Hotchkiss Machine Guns by Dorset Toy Soldiers

Finished up these Hotchkiss gun crews from the Dorset line by Imperial Miniatures. Reasonably priced and good service so I recommend. Will make a nice addition to French forces for Belle Epoque games.  The loaders had some flash under the visor of the kepi that almost looked like they were wearing goggles! Took me almost to the end of painting them to realize it was just flash and easily cut off.  The kneeling officer is a W.Britains recast by London Bridge.

The Dorset catalog numbers to make the gunner plus loader combination are: D-C057 and D-C058.

Kings of War Historical (in the Barbarian West)

Too much going on non-gaming wise so another solo Kings of War Historical solo game, this time with the Late Romans. 1,250 points per side roughly which worked out to four heavy infantry regiments, three archer troops, two cavalry troops, and a regiment of cataphracts for the Romans, up against six regiments of warriors, three archer troops, and three cavalry troops for their Germanic opponents (mostly Goths with some Frankish allies).

I used my terrain cards random draw system to set up the table and a random deployment table to deploy the armies.  The result was that the Romans ended up in a single line but behind the woods.  The Goths were deployed in two divisions.  The Romans accordingly split into two divisions and used the woods to anchor a flank for each division.

End of Turn 1.

Roman archers.

Roman legionnaires.

Kings of War Historical continues to hit a lot of sweet spots for me. Movement/charges are not subject to the whimsy of dice, which puts the onus on the player to make the right move at the right time. Combat is not too swingy. Shooting is not overly effective. The 'Heavy Warrior' Roman legionaries held their ground against lighter 'Warrior' Gothic infantry. A six turn limit to the game with victory points awarded for moving your units across the table disposes with tendency to 'turtle up' or to wait for other side to make a mistake. The moral bonus of Generals is small but not insignificant.

Roman right gets into line.

End of Turn 2.

Things I am less sure about include whether Kings of War Historical can support multiplayer games (with two or even three players sharing a side), and also what would happen if terrain and especially deployment were not randomized. Especially with deployment, I think competitive thinking by players would result in some more gamey, less realistic battles.

Goth left looking towards Roman line.

Scattered state of affairs on opposite flank.

Goth cavalry has routed a troop of Roman archers but taken some casualties from ranged attacks.

Things getting heated on right Roman flank. Gothic cavalry taking casualties from Roman cavaly and cataphracts.... 

...while Roman legions push through Gothic archer screens.

Infantry finally getting in range of eachother on Roman left.

Roman cataphracts (by Old Glory miniatures).

Roman legions (finally) clashing with Gothic warriors.

For this game the basic arc was that the Roman right, which included its big regiment of cataphracts, was easily able to cross the table middle point and push back the Goths, while on the opposite flank, while the Goths were able to cross the middle point (but not push back the Romans), the point total of the handful of warrior units was not greater than the entirety of the Roman right.  So, a Roman victory, which was clearly how the game was flowing anyways.

To the strife of mail-clad warriors *

Monthly Saga group game night saw the Lombards deployed for fourth time and getting their first win.  The opponent was Adam's Carolingians, which was interesting to see how that faction/board played in person, as opposed to trying to parse it from the text. Adam fielded four points hearthguard (as 6-6-4 units), a warrior bow unit, and a javelin levy unit.  I took 1.5 hearthguards, 2.5 points warriors (as 10-10 units), 1 point levy bow, and 1 point Bulgar mercenaries.  I'm not quite sure how to use the Bulgars, yet.  Their 'Retreat' is pretty great and it totally bailed them out when they were charged by the 4-figure Carolingian HG unit towards the end of the game. But the two 10-figure mounted warrior units were able to destroy both 6-figure Carolingian HG units by using variations of combinations of Attack / Immunity / Cuneus / Gratia while "only" losing 4 and 5 figures respectively.  Bulgar rangey-ness maybe makes them most useful as a distraction to the opponent and as potential exploiter of advantageous situations, such as mopping up already weak units.  Anyway, here's all the pics...

Initial set-up, Carolingians on left, Lombards on right.

Lombard warriors in two units of 10.

Lombard initial set-up, Bulgar mercenaries on left flank.

Carolingian initial set-up. Two hearthguard units of 6-figure each at upper left.

Bulgar mercenaries get to throw dice in anger for first time, taking out some Carolingian javelin levy.

Bulgars vs. Carolingian levy.

Carolingian javelins extract heavy payback, however...

Lombard warriors complete routing of both Carolingian 6-figure hearthguard units.

Carolingians.

Casualty situation by bottom of turn 5.

I probably dang near lost the game by letting my 6-figure hearthguard get whittled down to 3 figures by bow and javelin attacks, and then the Bulgars losing half of their unit to javelins and then getting wiped out by the Carolingian hearthguard at the end of the game. But the hearthguard were probably too tempting a target and probably diverted a lot of actions away from responding to the Lombard warriors on the other side of table who were doing so well.

*Y Gododin. LIX.

Bulgar mercenaries for Saga

Although I'm getting comfortable with (and enjoying) the Lombard faction for Saga, the strength and challenge of that faction is that all Hearthguard and Warriors are mounted but without javelins.  This leaves all ranged attacks to levy archers, which is mainly problematic because levies need the uncommon die to activate, but that die is also used for almost all the advanced board abilities. Lombards may take Breton mercenaries (mounted warriors with javelins) but these are noted in the text as being "Bulgars, really."  Old Glory has a pack of Bulgars (set AHP-5) that looked like fun so I picked that up.

 As you can see, the Old Glory Bulgars (and pretty much all of their "horse people" / horse archer figures - Huns, Alans, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc.) are two piece figures, allowing you to angle the upper half of the body to be facing forward, to the side, or even aiming a "Parthian Shot" over the back.  They went together pretty easy especially as I recently picked up the tip that sharpie ink acts as a bit of an accelerant for superglue, and the nature of a sharpie pen (its a pen!) allows you to pinpoint areas for the glue to set faster.

If you compare the later pics to the initial one of the unassembled figures, you can see that four of the figures originally had swords, but I trimmed these off and drilled out the hands to give them javelins instead. The set also had shields but chose to ignore these and shaved off the pegs on some hands meant to mount the shield.

My bad habit is to undertake painting 60 infantry or 20-30 cavalry at a time, so when I work on a single set like this the process is an absolute breeze.  I used my standard block-painting method, then a "magic wash" of matte medium / water / black paint, with excessive wash lightly sponged or rolled off with cotton swabs.

After a clear top coat of matte varnish and mounting on MDF bases, I flocked with kitty litter, painted the kitty litter with a cheap acrylic light brown/tan, then added some flock and tufts.

This was just in time to meet Chris and Tom for a three-player game of Saga using the "Battle Royale" scenario.  Chris brought Anglo-Saxons with the mounted hearthguard option.  Tom brought his Normans.  In this scenario, players take turns placing units where ever they want on the table. What ended up happening was the Lombards were on one end, the Normans on the other, and the Anglo-Saxons in the middle area. Chris had a hard-stop time and because his Anglo-Saxons kept focusing attacks on the Normans and therefore moving away from the Lombards, the Lombards had not charged a single time (and the Bulgars had not thrown a single javelin).  Just to try things out, I did manage a charge of 10 warriors against 6 Norman hearthguard with a favorable result.

Start of the Battle Royale.

Lombards.

Bulgars make their debut.

  

Anglo-Saxon cavalry.

Lombards lined up.

Around Turn 2, maybe.

Saxon archers at extremely close range to Norman crossbows. Saxon cavalry charges Norman counterparts in background.

Turn 3 or therabouts. The Saxons keep focusing on the Normans and therefore moving away from my Lombards so I didn't do much most of the game.

Same point as above, but from other end of table.

Next up on the painting bench I have started in on 20 Alan horse archers by Old Glory, for Late Roman games. These have been languishing around for awhile, and they use the same separate torso-and-legs set-up as the Bulgars.