A foray into the Tonkin Wars

This week has been a quiet one on the hobby front with just one game, a Volley and Bayonet game set in the Tonkin Wars.  Jon, Alastair, and Adrian, popped around. Jon brought his Tonkin Wars 15mm armies and we fought na fictional scenario he'd devised to reflect the Chinese/Vietnamese pursuit of a defeated French force.

The French commanders were conducted a withdrawal in the face of a very close pursuit by the Chinese. The French failed in their endeavours.

We are still renovating.. a new army from the dusty depths

Um, there I was pondering what to do next and.. well.. the war band just screamed out to me. I acquired these 25mm war band figures second hand over 25+ years ago (can't recall the manufacturer), all block painted, and now with quite a few broken weapons after surviving over 14000 earthquakes. So, we have enough war band for a Big Battle DBA army, or a Big Battle HotT Barbarian army, or a significant chunk of the infantry component of a Kings of War Kingdoms of Men army, or an Armati Early German/Barbarian army.

Here's the deal ... glue back some of the missing spears which are sitting in the box,  touch up the chipped paintwork, give them a black wash, a bit of a highlight, redo the bases with black edging and static grass, and they should see service in whichever genre I choose.

Here are the first five bases (these were test bases), with another 29 to go.

They can even work in with the Huns in several of those rules genres. Hey .. a real win-win.

Hunnic Horde - ready for action

The great renovations is complete. Fifty two bases of Hunnic types have been touched up (purely in  a platonic painting sense, you understand), washed (in a 'making dirtier' sense), and given nice 'scenic'ed'  (is that even a word?) bases replete with sand, highlights and static grass.

Why? Well, because they were there, and because they would give me another army that looks reasonable on the table (more on that later). This gives me the option of Big Battle HotT (with a few additions) at 72 points, or Big Battle DBA (which I am warming to once more), or Armati (which I still love too).

So here is the Hunnic Horde - 52 bases worth.

The entire Horde.

Attila on the right, and a Goth type general on the left. 

Hunnic nobles, knights.

Hunnic light horse up close

The Airfix Hussar conversions, as you can see they are not too pretty up close. However as they say 'quantity has a quality of its own'. I pondered attribution of the comment. It seems there is debate about who said it. I have seen it attributed to Napoleon, and to Stalin. I even found this:

The general principle that quantity begets quality is a key tenet of the Marxist theory of dialectical materialism, as formulated by Marx and Engels, phrased as the law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Who-said-Quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-own

Regardless of who said it, it certainly seems to fit the bill as an observation on my particular Hun army.

The slightly tricky aspect of all this is that I seem to have accumulated more Huns that I am likely to use at one time in any of the game systems I like. These numbers were originally accumulated for WRG 3rd Edition, and then DBM, neither of which I play today.

Oh well, at the risk of seeming to be far too philosophical for a hobby blog, can you ever have too many Huns?

And this arrived the other day..

How could a small parcel like this be connected with the Huns?

Impetuous pirates swept aside ... arrrrrrrr

First game for a few weeks, and Adrian and I opted for a small game combo: a HotT game followed by a small renaissance Armati game (there was a beer in there, too).

I grabbed my two new HotT armies, orcs and pirates, and opted to field the pirates myself.

The pirates were defending, and ended up with a large forest in the centre of their deployment zone. No idea what came over me but I decided to advance out of the forest even though there were two orc chariots (knights) fast approaching. What's worse, I didn't double rank them.. this was never going to end well.

The lines approach

I'd thought that I'd attach the flanks with the airboat on the left, and the hero and magician on the right. Well, it seemed like a good plan at the time.....

Starved of PIPs, the airboat was well out of the action, and the hero on the right, supported by the magician, managed to lose combats twice

The 'hero' recoiled by an orc war band

The lines hit...

The pirate line disintegrated, losses included the pirate general ... and it was all over

At least the pirate air boat looked pretty

... as did the pirate magicians (the sirens on the rocks)

So then it was Muscovites vs Ottomans in an Armati renaissance stoush. Just a few photos of Adrian's beautiful 15mm figures (mostly Mike's Models IIRC).

Suffice it to say that I commanded the Muscovite army, and was for the second time in the evening handed my 'head on a pike'.

A great evening with two awesome games.

Old enmities

It's been a while since we had played Armati, so Adrian and I managed a game of ancients, pitching Egyptians against Hittites, reliving old enmities. These are both Adrian's armies, as usual in 15mm. By Adrian's admission, the figures are old and the Egyptians are showing their age with a little metal rot having broken a few small pieces. However to me they look great. I won't offer the more usual AAR, just a few photos to enjoy.

Assyrian foot

Clash of chariots on the Hittite right, Egyptian chariots facing

Egyptian foot advancing

The heavies clash in the centre

The strong Hittite left clashes with the weaker Egyptian right

The game was an Egyptian victory. I had mis managed the organisation of the Hittites, leaving the chariots in too large units too large to allow maneuver. This deprived me of the use of the Hittite superiority in chariots.

As ever however, what a great game.

A quick flick at Armati

Bit of a change last night .. a renaissance game using the Armati rules. No tedious AAR, just a few shots to give the feel, and show off Adrian's awesome 15mm figures. The armies were Turks and Austrian Imperialists.

Renaissance 'gaming and DBR

I've had  along standing interest in the renaissance as  a wargames period, and partly acquired (form Stuart A, wargames friend from waaaaaaaay back), partly painted a Royalist ECW army many years ago. I fell out with the DBR rules (that's probably a couple of decades ago).

A couple of years back Keith introduced me to the condensed scale DBR (DBA sized games using DBR), and I clearly enjoyed them so much I sorted the basing of the entire Royalist camp (they'd been based in thin card, and my preference these days is for thicker bases that don't slide around as much, abut each other more easily etc.) I don't recall the games, but they obviously had an impact.

I hadn't got back to the rules since then, and when Keith suggested a game last Friday I suggested DBR. We played 300 points in a thoroughly enjoyable evening's game. Basically I had a ball (although that is as much to do with the company as the game), and it remind me of PRECISELY the reason I play games in the first place.

My own bumbling incompetence  alongside some good coaching from Keith, gave me a win, but that was immaterial and inconsequential in the context of the game. It was just damned good 'gaming.

I've been pottering with Armati rules for renaissance for a few years now.  This latest great experience in no way diminishes my liking for Armati. These are still good rules too. I was again pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed DBR. Interestingly I have enough ECW bases/figures that I could field a 300 point Royalist army AND a 300 point Parliamentarian army.

Matched opponents .. does it come any better?

So, more DBR looks to be around the corner.

Trajan in Germany ...

Friday night's attempt at a Volley and Bayonet game was stymied by illness and fatigue, so we managed an impromptu Armati game with Trajanic Romans against Ancient Britons. I hauled out masses of 25mm figures that have not had the 21st Century Robin painting treatment (i.e. they are as they were painted 25+ years ago). We managed two games in the evening, the Romans winning convincingly in both encounters. Just a few shots of the armies in the first of the two games. Despite the painting quality, quantity still has a quality of its own. It's been a while since I played Armati and I'd forgotten what a good game it gives.. "things to do" list: play more Armati soon.

These are Minifigs Romans that were bought back in the early 1980s.

The cavalry here are actually Huns used to proxy as AB cavalry. I converted these from.. wait for it ... Airfix napoleonic British Hussars.. WAAAAY back in the late 70s.... well, you did that sort of thing back then, didn't you.

EEE by gum  .. them were the days eh laaad!!