‘Bull’s hide shields being dressed in line, they rushed at the Danaans,

certain that these could not resist the charge that swept now on the black ships.’

-Homer, The Iliad

Despite completing the 6mm Trojan Wars project (for now), I’ve been quietly plugging away on a few more miniatures for the 28mm version.

Here we have Nestor, Menelaus and a young (as yet unnamed) champion of the Achaeans. I don’t feel that he’s a major player as he doesn’t have a bronze breastplate or helmet, but he definitely has some heroic speeches in him!

These are all Wargames Foundry miniatures. I’ve done my usual method at the moment, which is base coating in GW Contrast/ Army Painter Speedpaints over a white undercoat, followed by assorted highlights in acrylics.

The bronze (my favourite part of the paintwork) is added after matt varnishing. After a basecoat of dark brown or black, I paint all the bronze with Vallejo Brass. This is followed up by a wash of Winsor and Newton Nut Brown ink and then a highlight of Vallejo Gold, with a tiny amount of Army Painter Sjining Silver on blade edges. As usual, I’m not looking to win any painting prizes, just trying to get some colourful minis onto the gaming table.

The heroes are on 30mm round bases from Warbases – I will label them up with their names for Iliad gaming.

Warriors are on a 20 x 25mm round-cornered base (or equivalent for multi-bases), again from trusty old Warbases.

These Achaeans are headed for the Lard Workshop at Britcon 2024 in Nottingham, where they will be taking on the Amazons in a heroic clash using my (still forthcoming) Midgard Heroic Battles rules.

With this in mind, I also set up a few photos with the opposition. Nearly all the Amazons are by Lucid Eye Publications with a few conversions.

Unusually for me, backdrops this time are not from Jon Hodgson, as I’m eagerly awaiting the new books for some more Mediterranean options.

Instead, these are photos from my travels printed out at A3 by my chum Pete.

Hopefully I can recapture something like this on the gaming table at Britcon.

Finally, here’s one of the survivors off on his travels somewhere mythic!

Next up in the project will be some chariots and Sea Peoples.

Sunday 19th May saw myself, Tom, Pete, Andy and Martin crawl out of our beds far too early and get on the road to the awesome show that is Partizan at Newark Showground. Setting up on the edge of the Lard Zone, we put up our double-headed game format to promote my forthcoming Midgard Heroic Battles rules. It’s all very well telling people that your rules will work with any scale of miniatures, but it’s far better to show them!

So this time we had Trojan Wars in 6mm back-to-back with a battle from Tolkien’s Silmarillion in 28mm. This also neatly showcased the fact that Midgard can be used across the spectrum of historical, mythical and fantasy gaming.

Jon Hodgson (of Handiwork Games and Jon Hodgson Backdrops ) had kindly granted us permission to use two of his pieces as backdrops for the battles, so we had a lovely vista on both games.

Once I had micro-managed every single miniature and piece of terrain into its correct location, we had a quick team briefing and then got stuck into the games. While it’s fun to have two games on show, of course, it’s double the work for manning them, and we try to have games being played as well as being available to talk.

I played through several turns of the Silmarillion game with Pete and Andy in between chatting with everyone passing by, so the battle moved at a leisurely pace on my side of the table.

Tom and Martin took the Trojan Wars game so I apologise for the lack of photos of this – Tumhalad was taking up most of my attention!

I didn’t see the action develop in the Trojan Wars game but understand that Hector challenged Achilles to single combat, and found himself being dragged three times round the walls of Troy by his heels…

Back to the Battle of Tumhalad…the Orcs deployed on three sides of the battlefield, with the Elves of Nargothrond trapped with the River Ginglith to their backs.

Surrounded, the Elves elected to throw their archers forwards and harass the Orcs as they came on.

The game featured an Elven watch tower that had been taken over by Orcs and was now manned by their drummers creating an almighty racket!

Yet more Orcs arriving from the North!

Here we have some of the Peter’s Paperboys Orcs taking part in their first Midgard game. They said that they were worried about feeling a bit flat, but were soon made welcome and no-one mentioned their 2D qualities!

Although the Elven archery felled the front ranks of the Orcs, more came on and Glaurung breathed fire upon the Noldor.

Glaurung piled into the Elven ranks but the Elves held on for a minor victory, having more Reputation tokens in their goblet at the close of play. A few more turns might have settled it, but that’d best be played out at a club night rather than a show!

Thanks for all our helpers for today and especially everyone who came and chatted – I hope we have some Midgard news for you soon.

The Partizan show in May at Newark Showground is one of the gaming highlights of my year, and we usually get the Morris & Chums group together to put on a game or two.

Tom WD got us onto the cunning/ unhinged idea of displaying in two scales at once back in 2017 (where we ran the WW1 Battle of Oppy Wood in both 12mm and glorious 54mm), and it resurfaced last year when I put together a Midgard double-header of 28mm Norse Myth (The Rainbow Bridge) and 15mm Early Medieval (The Battle of Degsastan 603).

As the forthcoming Midgard Heroic Battles* is very flexible on figure scale and setting, it’s nice to be able to demonstrate it with two different periods and sizes on the same table. This year’s ‘smaller’ game is the Trojan War in 6mm, featuring Hector and Achilles duking it out in front of the walls of Troy on a 3 x 4′ layout.

*early caveat: the rules are still in layout and I’m waiting for news about release dates. Hopefully I’ll know more by Partizan.

This game is run with two 300 point Forces (the recommended starting size for a game of Midgard – you can read more about Force sizes and composition here).

These were as follows:

GREEK FORCE

Diomedes (Level 3 Major Hero, Army Commander)

Achilles (Level 4 Legendary Hero)

Patroclus (Level 2 Minor Hero)

5 Units of Spearmen (Warriors)

2 Units of Myrmidons (Warriors)

2 Units of Archers/ Slingers (Skirmishers)

2 Units of Chariots (Light Riders)

TROJAN FORCE

Hector (Level 3 Major Hero, Army Commander)

Aeneas (Level 2 Minor Hero)

Sarpedon (Level 2 Minor Hero)

Polydamas (Level 1 Champion)

4 Units of Spearmen (Warriors)

2 Units of Lycians (Warriors)

3 Units of Archers (Skirmishers)

2 Units of Chariots (Light Riders)

Heroes in Midgard Heroic Battles need Mighty Deed markers. For 28mm gaming, we place these by the side of the Hero miniatures on the table, but for smaller scales, it works well to have them recorded on a card at the side.

For our play test game, the Greeks (played by chum Martin) decided to go aggressive and sent everyone forward.

Achilles threw an early charge with his chariots at their Trojan opposite numbers; his momentum carried the Trojans away, but in a twist of fate, he was wounded by a javelin in the melee.

Trojan Hero Polydamas, son of Panthous, boldly led the remaining Trojan chariots into Achilles and found himself being challenged to single combat by the greatest warrior of them all. Polydamas didn’t wish to lose Reputation by turning down such an opportunity, despite the fact that it was likely to be a fatal honour!

However, the Gods were most certainly not with Achilles; cautiously holding back a couple of his Mighty Deeds for a future turn, the Greek Hero fluffed his (numerous) combat dice. With a mighty flourish – and some more fortunate dice – Polydamas dispatched the wounded Achilles with a sword thrust to the heel. This sent tremors through the Greek Force as the goblet of Reputation suddenly emptied – but was it half empty, or half full?

The Trojan right flank was crumbling – Sarpedon’s unit broke and ran, leaving the Lycian Hero high and dry! He was lucky to survive the attentions of the Achaean slingers…

Having lucked out and dodged the sling stones, Sarpedon did what any Homeric Hero would do and charged Patroclus’s spearmen. Naturally, a challenge was issued and accepted. The Heroes clashed shields before Sarpedon dispatched the luckless Patroclus with a spear thrust to the neck…’and darkness engulfed his eyes’, as Homer would have put it.

With this loss, the Greek goblet of Reputation was empty, and the game was over. The Achaeans began to flee back to their black ships, hotly pursued by the victorious Trojans.

We both enjoyed the game which could have gone either way, although the fateful loss of Achilles early in the battle paved the way for the Trojan chariots to encirlcle the Greek right flank.

We look forward to replaying the battle at Partizan!