Walcourt, and then DBF... two extremes of our wargames hobby

 A few phot3os form a selection of games. A Volley and Bayonet refight of the battle of Walcourt, 1689, play testing one of Adrian and Jon's scenarios for the upcoming book of scenarios for the Nine Years War. I loved the look of the table.

And then for something completely different, a couple of 80 point games using the DBF rules.. Murray and Andy, Jim and me. The armies were 'rocks vs dwarves';, and Lost Worlds vs Alexandrian Macedonian.

Serbian MMGs in 1914

Just off the painting table are six 20mm MMGs for the 1914/15 Serbian division. The figures are from the Tumbling Dice range. I bought three with the MMG in firing position and three with the MMG being moved. In hindsight I wouldn't have bought the figures for the moving MMG, simply because I'm not sure they will be straight forward in game play, although I left space to put the base label at the back. That will be the how I designate the firing edge and firing arc.

The MMGs being drawn along by their crew

In classic firing position

 The figures and guns are nice sculpts, although the mount is something akin to the German Maxim 'sledge'. The photos I have of Serbian machine gunners has the gun on a conventional tripod. For example:

Source: https://www.forgottenweapons.com/vintage-saturday-serbian-maxim/

Assyrians on the attack.. action with orcs and pirates

This week we played another two trial/learning games of DBF. We opted for 80 point games, which seems to equate roughly speaking to the older 24 army point HotT games. Each army we used was composed of just one command.

The first game saw orcs against Andy's mythical Assyrians. This was the first time the Assyrians had been on the table, having originally been painted simply as 'test sprues' for HaT.

First turns, Andy throws light horse against the Orc general and support chariots, which I'd classed as knights. 

The stand on the right Andy was using as a Level 2 mage. Remember that the figures weren't originally based for HotT or DBF, so the mage is on the wrong sized base.. but we knew what it was. The figures to the left are spear

Orc blade and warbow .. the warbow getting the 'retinue' side support factor from the blade

The Assyrian general in chariot.. a hero

The orc chariots destroy one light horse and recoil the other

The battle lines clash

The orcs make a breakthrough in the centre and begin to lap around, the orc general on the right of the line destroys its opponent and pursues forward

It's very 'argy bargy' along the line, but eventually the orcs destroy over half of the Assyrian elements..

The orcs managed to destroy many of the Assyrian elements, due in no small part to Andy rolling nothing higher than a 2 in five combats.. oh dears.

On to the second game.. a slightly modified Assyrian army against pirates, which include 3 great beasts.

The pirate 'great flyer' (the air galleon) pushes forward to threat the Assyrian flank

On ly to be attacked by the Assyrian mage ... bugger

It all gets very confusing, but the airboat is attacked by the Assyrian hero

One of the great beasts flees from th Assyrian spear

The Pirate camp ...

The Assyrian hero general is attacked by pirate warband supported by the great flyer hitting it in the flank, and the hero wins

Much of the pirate right is destroyed, the ships guns that had been landed in support are looking decidedly vulnerable

The battle continues against the Assyrian hero

One of the artillery guns is attacked and destroyed...

And so the battle went to the Assyrians ... quite a 'pasting' for the pirates...  maybe next time the large pirate figures might be behemoths.

However all n all a successful pair of games.. we are getting the hang of DBF.