Welcome to Korovin87

Just wanted to say thanks for joining; I'm glad you found it interesting enough!

Welcome to DeanMoto

Hi Dean, welcome to my strand of the web.  Dean has a whole load of lovely WAB armies, including some samurai, here.  I would love to be able to do these in 25mm, especially for the Mongol invasions period.  I have started a 15mm Sengoku Jidai project, but that's miles off completion.  The Shogun Total War computer game reminded me of a lonsgtanding interest I've had in Japanese warfare, but time is now limited so I'm sticking to 25mm ancients in the meantime.  Dean has some mouthwatering Ashigaru, but I must resist more temptation!  I'm the kind of gamer who wants to do it all when I get into a period project, so I know what will happen if I give in...

Gallic Cavalry

These are loopies by 1st Corp:

Or should that be loonies?  Anyway, I bought the men really cheaply at Carronade in Falkirk and then purchased the horses to go with them - overall, a quick way to put some cavalry together.

The bags the guys were in were labelled "Gallic/German cavalry".  I based them in the same style as my Romans and Seleucids.

They saw their first outing last week at Claymore as Galatian cavalry, and performed reasonably well.

Unlike the infantry, I tried stripes and checks on this lot.  I think they came out okay, even though it's my first attempt.

To finish off, here's a close-up of nutters in action.  I'm quite pleased with the final result.

Welcome to Amylum, and thanks to Joel Houston

A hello to Amylum who has joined.  Blogger won't let me see if you have a blog, so apologies if you do - I can't link to it yet.  Also, thanks to Joel from Hobbies in the States for pointing out that one my links doesn't work any more.  Joel has lots of radio-controlled goodies.  He also has products which may be of interest to gamer people.  There is a card holder that would be ideal for card-driven games like Command & Conquer or Piquet, a good way of minimising clutter.  He also has some good looking hobby knife sets for the serious modeller/clumsy gamer like me who keeps breaking them; have a look!

Magnesia at Claymore

A few shots courtesy of Alan:

Above: the army deployments, Seleucids on the left and Romans on the right as you look at the photo.  Taken from the flank with the bit of river (the Roman left).  In the foreground the best of the Seleucid mounted troops led in person by Antiochus face off against a Latin legion.

Above: this one shows the legionary deployment, from the perspective of the left rear of the Roman army.  Each legion has two waves of 12 Velites, followed by two 24-figure units of Hastati, two 24-figure Principes units, and finally two 12-figure Triarii units.

Photo number three shows the deployment of the elephants between components of the phalanx in the Seleucid centre.

The Seleucid centre left, from a Roman's perspective.  The phalanx has a bunch of Galatians to its flank (on the right as you look at it), then loads of light infantry.  It's nice to get some closer shots of the units.

A shot showing more of the phalanx plus elephants.

A full table shot plus gamers.  In the right foreground you can see the scythed chariots having some limited success, which is a lot more than they usually manage. 

A column of Seleucid cataphracts threatens to break through (figs by Essex).  Taken from the viewpoint of some Achaean thureophoroi who are about to have a bad time - they are quaking just off camera at this point.

A nice close-up of the successful unit of Argyraspides, as opposed to the rubbish who were wiped out to a man.  These belong to Donald.

And a big thanks is also due to Jonathan for "distressing" the mats to make them look a lot more varied.

Claymore 2011

Yesterday we put on Magnesia at Claymore in Edinburgh.  Photos of our game and of the show as a whole can be seen here: http://wappinshaw.blogspot.com/2011/08/claymore-pictures.html

Thanks are due to Michael for being so prompt with these.  Alan also took quite a few, which I'll post here at one point.

Our table was in a good location, being the first to be seen as folks came into the main hall.  We seemed to generate quite a lot of interest, although I'm not sure how much of it spilled onto Chris and Phil's Society of Ancients table right next to the game.  We did get an invite from the Falkirk club to come over and put a game on there one evening.  With Tactica II hopefully being released soon, they want to see a playtest because they've been looking for a good ruleset to play to conclusion on their club evenings, which are Mondays.  I'm thinking that we might take a standard-sized campaign battle through on the Monday of the September weekend, if they are on that evening.  Mick from 1st Corps came over to say hello too, which was nice - he knows my Romans are pretty much all from his range.

One thing that did please me was that the Han Chinese game from Carronade won best in show, or whatever they call it - 1st prize, anyway.  Well deserved, I thought.

Magnesia was a draw, which was a good result for the Seleucids.  Much better than last time, and certainly a lot better than they managed historically.  Simon ran the left of the Seleucids, against Paul.  Surprisingly, the scythed chariots did quite well for a change, mainly because half of Eumenes' skirmishers got too close and were dispersed as a result.  The chariots inflicted a few hits on the Roman/Pergamene cavalry before being routed, and only one of the Seleucid Galatian cavalty units was disordered.  This wing was more or less a draw.  On the Seleucid right, Billy attacked with the cream of the cavalry and the Argyraspides, and had a bad time.  I ran the Seleucid centre.  I deliberately sent the elephants forward to die horribly while inflicting a few hits on Hastati.  The good thing about this was that the rubbish morale phalanxes were not affected by routing elephants because they were too far away.  The Romans advanced aggressively, but a gap opened up between their centre and their left, which was in combat against Billy.  I was able to gain superiority at this junction against the left Roman legion.  Overall, the phalanx did well, probably because this part of the Romans (Gordon and David) didn't wait for their left to destroy Billy's forces.  So it was even honours on our left and centre, and not so good on our right.  We called it a day when we had lost 11/13 breakpoint units, and two legions were in trouble.

I was expecting more of our club players to take part, especially as many had said they were happy for us to put on such a large game.  Fewer of them went this year, and most wanted to see the rest of the show, so I ended up playing a major role rather than umpiring and talking to the interested folks (although we all did plenty of that anyway).  It was all very time consuming, which is why we didn't finish quite as planned.  I'd recommend that next year whoever is going should take advantage of the ability to set up the evening beforehand - that leaves more time for the game and show stuff in general on the Saturday itself.

On the Painting Tray: August 2011

Still making the final touches to a batch of 30 Gallic cavalry.  They'll be finished in time for Claymore this Saturday, which will be their first outing.  I'll take photos at one point.  After that, I have some Parthian horse archers to paint for Willie's army.