I’m not generally given to nostalgia, and I’ve tried to avoid the Oldhammer tendency of gamers of my age to go and re-buy their teenage collections of Citadel Miniatures from Ebay, but I crumbled when I saw these! In two separate lots in 2023/4, I picked up the original models for Grom and 15 of his goblin guard, one of the very first Regiments of Renown (RR3) issued in 1984.

In 1984, I was a whole 12 years old. Having just started playing Warhammer with the first edition boxed set (when it was billed as ‘the mass fantasy battle roleplaying game’!) and being a big fan of goblins, I had to get these. Over a couple of years, I managed to get hold of the whole regiment (4 boxes with the different command models) and painted them in glorious Humbrol enamels.

They saw action in numerous games of Warhammer 1st and 2nd edition on the family table tennis table (fortunately a useful dark green colour) and saw action in the Blood Bath at Rorke’s Drift campaign and our own version of the siege of Middenheim before being sold off during a house move in adult life.

Nevertheless, these little chaps had made an impact. The monopose Perry-sculpted models were nothing compared to what was to follow but if there was a set that encapsulated the best bits of my early gaming days, this was probably it.

Hard as it is to believe in these days of Games Workshop PLC, when Citadel released new models back in the 80s, they didn’t all have rules, and codexes were in the distant future. Some models were released for non-Warhammer systems (e.g. the fab Dungeons and Dragons range) or without a games system at all (such as the much-loved Lord of the Rings models, or the Michael Moorcock minis). Absolute anarchy!

If I recall correctly (and I may be wrong), they were introduced with a little black and white booklet which came with the ‘Forces of Fantasy’ supplement for 1st edition, and then received updated statlines for the 2nd edition in the Spring 1985 Citadel Journal. I loved the little back stories that the studio writers had put together for each regiment and this was definitely an influence on my early creativity.

Anyway, back to the plot! Having got hold of some original models, what was I going to do with them? There was a part of me that wanted to relive my Humbrol enamels days, basing on a 20mm square of mounting board with Tetrion filler and bright green paint, but I decided against it. Although my original orc and goblin army was sold off many years ago, I’ve more recently collected a more Tolkien-based orc force for my games of Midgard Heroic Battles set in Middle-earth, so I decided to go for a colour scheme to match. After trying out a test model, I got down to work on the whole unit.

After cleaning up the minimal flash on these ancient goblins, each one had a black undercoat which was followed by a dry brush of gunmetal for the armour base. I tidied this up with some black acrylic and painted the skin in traditional layers. Colours used included a variety of khaki tones – always good for orc flesh. I don’t usually bother with eyes, but these had quite bulbous ones which were’t too hard to pick out with a dark red and yellow highlight in the centre.

I tried to vary the skin tones, helmet colours and fur tunics as I went along to give some variety to the miniatures. Taking inspiration from Tony Ackland’s original artwork, I also added some shield designs to some but not all of the models.

I hadn’t been able to get hold of an original standard bearer model and decided that I didn’t really fancy selling a kidney some of the prices being asked on ebay, so I made a snap decision to do a conversion instead. This consisted of drilling out a trooper’s hand and adding a greenstuff standard.

To create the bones seen in the original Dave Andrews art and on the mini, I robbed a couple of femurs from a plastic skeleton kit by Wargames Atlantic. WA have also recently produced a werewolf kit which had a perfect clawed hand to place on the top of the pole, which gave me a nice chance to mix old and new in the same unit!

With all the models finished, I decided to base them as a single group on a 120 x 60 mm unit base (using my favourite 2mm MDF round cornered bases from Warbases, as usual). This would allow me to arrange them in a diorama fashion and offer them some protection from handling.

To add some undulation to the base, some of the back rankers were raised up on a piece of 5mm foamboard to give the impression of standing on higher ground.

With everyone glued down, I then used my usual basing paste (see my Wargames Atlantic orcs article for details) before dry brushing and adding tufts, static grass and some grit.

The final touch was an original Citadel plastic shield, painted up as one belonging to Bugman’s Dwarf Rangers, another Regiment of Renown who had history with Grom and his friends!

Photos have been taken using Jon Hodgson Backdrops. I’m not sure which is my favourite, but it’s great to have some 1980s goblins back on the table!

Now, back to the present…

These marvellous little minis came to my attention last year when Oz sculptor Mathias started posting works in progress on his Instagram account (@macefaceminiatures). 15mm isn’t my main scale, but I’d enjoyed putting together some Wiglaf and Forged in Battle minis for a recent project and was willing to have a look. Nick at Northstar passed on some samples which, I regret to say, sat on the painting table half finished as I got distracted with real life and other such stuff.

The Christmas holidays were a chance to get these finished off and based, and I’m glad I did. The sculpts have more than a nod of Copplestone about them and match well with his work on the Barbarica and Wiglaf ranges.

I confess that I was slightly intimidated by Steve Dean’s superb paint jobs on these exact minis and decided to focus on what I do, which is putting together units to get onto the gaming table. I opted to go for something along the lines of a ‘slap chop’ approach – using Contrasts/ Speedpaints to add colour over a pre-shaded base layer.

After a quick clean up, mine were sprayed black and then dry-brushed with mid grey and white acrylics to provide a graduated base. This didn’t work quite as well as when I’ve used it on 28mm minis, as some areas (especially faces) were so small that they didn’t pick up much of the grey/ white paint. This resulted in a bit of fixing up later on, where I did some manual highlights onto these areas with traditional acrylics.

I failed to take step by step photos, but the sequence was:

1. Black undercoat followed by grey and white dry brush.
2. ‘Colouring in’ main areas with GW Contrasts/ Army Painter Sppedpaints: Skin (AP Crusader Skin); Hair (GW Nazdreg Yellow); Leather/ Boots (GW Snakebite Leather, GW Gore Grunta Fur, GW Gagarak’s Sewer); Horns (GW Skeleton Horde); Spears/ Bows (GW Snakebite Leather); Helmets/ Armour/ Blades (AP Broadsword Silver).
3. Clothing – blue was the theme here! (All GW Contrasts: I used a whole mixture of Talassar Blue, Ultramarines Blue, Celestium Blue, Gryph Charger Grey, with a few leaders with Luxion Purple).
4. This was followed by some light dry brushing with Vallejo Iraqi Sand to bring up detail and touching up darker areas with various acrylics as described above. It wasn’t an exact science! Some clothing had trimmings painted on, and I highlighted and added some runic designs to the banners.
5. Shields were painted acrylic black – I wanted a contrast with the bold blue clothing.
6. Following a coat of spray varnish (Winsor and Newton Professional Matt), I added the metallic highlights. Army Painter Shining Silver was used to dot in rivets on the shields, as well as to highlight all the iron and steel. The few areas of bronze/ gold were done with my usual technique: Vallejo Brass base, wash of brown ink, highlight with Vallejo Gold.

I’m planning to use these for Midgard Heroic Battles; 80mm x 40mm bases worked very well indeed for my 15mm early medieval collection, and has become a common standard amongst 15mm players, so I went the same way with these.

The bases are 2mm round-cornered MDF from Warbases, with the heroes being based on a 20mm and 25mm circles. Frosty bases were the order of the day using Gamer’s Grass winter and beige tufts and some Woodland Scenics snow scatter.

This also gave me the excuse to use the new Winter Book from Jon Hodgson Backdrops for the photo shoot! These are the A3 versions which gave me more options on the wide shots. I’m absolutely thrilled with how good these are (though I need to raise my photography game this year!)

Having got these finished, I can now work on the next project, though I hear that some Shield Maiden cavalry are just around the corner, so there may be more to come very soon!

You can find the Hornblower 15mm range at Northstar, along with the Gamer’s Grass tufts.

I was a bit young, only 11, but this game looked pretty good (we’d seen the adverts in White Dwarf), and I think I received it for Christmas. There wasn’t a wargames club anywhere in the town where I lived, so I got together a small group of like-minded friends and we did the best we could on my parents’ table tennis table (which, at least, was green). Having played D & D, we saw all the figures as individuals rather than units, and anyway, the initial tagline of this game was ‘the mass combat fantasy roleplaying game’, so it was all a bit confusing. And brilliant fun.

Fast forward forty-ish years, and I’m sat at a gaming table with one of the original authors of Warhammer, about to demonstrate my own ‘mass battle’ game to him. I’m not sure that twelve-year old me would have believed it, but there you go.

I got to know Rick during the heyday of Warhammer Ancient Battles, the historical game produced through Games Workshop in the early noughties.

I was fortunate enough to write two supplements for WAB (El Cid and Age of Arthur, the latter with Steve Jones) which Rick maintained an involvement in before the project’s end.

Having run into Rick behind Mount Erebor at a recent show, he kindly expressed an interest in Midgard Heroic Battles, so I agreed to pop over to demonstrate the game at some point in the future. Arthurian Britain was picked as the theme, we agreed a date, and it was game on. Having survived a savaging (well, licking) from his ferocious cockapoo as I entered his house, we carried the boxes through and set up on a portion of the mighty wargames table.

I brought a couple of Forces over, the same ones that have been appearing in our official videos with Richard Clarke – Artos and the Britons and Aelle’s Saxon Raiders. These were slightly different versions of the 300-400 point sample lists that appear in the rulebook.

The scenario was to be The Red Ford – a new one currently undergoing play testing that is likely to appear in a future Midgard supplement. Rick had set out some of his terrain tiles in a 6 x 4′, to which I added my ‘drop on’ river terrain piece. The lush green banks of mine didn’t quite fit the traditional green flock of Rick’s boards, but so what?

We both had soothsayers in our ranks with the Omens Trait and elected to spend a Mighty Deed each to gut a goat (or similar oppressed small animal) and read its entrails to foretell the future. We each rolled a 5, with our prophets each reporting that it was a good day to fight, my lord, and that surely we would win the victory! (Someone must have been fibbing, but we both added two Reputation tokens to our goblets). We were therefore much amused to find this porter on in the pub at lunchtime!

Anyway, back to the plot. Artos (Rick), determined to hold up the horde of West Saxons (me) about to pour into Dumnonia, sent Gwalchmai (AKA Gawain) down to the ford. He issued a challenge to single combat which Wiglaf (and his hound) was glad to take up, as turning it down would have meant a loss of Reputation.

With both Heroes succeeding at keeping their footing in the water, the combat went back and forth as Wiglaf first wounded Gwalchmai, then was wounded back in return. In the third and final round, however, my dice came up trumps and Gwalchmai ended up in the ford, ruining his day, his trousers and his fancy shield. The Saxon Force gave a great roar of victory and surged forwards towards the crossing.

Unfortunately for Aelle, while the front of the Saxon line surged forwards, the back ranks were clearly feeling a bit reluctant and refused to obey orders despite repeated yelling and bawling from the Heroes!

A round of dreadful Command Tests – and failed rerolls using the Heroes’ Mighty Deeds – left Aelle’s front line unsupported. The Britons, in contrast, had managed an orderly advance!

Seeing Hussa and his Saxons taking the left side of the ford, Rick did what any good Arthurian hero would have done and sent Artos’s warleader Bedwyr and his heavy cavalry smashing into the Saxon lines, hoping to break them before Aelle and the rest of the Saxons got their house in order. Reputation was duly gained (+1 for a Hero leading a charge and +1 for the first charge of the game – hurrah!), helping to make up for the loss of Gwalchmai in the single combat at the start.

I’d like to say that the battle for the ford was hard-fought, but Hussa and his Saxons turned in a desultory performance, inflicting no Stamina damage on the Britons while losing half of their own. Some superb ‘support saves’ from Rick meant that the cavalry Unit shrugged off a number of blows from the Saxons.

Worse, Saxon thegn Hussa was hit by a javelin in the melee and took a wound (this was me rolling 1 on my raven dice and sadly not for the last time in this game!)

With the combat won, Bedyr’s mounted comitatus pushed the Saxons out of the river. Using the momentum of their win in combat, the supporting Unit (with the red banner) swung round to cover off Aelle’s Saxon hearthguard who would otherwise have threatened the flank of Bedwyr’s men.

Reeling from the defeat on their left, it was time for Aelle to commit everything to battle. Along the length of the river, he issued the order to charge, and an enormous melee broke out in the knee-deep water. Many Reputation tokens were earned for this glorious deed, giving the Saxons a slight edge at this point in the battle.

On the Saxons’ left, Bedwyr’s gamble of an early charge was paying off. As the fighting continued, he broke Hussa’s Unit and forced the Saxon leader to choose discretion over valour as his men fell around him; Hussa chose to retire to the rear, but at the loss of a Reputation token as Bedwyr’s riders jeered him!

Bedwyr’s supporting Unit was now fully engaged with Aelle’s Saxon hearthguard who – with indifferent dice rolling – had to settle for pushing the British cavalry up the bank and on to Artos’ side of the river. This had almost immediate consequences as Rick had held back a third Unit of mounted companions as a rearguard. Seeing the potential crisis, they hurled their javelins and plunged in to join the melee.

Now it was action all along the ford, with Artos himself riding in and joining in the melee. Despite being in the thick of it, with both sides taking damage, Artos couldn’t roll a raven to save his life, passing all his Risk to Heroes tests. What a Hero!

In sharp contrast, Osric, another of the Saxon champions fighting in the ford, promptly rolled a 1 and found himself with a sword in his head. Ouch.

On the Saxon right, Artos’s foster brother Kai found himself face to face with his opposite number, Eanfrith. It would have been rude not to issue a challenge and Kai duly did so, dispatching the Saxon in two rounds.

I rolled on the Hero Death in Combat table, hoping for at least a glorious death, but found that Eanfrith had ended up as no more than ‘food for ravens’. Which is why he doesn’t get a mention in the Arthurian legends, I guess.

The fighting on the Saxon left continued, with the wounded Hussa and Wiglaf trying to shore up their flank. A change in fortunes finally saw the lead two British cavalry Units broken, but Bedwyr survived (albeit at the cost of a Reputation token) and Artos’s rearguard had held the line.

Unfortunately for him, Aelle paid the price for pushing so deep into the British lines. Having little support, he was wounded and then killed by Artos’s cavalry, leading to a catastrophic loss of Reputation (four tokens out of the goblet). The battery on my iphone took a sudden nose dive at this point as well, so I’m afraid our chronicler was forced to use stock pictures to illustrate the rest of the report.

Although the Britons had been damaged by the loss of two of the noble cavalry Units (three Reputation points apiece), the gains resulting from Kai and Artos’s heroics managed to shore up the Reputation of the Britons. The Saxons were now almost leaderless; although they were inflicting casualties upon the British Units, several of which were on the verge of breaking, the momentum was with Artos and his warriors.

The final turn saw the critical damage done, with the Saxons losing the wounded Hussa and another Unit, emptying their goblet of Reputation. With no Heroes left in position to lead a charge, the Saxons were broken and fled, leaving the Red Ford filled with their dead. Artos and his Heroes had defended Dumnonia once again, the great warleader having an apparently charmed life in the midst of battle. The bards would sing of this for a long time.

It had been a thoroughly enjoyable game, with Rick being ever the genial host and gaining the favour of the Gods in his dice rolling as a result! (Apparently this is not a normal occurrence – the dice rolling, not the geniality). It was a massive privilege to be able to demonstrate my game to someone who has been a major influence on the wargames scene and my gaming in particular.

I was especially pleased that Rick enjoyed the game and commented favourably on the rules, in particular the ‘support saves’ mechanism. We had a chuckle about nothing really being original in wargames rules, but I hope that Midgard Heroic Battles manages to assemble them to create something new. Unsurprisingly for someone who read The Iliad in his youth, Rick picked up the heroic ethos very quickly and got stuck straight into the game with a winning combination of single combats, heroic charges and sound tactics.

My thanks again to Rick for his hospitality and hosting the game. Anyone seen that soothsayer though? The Saxons would like a word!

On the cover, we see Raedwald, King of the East Angles in the first quarter of the 7th century, (representing the ‘Historical’ element) and Celtic Goddess Morrigan (pushing ‘Legend’ and ‘Fantasy’) – these two act as guides within the rulebook, offering advice to the would-be warrior and hero throughout its pages.

Behind them, the ‘Battle’ element is fully in progress in a mountain valley, with warriors facing off, a challenge to single combat being issued, and some fearsome beasts pushing their way out of the tales of myth and legend onto the battlefield.

Of course, in addition to Jon’s outstanding art, the whole thing is topped off by the awesome logo by Paul Bourne of Handiwork Games. Gentlemen, a heartfelt thank you to you both.

Midgard Heroic Battles is due to be published by Reisswitz Press in November 2024, with pre-orders going live soon.

Somehow the second Partizan show of the year has snuck up on us, so it’s time to show what I’ve been quietly working away on over the last six weeks. This is the biggest game that I think Morris & Chums have ever put on, with around 1500 28mm miniatures on a 12′ x 8′ L-shaped table. It’s part wargame, part art project, and I hope you enjoy it!

I reckon the project started when I was around 15, creating a large sculpture of the Battle of Five Armies at school, having been inspired by reading The Hobbit and playing Warhammer.

Sadly this clay artefact has been lost to the mists of time, but the idea remained, and was poked back into life by two things: reading The Hobbit graphic novel to my son (a joy) and then watching the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies with him (some fun bits but largely a travesty of JRRT, especially the Battle of Five Armies).

While browsing pics of Historicon 2021, I also came across a lovely game of the Battle of Five Armies by David Kujit. What struck me about this was the painted backdrop, immediately setting the scene for the battle, which planted the seed for our game.

The plan then went a step further as Middle-earth games became very popular within the Midgard Heroic Battles play test group and Dave Hunter – a bit of a Tolkien fan – joined and got involved with running games. We’re going to be playing the Midgard rules on a grand scale at the show, hopefully their final appearance before expected release by Reisswitz Press in November 2024.

From there. it was perhaps a slippery slope. I can’t remember what finally pushed the button, but it may have been James Deering from the play test group suggesting he come up to Nottingham and we put on a big Middle-earth game. Anyway, one day I woke up, and told myself that’s what we were going to put on at Partizan in October. And here we are.

I dropped a line to Simon Toey, well-known on the Facebook Wargaming in Middle-earth group for his cracking Tolkien miniature projects. I’m a huge fan of Simon’s style, where he combines classic metal and newer miniatures onto diorama-style bases with some conversion and stunning basing.

Not only did Simon agree to get involved, but he also added additional pieces to the collection to bring units up to size.

Simon’s dedication is demonstrated by his new Beorn model; we had a brief discussion about the original Reaper mini being a little small for the scale of battle that we had planned.

A few minutes later, he’d ordered up a new model and then set to work swapping heads and sculpting new fur as soon as it arrived. Following a quick suggesting from me about basing, and he was hard at work putting together Beorn’s goblin victims…

Other members of the group have also chipped in and we hope to have a veritable host of Goblins, Wolves, Dwarves, Elves and Lake Men to show you at the weekend!

An honourable mention needs to go to Sam Lancashire, who is pitching in with the hobbit himself, Mr Bilbo Baggins (wearing his magic ring, of course).

Dave Hunter and I sketched out the plan for the table with help from the Facebook group; I had an idea for an L-shaped table, leaving out the ruins of Dale but keeping in both spurs of the Lonely Mountain involved in the battle. With Dave’s expert Tolkien knowledge, we put together a possible battlefield that would also meet our gaming requirements and I built a maquette to test it out.

After several design changes, I got to work creating the battlefield. This is all work in progress at the moment – I’ll do a full photo game report once Partizan is over.

Colour schemes and designs were heavily influenced by Tolkien’s artwork for the book, as this was very much the inspiration for the game.

Anyway, I need to head off and finish the layout, so hope to see some of you at The Other Partizan on October 13th!

After many months of waiting, we’re delighted to be able to announce that Midgard Heroic Battles should be released in November 2024. Following several years of writing and play testing, we can’t wait to get it out to you.  Midgard Heroic Battles will be an all-in-one volume containing the rules (including flying creatures and sorcery), five scenarios, 12 sample Force lists and an appendix to allow you to create your own Heroes and Units.

Layout and art are currently being completed by the hugely talented Jon Hodgson (Beowulf Age of Heroes, The One Ring, Warhammer Ancient Battles, Dragon Warriors, Jon Hodgson Backdrops and many more) of Handiwork Games.  We are absolutely delighted to have Jon’s input on this project which has raised the presentation of Midgard Heroic Battles to another level and can’t wait to show it off nearer the time of release.   Stunning miniature photography by Pete Jenkins also accompanies Jon’s artwork.

Midgard Heroic Battles will be published by Reisswitz Press, who will be running pre-orders from their website in the run-up to release.  A dedicated Facebook group to support the game, administered by members of the playtest team, will be launched on Friday September 20^th 2024.

More details will follow as we have them. 

All the best

James Morris (mogsymakes.net)

To celebrate the rare coincidence of both of us having a day off work at the same time, I got together with old mucker Steve Jones for a game. Although our joint history is largely ancient and medieval (we co-wrote the Age of Arthur book for Warhammer Ancient Battles way back when), Steve’s long term personal project has been the American War of Independence. Since the earliest releases by the Perry Twins (first at Foundry, then at Perry Miniatures), he has collected and painted units for the period to an incredibly high standard.

Gaming has included some Black Powder (Steve also wrote the Rebellion AWI supplement for Warlord Games) but has mostly focused on developing his own Bloodybacks period-specific rules, which are now up to version 9.0. The latest variant includes card activation for leaders and now uses D12s for most rolls – interesting stuff!

The scenario was a refight of the Battle of Oriskany 1777 – especially chosen for me as Steve knows I prefer irregular warfare and Native Americans! Oriskany (popularly known as ‘the bloodiest battle of the Revolutionary War’) was a British-led ambush on a Rebel column which was coming to the relief of the besieged Fort Stanwix.

A force comprised almost entirely of Indians staged an attack on Brigadier General Nocholas Herkimer and 800 men of the Tryon Militia, killing and wounding around half of them (including Herkimer, who died several days after the battle) before being driven off, aided by a sortie from the fort that attacked the ambushers’ camp.

Steve’s scenario included a number of features to encourage the historical events of the battle. Both sides had three commanders apiece and each turn began with rolling an average die (remember them? I don’t think I’d ever used one before) to determine command points for each leader.

The better commanders had an increased chance of gaining more command points, though everyone had a minimum of one, so there was always going to be something to do.

From a gaming point of view, I think I prefer this to Black Powder, where a duff roll for a commander can mean doing nothing at all.

Activation involved a card draw to determine which commander activated when and also random events such as the duration of each turn, the timing of the ambush and a scenario-specific thunderstorm which halted action in the real battle for around an hour.

As play got under way, the Rebel column advanced further into the woodland before the inevitable happened.

Steve and I were playing in a fairly narrative fashion, with both of us moving and dicing for different sides in different parts of the game. Once the ambush had been sprung, I had a free choice of where to place the Crown forces and went for uphill of the Rebels, both for the height advantage and to avoid getting caught in the loop of the military road.

Historically, the Indians started shooting before the Rebel column was completely over the first creek, and this was replicated in our game.

Steve’s terrain is pretty much entirely scratch built. The cloth is a piece of polar fleece with a lot of paint to add extra layers, and it’s ideal for this kind of undulating terrain where the contours have been created with boxes, foam and mats underneath.

I should point out that nothing on the table was my work (apart from the roads, which I made and sold to Steve about 25 years ago!)

Joseph Brant’s Mohawks were the first to appear, with a couple of large units manifesting themselves uphill of Colonel Ebenezer Cox’s Tryon Militia and opening fire at very close range.

Cox was luckier than his historical self and survived the first first volley.

More Indians went for the baggage towards the rear of the column, but were held up by the small size of the unit and the fact that Black Snake was focusing his energies on the firefight further up the road.

Indian commander Black Snake pulled up directly opposite Herkimer’s command and again opened fire.

Colonel Visscher was doing a fine job of holding the rear of the column together, risking himself at several points as he encouraged his men.

Having escaped the first volley, Colonel Cox rapidly rallied his militia and turned them to face the threat from both The Mohawks and a few British units that had deployed at the front of the column.

After an initially fierce firefight, the cards dictated that the thunderstorm had arrived.

In the actual battle, this was so heavy that it halted all action, and we did the same in our game, only allowing some rallying.

Within an hour, the thunderstorm cleared and the combat started again.

Brant’s Mohawks decided to risk an all-out charge on the wavering British centre. Despite inflicting casualties, they were unable to break the Tryon Militia and fell back.

This highlighted one of the things that I really like about Bloodybacks; units can, with a good activation roll (and leadership) take multiple actions in a turn. It reminded me a little of the Song of Blades And Heroes mechanisms, where you can push your luck and take up to three activations. This nicely represents the bursts of activity in this kind of battle and kept the action moving.

Brant’s warriors broke and ran, freeing up Herkimer’s Militia to attempt to move down the road and join up with Visscher’s rearguard.

By this point, Visscher had successfully brought up some more Tryon Militia to support Herkimer and fend off the attentions of Chief Black Snake’s warriors.

Feeling bolstered by a couple of good command rolls and feeling the need to break the deadlock, the Tryon Militia attempted to drive off their ambushers with a charge.

With some less than auspicious dice-rolling, this all went a bit Pete Tong, and both Herkimer and Visscher fell as casualties during the combat.

Steve’s rules don’t currently have a Leader casualty table, but after rolling a 5 and 6 respectively, we decided that Herkimer had been mortally wounded and Visscher brained with a tomahawk.

The leaderless Tryon Militia then found themselves being charged in the flank by the British Light Infantry, who had pursued down the valley at the behest of Johnston. Rude!

The Militia had had enough, and broke and ran. This was enough to seal the fate of the Rebel column. The rearguard began to retreat, leaving the wagons as prizes for the remaining Indians.

A super narrative game with some awesome minis and scenery. I was glad that I had Steve there to talk me through his rules and will doubtless play again in the future!

You can follow Steve’s Painting Shed on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paintingshedblog

‘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.

Rebels and Patriots is one of the rules sets that’s been sat on my shelf – unplayed – for years. I enjoy all the different variants that sprang out of Dan Mersey’s original Lion Rampant, but this was the only one I hadn’t tried. A quiet Sunday afternoon was just the time to sort that out!

During lockdown, I collected two forces for Muskets & Tomahawks from Galloping Major miniatures with a view to adapting the rules to game the rather more obscure conflicts between the native Tlingit tribe of Alaska and Russian traders in the 1790s-early 1800s.

While I enjoy a bit of M & T, it was clear that it wasn’t going to work straight out of the box with two forces with similar composition. Every Tlingit unit would be classed as ‘Indians’ and activate on the same card, therefore producing a rush of activity all at once in the game; also, we experimented with Tlingit in a test game and found the close combat perhaps too deadly for this setting. These small issues were nothing that couldn’t be solved with some house rules, but I wasn’t sold on it for the Tlingit skirmishes.

Rebels & Patriots is a 2019 Osprey collaboration between Dan Mersey and Michael Leck to game large skirmishes in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. It uses the core ideas of the ‘Rampant’ series (skirmish units in ‘blobs’ with no facing, activation rolls on 2D6 per unit, leaders permanently attached to units, simple D6-driven combat and shooting, etc). However, each edition treats these slightly differently, and R & P is no exception. I’ll drop in some notes about these changes in the battle report below.

We generated two 24-point ‘companies’ for the game based mostly on my collection, of which Tom commanded the British and I took the French.

BRITISH

2 units of Line Infantry (12 figures each); Aggressive @5 points each

2 units of Skirmishers (Rangers, 6 figures each): Good Shooters, Aggressive @5 points each

2 units of Skirmishers (Militia, 6 figures each) @2 points each

2nd Lt Wensleydale commanded the British and rolled the special rule The Quartermaster’s Brother, meaning that his unit had gained extra ammunition for target practice and could reroll a failed firing dice each turn!

FRENCH

2 units of Compagnies Franches de la Marine (Light Infantry, 12 figures each) @6 points each

1 units of Canadien Militia (Skirmishers, 6 figures) : Sharp Shooters @6 points

2 units of Huron (Natives, small units, 6 figures each) @3 points each

Commanding the French was Lt Roquefort. I rolled a magnificent double 6, meaning that his officer trait was Heroic Leader – a +2 bonus to all his leadership rolls, but a higher chance of getting shot! Perfect!

Playing the Scenario My Enemy’s Enemy from the R & P rulebook, we laid out a 4 x 4′ table with an Indian village in the centre and started in opposite corners. The village contained a unit of Natives that had not yet declared its allegiance but would do so as soon as a French or British unit approached within 6″

The first couple of turns whizzed by as we advanced on the village. One change to the Rampant series was that all units activated (and passed morale tests) on a 6+ on 2D6. This really speeded up play, without having to look up and down at command sheets to remember which unit activated on which roll.

Like Dan’s colonial rules The Men Who Would Be Kings, R & P dispenses with the mechanism of failing an activation roll ending your turn. If you fail a roll, you simply move onto the next unit until all have had a chance to activate. Personally, I missed the comedy/ stress (delete as appropriate to your personality type) of failing an activation and passing play straight to the other side, but this gave a smoother game and would scale up to a larger number of units with ease ( something that Lion and Dragon Rampant don’t do well).

With a movement of 8″ and the bold leadership of Lt Roquefort, the French reached the village first. Fortunately, the locals turned out to be friendly (on a random dice roll) and agreed to open fire on the approaching British, resulting in Lt Wensleydale nearly getting toasted by a round of musketry.

This made the redcoats hesitate. Wensleydale sent some of his Rangers round the side of the village, where they quickly found themselves under fire from Hurons working with the French.

A British militia unit was sent in to pin down the Huron, who ended up pulling out their tomahawks with the expected effect. However, several casualties from the combat and return fire from the Rangers reduced the Huron to half strength, making them pretty much ineffectual for the rest of the skirmish.

One of the changes to the Lion Rampant/ Dragon Rampant engine for R & P is the potential to have up to two Disordered markers following failed morale tests: one marker means the unit is disordered, two is broken and three is routed. This slightly more granular system means that units hang around longer, although can be quite ineffectual when damaged (especially if at half strength, when they have a Permanent Disorder marker that cannot be rallied off). It’s a nice touch, especially with games like this involving four or five units.

Another interesting mechanism to note here is that small units (6 figures) roll the same number of dice as standard units (12 figures), but are less resilient. This seemed to work really well, with the 12-figure units having far more staying power over the course of the game. INatives can also be fielded as large 18-figure units, giving a lot of options for tailoring units for particular games and settings.

Unfortunately, the new French allies inside the village had now taken a drubbing from British fire and were forced to withdraw, being replaced by Lt Roquefort’s heroic Compagnies Franches.

Faced with sterner opposition, the Redcoats took the obvious option and advanced with fixed bayonets into the village. The resulting melee drove the French back, but worse, our hero Roquefort was laid low! His Heroic Leader trait had kept his men moving in the early stages of the game, but now he paid the price.

This transpired to be the turning point of the game. Without a leader adding +2 to all activation tests within 12″ (i.e. meaning that most units could activate on a 4+ on 2D6), the French were rudderless and failed a few critical activations that could have turned the tide.

Nevertheless, we kept on playing as the French force was far from broken. The British militia jumped the woodpile and took position inside the village, while the depleted Redcoats drove off the remaining Indians and formed close order around the camp fire.

French attempts to get round the flanks were foiled by Rangers shooting at a distance and a number of cries of ‘merde!’ as they failed several activation tests. The Canadien Militia – so effective in the early stages of the game, with a range of 24″ and 4+ to hit – found themselves without targets due to the Redcoats moving into the village.

The Compagnies Franches attempted one more attack to drive the British out, but volley fire put paid to them, and the game finished after 9 turns with a win for King George’s men.

Overall, this was a thoroughly enjoyable game which cracked along at an excellent pace (assisted by the universal 6+ target number for activations and morale) . We really enjoyed the tweaks to the Rampant system, all of which felt very appropriate to this theatre. I was initially concerned that the ability of muskets to shoot every turn wouldn’t feel right, but we had our share of failed activations (clearly more powder being passed up the line) and low-level shooting (one clever feature of the Natives unit type is that they have to perform a Skirmish action to shoot, shooting with half their dice but being able to move as well). The option to field units at different sizes gives a great deal of flexibility and will probably make Rebels & Patriots a shoe-in for my forthcoming Tlingit project.

There was a bit of maths at the end (the usual trying to calculate 33% etc of units lost for morale purposes) but this didn’t detract from what had been an excellent game with plenty of memorable moments and chances for both sides to win. This rules set most certainly won’t be spending the next four years on the shelf!

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.