Woolston DBA tournament

Last weekend I played in the second annual Woolston DBA Challenge (for official results follow this link) organised by Keith McNelly. There were 9 of us playing across 6 rounds, with local players taking a bye to allow those who had travelled from Timaru (south of Christchurch) to get a full complement of 6 games in.. fair and just reward for travelling to join us!!).

I took my Spanish (Celtiberians, with 6 x warband) - the only 15mm army I have that fitted the period of the tournament. I had had little success with these guys before and felt that they were probably the easy beats of the day.. how wrong I was!! I defended in all 5 games, and made sure that I used the max 2 steep hills, and 3 other pieces of rough ground. I wanted to disrupt my opponent's deployment, and give myself the best opportunity to occupy rough ground as I wasn't convinced that the army would stand up particularly well to the pike and spear armies that I thought would be predominant on the day.

The first game was against Brian's Bosphorans. Brian had to work hard to advance around the terrain and get at me (all photos are taken from the Spanish side of the table).

He advanced his knights down his left (my right).

I attempted to delay with my light horse, but these guys didn't last long.

My general supported by a warband ended up defending my flank (and my camp) against the knights.

Brian pushed me back to the camp, and a couple of lucky die rolls on the day saved my general, and saw one of his knights destroyed before we had to call time on the game (the format allowed one hour per game). Lucky for me, as given another couple of turns Brian would have taken the victory.

The next game was against Stephen's Numidians. Stephen swooped on my right flank with his light horse while pinning me with his auxilia in the centre.

Things were looking dodgy on my right as Stephen cunningly worked around my flank with the light horse supported by a couple of auxilia units.

Seeing that the writing would be on the wall if I sat back and continued to cede the initiative to him, I advanced my warband against his auxilia in the centre, and a series of lucky die rolls on my part saw me take out his centre and the game. Frankly this was a case of good luck for me and bad for Stephen as he had totally outmanouvred me as far as I was concerned. We were both a little 'gobsmacked' at the result!!

The third game was against Joel's new Lysimachid army. This was tough. Joel organised himself well, and was methodical and careful in how he advanced, trying to make sure that each attack was well organised to maximise the chance of success.

Most of the action took place on the Spanish left where I clung to the steep hill like glue, and effectively fought Joel to a standstill.

The game ended in a well fought draw.

After my bye round I faced Simon and his Polybians. Again this was a well organised attack against a Spanish defence based on the terrain.

Simon organised himself well and attacked on the Spanish left (his right).

He went in with Spear, and cavalry. That's his general on the right of the picture attacking Spanish warband.

Yet again luck favoured the Spanish, with Simon losing both a spear base and his general in the one turn, giving the Spanish their second victory of the day. Once more we were both surprised .. the outcome wasn't one that had looked likely as Simon organised his attacks.

Last game of the day was against Jim and his Ptolemaics. Jim was top of the table and unknown to me I was actually vying for one of the top spots at that stage .. yeah right!! Jim is another player who took his time and organised his attack carefully.

Jim opted to hold in front of my warband on the steep hill, and attack my left flank.

The action around the flank was hard fought, with the initiative in this battle swinging both ways.

Finally Jim took the game with a series of combat victories on the Spanish left, leaving him the only commander to defeat the Spanish on the day... a well deserved victory on his part, and a fitting end to a fantastic game, and a fantastic day.

Thanks to the other 8 players for a wonderful day of good hunoured and well fought battles, and to Keith for organising the day.

HotT Soviets - Part 2

More Soviet HotT elements off the painting blocks. As I mentioned in the initial post, a HotT Soviet armyshould have Hordes - riflemen from a seemingly inexhaustible population stock (we now know of course that this was far from true, but this IS a fantasy game system!). So six elements of Hordes to start with.

I thought that Soviet hordes should have riflement marching forward, being shot away, but with always more ofm them to come. So I dug out of that miraculously little box of bits all of the marching figures I could find, and also those figures you got with men stumbling forward having been shot.. remember the ones in the Airfix boxes?

Now I had also planned the next stand to be a Hero, but Stan's advice that a commissar should be a Cleric, and the fact that the central figure here looked stern and Commissar-like, just seemed too much  like a good idea to pass up. The figure was a head swap I did 35 years ago, putting a Soviet helmeted head onto a general figure from those delightful WW1 Germans. What's with the flag? I know Soviet troops didn't go into battle with flags flying, but.. hey! This is HotT.. I can have a flag if I want one!!!!

So here is the Soviet HotT army so far:

1 x Cleric(Commissar)
1 x God (Artillery barrage)
2 x Knights (T34 Medium tanks)
6 x Shooters (Submachine gunners)
6 x Hordes (Riflemen)

More than enough to be going on with, with a few choices to make up the 24 army points.

I'll potter with a few more ideas (Stan's suggestion that a sniper would make a Hero is too good to pass up!!). I think this will be relatively easy to push up to a double army for some larger battles; I've got the taste for these larger battles after Carruthers' first foray.

HotT Soviets... stage 1 complete

Here is the preliminary Soviet World War 2 HotT army, an exercise in re-using existing figures. The infantry had previously been block painted, so I gave them a couple of coats of the Citadel wash (Badab Black) and based them up.

The composition with these stands is:

1 x God (Artillery bombardment)
2 x Behemoths (T34 tanks)
6 x shooters (Soviet sub machinegunners).

A close-up of the behemoths and the God. The classification of the artillery as a HotT God seemed logical to me. Artillery was mostly controlled at Corps or Army level, and so lacked local command control. It was therefore likely to be hard to get, and as easy to lose (unless being used in the deliberate attack of course, when even then it's use was carefully pre-planned).  This sounds like a HotT God to me.

This initial composition is not quite as I'd envisaged the complete army, and I have enough figures to complete some Horde bases (Soviet Riflemen).

However I'd initially seen the T34s as knights, and they will revert to that classification once I can complete enough additional stands to compose the 24 army points required for game play.

I was also on the look out for a Sturmovik, or a Pe2, in 1/144th scale to use as an airboat, and maybe a Yak 5 or two for flyers. A quick foray today to a local model shop hasn't provided anything suitable, so this may be one of those acquisitions that requires  a little patience. The discovery will be all the sweeter!!!

Imperial Guard in action ...

Dozens of pairs of eyes peered into the dawn gloom, watching nervously for signs of the alien invaders.

"Niner this is 10A, over"  a whispered voice over the vox caster.

"Niner over."

"10A, we have movement to our front over."

"Niner, Roger."

This might have been the opening conversation whispered over the command net as the small Cadian Defence Force unit waited in the dawn for first signs of the Tau forces that had been identified landing on the planet. The Guard forces had stolen the initiative from the Tau forces in a Seize and Control mission, and crept forward to set up a fire base. The Guard commander had deployed a unit of veterans to secure his left while pushing his invaluable unit of stormtroopers out onto his right flank, supported by the solitary Guard Leman Rus available to his small detachment.

The Tau commander  pushed his mobile fiorces forward on his right, while holding centre and left with units of Kroot mercenaries.

Fire from the Leman Rus, and the Storm troopers, eliminated the unit of Kroot that had been holding the Tau left flank. The Tau commmander was left on his own holding the flank, although it was a task he was more than up to.

Initial volleys from the Guard fire base inflicted heavy casualties on the first unit of Fire Warriors to deploy to their front, and these troops fell back.

However the Tau mobility allowed the Tau commander to outflank the Cadian flank guard.

The Cadian left was now the scene of heavy action and the Tau Firewarriors won a vicious fire fight.

As the Cadian firebase was neutralised, so the Kroot warriors positioned in the centre pushed off the central feature and towards the Cadian objective.

The Cadian stormtroopers on the Cadian right pushed forward to outflank the Tau left, but were caught in a hail of fire from the Tau battlesuits.

A vain last attempt to advance and flame the Kroot warriors from their position failed, and more Cadian troopers found themselves exposed in the open.

With just one squad of troopers left to him, supported by the Leman Russ, the Cadian commander could see that his inital defensive line was lost, and he ordered his troops to fall back further.

Adrian, Andy and I were trying out 1000 points of Guard against Adrian's Tau. The force is still very imbalanced, and so Adrian opted to take only lighter forces in order to try to balance the game a little more. As I don't yet have the full complement of Guard forces, I used a couple of Rhinos as proxy chimera to transport two Guard squads.

I clearly have a lot to learn about how to fight with Guard (or any 40K forces for that matter). Next time!!!!

The game was a lot of fun; vicious fire fights meant old fashioned 'tit-for-tat' exchange of units. It was the initial destruction of the las gun heavy weapons squad supporting the Cadian left flak, allowing Adrian to assault the Cadian left with his fire warriors, that was the turning point of the game.

Hidden in a box .... another opportunity!!!

I'm in a tidying mood and that's dangerous. I came across this box of WW2 Rusian infantry in 20mm plastics that a good friend had given to me a number of years ago (his signal that he had foresworn figure 'gaming for the time being). He thought that they might be a good supplement to my own collection (which has since been rebased for the Crossfire rules).

However what I did see was an interesting HotT army (inspired by a WW2 German army that colleague Tony created and used a couple of years ago). It would be different from his Germans though, as the Soviet army created HotT images of shooters, hordes, knights and more. So here is the start.

Sub-machinegunnrs based as shooters, and a couple of old T34s for knights. I also thought that given the image I have of the Soviet army of the time, maybe artillery might best be represented as a God, so there will be a base of shell explosions to represent artillery.

The figures were block painted, so there will be some 'tarting up' with a few washes etc to bring out the detail on the figures and improve their overall appearance on the table (I'm not repainting them though, this is all about re-using what I've got).

And, yes, following on from a post last week, I bought another three of those 15mm buildings. Here they are undercoated black, ready for painting. I just have to get the motivation to finish them, but that's the over-riding theme of this holiday break, finishing up projects, using what I have available, without buying anything new... YET!!!

A few extra Dwarfs ... still finishing projects!

Wow!! am I feeling virtuous.. there's still more 'finishing' going on. I recently bought  a few extra Dwarven warriors with which to fil out the units of warriors in the WFB army - building the warrior units up in size.

Here are the extra boys ....

And the warrior units (with a unit of Longbeards in the middle) looking a little more solid than before.

OK.... what's next???