Egyptian magicians for HotT

The latest off Andy's painting table: two magician bases for his semi historical Egyptians.  I love his creativity.

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.

Controlling the Carribean .. arrrrrr

The Pirate army is finally finished, a relatively quick army in the scheme of things. It took one box of Pirates, the single galleon model I acquired some years ago, and a few palm trees.

The pirate camp.. burying treasure, arrrr

Shooters, me laaads

A horde.. lots of drunken lying around.. arrrrr

The magician base (sirens on  the rocks, arrr. an' that's not a drink, me 'earties), and the three pointers - an airboat and a couple of artillery

A bevy of of ruthless pirates.. warband of course

So a pirate army with options.. now to fight for control of the Caribbean an' all that treasure .. arrrrrrr

Not sure the army will be very powerful, but I'm thinking it's going to be fun to play.. lots of "arrrrrrr'ing" and "ahoy there, me 'earties" across the table eh!!!

Treasure Island and all that

Three more bases added for the Pirates: A Horde (featuring pirates lying around, as I thought they would), a shooter, and the camp, seen at the right rear of this photo, featuring three pirates burying treasure on a beachy shore.

I just need to complete one more two point base so that I can accommodate several variations for the army, and it will be complete.

Semi Historical Egyptians for HotT

Alongside my own HotT (Hordes of the Things) painting and army building, Andy embarked on his own army building. He had some Egyptians in the garage (alongside sooo many other boxes of figures it exhausts me just to think about them). He has opted for a semi-historical army with a 'Stargate/visitors from the stars' theme. He sent me these photos and I thought they were so good I just had to share them, with Andy's permission of course. Andy offered these comments:

"Here are some piccies of the Egyptian Army, as led by the Alien masters (who probably had a hand in building the pyramids.....).

The saucers were designed and 3d printed by me for a game Dave was working on....... he had some of the originals, these are reprints at low resolution, "proof of concept" versions you might say."

The army so far

Aerial hero.

Flyers

Shooters

The other bases completed so far are blade. On the painting tray still are a magician and God.

An' more poirates .. arrggg Jim Laaad

More pirates for the HotT army.. two artillery and two war band.

The newest batch

Artillery 

Warband

And another warband

The army now has:

1 x hero
1 x magician
1 x airboat
2 x artillery
4 x war band

This isn't a legal army in itself of course, as the army can only contain 12 points worth of stands that cost 3 or more points (the subtle but effective balancing mechanism in the rules set.)

Planned are  a water lurker, a shooter and.. hmmm, we'll see.

New Great War Spearhead scenario book

News of the newest release with a series of eastern front 1914 scenarios in Shawn Taylor's newest publication 'Summer Harvest'. Here is Shawn's comment:

Well, after about 3 years of research Summer Harvest is out. It has been both the most fun and most frustrating experience I have had yet in making war gaming material. As stated in Fall of the Double Eagle there is just not a lot of good documentation no the theatre and that which is available is often badly slanted to one side or another. Nothing exists like the detailed maps found on the western front. We as a team have done our best to make an enjoyable book of scenarios and I am confident we have done just that. All are historic in their content and as accurate in the disposition of forces as we were able to achieve. We also threw in one or two where you can use on option that was available to the commander on the ground but was not utilized. This scenario in particular is Gnila Lipa Mereschiv, this is where it was suggested to General Ruzsky, to make a hammer blow against the Austrian 16th Division.  So that scenario is played in depth and with an entire Russian Corps against a single Austrian Division that was not allowed to entrench. As well included an action with two Austrian cavalry divisions facing a mixed bag of Russians, its a very interesting scenario and tests the metal of both players.

I know of no other scenario book that deals solely with these two theaters of operation. I truly believe gamers will find challenge and fun in all the scenarios provided.

Shawn

I helped wth some of the proofing, and this is an awesome book with some fantastic historical WW1 scenarios. I suspect that most (if not all??) of the scenarios have never been seen before, and they promise some amazing new perspectives on the a number of the 1914 Russian/Austrian battles.