Medieval Midgard Massacre!

Dan has been building a large number of angry peasants for his German Medieval armies so he wanted to do an 11th-12th century feudal era battle. So we met to decide who's candidate would be Pope, or Holy Roman Emperor, or Chief Dog Catcher of Altdorf.

His army at 450 points and 11 Reputation was pretty huge. He didn't add any upgrades to anyone and he had 8 or so horde units of peasants.

My cavalry foreground. Sergeants in the van, which was a fatal mistake.

My army was 442 points, 12 Reputation and had a lot of expensive knights. I outnumbered his cavalry 8 squadrons to 3.

Dan's cavalry

Dan's foot sergeants

Some of Dan's archers, peasants, and his thematic dice tray.

My center. three units of foot sergeants and two units of crossbows

Dan had his peasants massed on his left, but the frontage was constricted by some woods and a mountain side which wouldn't give my cavalry space to effectively smash into them, so I put the bulk of my cavaly on my left, opposite his cavalry.

I lead with my sergeants hoping to wear him down so my knights could then overthrow that flank. Instead my sergeants were defeated and thrown back onto my knights, which gave Dan's cavalry the impetus.

The Red Knight tries to stem the tide and dies in the melee

In the center my crossbows didn't do badly against Dan's foot sergeants, but it wasn't enough.

With my squadron of knights destroyed my army commander, Count Raymond the Good was on his own. Dan's cavalry commander challenged him to single combat and rolled four hits to my one. Ouch. My Reputation plummetd to -2. Troubadours will sing of his tragic fall for many years.

Count Raymond (R) in red cloak dies in Single Combat

The White Knight also found himself alone and fighting a squadron of Dan's knights single handed. 

A squadron of my knights charge Dan's hero hoping to kill him and knock some of his Reputation down.

My right wing, two squadrons of Knights tries to squish some peasants. They do, but it's not enough.

In the center I try and launch a counter attack with my foot sergeants but fail some Command Tests and it doesn't happen.

At the end of the turn we were at -1 Reputation for my army and 6 Reputation for Dan's. A mighty victory to be recorded in an illuminated manuscript or bawdy ballad. Or perhaps a bawdily illustrated manuscript.

Dan (L) likes thematic headgear and had to show me (R) his new nasal helm

This was my seventeenth game of the year! It was great to return to get these figures out again. I just love the early medieval period. There's something about knights in chain hauberks, kite shields, and nasal helms with lots of flags and colourful shields crashing about scaring the livestock and disturbing the peasantry.

Obvioudly I need to edit the army list though....

Midgard in Mantovia

Played a 400+ point game of Midgard last night with Scott, Brett, Dan, and Pat.

I got out my 11th-12th century Medieval stuff and was able to build armies over 400 pts and still leave troops in the box! So I guess I don't need to buy any Victrix Norman cavalry or infantry. Which is good to know. I think as is, I can build armies up to 500 points easily.

Fulk the Bastard has once again raised the banner of rebellion to overthrow his father, Count Raymond the Good in my Medieval Imagine-Nation of Mantovia.

I was so absorbed with playing and guiding my friends through the rules that I didn't get many photos.

But here are some:

The centers clash. Cound Raymond's ward crashes into the Black Company

View from my ward. My crossbows are having trouble finding targets.

The Red knight smashes the Saracens mercenaries lead by Khalid al-Babar in his sedan chair.

End game. My ward has been bashed about. Losing it's commander in a duel with the perfidious Black Knight. Count Raymond having lost all of his troops is coming over to take command, but the enemy center is in not bad shape either.

The game ended with both sides into negative Reputation Points, but Count Raymond was at -2 whereas Fulk only had -1. Very bloody! Count Raymond is wounded and will have to retreat and regroup. Fulk will need to regroup as well before he can lay siege to any castles.

I like that with Midgard I can incorporate my head fluff for the different characters.

I need to buy a big bag of glass beads for Reputation Tokens. They're easier to pull from the Tea Mugs of Reputation than plastic bingo chips.

Midgard

 

In my on going quest for some satisfying Middle Earth rules, I have purchased Midgard, the exciting new "heroic era" wargaming rules by James Morris (see his Midgard stuff HERE and his Middle Earth stuff HERE) and published by Too Fat Lardies. Find the Lard TV Midgard videos HERE.

I've watched the development of these rules with interest. The 20% off pre-order deal was just too good to pass up on so I jumped on it (especially with the current exchange rate with the Pound).

A nice value added with TFL products is getting the pdf when you purchase the physical book. Normally I am not overly bothered with the pdf. I dutifully save it to all my devices. I will open it to print the Player QRS. And then promptly ignore it. 

Canada Post going on strike while my copy is in transit was a bit annoying. But thanks to the pdf, I can load it onto Mrs. Rabbitman's tablet and get stuck in and start thinking about elves, dwarves, and orcs again. 

There will be a tiny bit of reorganization required, but nothing too onerous. Midgard doesn't use fixed unit sizes. But it does use a fixed unit frontage. Everything is based on the "spear throw". Nominally 120mm, but you can make 80mm a "spear throw" if that works for your armies.

My dwarves already fit nicely into 120mm x 40mm for a unit. Or I might make a spear throw equal to the nice movement trays Don designed and printed for me. I can cut different measuring sticks and see what I like.

Elves and orcs will need some trays. But with everyone being on washers, I can do that easily. 

My Medieval armies are already on 40x40 bases, so 3x stands across will be a unit. Which is 12x heavy infantry or 6x skirmishers, which is how I organized them for Lion Rampant, so no rebasing required!

Midgard might even work with Samurai. The Age of War is starting to get away from the heroic leadership of earlier Samurai wars, but sub commanders still got stuck in.

Could these rules be the "magic bullet"?

We won't know until we try.

Watch this space!

Speedy Swiss

After my game of Lion Rampant 2nd Edition on the 22 August, I got all excited and finally painted and flocked the bases on all my Swiss and rationalized some units (short 4 halberdiers for 1 unit, and had 4 extra pikemen! Helllloooo Bits Box!). 

Converting Essex pikemen with Perry halberds 

I also started looking at how many Swiss I had and did I have enough for 3 players for a convention game next month? I dug out my unpainted Swiss, which included 3 dozen Old Glory that I had assembled and base coated maybe 10 years ago and then lost interest.

Also added 4 handgunners to bring them up to 3x 6 figure units of skirmishers 

3 hours to paint this mob!

These were given to me about 15 years ago, and are supposed to be pikemen. I honestly had enough pikemen, and they're in the early 16th century Italian Wars costume (puffy sleeves, slashed doublets, floppy berets, lots of feathers), not the mid to late 15th century Burgundian Wars look that I wanted (sallets, tight doublets and hose), but oh well, they were a gift. I eventually sourced some halberds from Perry Miniatures and got them assembled and primed and base coated, to sit...

...and sit...

...and sit for 10 (+?) years.

But after the game, I decided to get some paint on them and produce three more units of Warriors (Fierce Foot in old money). If I bring in some Wars of the Roses billmen, I should have a 3rd retinue for the upcoming convention game.

Painting was pretty fast and dirty and the costumes are pretty simple. No facings or equipment etc to worry about like with Napoleonics. The blue and white unit I banged out in a 3 hour paint and chat with Mikey and Patrick last week. Historians aren't really clear just how common the bright cantonal colours were worn, and the more irregular scruffy units could be late 15th century revolting peasants anywhere. Trying to vary the colours slowed things down a bit, but I was in a "Don't fuck about, just paint it!" mood so I got 40 figures painted, based and flocked within one week! 

The command figures are from a bag of Old Glory Wars of the Roses foot command and one random Citadel WotR pikemen who was probably cast back in the 80s.

This is how I do flags. A bit awkward but it works for me. 

While I was at it I painted 4 more schutzen to get me three 6 figure skirmisher groups. Plus those schutzen finally got their schutzfahnlein so the commander can stop waving an empty pole around.

Schutzfahnlein 

The Swiss now muster 4x units of pikemen (Veteran Sergeants/Heavy Foot), 7x halberdiers (Warriors/Fierce Foot) and 3x skirmishers. Plus they can borrow some artillery, knights and more halberdiers and crossbowmen if required.

So there's some more knocked off the Leadpile and an army mostly completed. I won't say it's "complete," but I'm not actively seeking more figures for it.

Now if I could only knock out Napoleonic Russians that quickly. 

Never Give Up!

 Way back in 2008, when I was unemployed, and before I had started this blog, I embarked upon The Great Rebasing of my Medieval collection to fix some issues (warped balsa, chipped plaster of Paris, single based pikemen!) and bring it in line with my ideas for a 2nd edition of Blood & Chivalry. Which showed great promise, but got no interest, so I never developed it further.

By November of 2010, I had progressed to having my Burgundians done, and the Swiss started. Which is where the Swiss pike hedgehogs of doom then stalled out for the next 12 years. Never flocked, hardly played with.

Well last Friday the long awaited Lion Rampant 2nd edition arrived in all it's hard covered glory, so Patrick and I had a little game. I went with Swiss vs. Burgundians to try the new pike and handgun rules. A random die roll gave us the "Stampede" scenario; the Attacker drives a herd of cattle into the enemy camp.

I don't have a herd of cattle, so the Swiss were driving a herd of very fierce sheep instead!

Burgundian reinforcements start on table edge

The camp with 2 units. I gave the Burgundians a 4 pt unit of foot to balance out the 4 pts of sheep

My oldest figure leads the Burgundian foot knights

Very fierce sheep drive the Burgundian foot back, but they counterattacked and slaughtered their woolly opponents. 

Swiss advance in their unflocked state.

Close up of the First Figure

Glamour shot of Charles the Bold. I should have taken some cavalry instead to properly test the pike rules

This got me thinking and the following Sunday was rainy and lazy, so I started painting bases and spreading glue and digging out 3 dozen Swiss halberdiers that have been sitting in a box in their brown undercoat for ..... ooooh I hate to think. 6, 7 years?

Maybe these chaps will finally get their banner!

So I've easily got two Swiss retinues. The next 3 dozen figures and borrowing some other figures from my Wars of the Roses troops might bump me up to 3 retinues.

So, it's only taken 12 years, but their bases are done!

Never give up.