Clash of Spears: Carthaginians

Having completed (well almost) one historic army, rather unusually for me I'm starting on a second with the first of the forces for Clash of Spears. I've had the Carthaginian box for a little while now so it was nice to crack it open again and start on the goodies inside.

I thought I would break myself in easily with the skirmisher troops so started with the slingers and javelin men. As Clash is a skirmish level game all the models are individually based rather than the multi-base units of KoW and I opted for a nice bright green colour base mix from Geek Gaming. 

I kept them nice and simple with a couple of different off white washes over a plain white base and then a touch of colour on the shields.

Units in Clash are assigned four stats to define their base abilities which give a target amount to be rolled against on a D6. Those stats are Melee, Shooting, Grit (morale), and Save. As these are lightly armoured troops with small shields/bucklers then their save is not very good. Some abilities also modify the save score so both these units benefit from the ranged save bonus associated with being Skirmisher Specialists.

These stats are from the very useful Clashculator. 

The other skirmisher unit in the force is Libyan Javelin men and I converted a couple of the elephant crew over with a head swap to bulk them out to eight men.

It seems the Libyans traditionally wore red and had some very punk hair cuts, but given that these are very cheap troops @ 9 points each (compared to 18 for the slingers) I suspect they won't be causing too much anarchy in the Roman provinces.

I also broke out the Numidian elephant which was the first model I painted up for this game for a little photo-op.

It looks like this should be a nice colourful game once all the men are painted up which seems to be a little bit of a continuing theme from the last army.

In other Clash news I also took delivery of the Roman starter box which had been Covid delayed so I now have plenty of painting to do and all the troops for both sides.

Again it comes with a good selection of models to give a nice varied army which hopefully should make for a tactically interesting battle.

Ostrogoth: Almost Done

After an enforced posting break caused by my PC going pop I'm back with the last of the Ostrogoth's that I currently have the models for. Over the last 2 weeks I've completed the last regiments of cavalry and the several of the characters.

On the cavalry front I now have 4 Regiments of Knights, 6 Troops of Sergeants, and 5 Troops of Mounted Scouts along with 2 Wizards and 3 Mounted Heroes. 

I still need to paint up the Generals on Winged Beasts but the models I plan to use for them are currently still in production so they aren't expected out until November.

This means that I have completed around 3000 points worth and I have some flying beasts I can proxy in for the Generals in the meantime.

For the mounted wizards I've used two Gripping Beast models to represent a court wizard and a hedge wizard. I also had a Gripping Beast priest on foot to use as a wizard in Vanguard if I ever need to field one.

The KoM wizards are pretty flexible and come with a good range of spells to choose from, probably Lightning Bolt and Bane Chant are the most commonly taken.

I also painted up a knight with banner to represent The Captain. He is the unique KoM hero who comes with some nice stats and rules for the price. The most interesting rule is Master Tactician which allows you to redeploy D3 units after setup is completed but before Scout moves. In an army that has the potential to field Knight Hordes the chance to move one or more units across the table after your opponent has committed looks like a real boon.

I've also painted up the spare infantry I had left over from the kits with enough models to make a nice little Vanguard force.

KoW Vanguard: Capture the Giant

For our second game of Vanguard we played the ever unpredictable Capture the Giant. This sees both sides trying to score Victory Points by causing the most wounds on the Giant that round with bonus VP's available for killing key enemy models. The Giant moves 9-16" at the start of each turn in a random direction attacking everything along it's path.

We both setup facing the Giant with the knowledge that the only safe place to be was outside it's movement range but then you'd not be able to cause any damage, the second safest place was to be in contact with the Giant as he could then do a maximum of 1 damage rather than the 5 powerful attacks he made if he ran over your model.

During the first turn we both tried to get into contact with the Giant and my Werewolf was fast enough to also be able to attack and score some wounds, the  Kingdoms of Men could make contact but not attack. This meant the Undead had a 3-0 lead at the end of turn 1.

At the start of the second turn the Giant moved directly onto my two Soul Reaver infantry causing two wounds to each and knocking them down, not a great start. The KoM also triple charged my Werewolf and killed him off, so I'd lost my most powerful attacker and the 2nd & 3rd most powerful where heavily damaged. The rest of the second turn saw the combatants close together in the centre of the table apart from one lone Revenant who managed to put a wound onto the Giant so I lead 6-1 at the end of turn 2.

The Giant in turn 3 then helped out the Undead massively by moving back in the only direction that would do maximum carnage to the KoM and ending up back in the middle of the table. As you can see from the before (above) and after (below) pictures he cleaned up multiple KoM units for me including the Knight and Ogre Warrior, both of whom are serious damage dealers.

The KoM managed to put plenty of wounds on the Giant so by the end of the turn the scores where 6-4 to the Undead.

Once again the Giant helped out the Undead by running over the KoM leader and also knocking down the Wizard and one of the Warriors. This allowed the Undead to kill the knocked down Warrior and the remaining Soul Reaver killed off a KoM long bowmen with the other bowman falling to the skeleton archers.

The Wizard also was killed by a Revenant and suddenly things looked grim for the Men who had passed their break-point. The return of the Giant back over the remains of the KoM force left them with no options to cause a wound so we ended the game at that point.

Only the leader from the KoM survived with the rest of the force no doubt destined to be raised by a Necromancer and forced into battle against their old comrades.
Capture the Giant can be a deeply 'unfair' scenario sometimes if it happens to run over a bunched up group of your models, so perhaps the KoM will be luckier next time.

I've also completed the 2nd Regiment of infantry for the Ostrogoths which takes them up to a full Horde's worth if required.

I also have some spares so I can make up some men for a Vanguard force if required.

KoW Vanguard: Return to the Fray

With the relaxation of the current lock-down rules Mr T and I where able to take advantage of being in a 'Support Bubble' to meet up for our first game in a long time.
We'd decided to move onto Kings of War: Vanguard as our next game and Mr T had managed to complete the bases on his Kingdoms of Men units in time for the game.

This was Mr T's first try at Vanguard so much of the evening was spent with me giving a meandering explanation of the rules and then we threw some models down and had a quick play to get used to the combat mechanics.

This was a somewhat historic moment being the first time Mr T had fielded a fully self-painted army with ten miniature works of art gracing the field of combat.

Now he now only needs to paint another 150 odd models to convert the strong start into a full Kings of War army, I wouldn't expect to see a post on that being completed for a very long time...

It also gave me a chance to break out the Undead again and for Mr T to learn the best way to kill the Undead is to knock them down and have someone move in to finish them off.

All in all it was great to get some dice in hand and push some models around in good company and having all painted armies always improves the spectacle.

Talking of painting I've also completed another Regiment of Sergeants to add to the Ostrogoth army.

So the army is coming along nicely and I already have around 2000 points worth.

I also took delivery of some more mud-brick scenery from Chris at Fogou models, the plan for these is to make semi-fortified wall sections to use with the rest of the buildings I got on the Kickstarter.

Ostrogoth: Infantry Option 2

This week we have another infantry option for the Ostrogoths and this time it is the melee troops.

So far I have completed a Regiments worth split into 2 Troops but I will be bringing them up to Horde strength once I complete the other Regiment. The models are again Gripping Beast plastics and I went with the Saxon Thegns box. As with the other boxes you get a good amount of models for your cash and lots of build options.

The Kingdoms of Men have plenty of infantry options so you can either go for a cheap token holder / carrier or something more expensive and more durable. I went with mostly spear armed troops for the unit to add some flexibility into what they could represent but also historically speaking most common infantry of this period fought with spears. Most likely they will be fielded as the ultra cheap Shield Wall or the more durable Foot Guard, though the option to field a Phalanx unit against an army fielding lots of fliers or cavalry is nice to have.

I also went with nine models per base which gives a nice full look to the unit and with the models on the rear Troop being slightly raised above the ones in front a bit of added depth.

As the box comes with 44 models in it I will also have some spares to make up some men to use in KoW: Vanguard should they be required.

I have also completed a second regiment of Knights ready to join the fray so could now field a Horde, if I was able to play.

The aim is to complete four Regiments of Knights so I've reached half-way on these ones but with still a fair amount of cavalry left to paint with the extra Knights and Sergeants still to complete.

A Horde of Knights packs a real punch with 32 attacks hitting on a 3+, of course it has a massive frontage as well. But now that you measure the charge range from anywhere on a units front edge it also has a much large threat range.

Happy Birthday to...... Kate W

As a small token I gave these two regal figures to afa for her 50th birthday. I picked them up a couple of years ago as a pack with some ecclesiastical figures (they were the ones I wanted) from a show. I wanted cobblestone effect on the plastic bases so turned to a bit of green stuff and then dry brushed layers of various shades of grey. Overall I was quite pleased with the outcome.