here are some pictures:

My Brits advance up the board.

The entire battlefield... more or less. The house on the left represents my objective.

My left formation is beginning to deploy into line, while my right formation is struggling to get through some woods. To my right, Dave's British cavalry have attacked Andrew's French center.

French and British exchanging skirmish fire.

Much the same as before, save that both sides are getting quite fatigued. In the center, Dave's cavalry have beaten up a few French battalions. To the far right, Vic and Andy are mucking about.

Before that, I hit the monthly Saga day at Guardian and got a couple games in; both victories for me, but both only as a result of Hail Mary plays, so I can't really chalk that up to strategic acumen.

First we had defend the homestead from the Viking Age rulebook:

My Crusaders defend a few ruined buildings from Anglo-Saxon marauders.

Had to trade 8 knights to eliminate a single unit of Anglo-Saxon warriors. This is not a good trade.

That game ended with me rushing my last group of (dismounted) knights up and just managing to kill the enemy Warlord for a victory before he was able to kill off my own remaining mounted troops.

We reracked and did a Last Stand game. This time I was the attacker, and only had six turns to eliminate all of his troops. That turned out to be barely enough time.

After my first turn: Anglo-Saxons huddled in the center, my troops have just moved on.

I charged in with my Warlord and knights on the right and eliminated a small unit of Anglo-Saxon Hearthguard at a cost of four knights. (This happened every time my knights charged in today - lost four knights every time.)

That, it turns out, was a mistake; as the photo shows, my Warlord is now gone and he won't be coming back. I did manage to pick off most of a unit of warriors on the left, though.

Just before the end. Only two Anglo-Saxons left beside their Warlord, and I disposed of them pretty quickly - and just in time, too! 

Saga and Swedes

I had the pleasure of playing some historicals this past Saturday at Guardian Games, though not as many as I'd have liked.

First off was the monthly historical games day, which has rather developed into "28mm medieval skirmish" due to the interests of the regular attendees. I threw down my Crusaders in a Saga game against some Anglo-Saxons in a battle for the ford.

The Anglo-Saxon Warlord considers his options

The Crusader band is decimated, but the Anglo-Saxon warlord is dead and his warband on the back foot.

It went well enough, though my opponent conceded after my fourth turn. He felt that he was in an irreversible position, though I disagreed. Still, it was nice to break out the crusaders again after a few months. I'm not terribly happy with some of the paint jobs, and I think they might get repainted sooner than later - and I really would like to replace my mounted knights with some Perry or Gripping Beast models.

After, I took command of the Imperial army to put paid to Gustavus Adolphus' attempt to turn the tide of the Thirty Years War (as commanded by Andy and Victor, and put on by Kevin). This was something of a test game for the Pike and Shotte rules from Warlord.

Closing lines, from the Imperial point of view.

Swedish maneuvering

Imperial left flank and center getting it rather rough

Our verdict was that it's a decent rules set, and worth playing again. One house rule we'll probably be using is to grant a commander a single activation if they fail their first command roll in their turn - something both the Saxons and the Imperials needed to take advantage of several turns in a row.

PDX March Historical Wargames Day - DBA & Saga

This month's historical day went pretty well! We had the regulars plus a few other folks turning up for some Saga action, and I played/demoed De Bellis Antiquitatis a few times - standard Polybian Romans versus a slightly non-standard Seleucid list. (I haven't any scythed chariots, as it's pulled together from some other figures.)

I am still undecided on how much I like DBA. It certainly plays quickly - five games in four hours, and that's allowing for quite a bit of not-playing time where I was chatting, browsing merchandise, or kibbitzing on the Saga games. I also like the smallness of the scale - 12 elements to a side, 24 x 24" board, etc. But it does feel quite swingy - more of a dice game than a strategy game, as it were.

Everyone had fun, as far as I can tell, and we may have hooked another fellow into the Saga pond. Thanks to everyone who attended!

Next month it looks like I'll be demoing Sails of Glory, based on the poll I put up on the Wargames Oregon Facebook page.

Saga Tournament Report: December 12, 2015

 I drove down to Salem - Haven Gaming again - this weekend for a Saga tournament. The weather's been lousy, but luckily the drive was the worst part of the experience. Haven's got a nice gaming space, and the TOs even arrange catering with some pretty good pizza. Saga's a nice change of pace from Warmachine, and I couldn't help making some comparisons throughout this report, since I was Haven last Saturday for a Warmachine tournament. Also, I won.

I brought Crusaders, a mix of Gripping Beast and Old Glory figures:

Warlord
Hearthguard 4 pts
Warriors 2 pts
Levy 1 pt

Each game is only six points, but you bring seven points worth to the tournament and then decide what's going down on the table - and how they're equipped and organized - at deployment. For example, my Hearthguard could go down as four separate units of 4 models each, or as two units of 8, or a unit of 12 and a unit of 4 (max unit size is 12, so no 16-model units); further, they could be mounted or foot, and if foot, equipped with two-handed weapons instead of shields. This gives your list selection a lot more flexibility than Warmachine grants, even if you're using Specialists. It's a nice layer of strategy - you can organize into smaller, more fragile units to ensure a game-long supply of Saga dice, or clump up into bigger, more powerful units at the cost of fewer Saga dice.

Round One

For the first round, I faced off against Randy's Crusaders in Clash of the Warlords - the way to win this one is to kill your opponent's Warlord (rather like Warmachine). (Also, there were a surprising number of Crusaders at the tournament.) His force, built off of his old GW Bretonnian models, was surprisingly ranged heavy: he brought three units of bow-armed Warriors, one unit of crossbows, and two 4-man units of Knights. Usually I shy away from ranged in Saga, unless the faction battle board supports it, but I guess if you go all in it works out. In this game, I wasn't able to get enough models into melee to shut his archers down, and they slowly whittled away at my forces while his knights tied up my own on the right side of the board. I finally went for a hail Mary, and charged my Warlord across a cabbage field to attack his in single combat... and rolled one hit on ten dice. His Warlord was a bit more effective, and brought mine down with hits to spare. So, I lost, but I did get a goodly number of victory points from killing his models. More on that topic later.

Round Two

Second round was against the feared Steppe Nomads - Mongols, basically - run by Mario. This army is one of the special snowflakes in Saga. They're probably the best ranged army, and since they're all mounted, they're very mobile - they even have a trick where they can redeploy a unit on their opponent's side of the table. But they're quite fragile in melee, and any scenario where they have to hold ground is already a problem. This was one such scenario, Sacred Ground, where you score points by having models on one of the zones in the middle of the board. On the other hand, this table had no cover or rough terrain whatsoever, which did rather favor their style of play. It had me on the back foot before deployment.

Steppe Nomads making a final stand against the filthy Crusaders

However, I kicked things off by sending my eight mounted Knights across the table and murdering the Warriors on his left flank - thanks to Taking the Cross, one of the Crusader board abilities, I can push them 32" across the table with two activations, and hit a weak unit with only a single fatigue. In this game, I ended up trading them for six warriors... but also forced Mario to draw his Warlord and half his Hearthguard over to deal with it while my other units moved up toward the hills in the middle. Over the course of the game, he was able to kill off my Knights and my Warlord early, but in the end I was able to kill all of the Nomads, giving me a complete victory. (One turning point would be when his warlord attacked the single surviving Knight and barely failed to kill him, saving me a crucial Saga die.)

Round Three

Crusader knights advance on the river crossings against the Saracens

The final round was against Ollie's Saracens in Battle at the Ford - win by having more points across the river than your opponent does. Above you can see the results of my first turn. Instead of slinging my mounted Knights across the river, I decided to play a bit more defensively. Ollie peppered my mounted Knights with arrows, to no effect, and then threw his right-hand unit of mounted Ghulams into my foot Knights - with terrible results. He lost all but two of his own in exchange for two of mine, and the following turn my foot Knights finished off the unit. After that combat, Ollie was on the back foot and - though I once again lost my Warlord and mounted Knights - I was able to push across the river and kill all of his models.

Final result: With two complete victories and one not-too-terrible loss, I scored enough points to win the tourney.

Tournament Scoring

Which is another difference between Saga and Warmachine. Warmachine tournaments run according to the Steamroller packet are done Swiss style, where winners play winners and losers play losers. The winner of an event will have lost none of their games. There are tiebreakers - number of control points scored, enemy points killed, and so on - but winning each individual game is critical. The downside to this is that the number of rounds is based on the number of players, which can make for long tourneys. More than 8 players usually requires 4+ rounds.

In both of the Saga tournaments I've played in, though, the winners are decided by how much they score in each game, and the score is based on how many enemy models you kill, plus 5 points if you actually win the game. An army is worth - including the Warlord - 27 points. So winning a game, if you table your opponent, is only about 16% of your score: 27 slaughter points + 5 scenario points = 32 points. End result: players have an incentive to focus more on killing models and/or preserving their own than on winning by scenario. On the other hand, tournament organizers can limit the number of rounds and still get a result.

Now, this might be what the designers had in mind, but it seems a bit askew to me that a player can lose a game - or even all their games - and still win the tournament. The worst case for this is probably Clash of the Warlords: Able could damn near table Baker but lose only his warlord, to Baker's sole surviving Hearthguard, and the scores would be Able: 26 points, Baker: 8 points. Even though Baker's won the game, he's dramatically behind Able in tournament standings. Spencer and I talked about it on the way home, and the most elegant fix (aside from adopting a Swiss system, which has its own problems) seems to be to raise the reward for winning scenario to 15 points. Then Able would be at 26 - still, and Baker would be at 18. Still behind Able, but not nearly so badly - and in less ridiculous games, the winner would probably have enough of a points lead so that the winner of the tourney would also have won all their games.

And yes, I know about Pyrrhic victories and winning the battles but losing the war. This is a game of toy soldiers, a tournament is not - usually - a campaign, and the drive home isn't Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. I hope.

Wargaming Update - October 2015

Crusaders and Vikings in battle

As it's been over a month since my last post, I'm blowing off the cobwebs of October with a quick All Saint's Day recap. In fact, I haven't been doing an awful lot of gaming lately. Life keeps getting in the way, especially family stuff.

In terms of play, I've been getting back into my groove on Warmachine/Hordes, after very nearly dropping the game a couple months ago due to a terrible win/loss record and some personality conflicts. After some careful introspection and a change in attitude, I'm enjoying it again. Two reasons for this: I switched from Skorne to Circle Orboros as a palate cleanser for the remainder of the year, and I've pretty much given up on competitive play. I simply don't have the time or energy to compete with the dedicated competitive players in my meta. I did play in a tiny 8-player tournament a couple weeks ago, where I went 0-3 with my Kaya 2/Krueger 2 pairing, losing to assassination all three games - but I did have quite a bit of fun, so that's what matters. I'm planning on bringing the same lists to a tournament this upcoming Saturday, and I hope I'll do a wee bit better.

Outside of Warmachine, the only play I've gotten has been in Saga, with the tournament near the beginning of October. I'm quite happy with my play there, as I won each of my three games using my Crusader warband. Even so, I didn't win the tournament due to the unusual format (well, unusual to me anyway). Instead of the Swiss format I'm used to in Warmachine, the TO had something of a partial round-robin, with the ultimate ranking determined by scoring. The scoring system heavily favored killing as many enemy models as possible, rather than winning games - though, of course, killing a bunch of enemy models usually results in a victory, so... Not the way I'd run it, but that's the TO's prerogative. The event was quite a bit of fun, and I'm looking forward to more Saga stuff.

Outside of actually tossing dice and moving figures, I've been getting in a decent amount of painting. I finished up a Hungarian company for Flames of War on behalf of CGR Painters, been making progress on some (quite nice) Perry samurai in street clothes for a friend, and plugging away at Circle Orboros models.

The newest thing to grab my attention is Kings of War. I collected a Vampire Counts army back when Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition was released, and then promptly found I disliked the system and so it never went anywhere. With the Age of Sigmar release this year and the subsequent exodus of Warhammer players, Kings of War is slowly growing in popularity, so I've dusted off the zombies and ghouls. I should be getting my first game with them today, in fact, and I'm looking forward to playing games that feel bigger than Warmachine or Saga.

July Historical Day

Saturday was the monthly historical miniatures wargame day at Guardian Games, and for the first time in quite a while we had more than just me and Gabe, thanks to a crowd that came up from Salem. I played Saga with Oliver, and my Crusaders sadly lost to his Saracens on scenario.*

Saga - Vikings versus Pagan Rus

We played a couple other Saga games - Finns vs. Jomsvikings and Vikings vs. Pagan Rus - as well as trying out a game of Lion Rampant.

Lion Rampant

* So my main game is Warmachine, and one of the reasons it does well competitively is because of the updated-yearly Steamroller packet, which contains the official tournament format(s) and scenarios. I'm going to try adapting a few features of that to Saga. The easy sell is the scenarios; the hard sell is using a chess clock or timed turns, as I've found most non-Warmachine players are extremely reluctant to use them...

November Historical Games Day AAR

We had an excellent turnout this past weekend at the PDX historical games day. Special thanks to the guys who drove all the way from Seattle! The action was all SAGA and Bolt Action:

A German platoon faces off against an American force over a bombed-out village.

Welsh take on the Vikings

Byzantines and Vikings compete to capture an Anglo-Dane village

Vikings versus Normans

Defending the fort

The next game day will be December 20th. There's also a game day down in Salem at Haven Gaming on the 13th!