Only a little bit more done o the Gothic scenery as I have run out of mdf place mat bases.
I have glued on and tiled eight of the twelve bases. I will make up two more with a graveyard on each.
I will keep on plugging away at them with just eight days to go!
I am always sceptical of second editions of rules because of the GW tactic of “upgrading” rules and codices as a marketing sales gimmick. As a result it took me a while to pick this one up.
The first thing you notice is that the publication is no longer an Osprey “blue book” but a very professional hard book that we have become accustomed to with other sets of rules like the McCullough suite of rules. As you would expect from a Dan Mersey set of rules it is full of scenarios, unit types, and sample retinue lists with a simple and fun game to play.
What then has changed? From the author himself:
“If you played the Blue Book first edition of Lion Rampant, rather than re-read the rules in tedious detail to spot the differences, here is a brief list of what has changed in Chapter 1’s battle rules:
The headline changes when mustering your Warband are:
I have also taken the opportunity to add more detail and plenty of optional rules but decided to keep them in a separate chapter.” (Taken directly from Page 200-201 of the book)
As you can see the rules have not changed significantly but it has a new range of scenarios and army lists that is worth the purchase on its own. The rules changes make sense and clarify rather than significantly change the way the game is played. This is a purchase that i thoroughly recommend but then I am a Dan Mersey groupie!
With the month quickly passing me by I needed to get off my backside if I was going to finish what I wanted to do. My plan was to do the Skull Cave, Skull Mountain, the caverns underneath Skull Cave, and my mdf Gothic terrain.
The cavern is finished as the furniture was an unexpected arrival and was never part of the plan. The Skull Cave and Skull Mountain require a few more hours work each. So the big piece of wotk as the mdf Gothic ruins from TTCombat. At the moment all I had finished, or even started, was the Ruined Chapel.
I started over the weekend on the Broken Domicilium. This went together very well but the Grey card was a bugger and took a fair bit of time.
All three kits I had came with several ancillary items which I have not bothered with. I needed to concentrate on just the buildings.
The seven pieces gave three tabletop pieces of scenery. I particularly like the u-shaped corridor.
Next to put together was the “Hallowed Ruins”. Now these were an absolute pain to put together. Not difficult but so many fiddly little pieces which should have been engineered out. Whilst the set looks good from a tabletop perspective the extra detail didn’t add that much. The instructions were over 80 pages long – I kid you not. Here! This is a kit I would not recommend!
The next kit set to put together was the “Razed District”. Although this had 40 pages of instructions they were not needed and the eight building went together in about 20 minutes. They were so good to work with they didn’t even need to be glued! A great kit that I would thoroughly recommend. Again there is a lot of other stuff including a couple of shipping containers and barricades etc which will wait to another time.
I only concentrated on the eight buildings.
These will give me a large ruined monastery gaming table along the lines of “Fountains Abbey” in the UK.
Tomorrow I will do the basing on each, including the odd tiled floor and a sand and rubble basing. Once this is done I can go crazy with the spray can like I did for the Ruined Abbey.
I also ended up with enough “cut out” bits and pieces for twelve more graves!
The only thing left to put together as part of this project is the Knights of Dice Church:
This is not a ruin and will be finished off with the Terrain Crate church furniture.
The church will not only fit with this :Gothic: project but also for my “Went The Day Well” scenario.
This new addition to The Men Who Would Be Kings wargaming rules focuses right in on The Last Samurai Rebellion and the clash for control of Japan.
The original The Men Who Would Be Kings rules allowed you to play within an historical context but with a Hollywood flavour and style. This new supplement focuses on The Last Samurai Rebellion but with that “Shintaro the Samurai” style that I grew up with in the early 1960’s!
Now I have to admit whilst having more than a little knowledge of the Sengoko Period of Japanese history the only knowledge of have of the Satsuma Rebellion, or Seinan War, is from the Tom Cruise movie “The Last Samurai”!
The supplement not only has the normal unit details, and army lists it also has a significant amount of detail of the history of the period.
I like the idea of supplements that we have seen previously for Lion Rampart rules such as Crusader States, and A Viking In The Sun which concentrates on a specific period and tweaks the rules to bring out the uniqueness of those times.
The Men Who Would Be Kings – The Last Samurai Rebellion does this and educates the uninformed like me at the same time. I thoroughly recommend this one.
Over the last 60 years, British historian Professor Christopher Duffy has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of warfare in the late Old Regime. For much of the twentieth century, historians asserted that the military forces of Old Regime Europe were stagnant, formalised, and decorative. In this view, Old Regime armies were a lacy pastel façade destroyed by the new military prowess of Napoleon. A specialist on the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Jacobite armies of the mid-eighteenth century, Professor Duffy demanded that we understand the armies of the Old Regime as they were: serious and dangerous military institutions.
The Changing Face of Old Regime Warfare is a series of afrticles honouring Professor Duffy’s legacy of writing on this pivotal period of military history. The book collects 16 essays by scholars from seven countries on three continents, which together tell the story of the dynamic nature of warfare in the Old Regime.
Topics such as cavalry tactics, divisional organisation, the rise of light forces, and the effects of war-making on society accompany primary sources translated into English for the first time.
Throughout his career, Professor Duffy has written on a wide variety of topics in over 20 books, from topics ranging from the Seven Years War to the First World War, from the history of fortress warfare to the experience of Marshal Suvorov. It is fitting then, that although centred on eighteenth-century warfare, this book also includes chapters which address the Napoleonic conflicts, and First World War.
The first section, Backgrounds and Retrospectives, explores the state of historical writing on eighteenth-century warfare, as well as Professor Duffy’s contribution to it. The second section, Commanders and their Armies, explores the field of traditional military history. It provides coverage of tactical analyses, campaign narratives, and organisational and doctrinal changes for the armies fighting in the Old Regime. The third section, Voices from the Past, provides translations and analyses of military sources which have been previously unavailable to the public. The fourth and final section, New Perspectives, demonstrates the varied picture which methods such as archaeology, cultural history, and colonial history tell us about the imperial history of European states at war. This section contains the final essay of the great American historian Dennis Showalter, published posthumously here with the permission of the Showalter family.
The Changing Face of Old Regime Warfare continues Professor Duffy’s legacy of studying the armies and states of Europe in the eighteenth century, and allows a host of his colleagues to honour his fine work.
Section One: Background and Retrospectives
1 Eighteenth Century Warfare in a Global Perspective – Jeremy Black
2 Writing for Pleasure: Christopher Duffy’s Historiographical Legacy – Alexander S. Burns
Section Two: Commanders and their Armies
3 Military Action and Reflection: Thoughts on Frederick’s Elements de castrametrie et de tactique of 1770 – Jürgen Luh
4 The Württemberg Army in the Seven Years War – Peter H. Wilson
5 The Crisis of the French Cavalry during the Seven Years War – Frédéric Chauvire
6 French Cavalry at Austerlitz: The Historical Narrative and Data – Frederick Schneid
7 An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old Regime France – Jonathan Abel
8 Pandours, Partisans, and Freikorps: The Development of Warfare and Light Troops across the Eighteenth Century – James R. McIntyre
9 The Extraordinary Life and Times of Military Engineer Charles Bisset – Petr Wohlmuth
Section Three: Voices from the Past
10 Pastor Täge’s Account of the Siege of Cüstrin and the Battle of Zorndorf: August 1758 – Adam L. Storring
11 Fighting in Frederick II’s favourite Musketeer Regiment: A unique series of Prussian soldiers’ letters from the Seven Years War – Katrin and Sascha Möbius
Section Four: New Perspectives
12 Clearing the Fog of War: Archaeological Research on the Battle of Kunersdorf, 2009-2019 – Grzegorz Podruczny
13 The Primacy of State Violence in the Austro-Bohemian Lands: Subjects, Soldiers and Shifting Social Boundaries, 1788-1816 – Kurt Baird
14 A Crisis of Battle? Decisiveness in the Wars of Frederick the Great – Alexander Querengässer
15 Embattled Representations: Indecisiveness and the Making of Victories during the Seven Years War – Marian Füssel
16 ‘…when it comes to fightin’…they’ll shove me in the stalls’: Africans, Indians, and Imperialism’s Great War – Dennis Showalter
If any of you are interested in 18th Century warfare I highly recommend this one.
Books have always been a significant part of my life. Call me an old codger but I still like to touch, feel, and smell a physical book. In the past when I was doing a lot of travel for work I used to listen to e-books on CD as this was a great use of time, but nothing beats the smell of a musty old book in the morning!
This year book week in Australia runs from August 20 to August 26.
Each year since 1945 the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has brought children and books together across Australia through CBCA Book Week. During this time schools and public libraries spend the week celebrating books and Australian children’s authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians create colourful displays, develop activities, run competitions and tell stories relating to a theme to highlight the importance of reading. Often you will often see parades with students dressed as their favourite book character.
What I will do each day is to provide you with some book, game or wargame rules reviews that I have been saving up for this week.
Although by way a a large digression this is not as silly as it seems. The Cat in the Hat as often been thought of as an allegory for the Cold War. As we are all aware Communist sympathizers were commonly known as Pinkos, and so does the spread of the pink stains on the cat symbolize the spread of communism?
In fact, there’s even a scene where the cats are shooting at the pink stains as if they were actual live enemies:
“My cats are all clever.
My cats are good shots.
My cats have good guns.
They will kill all those spots!” (201-204)
Hardly a stain removing technique is it!
If the Cat and his stains are communists and communist sympathizers, then that makes the narrator and Sally Americans who freaked out in the Cold War. And according to the Cat, and maybe to Seuss as well, they were freaking out over just about nothing.
Obadiah
The Legendary Elite Orc is armed with a sword and a pistol. His many brushes with the hangman’s noose and the army Provosts have led Obidiah to believe he is immortal (Muvver says so). Obidiah is an expert in survival and believes sincerely that he cannot die.
Messa Gruga
An Average Trolkin he is armed with a Dwarf Jager rifle. Gruga has magical abilities that he uses in battle in addition to his great strength. His long combat experience means he is also reliable and steadfast in battle.
Dotti Bonkins
A female Halfling prostitute who counts as Experienced for many an interesting
reason. She carries a whip (of course) and a throwing knife. Dotti can also, as a special action, attempt to seduce any character in base-to-base (how base????) contact with her.
Svien Dirkschneider
Svien is an average Finklestein Dwarf armed with Dwarf Musket. He also has a throwing axe hidden about his person. The throwing axe bestows +0 in melee and when thrown acts the same as a throwing knife.
Carlos Los De Marbelos
CARLOS is an average Dark Elf (some may say very average) armed with a Dark Elf Musketoon and a sword. De Marbelos once had magical abilities but recently lost them after a blow to the head from a struggling Unicorn. It is not known whether this is permanent, but at the moment his name is quite apt!. In one of his bags he carries a stolen Orc Grenadier Bomb. That’s all you need a frustrated spoell caster who has lost his marbles and carries a bomb!
Miguel De Monte
Miguuel is a raw Dark Elf Infantryman armed with a Standard Musket and a knife for using in melee. He has magical abilities, which are determined at the start of the game.
Lamond Adragain
Lamond is just your average Ferach Elf Deserter from the 46eme Ligne. He is armed with a Ferach Elf Musket and an empty jug of ale, treated as a small-improvised weapon
(-1 in melee, included below, given his state he doesn’t realise using the musket butt would be better).
He was the lone survivor of his company’s campaign in the Witchlands. The experience of seeing his entire section killed by the Undead resulted in him turning to alcohol soLamond suffers from the ‘Sauce’ flaw. Before every game, roll a D10. On a 6 or higher Lamond has been hitting it particularly hard and his shooting, melee, discipline and steadiness!
Additionally, during the course of the game, if Lamond comes across alcohol there is a chance that he will succumb to temptation and become even more drunk. If he moves within 5cm of a small cache of booze, or within 15cm of a large and obvious source of alcohol he must test to see if he gives into temptation. This test is taken once for each source of alcohol encountered. On the plus side there is a chance that he might sober up with a test each turn.
Castrado Del Los Spheros
Castrado is a raw Dark Elf armed with a Ferach Elf Duelling Pistol and a spear (+3 in melee). He once rode a Unicorn, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Is this the one that caused Carlos to lose his marbles?
The rest of the infantry (8) are completed and will be posted on soon. The cavalry, artillery, limber, howitzer, and a mounted Obadiah are still a way off at the moment.
The Partisans have been very successful raiding the German supply lines and this has increased their recruitment, enabling them to now field a third squad.
The third squad with leader, 3 Partisans with SMG, one Bren gun crew, and four Partisans with rifles.
Partisan Squad Leader
Three partisans with SMG
Partisan Bren Gun Crew
Four Partisans with rifles
I had finished the seeker zombies that come with “Angry Neighbours” way back in the “Apocalypse Me” challenge of October 21, but until recently had not started work on the new companion troop types and the additional survivors and their zombivors. For this post I have finished the eight companions.
Zombicide “Angry neighbours introduces a whole new breed of zombies! These Seeker zombies have your group in their sights and will chase you to your bitter end!
Every Seeker zombie get an additional activation every time a seeker zombie spawn card is drawn making them real mean dudes.
Angry Neighbors also brings four new survivors, each with their own special abilities, and their Zombivor counterpart, but these will be discussed in a future post.!
Angry Neighbors also brings eight special human companion miniatures, two of each sort, to support your group! If you rescue them you can add their firepower and special abilities to your party!
Two “Gunmen” that help coordinate gunfire.
Two “Handyman” help break down doors and barricades.
Two “Searchers” assist the leader in searching locations.
Two “Snipers” that add to firepower and coordinate all fire increasing everyone’s range to sniper rifle range.
All that is needed to paint to complete the “Angry Neighbours” box set is the survivors and their zombivors shown below in various stage of painting.
The ruined Church is completed.
