Germanic Invasion

In a few weeks time, my wargaming friends and I will be playing the first few scenarios in the Hail Ceaser supplement, Germania. As you'll know from previous weeks battle reports, we've been playing Hail Ceaser to get ready.

This week, we put aside the Saxons and the Vikings and brought out the Celts and the Germanic Tribesmen. Instead of just a straight forwards line up and fight, we decided to have an objective. The Germanic tribesmen had to get through the Celt forces and off the board edge.

How the battlefield look for turn 1 and 2.

So we broke out the troops and lined up the forces. Both sides contained a good mix of troops. The Celts, or as they should be called Brits, had a few chariots. Whilst the marauding Germans had some cavalry.

The Brits were commanded by Terry and Jim, and they won the right to go first. The only positive move forward was when Terry blundered and his division drifted to the right. On our turn, we moved forward slowly, getting ready to charge forward in the following turn.

That was if we had a turn two. In this game, as you might be able to make out from the photos, we had six division, three apiece. All six divisions failed their command checks. Worse for Terry, the division that blundered previously blundered again and remember that they had left the gas on, and left the board, taking a wound per unit. At this point, Terry was the only player to have caused any damage and that was on his own turn.

It's not fun getting up close and personal with fanatics

The third turn was a bit better and I believed that Jim was able to charge forward and take on John's forces on our right flank. Combat raged but neither side were able to find the upper hand. In our turn three, seeing a big hole in the middle of the battle line, I charged two of my units forward, hoping to break through a unit of fanatics and off to the green countryside of Britain.

We rolled the dice, and my men came off the better. Causing five wounds, to Terry's two. It was this point that we've realised that we had rolled the wrong amount of dice on both accounts. As gentlemen, we agreed to refight the combat, and this time, Terry came off the better. Causing many wounds to my units.

Just before my clever move to kill the skirmishers

Turn four was a brutal round of combat, and my memory is a bit fuzzy on this. Hopefully Jim, on his wonderful blog Wednesday Night Warlords, will be able to inform you more about this turn. But at the end of this turn, we saw my division taking enough wounds to be broken. Whilst on the right flank Jim suffered the same fate.

As it was getting late, we called it there as a draw. I enjoyed this game, and it was a good game, played with lots of laughs. I'm looking forward to getting a rematch next week. Hopefully, it will come off better for me.

On the painting front, the weather has been better this week and so I've been able to get outside and do some undercoating. This allowed me to get the remaining seven Warg Riders undercoated and as I write this I'm in the processing of painting two of them up. This leaves me with some Mordo Uruks to paint up and a basing session and I've finished all of the models I need for scenario 1 of Siege of Gondor. I hope to do a photo session of them soon.

A second quick update

So due to having to find a new job, things have been a little lax on the blogging front. However, I'm here to recount tales of gaming woe to you. Wednesday night saw another clash between Saxons and Vikings. I took on the Vikings with Terry, whilst John M and Jim were commanding the Saxons. The game was a quick and bloody affair with the Vikings being forced off in quick order. It was enjoyable but the game was hampered with many poor dice rolls on my part. 

The Imperials have entred the base.

However, on a slightly more postive note, I got to try out my christmas present on Thursday night with my friend, Jonathan. This present is, of course, Star Wars Imperial Assault. It's a nice hybrid of RPG and tabletop miniatures game and I've now got a Darth Vader and AT-ST in my colleciton, so I'm happy.

We played the training scenario through twice, allowing us to be both Imperials and Rebels. I lost both games, but had a lot of fun. It's a nice little system and I'm looking forward to playing it more in the not so distant future. 

On the painting front, my out put, so far this month, is not great. Getting another 30 models done. It's not been helped that, despite being at home a lot more, the weather is rubbish, meaning that I can't go outside to undercoat some new toys. And when it was fine to do some undercoating, I went and ran out of spray. Going to get some more over the weekend to resolve this.

However, I've been able to get a bit more work done on the Seige of Gondor front. I've now painted every model I need for scenario 1, for the forces of Gondor. There will be a large round of basing at the end of the month, where I hope to show some the models all nicely painted up.

I have then turned my attention to the forces of Mordor. This has seen me paint up the seven remaining Orc bowmen, that i've had kicking around my painting table for several years. And the several remaining Orc Warriors that I never finished when I was mass painting Orcs for the large Helms Deep battle that I fought in 2007. 

Next up on the Mordor front is Uruk Hai and Warg Rider which will take a few more models of the to paint list. Once I do a round of basing on the Orcs, it should see me being able to play through scenario 1. 

As you can see from the photo to the right,  I've got a long way to go before I've painted everyhting I want. Though you'll not be able to make them out I've spent a lot of time building. I've built another two units for my War of the Roses project and the Mirkwood Cavalry that I brought last year. Now to get that spray paint out and get some paint on them. 

If all things go according to plan, the next battle I should fight will see some Celt on Celt action as a band of maurading Germanic Tribsemen land on the British shores to a hostile welcome committe.

Stay tuned for that. 

Saxons vs Vikings round 2

Or the tale of how I managed to snatch defeat from the hands of Victory.

So, Wednesday night, I had a game of Hail Caeser against Terry and John. They were using a combined force of Vikings and Normans, whilst I would be fighting off their unwarranted advances with a force of Saxons.

Get em lads.

I had two divisions of consisting of five units of thegns plus some slingers each. Terry had two division of Viking hirdmens and John had a mix of warriors on foot and a unit of mounted knights. I won the role off and my right flank marched forced as ordered and set out in traditional shieldwall manoeuvres. My left flank, heard the order, and then ignored it and possibly mishearing the order for a chant of Skulls for the Blood God or Waaaaagh decided to charge forward trying to get grips with the enemy as quickly as possible.

Terry and John's opening turn involved them moving forward and forming a shieldwall of their own. John's crossbow-toting warriors took aim and peppered a small unit of slingers, causing two wounds. Turn two began, and the first of my units made it into combat. Terry had the better of the dice rolling and inflicted more casualties on my men and they retreated to safety but Terry followed up and combat spilled into their turn two.

Terry's Vikings let out a roar and more combats appeared on my right flank. John tried to charge his knights into combat but a failed order role left them stranded in the open. Combat was a brutal affair with my Saxons inflicting wounds that Terry was unable to save. Terry did his best, but I was able to make my morale saves and I had gained the upper hand.

How many units are in this combat then. Answers on a post card to

My turn three became a brutal affair, I charge as many men as I could forward, arranging a string of combats across the middle of the table. On my left flank, I moved my skirmisher with javelins forward with a small unit of slingers and let rip. Inflicting four wounds on the mounted Knights which John was unable to save two off. Having rolled two sixes to wound, John was forced to make a morale save, which the knights failed and fled the table.

The combat was brutal with my men making short work of Terry's units. However, as their third turn began things were not all going their way. I had tried to hack my way through John's unit of foot knights, but they remained  resistant to my axe blows and my unit backed off, losing one of them in the process. As you can see from the photo to the left, it was a big swirling combat, which caused much discussion over the rules.

However, in their third turn things carried on as they had been left off with myself gaining the upper hands. Out of their three divisions, one had been wiped out and another was perilously close to collapsing. It was here I made a few mistakes.

During my fourt turn, I should have done three things that would have guaranteed my victory. I had to move one unit forward into combat and break one of Terry's remaining units. I got into combat, but in a rare flurry of dice rollsTerry won the combat and I was beaten off. The two things that I should have done, which I didn't do was to move my division commander into a unit to brings it's stamina down, taking away it's shattered status, and to move a unit forward into support.

Terry and John's fourth and final turn saw one of my shattered units wiped out, which broke my division and I lost the game. It was a highly enjoyable game, and I'm sorry for the lack of pictures. When you get caught up in the game it's hard to take time out take snaps. Terry and John were fun to play against and so, despite kicking myself for losing, I did have a lot of fun playing.

A quick update

So February is here and so it's time for a quick update. Well, there's been a lot of painting done, getting 104 models finished in the month. It's quite an achievement, especially as I've got them all based as well. :)

Plans for February are to carry on with the painting of the models I need to play through the Seige of Gondor. This is going well. I've now added Faramir into the mix. Thankfully the model was already painted, and so all I had to do was a quick touch up and he was then based up with the other 104 models. You can see a bad photo of him to the right.

In terms of this project. The remaining models I need to paint, for the forces of good, are excitingly painted up. This is Beregond, Citadel Guard, and the Warriors of Minas Tirith. Some of these are needed to be based, and this will happen later this month. I hope to be able to spend some time getting better photos of these in due course.

So I am now turning my attention to the forces of evil. I have decided to start with my Orc warriors with bows. This is because I picked five of these models just before Christmas last year and I would love to get them removed from the list of unpainted models. I also have two plastic models still to go. I've found these and they are now on my painting table.

In terms of gaming, I was hoping for another Armada game last week, but Ben never showed. Claiming to have homework to mark. Anyway, on Wednesday, we are planning another Saxons vs Vikings game. This battle report is to follow soon. This is a reminder game of how to play Hail Ceaser as we prepare for the start of our working our way through the Germanica book from Warlord.