Big, Bigger, Biggest

When I started War and Conquest I built my armies around 24 man units, three ranks of eight, and while both my own armies faced each other this was fine as both sides were built around the 24. After my first tournament I learned about 'warbands' and therefore added a couple of 32 man units to each side in four ranks of eight, these large units I saw as the usual cannon fodder types or mercenary bands. If you read my battle reports not many of these large warbands, especially the Franks, made much of an impact in combat, so they only turned up now and again.

Quantity has its own quality.

 In my third tournament I had learned something, at least for the second half and started to expand my Roman cohorts into two lines to better withstand barbarian armies, and it worked. I therefore rebased and recruited more men into my core Dark Age forces, going to 27 man units, three ranks of nine. Once I had done this I realised that I had to do something with the 'warbands' so instead of also giving them nine men per rank, I have now rebased them to thirty men in three ranks of ten, this should still give them the numbers they need over other units but without going daft increasing them to 40. I think we will see more of them in future battles.

I leave for my fourth tournament on Friday and have not yet managed to put an army list together, what with one thing and another I have not had the time, it took me an hour today to tax my car for instance, don't ask. Not only that I have two lists to put together, Early Saxon Heptarchy and Early Imperial Roman. All the army lists have also changed from the ones used previously, some quite considerably and most now have little special rules added, my Dacian opponents for instance have a couple one of which I am unsure about historically, but it's a friendly tournament and an opportunity to fight armies which I would not normally come across. So I will go with an open mind and a devil may care attitude to actually managing a few wins if the Gods are kind, now where did I put those chickens. After languishing in the Post Office for five weeks I am looking forward to it.

It's Bolt Action again at the club tonight mainly because it is new and also because no one can make their mind up to do anything else, I would perhaps have done WAC or joined in something else but I am being a bit lazy not having my usual days off to dawdle. I have also managed to complete the anti-tank guns for both my forces now along with tows and a couple of transports, which if I don't get some pictures tonight I will regale you with next week.

I am having a bit of a break until after the weekend, my wrists are a bit sore and they need a rest so the extra squads I have will have to wait until then, on the tray at the moment then are two forlorn figures, a medic for each side, I may just have a little bash at them for an hour or so.

I have also got three map projects complete of this morning, two are still awaiting the authors comments but I can now move on to another WWI project before tackling charts and maps for Vol 2 of a history of the Luftwaffe.

Gotha bomber losses over England, WWI

Assault on Leningrad, WWII