Frostgrave leaves me cold

I forgot to mention what else was going on at the club the other night, the Bloodbowl league had two games going, we had X-Wing and there was a massive, very good looking, game of Frostgrave over which hunched most of the club members. I don't get it, it is sweeping everything in its path, why? I played it once and it was OK but like Chain of Command I don't see me trying again. Maybe it is the fantasy thing, I could quite happily play Deadzone again with my Enforcers, but Frostgrave, looking for treasure with a bunch of people who you would probably find drinking in the Carnforth Inn, the characters I mean, not the players, just doesn't appeal. Anyway, if I have learned something in over 40 years of wargaming it is each to their own.

I have bought more Romans, relax, it is only four slingers to give me a choice of up to sixteen troops, I am however looking closely at the army of my chosen period and wondering if I can add some exotic supporting acts. Maybe those Palestinian clubmen or camel riders as the Twelfth is based in the East, I have a feeling they are earlier than my period, but we will see.

I think I have found a way to get some of those lovely Saxon miniatures, I am upgrading as you know my Dark Ages stuff in a month or so and was simply going to pop the extra figures on the ends, but if I cunningly put them in the middle I shall need officer types, hence the beautiful Saxon miniatures.

My son is building a Western Frank army, I may have mentioned it, and as this will be his first proper wargame army, he dabbled with Wars of the Roses and Warhammer on which he did a fair job. He primed his archers and it all went horribly wrong so he decided to remove the paint and try again, but the bright spark who put the 'how to' video on YouTube forgot to mention the very important fact that if you use Dettol do not mix it with water or it melts the brush you use to take the paint off onto the figure. I cannot count the amount of times I have followed drawing tutorials and thought I was going mad only to find out a vital piece of information was missing all the time. Anyway the said archers have now been defrocked properly and await priming tomorrow, when I will be in the vicinity to blame if anything goes wrong again. I have looked at the list and they are a tough set of hombres to meet on the field of glory, I am looking forward to it.

I have decided once again to try and find someone in the village willing to play wargames, I know it will garner no interest at all but I just have to try and get more games of War and Conquest in than I get at present. I have used the BBC series 'The Last Kingdom" as a debatable hook. And talking of the show the hero is beginning to grate on me, he looks nothing like his contemporaries with the daft top knot and long hair and every time I see him take two actions to draw his sword from off his back I roll my eyes to the heavens. I am trying so hard to like this but I am failing.

Saga Cross & Crescent

I had almost made my mind up to give the club a miss this week and concentrate on some painting as I am leaping ahead with the Auxiliary cohort at the moment and I suspect I will finish it today, basing etc. by Friday at the latest, so I have got another unit ready in the wings for the tray.

Anyway I got an invite to take part in one of Dan's large scale Saga games and as I had watched many of these from afar and always wondered about Saga I jumped in the Batmobile and braved the Lancaster traffic. I suspect most of you have played Saga as it is an extremely popular game and well supported with rules and especially some beautiful figures, one of which I 'stole' to lead my Saxons. The game is usually a skirmish game where you have a set of dice which represents your army and you use these to activate certain traits on a battleboard, these can help with melee, shooting or can disrupt something the enemy wish to do or just generally give you an advantage during a turn. You know how I feel about activation systems but this presented no problem during the game and although a few times I was unable to move a couple of units that was more down to how I used my leaders than the dice.

The Templars in all their majesty.

Dan uses 10mm figures and has enlarged the size of the units so the game presents a small battle rather than a skirmish and it does look good on the table, in keeping with my love of proper armies. We fought a simple meeting engagement as I was completely new, I chose the less fanatical crusaders while Dan took the military orders, I was opposite the less fanatical Saracens while Dan was up against his opposite numbers, whose name escapes me.

The Saracen fanatics.

These were a really lovely unit.

 I deployed with levy and shooters in the front line with cavalry on the left flank, everything else along with the good infantry was backed up behind, this was daft and I think I got off lucky that the enemy did not or could not take advantage of this. They did try and threw an early cavalry charge into the line but despite my horror at the casualties inflicted my boys stayed put, even the levy only fell back, a counter charge by my knights wiped out the enemy, a great start. It was now that my useless deployment held me up as I struggled to get my more experienced fighters into the front line, Simon kept playing one of his ploys on me which stopped my knights from moving and letting the infantry in, that was extremely annoying. Dan meanwhile was suffering from ferocious attacks by Ian's fanatics and was losing quite a few men, but luckily so were the enemy, one bug bear for us was a huge archer unit which kept us away from the centre of the battlefield for quite a while.

The enemy infantry advance against the Christian line, brave men.

With time running out I charged a unit of knights along with my Warlord into the enemy cavalry, I had some good extras to add to the fight but then only managed five hits from sixteen dice, only my bloodied Warlord survived to hobble back to my lines. Dan's Templars had charged the enemy infantry and been bounced back, but now my Sergeants charged them and drove the infantry back.

Dan had had all the fun and just as Simon and I were at last getting to grips time was called, the points totalled and we won! I think Simon would probably have lost his infantry but his cavalry could have destroyed my flank having lost my best knights, but it was not to be.

Dan took some more professional photos and when I get a few I will add them in.

A good evening's wargaming and a nice introduction to Saga, again a game which seems easy to play but requires thought to play well, very clever. Elsewhere we had a Sword and Spear (10mm) game and a Black Powder Napoleonic (28mm), sadly none of which I took much notice of as I was engrossed in my own game.