Heavy Weapons for the Twelfth

I have finished these 'bad boys' in a couple of days, no patience. I have perhaps gone overboard and should have got the small scorpions, but you know what, stuff it, they are a lovely group which were a joy to paint and get ready for the field of battle. No doubt they will fall prey to that one guy who can't keep quiet and has to blab that they were only used for sieges and not on the battlefield, in order to let everyone know the depth of his knowledge. And yes, I got the order wrong.

I have prepared some extra characters along with the last Romans for painting during next week, the missus is away so in between catching up with Gotham and the Flash, maps and perhaps serving the odd customer, I hope to have these done before everything comes to a halt on Christmas Eve.
 

I stuck with 'The Last Kingdom' and quite enjoyed the last episode, I hope Uhtred gets a haircut before the next season. I am not entirely sure about the 'England' thing, one minute Alfred is banging on about Wessex, which in turn becomes England or vice versa, with several kingdoms in the land would anyone have been thinking of fighting or saving 'England', I doubt it. Did you notice the fighting Nun riding off into the sunset with the boyo, oh dear that's going to take some swallowing. Anyway, overall I am happy we are getting a second run at it.

Date Night

I knew my birthday was this week but had not registered which day, so as I came too on Monday morning I realised I was not going to make the Sudan game at the club as the wife had booked us into a 'French' restaurant for my birthday feast, the same one we had enjoyed a week or so previously pre Storm Desmond.

In the words of the insufferable Craig Revel-Horwood(?) the dancing judge, it was a 'disaaastor darling'. The place was fairly empty being a Tuesday night except for a huge office party of 17 or so, I immediately thought the kitchen would be overwhelmed. We were pointed to a table in an alcove and I had to squeeze myself in and then move the table to get some leg room, the wine arrived and was simply poured out, not a great start.

The scallop popcorn appetiser was very nice, my wife's soup when it came was lukewarm, you never serve soup lukewarm to a Scot, my own rabbit and chicken confit was the size of a main meal and contained stuff which simply looked and tasted horrible, which was a shame as the confit was nice. As the menu was uninspiring, very unlike the week before we both went for the confit of duck, that being the only thing we fancied. Neither of us liked it, my wife especially, I at least managed the duck. I also made a mistake and got their parmesan and truffle chips, someone had merely thrown a large handful of parmesan on top of the bowl and completely ruined the chips. My wife of course was under orders not to annoy me as it was my birthday, but the look said it all.

I then mentioned that I thought they said they would do something special at the table as it was my birthday, I looked around and lo and behold the two half deflated balloons tied to my chair and the 27 silver stars which were scattered around getting in to everything was all for my benefit as a quick scan showed no other table had these tasteful decorations. So, no more Quite Simply French for us, and as the chimes hit midnight and I was 63 and a few minutes the truce was up, "why on earth did you pick those chips ...................!

Oh Contarii, oh, oh, oh, oh!

That is the final line unit of the Twelfth done, a supporting formation of Contarii heavy shock cavalry. Officially I now only have the artillery supports to do, two of which, very large ballistae are on the tray as I write, primed and ready to go. After this a few manuballistae and some additional extra skirmisher figures and bingo, six months of painting and we are ready for battle.

When I was researching this unit I forgot the clincher, Dean Martin sings about them, what more definitive proof could you need. I have said it before and I will bore you with it again, these figures are splendid and guess what, they actually do fit the horses!

View From The Window

Winter is upon us, the view this morning is cold indeed, a thick layer of frost covers the cars, it is damp and it is still very dark, mind you it has been dark since the beginning of November here. However it is far better than last weekend when Storm Desmond hit. The Met office, perhaps in an attempt to justify their huge wages despite normally getting things wrong, now give storms names, I can't remember this being the norm. Abigail, Barney and Clodagh, must have been heavy rain showers at some point during the year as I can't recall other parts of the country grinding to a halt for a few weeks with newscasters standing in water to show you, eh water. I may be wrong.

Desmond however was certainly a storm, we had had torrential rain for almost a week before he turned up, on the Saturday it had already rained heavily for almost 24 hours continuously when the wind began to roar through the village, I can always tell because the bushes in Eyebrow Cottage and the trees in the gap across the road bear the brunt of it. It was my grandson's birthday party and the missus insisted we try to get to the other side of the country, I knew better than to argue and knew better to make the decision which would scar Jamesy Boy for the rest of his life as his Gran and Papa had not been at his second birthday and it was all Papa's fault.

Birthday, what's a birthday?

 So we loaded up the wife's car, if we were going to have an accident of some kind better that than the Batmobile, and off we went, window wipers on fast wipe even before we left the drive. The motorway was horrendous, it was like driving on a sheet of water, we were constantly buffeted by wind and I was crawling along at fifty, glowering behind the wheel, "turn back if you want" came the unhelpful advice, the 'if you want' being the words to look out for. On we went, we had no sooner left the motorway and went half a mile along what was essentially a river when I cracked, we're going back! On the way south again we were in the teeth of the gale, walls of water and spray seemed to be flung at the car and just in front of us a car had been lifted on to its side, it hadn't been there fifteen minutes ago on our way north, I was down to forty and gripping the wheel. Roads were beginning to be closed in the area around the village so once we did get back we battened down the hatches and stayed put.

The power went at 22.30, there was a mad scrabble for head torches and candles, no big deal we can have a cup of tea, no, check up on the internet, no, at least a slice of toast, no, phone family, no, find new batteries for the useless torch, no, the power will be back soon, no.

The weather had improved by Sunday morning, so guess what, we went to Jamesy Boy's. On the way there were trucks lying in fields or stuck in hedges, apart from that the journey was uneventful thankfully. Seemingly the young lad was none the wiser we had not been there on the Saturday. On the way back there were huge traffic jams still around Warton and Carnforth and as we approached the village we noticed lights on and Christmas lights merrily blinking away in gardens, but once we got to Main Street, oh cruel fate, our part was still in darkness. I needed to check my emails, no I really needed to, I needed contact with the outside world, what was I missing. The Gods were listening, we had been back in the house for about ten minutes when BOOM, let there be light, quick fire up the computer! Needless to say I had missed nothing and my inbox remained undisturbed.

We had another small outage on the Monday afternoon for about four hours and then that was it. We were the lucky ones, Lancaster had no power and was flooded, business' ruined and in the village some residents had to leave their waterlogged homes. Being an old village we have a patchwork of electricity lines and phone lines, some are still above ground, the top end of the village get their electric from Milnthorpe which is miles away and they never suffered at all, while we did, the other side of the street has fast broadband, this side doesn't, go figure.

Perhaps all this misery is at an end now that our betters have sorted out an agreement in Paris to limit a rise in the planet's temperature by whatever fraction of a percent, how arrogant are we that we can even discuss this nonsense, the planet will do what it wants to do despite us. Can you imagine people in the past when the weather changed come up with stuff like, we have to take more chariots off the roads, limiting candle emissions to one per mud hut, worrying whether cabbages will cost more?

I see the supermarkets are jumping on the bandwagon helped by the BBC, reporting last week that oranges, pineapples and other exotic fruits are going to cost more, while walking past boxes and boxes of the stuff. I remember in the time before climate change became a religion and was merely called global warming that we were going to be able to grow all those things in our back garden in the West of Scotland, I'm still waiting to see a label on my Kiwi Fruit which says its origin is Motherwell.

Made in Scotland?

 On the West of Scotland did you see those poor bedraggled Syrians who had been relocated to Bute on the Clyde, this puts the population of the island up from 7,228 to what, 7,245? You manage to survive ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh/ISIL-Daesh (delete where applicable), you land in Europe soaked, nearly drowned but alive, you are accepted instead of being left in a squalid camp and they put you on ... Bute! I wouldn't live on Bute, there are no jobs on Bute, they are the only Syrians, possibly the only foreigners on the island apart from the odd Italian chip shop or Asian mini-mart owner. Why weren't a couple of family's taken in by those four or five politicians vocally led by Yvette Cooper, who boldly declared they would take in a family to spite David Cameron and appear human. Yvette's spare room remains empty to date.

Pick a field, any field.

I was misquoted, I said Minions, not Syrians.

Helion and Company

I was on the road again yesterday, I had been invited to Helion and Company's Christmas bash, as you know I have drawn maps for Helion and have done for just over a year now but I have only ever communicated by email and have never met anyone from the company. I have been invited to book launches but London was a city too far, so as the party was in Solihull just south of Birmingham I thought I would make the effort, still a fair old drive but it would be nice to put faces to the email signatures.

I stopped at a friends in Wolverhampton and then shared his car to Solihull, we duly arrived at owner Duncan Rogers' parents house which for now is Helion HQ and I met Duncan for the first time, a gentleman, I was made welcome and began to mingle. I met several people for whom I had drawn maps, both editors and authors and my head began to swell as they complemented me on my maps, I of course returned the complement about their books.

There were not a lot of people present but they covered the whole range of specialists required to bring a book to the printers, author, commissioning editor, indexer and proof reader, cartographer and typesetter. I enjoyed chatting about books for almost three hours.

Just before we left Duncan handed me a copy of the atlas I had worked on, 118 maps which I thought I would never complete to accompany a series of books on the battles for Smolensk in 1941. It is a lovely book, but of course I would say that, and the simple thrill of holding it I doubt you will ever achieve with a digital reader, I left the party very pleased that the journey had been well worth the effort, I also enjoyed the swift return in the Batmobile, sssshhh.

If you have never looked at the range of books offered by Helion I urge you to do so, especially interesting for the wargamers among us will be their series 'Century of the Soldier' covering the 1600's with some excellent books on the English Civil War. The commissioning editor for this series is a friend of mine, Charles Singleton, who has also written the upcoming ECW supplement for Warlord Games' Pike and Shotte rules. Helion have also just retained another academic to do the same for the 1700's. You can find them here.

I also managed to talk to someone else at the party who runs his own successful company producing maps, book covers (he produced the cover for the atlas) and all sorts of other stuff related to military history, have a look if you have ten minutes to spare, Battlefield Design.

It's A Trap!

Things are settling down here now, full story in the View on Sunday, power has thankfully been restored but we keep getting hints that further cuts will take place due to the system not being at full operational level yet, but fingers crossed.

The Skerton bridge was opened in time for me to pick up Simon and attend the club, it was another X-Wing game and Simon manfully managed in between being incommunicado, his job and wrestling with the weather to put a scenario together. You will notice we prefer scenario's to the usual 100 point dogfight, in the dogfights you put together what you hope is a winning list, but in a scenario you can have fun with all the ships and abilities rather than the flavour of the month. Not that you can't have fun with a dogfight but if you have spent money on all the ships you may as well get to use them.

This one caught me by surprise, the ship transporting Princess Leia after she had gone was used as a decoy to ambush some Rebels, supposedly it's crew had managed to take back the ship from the Imperial prize crew and sent out an SOS. A bunch of Rebels (me) duly dropped in with some hired help from the Scum and Villainy faction (Andrew) only to find that the Tantive IV was in fact a lure and still under the control of the Empire (Simon), accompanied by a Tie swarm along with Darth Vader himself.

I started at the wrong end of the Tantive and if I had proceeded I would have faced most of her weapons, so I sent my two X-Wings to help Simon with Vader while I had an idea that my Millennium Falcon could present a threat and maybe make a swoop on the big ship at some point when we all attacked it.

We drop into the ambush.

 The big ship did nothing much during the beginning and mid game, but the Tie fighters proved remarkably resilient to the Scum forces and went for the Hounds Tooth while Vader went for the smaller ships. By the time my X-Wings showed up the Hound had lost her shields and was taking a lot of hits on her hull. The Ties now began to die, with both Andrew and I sending one crashing out of the game, it was too late however to save the Hound, up she went and out shot the little Z95 shuttle, Vader had accounted for a Z95 at this point.

Vader and the Ties attack.

 Meanwhile after keeping as far away from the Tantive as possible I threw the Falcon in for a flyby shooting, big mistake, I did manage to hit the thing but any damage was mitigated by the beast being able to regenerate its lost shields, the only way to take this ship down is a concerted attack on its rear, but that was not going to happen due to the dogfight with Vader and his buddies. I decided Han had to get out of there and put the foot down to get out of range, I almost made it when another broadside slammed into me, but it was one short of killing the Falcon and Han lived to fight another day.

My X-wings join the fray.

 Back at the dogfight, I had now shot down two more Ties and as the game ended we were desperate to get Vader, we all calculated that with a sharp left turn he would, sadly escape, but wait, he makes a sharp right turn, oh joy! Even so, with all the laser fire engulfing him we needed three hits to bring him down, it was all up to one X-Wing, bang, four hits, one saved, Vader dies (or does he?)

Han McSolo manages to escape.

There you go, another game fought right to the end and a good scenario in the time given to produce it, Andrew and I got the win points wise and I was more than pleased to have killed three Tie's and Vader to boot. To take the big ship down it has to be attacked by several ships at the same time, this did not happen due to its escort and the fact that the 'Good Guys' started so far apart, it would be an idea to simply have an attack on a large ship to see how the mechanics work. I don't think these large ships have been very successful gamewise and you don't see them out very often, my own transport has never been on the table.

Elsewhere there was a nice 15mm AWI game and again a large Frostgrave contingent. I think that is the last X-Wing sortie for a while, I am back in the Sudan next week.

Normal Service etc.

Some of you may have seen the devastation caused to the North West by storm Desmond on the box, we have been flooded in many areas, roads are in chaos and we have been without electricity, internet and mobile signals since 22.30 last night. Some areas are not expected to get back to some kind of normality until Tuesday evening, we have just returned to the house and lo and behold within ten minutes the power came back on, whether it will stay on is anyone's guess.

Needless to say I have lots to sort out in the next few hours and I apologise to regular readers of The View (I have had a couple of emails on the subject) and might manage a late edition if the power lasts, but I expect the gods may be against me.

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.

Scum and Villainy

Club night and as requested Simon put on a scenario so that Andrew could use his, sorry, his son's X-wing forces against the big boys. The gist of the story is that the Scum and Villainy faction, the new boys on the block in the X-Wing universe, have managed to disable an Imperial shuttle carrying one of their own by setting an ambush with hyper-drive inhibitors which have cut the shuttle's power and have left it a sitting duck. Simon and Andrew know more than is good for you about Star Wars, I just like the wee ships. The shuttle's immediate escort could take out three of the inhibitors which would enable it to fire up its drives and head for home, meanwhile fighting off the enemy and preventing them boarding the shuttle and rescuing their man, a tall order. A second Imperial force were on their way.

The games afoot.

I would have simply gone for numbers as this works for the Imperials but I was under the impression that I was only allowed ships with hyperdrives, so no bog standard Tie's, I therefore took a Firespray with a laser cannon, three Interceptors, two advanced Tie's and a Tie bomber. Simon had two Y-Wings with blaster turrets, a fearsome weapon and two Scyk interceptors, Andrew had the Hound's Tooth a large vessel tooled up with all sorts of weaponry and systems escorted by two Z95's and a HWK.

Makes you want to make that Tie noise doesn't it.

  I took out one inhibitor as it was almost a gift but the others were a distance away and close to asteroids so I decided to launch a full attack on Simon then turn on Andrew. My first wave attacked and got some nice hits on the Y-Wings taking shields off and setting them up for the kill, my second wave dropped from hyperspace and also attacked, fairly soon Simon had lost both of his Scyk's and the Y-Wings, badly damaged, decided to put a lot of distance between them and my forces, I also lost an Interceptor in this fight. I actually had a good shot at a second inhibitor here but forgot about it and turned my guys towards Andrew. The Hound's Tooth had been slowly edging towards the shuttle while its escort made a wide sweep to the right of their leader, soon the shuttle had been boarded and the hostage rescued, but it had taken time.

Simon attacked and the inhibitor forgotten.

 I picked this moment to have a mental block, I wanted to disengage my forces as they were all heading for the same piece of space, but I completely cocked things up, made it worse by forgetting I couldn't K-turn backwards and ended up with the mother of all pile ups. However I still managed to down a Z95 with the laser cannon and take some shields off the Hound.

I have right of way, move.......

 I desperately tried to turn the Firespray but an asteroid got in the way, but I still had my small ships nibbling away at the Hound's shields. Simon tried to get back into the fray but his fearful blaster turrets just couldn't land a hit, I ignored the Y-Wings and concentrated on getting the Hound. The Hound disengaged and began her run for hyperspace under accurate fire all the way, just as it looked like she would make it one of my Interceptors landed a full salvo on it and blew it apart. My cries of victory were short lived, Bossk, the Hound's pilot had spent money on a second ship and he and the hostage escaped the explosion shoe horned into a Z95 cockpit.

The shuttle boarded.

A good game and exciting all the way to the end. I was very pleased with my escort build and although I lost two ships I shot down four, one of which was the large Hound's Tooth, my only regret was the pile up in the middle of the game. Perhaps I should have gone for the inhibitors but that would have meant splitting my forces and possibly getting taken out piecemeal, I could have destroyed all of Simon's force as his Y-Wings were in a bad way but I had to make some effort to stop the hostage being rescued.

My shooting was extremely good as was my saving rolls, Andrew I think was about average but Simon had some real bad luck with his ships. At the time the game was declared a S&V win, however it may have been a draw as I had possibly took down more than half the points value of the enemy, giving me a partial win, so maybe a win/win?

I will leave you with the news that my escort commander for the sector is urging an enquiry into why the shuttle was anywhere near an asteroid field in the first place!

The Last Cohort

I had a good run at the troops yesterday, I finished the remaining cohort for the Twelfth and managed with a bit of juggling to fit them all on the 20x20mm bases, it was a struggle though due to the pose I had chosen for them, but they look good. Also the shields look better than the battle damaged ones I had originally went for, that was a mistake as they would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I had a lot of time on my hands so I also rebased the Roman civilians to use as Strategy Intervention Points for the army. I will be glad to get the last unit done and move on to some 'fun' painting, the artillery, SIP's and such will not be time consuming and I expect the decks to be clear by the end of January. I may hit a snag about that time as the new kitchen and some decorating work is pencilled in for around that time, so my usual painting station of the dining room table may be out of bounds.
 

I have finished the 'Noise of Battle' maps from a book dealing with the attack on Winnedonk in January 1945 and only await amendments, I am also nearing the end of a series depicting the movements of individual British tanks on the Somme. In the wings I have two more projects, WWI naval maps and an interesting one looking at the effect of terrain in the Western Desert during WWII.

View From The Window

These weeks don't half go fast, that's another consigned to history. It is wild this morning, high winds are playing havoc with the neighbours garden across the road in Eyebrow Cottage, so called because it does seem to have eyebrows, the gate at Washington House has been slammed open, which otherwise it would move and bang all night and the view is murky. It is raining again and it is cold, I know this as I have already been out this morning, priming soldiers and checking the path and car for a pearl which dropped off my wife's earring as we trotted off for a meal out last night.

It was a French restaurant in Lancaster, well the maître d' at least was French, a small woman who lavished her attention and smiles on me when explaining that 'chicken leaver' was a special, I thought that gets the missus back for that greasy Italian waiter who ignored me in Preston. That's how I saw it at least. The food was very nice and my wife looked beautiful, she also very kindly booked a table for my birthday in a few weeks.

Yes, the oysters were delicious.

'Rinsing,' did you think that was when you put clothes in non soapy water and give them a shake, well there is a new meaning to the word, if you are a pretty girl you pop a shovelful of make up on, squeeze yourself into a tight, preferably low cut dress, take a picture, pop it on Facebook with details and online links to stuff you want and hope that some nut decides to buy you one or more of those expensive items and sends it to you. The Brooks sisters seemingly are the numero uno proponents of rinsing and have to date garnered some £75,000 worth of stuff from people with no lives, and believe me they are no great lookers.

Three little fishes?

Spare a thought for poor ex-SNP MP Natalie McGarry, it would seem that the police have decided right out of the blue to pick on her for 'discrepancies' in donations to 'Women for Independence', £30,000 of discrepancy to be precise. Isn't it about time the police stopped spending all that money and time on investigations into MP's who are clearly innocent of any wrongdoing and are simply being picked on. Natalie has assured us all she is innocent and is stepping down, temporarily(?), from her SNP position for the good of the party and, yes you guessed it, her constituents, bravo. She is of course remaining as an MP, not the kind her constituents elected but an Independent, no point in losing the pension is there.

Yes, I did it!

 Christmas is nearly upon us and over the last couple of days I have had the beginning of the rush, someone comes in clutching twenty or so cards "this one is for Australia, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Australia .............." I ask them to put the Airmail stickers on to save time and I get a look that says 'why am I doing his job?' Post Office Limited have also introduced a system whereby I have to punch in postcodes for everything now, just at the busiest time of the year, planning I think its called. I have had a few this week, in comes Mrs X carrying what she wants to post, have you a bag for this, or a box, maybe just a big envelope, what do you think? I think if you hurry the PO in the next town is open. After stuffing and destroying several padded envelopes she finds one that works, have you got a pen, no better make it a marker? Do you think it will get there for tomorrow second class, NO! I'm a vegetarian, it still won't get there tomorrow second class. Then there is the bright spark who, when asked where the parcel is going answered "I don't know" and when I couldn't help myself from blurting out "You don't know!" looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. How was he expected to know, his girlfriend had given him it, silly me. Or what about it doesn't weigh anything, yes it does you have not entered a vacuum, or, it is only 10 grams over that doesn't matter does it, yes it does that's why the limit is 10 grams under what you have.

And lastly of course why on earth did the Turks shoot down a Russian jet? A jet that wandered over a sticky out part of their godforsaken land for seventeen seconds, I don't want to glow in the dark because the Turks are trigger happy and stupid. Couldn't they just have sent Putin a stern email?

Tying up loose ends

I am trying to plan ahead and get the decks clear for when I eventually decide what the new army is going to be for 2016. I have mentioned the upsizing of the Romano-British and Saxon units to better survive in the dangerous world of the War & Conquest tournaments, this will now include the cavalry going from 10 to 12. I also need to provide these two armies with some accessories, the British are going to get a set of monks for Strategy Intervention Points and their Roman civilians are going to join the Twelfth in the searing heat of Mesopotamia. The Saxons have some lovely Irish wolfhounds for SIP's but they need a rally point, I have found a set of Dark Age binge drinkers which I think will do just fine. I also have some chickens on my 'to do' list, neat little models from Warbases to beef up my Dark Age scenery.

Binge drinking vignette coming up.

Romano-British SIP's

I got my Roman artillery from Warlord, I went for the large impressive ballista rather than the Scorpions, yes maybe that size was held in reserve for sieges but boy do they look mean, I can have up to four artillery pieces, one per unit of legionary's. That means if I could find crew members I could re-use the two Scorpions my Romano-British are now not allowed, but I can't, so what I am going to do is get some Roman manuballista's from Aventine and mount them on two artillery bases. What I would like to do is use these guys as crossbow armed skirmishers, but that is patently ridiculous albeit a fun idea, you see these men carried a hand ballista which looks almost identical to the big ones but is man portable, one was dug up near Carlisle if my memory serves me rightly. The overall cost of the Romans must now be approaching around £650.

Not mine but something to aim for, geddit?

Manuballista

Rob Broom and Dave Toone the keepers of the army lists for W&C have given due thought to my plea to introduce Contarii to the Roman Army of 150-200 AD, for want of a better name Trajanic/Aurelianic or simply Aurelian and I am now allowed up to one unit. I researched the troop type as far as I could and we know for a fact ala I Ulpia contariorum milliaria was garrisoning a fort on the Danube in the early 2nd century AD, other new cavalry units were in Pannonia at the same time. I suspect these are being raised as a counter to the Sarmatians with many of them heading east in due course for the wars against the Parthians and Sassanids. I have an idea that the contarii would eventually simply become true cataphracts/clibanarii and were perhaps a stop gap unit, mind you they seem to have been around for at least 50 years or more.

So where does all that put me, well the last cohort will be finished by the weekend, the contarii will be primed and on the tray at the same time, once these are done it's the artillery, then it is the field of glory for the Twelfth if I can get my son to fight them.

Deadzone

Another miserable wet night, we have had some terrible weather recently albeit seasonal I suppose, my journey to the club was not improved by meeting a couple of less than decent drivers on the way, something which is all too prevalent in these here parts.

As I said last week this week it was a try at Deadzone, Mantic Games popular sci-fi skirmish. Whole planets have been sealed off as they slip into decline, however there are factions who still wish to make money from their resources and so these factions slip past the quarantine and make planet fall and of course end up fighting each other, I think that is the gist of the storyline.

I chose the 'Enforcers' which, if you read the blurb are the cutting edge of the military of the time and then some, I found out that they were more like our Community Support Officers for most of the game and they certainly shot like CSO's. The others were Mutants, Rebels and Orc's, they do get around don't they.

Ruined cityscape, this was quite impressive.

 Each faction has certain abilities, you then randomly choose a mission card and 20 other cards to play as the game progresses, once the hand of 20 is gone the game ends. I had to gain my victory points by killing off specialists or leaders and hold victory point Z and the squares around it, the problem was there were three zones and you had to get there to find out which one was which. Also placed at random in the playing area were little crates which would contain goodies for the troops e.g. extra ammo, grenades, chocolate etc. OK there was no chocolate.
 

The Enforcer squad with their stat cards.

My specialists, sniper and rocket launcher.

Mutants.

 Near my entry point was a goodie crate and just across the road a zone marker, perhaps I was right next to my objective, we would see. I set off and holed up with an all round defence, I put my rocket launcher on overwatch and aimed it at a tall building a way off with a goodie crate on the second floor, I wanted to catch any Orc who made his way up to grab the goods, with the Mutants coming in on my right I set up a defence with my Sergeant and Sniper while two grunts went for the crate.

Rorke's Drift Deadzone style.

I loosed off several shots at the mutants and only managed to wound one, there is a nice mechanism where you can simply blaze away just like in the movies and lacerate an area with bullets, this did me no good whatsoever but in my head I could imagine the chaos as the mutants scrabbled for cover, I really felt like doing sound effects but remembered where I was.

One brave trooper made it to the box and found extra ammo, he had to use it however as he blazed away at a mutant dog which attacked him, yes you guessed it, he missed. The Orcs meanwhile played a card which took my overwatch off, so the rocket launcher was now useless for a turn or so, but I had a cunning plan. The mutants closed in on me for some hand to hand at which they were supposed to be good and my men bad, but I killed the two of them. Over on the other side as the clock ticked down to the end of the game the Orcs raced their devil dog into a group of Rebels where it promptly blew itself up and merely showered the Rebs with it's own entrails, the Orc leader was unhappy. He decided as my rocket couldn't hit him to take his sniper to the top of the building with the crate, open it and take up a position. I played a booby trap card, the crate exploded and the sniper was thrown into the air and fell to his death, result!

The game ended with the Orcs as winners, their objective was to keep 50% of their force alive, an unusual card for Orcs but easily sustained, the Mutants got nothing and I am not sure how the Rebels fared, but I had killed two mutants and an Orc sniper without losing a man, so I did not win but I was chuffed.

Deadzone, another skirmish game which you can play with a minimum of figures, which looks cool has a great background story and has some interesting features. We played on a large table for a skirmish game and it is meant for a much smaller set up so we took some time to get into action, but once we got closer there was a lot more going on, I quite liked the larger table as it meant that I had to think about my moves vis a vis the objectives but it did take time to progress with four players. I enjoyed the game and look forward to playing again.

It looks like skirmish games are the norm these days and I don't see that changing as we greybeards with our big armies get older, they are clever, their production values are high and they present a false sense of wargaming on the cheap, but of course they are not as you always need or want the next expansion, new mats, buildings or new figures. I can happily play both but prefer big battles. Next week we are continuing with sci-fi as one of the club members has asked for an X-Wing game so Simon is busily preparing a scenario.

I see my membership has risen to the heights of 32, after a time I am convinced that widget counter is not working and stuck at a certain number, but no, so welcome Legion Games.

View From The WIndow

Back in the saddle, the weather has settled down it is a lovely crisp autumn morning out there, cold, sharp and dry and looks like staying that way, but what do I or the weather forecasters know about that. A 'watery' sun outlines the far ridges so I cannot see much detail and not a soul stirs.

We had a horrendous week last week with almost monsoon like rain in amongst the normal rain, compounded by high winds, I had roofers fixing leaks during the odd gap, the front of the shop leaked, the back of the shop leaked and the living room was sweating water due to the plastering. I also just managed to prevent the living room leaking as I found a drain blocked and water lapping at the door. I stood in the dark getting soaked with my arm plunged into said drain scooping like mad. I continued with this as the water began to drain away until I spied something moving in the murk, it was a frog in the drain, the job now called for a long stick and not my arm, it looked like one of those man-eating, poisonous, vampire frogs, it was huge. Anyway I survived, the living room was saved and Dracufrog hopped away to find another victim.

Talking of biting, my grandson was bitten at his nursery and had teeth marks on his arm the kind forensics experts like, the ones where you can almost tell what the biter had for lunch if you look long enough. The same thing happened a few days later, and of course his mother went along to find out what was going on, the modern way is that you are not told who bit your son, the biter is not punished nor are his parents warned that if the biting continues will he be expelled for the safety of the other children. What transpires is that you have to think of taking your son out of the nursery, finding somewhere else, changing your morning routine, possibly your job while the perpetrator gets off scot free to continue biting.

The kid is lucky I don't live closer, to hell with counselling it's a smack on the wrist or backside at that age, a stern warning and problem solved, go in the corner and don't come out until you are quiet. In the distant past I have stood waiting for bullies, I have confronted them on the street, I have threatened extreme violence and I have offered them the first swing so I could legally thump them while using the self defence argument. Can I just offer in my defence if you think I am crazy I have never actually thumped anyone to date and I am obviously a different man these days, my efforts to keep my sons protected sometimes bit me in the backside, but hey I'm a dad.

I did turn once in the navy, a guy who was much stockier than me and a bit of an 'in your face' character took a dislike to me, back then I was almost a size 0, and began to pick on me, this lasted several weeks and in the confines of a messdeck it seemed worse. I was cleaning the mess one morning, mopping the floor as it was my turn, he was sitting in the corner giving me abuse, then for some reason he threw an ashtray my way, I hurled it back, he got up with the obvious intention of rearranging my face. In that instant I thought no, not this time, you're for it matey, I garnered all my seven stone drew back my arm and stepped up to the mark, only to put my foot in the bucket of water! At this point as I stumbled about stuck in the bucket Dave Cooper, a big lad, threw himself across the mess and planked one on my tormentor, he went down. I was never bothered again after that, good old Dave and his sense of justice.

Justice? I don't believe in it, I see some magazine has awarded the transgender reality star Bruce Jenner, now there's a job the world could do without, the title of 'Woman of the Year', the husband of a previous award winner, a policewoman who died in the Twin Towers, sent her award back with a very poignant letter to the magazine. Well done that man.

I have dropped myself in it with my old pub friend and I have offered to go to a football match with him as long as he buys the pie and Bovril at half time, although possibly these days I am off the mark and it might be Venison croutons and Lobster bisque. I have only ever been to one other football match and it was Hibernian vs Hadjek Split and I could not get out of it, in fact I went with the Dave Cooper mentioned above. It was possibly the most boring 90 minutes of my life so far, so this could be my second and last ever football match. "Come on you Shrimps".

That covers almost everything but the horrendous events in Paris, unlike the politicians words fail me.