What's been played at the club

I realised I haven't posted on the club games for a while, so this is a quick catch up.  I may have forgotten a couple of games.  

July.
I played a game of Maurice with 15mm figures, then ADG with 15mm Seleucids. Then I missed a couple of weeks.  Both games were good from what I recall, and I do remember that in Maurice, we ended the evening in a draw as both sides morale had dropped to the same point.

August. 
There was another general ADG night at the club, but I played Ancients Command and Colors with a friend's Hexon terrain and 10mm Roman and Carthaginian figures. Another good game and I actually don't think we've ever had a bad game on CnC.

We had a Dystopian Wars bash on another night.  This was a struggle, as the chap who'd played Dystopian the most could not show up, and the remaining 3 of us struggled with the rules, and trying to figure out what to do and which dice to use.  For us it revealed how hard it was to find stuff quickly in the Dystopian rulebook, and how much we relied on the experienced player. 
It also made me realise some of what I'd read online, that the Dystopian rules are very badly written and the game plays very slowly.  I'll play again because I like the Dystopian idea, but in future I plan just to get stuck in from the start, because we'll probably only get 2 or 3 turns played in the night. 

September.
Another Dystopian game, this time with 4 of us with 600 points each.  A better game as the experienced player was there, but again, I think we only got through 3 or 4 turns. 

Another night we played the new edition of Napoleon's Battles. I like the system and have had the original rules since they come out.  We used my original 15mm figures. This was a good game, and served to introduce some other chaps to the rules. 

Then 4 of us played Flames of War, with 1500 points of early war. Another good game, fast moving and seeing the use of mighty 20mm and 37mm guns. 

October.
We played Sails of Glory, then Wings of Glory the following week.

Then another Dystopian Wars game, and this time with 2 fleets of 1000 points, my FSA versus the Prussians, and 4 of us playing. And this time, I just got stuck in from the start.  We only managed 3 turns in the night, but it was fun.

Then there was the Blood Rage game last week. Great fun. 

And this week should be ADG, though I realise I've been neglecting Maurice, so I'll have to see if anyone's up for playing this again soon.

Blood Rage : Ragnarok

The 'viking' game we played on Thursday at the Perth club was Blood Rage: Ragnarok.  It's a recent kickstarter boardgame with very nice miniatures.  I took a few photos, but my shaky hand meant only a few were decent.

The game was a blast. We had great fun. The basic game is 4 player but we played with a 5th player expansion set.  Simple mechanics but a much more complex strategy involved in gaining glory and winning battles. The game has cards to modify combats, go off on quests and do other stuff.  There's a wonderfully unique way of dealing out cards to each player at the start of a turn (essentially you get 6 cards, keep 1 and pass 5 on to the player on your left. This process is then repeated; keep 1 card and pass the rest on, until you build up a deck of 6 cards).  

Each player commands a group or tribe of nice minis, and the can recruit more.  Movement and combat is fairly simple, and actually winning a combat may not mean you gain the most glory (a glorious death means you can steal 'glory' from the winner of the combat).  All combat deaths go off to Valhalla and are resurrected next turn.  Each turn - it's only a 3 turn game - a piece of land is destroyed as Ragnarok approaches, so there's slightly less to fight over.  Each turn a new and more powerful set of cards is dealt to each player.  In our game, we had 3 players tied for first place. 

Here's the table from my perspective. The game card for my faction, the girls of the snake clan, is at the bottom.  The red bar in the middle is 'rage' point and these are used to do stuff. Extra cards go at the top, and the red, blue and grey circles are where you mark your increase in figures and stuff.

 

Do you see the dirty big troll with the hammer in the middle. Well - the first time he enters play he kills everyone in that area. Full stop. After that he's less strong. Bah humbug - I lost several minis in my faction when he arrived.  In the top right of the picture are other monsters that can come on - there's giants, a sea monster, dark elves and dwarves. 

 

Here's the table at a later turn, and more from above. Very nice looking game. The 'glory' track is around the outside, and at this point, green is in the lead and my yellow faction is second. 

 

 

 

At the end, I'd say it's a very good Euro-game with a Viking mythology theme rather than a dark ages Viking game. But great fun to play and one we'll play again soon.  You can play with 2 players, but it's best with 4 or 5. There are also a couple more expansions that bring in the gods and some creatures and the gods expansion looks like great fun (e.g. If I recall correctly, combat in an area where Loki has influence may mean that the winner and loser will be switched around).

15mm Byzantines

These Byzantines are probably going to be the next batch of 15mm I sell. 

Once upon a time, I bought a DBA Byzantine army. Then I added a few figures and made a DBM army.  Then I added a few more to get some maximums.  Then some more and almost before I realised, I had all this.   

The first command group.

Cataphracts.  I did one base with 4 figures and a front base with 2 figures to try to represent a wedge formation.

Varangians. Gotta have Varangians. 

 

The Skutatoi

The Tagmata

The Thema.

More command.

And the light troops

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the bench

Some pics on ongoing work on 28mm Seleucids.  At the moment I have no intention of keeping them and this is just me attempting to finish the painting of the entire army.  

Some light cavalry and the scythed chariot in the background.  I'm still mulling over the colours for the light cavalry. The Tarantines could well remain as light tunics while the Seleucid militia more colourful.    

Some Seleucid line cavalry with irregular auxilia in the background.  I liked the red and blue combination for the Thracians but I'm still not too sure if the red shields were a good idea. 

A wider shot to include the general. 

And the remaining tray with the nearly finished camels, elephants and some cataphract horses. I decided to do the cataphracts as three horses to the base instead of the usual four horses per WRG. I used different yellows as undercoats for the metal and several different golds and bronzes just to try to get each one looking a bit different. 

More later. 

More 15mm ancients - the remaining Seleucids

This is really for a friend, to show my remaining painted Seleucids. It's mainly the oddball and unusual stuff like the camels, militia and some cataphracts. First a picture of everything. 

Then a closer picture of the Asiatic types, militia light horse, skirmisher bows and militia bows.

Then the medium camels and a stand of Bactrian cavalry I used as a command stand.   

The lancers, 2 stands of line cavalry and 2 of companion types.  

And some cataphracts I found in another box. Another attempt to use as many variations of bronze and gold as I could.  



 Artillery

Skirmishers with bows and slings. 

 Irregular auxilia 

Two groups of skirmishers with javelins. One in faded black and the other with faded red uniforms.    

The regular auxilia, with every variation of red I could find.  

 

And of course, like most other gamers, I still have more unpainted figures in boxes. There are more Seleucids and Successors and Macedonians and Persians and, and ....