A (musket) blast from the past...

While going through some old emails looking for hobby related messages, I uncovered photos and a battle report from April, 2015 with my old gaming buddy Frank. I decided to post this much belated battle report although the details will be fairly vague. 

The game was a refight of the Battle of Brandywine using Sam Mustafa's Maurice rules and Frank's 10mm Old Glory AWI armies. As a side bar, I once owned 10mm AWI armies myself...also Old Glory 10mm. I have to say that their 10mm AWI range is probably one of my least favorite. The figures were a bit 2-dimensional and felt flimsy. But I digress...

Here is the initial setup, I had the numerically superior but qualitatively inferior American army against Frank's British. 

Some more pictures of the battle. In an email posted after the game recapping the battle to my gaming buddy Rob, I stated the following: 

"It's tricky because it's a small battle table with a good amount of units compressed in there. The Brandywine "river" crosses the battlefield in the center. There are fords and roads but also lots of woods and hills. In Maurice, the only movement penalty for woods and the river is that you gain a disruption when you move thru it, which is huge (no movement distance penalty tho). ‎Also, units in different terrain types can't be included in the same "force". It really screws up both the attacking British and defending Americans. I was the American army and managed to fight Frank to a draw. He was about to crack my army morale but the store was closing and we had to call it. Both armies had "oblique movement" national advantage but the British also had "steady lads" and "Lethal volleys", plus they had some elite infantry units." 

I remember having a fun time playing this game, it reminds me that I really need to get in some more games of Maurice. Perhaps I should motivate myself to finish my French Revolutionary armies. 
Back in 2015, I was playing far more frequently at my local gaming store with old friends (Alex, Frank, Steve and the store owner Chris)...I hope I can return back to gaming that often sometime in the future. For now, I will continue to paint armies in preparation for future tabletop battles.

Slave to Success(ors)...

Lately, almost all of my hobby time has been devoted towards my 10mm Macedonian Successor army for To The Strongest. 

Having pushed through phalangite, hypaspists, hoplites, skirmishers and command...I only have a few more cavalry and elephant units to finish up. 

Sure there are more hoplites to complete but they are more for mercenaries to be used with the Persian and other armies. 

Having a brief free moment, I snapped some pictures of the progress and now I can share them with you. 

First up, we have the backbone of the army, six bases of phalangites. These fellas were serve as both hammer and anvil for most tabletop battle scenarios. I painted each base in its own scheme and I like the finished look. I won't go into too much detail because I've already spoken on these sculpts here, but I will say this as a tangent....I have a bad habit of butchering the pronunciation of ancient (maybe all) words. For decades, I pronounced these guys as " Fal-anj-ites" and recently I heard someone pronounce them as "Fal-an-geet-eez". I have no doubt I am wrong and they are right.

  

Next up we have two hypaspist units. I know there are different interpretation of this troop type. Old Glory have them sculpted as javelin/spear armed and they will be classified as javelinmen in my TTS armies. I added Macedonian sun burst designs on their shields, these are transfers from Veni Vidi Vici and are rather nice. To ensure I had enough transfers, I cut them in half and only used the half transfer on the portion of the shield that is visible. 

Here are our Greek mercenary hoplites (again I pronounce "hop-lights" and I'm sure it is "Hop-leet-eez"). I enjoyed painting these sculpts even if they are time consuming. I painted them up as individuals instead as uniformed soldiers of the state. No uniformity whatsoever. I used more transfers from VVV and they went on like a charm. I opted for a longer spear but still shorter than a pike.

The army has three sling and two bow armed skirmisher bases. Old Glory sculpt their slingers on 2 figure bases while the bowmen are individual. Painted plain but the bowmen have red headbands. 

And here are two units of cavalry, companions (yellow and purple) and Thessalians (blue and white). Need to paint up a couple more bases of these cavalry types. Like the phalangites and hoplites, the Macedonian cavalry require you to drill holes out of the hands and insert wire for spears. Much easier than it sounds like it would be. 

Nothing says Successors like pike and elephants. You saw the pike already and here are the elephants. Or rather elephant. I have more painted up but this is the only one bases right now. In TTS, these bases will represent "elephant screens" and will be less shock than pachyderms represent in other army lists. I plan to paint up a total of six of these bases. 

And lastly, we have some Macedonian/Successor command. I plan to have a couple mounted sub-commanders, a couple foot sub-commanders and a generic overall leader. 

I should add that almost all of the figures are Old Glory, the bases are Litko and the elephants and riders are 10th Legion (formerly Magister Militum). 

With two bases of cavalry, a few more elephant units and a command base left to paint....I'm not sure what I will to next. Should I paint up 10mm Persians and Indians to face off against Macedonians (and each other)? Should I venture back into my 6mm Tercios late 17th century armies (Jacobites, English, Scanian Wars, etc) or should I finish off my 10mm Fenian project? 

How the Sausage is Made...

I've been meaning to post some updates on the progress of my 10mm Macedonian army for "To The Strongest" rules however I haven't had the time to set up my "photo studio" for pictures (which is a gaming mat on my kitchen counter with some additional lights borrowed from my paint room). I've managed to finish all the phalangite units (six in total), half the hoplite units (3 so far), hypaspists (two units), light infantry (slingers and Cretan archers) and some command stands that will represent Alexander, Seleucus and a host of other Successors and pretenders. This Macedonian collection will end up representing a lot of different armies. 

Since I don't have proper photos ready and I wanted to post an update, I have decided to post some pictures of works in progress so you can see how I go about getting figures table ready. 

I'm currently working on some companion cavalry in a purple, white and yellow scheme and decided to fiddle about with some elephants for Successor armies. Simon Miller has tweaked/updated the rules and attributes for Successor elephants to better represent how they actually fought. No longer mobile battering rams, they are now mobile refuge for skirmishers and called "Elephant Screens". This change will affect how I base: instead of 2-3 elephants on a single deep base, I will have a single elephant and bow-armed archers around them. Indian elephants will remain battering rams and based as such, as will a stand or two for Pyrrhus' army. 

I am using Magister Militum (now Tenth Legion by Peter Berry) elephants for my TTS armies. I like their size and heft but they a bit fiddly to put together. I've decided to use elephants without howdahs for the screen bases since the howdahs are absolutely massive. For the pike-armed crew, I am replacing their cast-on pikes with wire (a bit of a challenge). I also pin the elephants to the base and pin the riders to the elephant so they are a bit secure without having to use heaps of glue. Some liquid green stuff is used to fill gaps.

After I finish the core Macedonian army so it is gameable, I'm not sure if I will move on to my remaining TTS armies of Persians and Classical Indians or I will take a diversion. Some possibilities are to dive back into my 17th century 6mm armies for Tercios (Scanian/Deluge War Swedes and Danes along with Muscovites, Poles and Ottomans) or something else. I'd really like to finish up some more gameable armies for Tercios (I already have armies to refight Killiecrankie as seen here) so I can play more games with my friend Alex.

I recently purchased an old Games Workshop figure from eBay. Specifically it is a House Cawdor heavy armed with a heavy bolter for the game Necromunda. I have old 90s miniatures for gangs to represent House Cawdor and House Delaque. This portly little fella is currently sitting in a bucket of paint stripper. I'm still vacillating on what color palette I will use for these gangs.