I’ve finished painting my Tlingit helmets, and I’m excited to share some initial results. The pictures aren’t great, and the figures aren’t based yet, but I’m quite happy with these guys. Most of the helmets are patterned after Tlingit artifact images I found online, or helmets carved and painted by Tommy Joseph. Thanks for the excellent inspiration, Tommy! I apologize for my inferior work and any errors my ignorance of the subject material have produced.
I followed my DBA plans quite closely. I’ll describe my overall impressions first, with my personal results later so I’ll remember them (but not because I think anyone else cares).
I definitely enjoyed playing DBA at Historicon. The last time I went to an HMGS convention I was alone, and decided it wasn’t fun enough for me to go again without a travelling companion; but I was only playing GM’d games and not DBA. This time, I played DBA with folks I’ve met online, and some I’ve played with in person, and it made the convention a lot more enjoyable. I definitely plan to attend more cons just for the DBA, and I’ll be more likely than I was this time to dedicate an entire day to BBDBA doubles or other longer tournaments.
It was good to finally associate faces and personalities to their online counterparts. I think this is important to provide context for interpreting peoples’ forum posts (especially all the taunting). I was as shy as I usually am in person, but opened up somewhat as the weekend progressed.
I really enjoyed playing against new opponents and against armies I’ve never faced or even seen before. The themes helped with this. In particular, the Assyrian Dominance and Fall theme increased my interest in book I armies significantly.
My goal for the convention was to win one game in every tournament except Midnite Madness, which I would lose so I could get to bed earlier. I won the right number of games, but in the wrong events: I won the first round of Midnite Madness, but didn’t win any games in the Baltic Crusades event.
In the Splendor of Persia event, first round(s) were matched by army year as usual, resulting in several civil wars. My Arab Conquest army faced Tony Aguilar’s Arab Conquest, the four Ghaznavid players all fought each other for the first two rounds, and the Fatamid players duked it out. Tony beat me 4-2. In the next two rounds I lost to David Schlanger’s Fatamids, 5-2, and Ron Giampapa’s Fatamids, 2g-1. Finally, in the last round I pulled off a 4-1 win against Rob Torres and his Ghaznavids.
Immediately following the Persian event was Midnite Madness. I continued to use my Arab Conquest army, and beat Jim Kasper’s Thematic Byzantines in the first round, 4g-1. In the next round, David Bostwick beat me 5-1 with his Leidangs. This was the most interesting Viking-ish battle I’ve ever fought or seen. The Leidang light foot helped, and Leidang have a much lower aggression than Vikings. But he didn’t just deploy in a long line and walk forward. Vikings have options? Who knew.
On Friday, my only DBA event was the Assyrian Dominance and Fall theme. Unfortunately, the tournament only had 3 rounds, so I was unable to collect a full set of 4 Bostwicks. In the first round, I beat Jason Bostwick’s Early Bedouins with my Early Bedouins, 4-2. Next I lost 4-1 against David Bostwick’s Philistines: despite two or three rounds of combat with his general completely surrounded, I just couldn’t kill it, and he ended up totally turning the tables. Finally, I lost 1g-0 against Alex Bostwick’s Philistines in a very short game; but not the shortest. Someone else lost their general to a psiloi rush in the first or second turn in that round.
The first event on Saturday was Not The NICT: matched pairs for everyone who didn’t qualify for the championships. There were 6 of us, and we ended up playing 3 rounds to find a best player in the A and B groups. In the first round we used my armies. Mike Guth chose Early Bedouins against my Later Achaemenid Persians, and beat me 4-1. In the next round, I chose Alex Halkiadakis’s (“Greek Alex”) Hittite Empire (a) list against his Mitanni, and won 4-2. It was enjoyable to “test drive” this army since I have it unpainted in a box. I managed to repel his light foot in the woods successfully with my spears, with the help of some good die rolls. In the last round, Hank Drapalski chose to play Later Achaemenid Persians against my Bedouins, and beat me 4-3 in a close match. The tactical situation was very stressful for Hank, but I enjoyed the interesting battle.
I was afraid that bringing light foot armies to a matched pair would result in longer games that might have to be called due to time, but this was an incorrect assessment. Light foot vs. heavy foot can be slow due to all the posturing and maneuvering required to find good matchups and avoid bad ones. In an all-light-foot battle, face to face battles in open ground are viable and resolve much more quickly than spear lines with their higher combat factors. I enjoyed the maneuvering that happened in these battles.
My final event for the con was the Baltic Crusades theme campaign. I expect a full report of the campaign to be posted on the Fanaticus forum in due time, so I’ll give my impression of the rule changes that affected me, and summarize my games the best I can from memory.
The basic campaign rules work as I expected based on reading about other Two Davids campaigns. Each campaign round, players draw numbered tiles from a bag. Players act in ascending order, to choose where to attack. Attacker’s aggression is the distance moved plus one, and defender’s aggression is zero. You can move over battles but not over opponents who aren’t locked in battle yet.
There were a few rules that affected the Mongols. First, their aggression was 0 plus the number of regions moved instead of 1, to represent their superior scouting. This had only a minor effect on my games, since the attacker alway has higher aggression anyway. Mongols who won an attack (not a defensive combat) could move their home region, but that didn’t affect anyone in this tournament.
Finally, Mongols were allowed to flank march. This worked exactly as a littoral landing on a sea of grass, except you could only deploy to the sides, not the rear. It provided additional tactical options, but it was risky. On a 30″ board you were virtually guaranteed to be out of command radius if you made anything but a very conservative landing. The light horse can catch up with their multiple moves, if you get enough PIPs, but you’re definitely at risk on early turns until you roll high.
In the first round, I drew a high number but was still able to attack. I attacked Jim Kasper’s Russians, one of the few remaining targets. All I’ll say about this game is: always remember to deploy all twelve elements before you start the game. Oh yeah, also: a lot of the board can be outside command range on a 30″ board.
Next round, I was attacked by David Kuijt, playing Volga Bulgars. I placed terrain (not particularly well) and put up a good fight, but he beat me. I had a handle on command radius by then, but the whole tournament I was trying to figure out what to do with my artillery. I was able to get a few shots off, but mostly it got in my way a lot. After the game, DK showed me a better terrain deployment for my situation: if I had placed one central piece of bad going, it would provide only one place for his bows to hide. That gives me one obvious target for my artillery, which makes it easier to know where to point it.
In the third round, I faced David Schlanger’s Russians; I don’t remember whether I attacked or not. This was my first attempt at a flank march, and it almost worked really well. He didn’t deploy to counter it, and ended up moving a huge force to face the threat to his flank. This ate a lot of PIPs, and although a few of my light horse died, the rest was able to retreat with multiple moves when he was at his weakest. This allowed my main force to attack frontally, and I almost beat him. It was a tight 3-3 bout that hinged on very few die rolls, but eventually he took my general and won. I really enjoyed that game, and again, I learned a lot.
My final match was against David Bostwick’s Cumans: he had even more light horse than me. He deployed to counter a flank march, but I attempted one anyway. It didn’t work out as well, but I was able to retreat without significant losses. In that situation in the future, I think it would’ve been better to skip the flank attack and swarm him frontally, hoping he couldn’t redeploy his flanks in time. I remember this also being a fairly close match, but I may not be remembering correctly.
In the end, I got no points for winning games or any other bonus VP, but I lost one for losing my general. I ended up in last place, the only player with a negative score. Oh well, better luck next time. Overall, the campaign was dominated by the stronger Western armies, but I never faced any of them so I have no good reason to have lost so much.
I had a great time at Historicon. My sincere thanks go to the event coordinators for organizing these events, and to my opponents for teaching me valuable lessons. I definitely hope to go to more HMGS cons in the future, and to eventually start winning a few more games.
Here are some pictures I took at Historicon of the Falcon Figures Hussite/Polish war wagon. It is quite small, and looks small enough to put on a DBA base. The wagon is available with either oxen or horses to pull it, and a crew of either 4 men (ELM21, a single casting) or 3 men and a gun (shown on the wagon).
Duke Siefried has gained a reputation over the years for running large, impressive games at the conventions. He decided to retire from this and clear out his collection, presumably so his kids wouldn’t have to. But first, one last bash: Uncle Duke’s Diamond Jubilee!
For his last year at Historicon, Duke brought 14 games and ran them (with the help of numerous volunteers) throughout the weekend. There was a special area set aside just for these games, and they were all always full of players. After the show, everything was available for sale (I didn’t check the prices: “if you have to ask…”)
Here are some pictures I took of the highlights. It’s hard to convey the scale of these games in pictures. They are simultaneously really big and highly detailed at a small scale. The miniatures were definitely painted to “convention gaming” standard, but when you put this many 25mm figures on a table at the same time, it looks impressive even with a basic paint job.
Most of the games were large, but his Jolly Roger game was played in a very innovative way. Large scale pirate ships with 25mm crews were mounted on waist-high movement stands, and the game was played on the floor. This provided for a much bigger game than a table allows (due to arm length limitations) without having to sit down. There were floating islands and ports around the edges of the play area as well. The game used Duke’s Jolly Roger home rules.
I didn’t take notes on which game was which, but this one is most likely Fire & Sword in the Sudan, using Duke’s Fire & Sword home rules (not to be confused with The Sword and the Flame rules for the same period). The table used real sand scattered over the terrain for a very realistic effect.
This one is Babylon I, with the hanging gardens just out of frame to the right. This Babylonian vs Assyrian game was played with 25mm figures and a variant of DBA called De Bellis Extravaganza. Talk on the Fanaticus forums suggests the rule changes were minor, and related to the specifics of this battle: some combat factors were modified, and some troops that ordinarily don’t have ranged shooting could shoot.
Finally, Azteca! Set in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City in the time of the Aztecs), this battle between Aztecs and Conquistadors was played with another of Duke’s home rules: Aztec! The Game.
Since DBA took up the bulk of my Historicon experience, I’ll go over “everything else” first.
There was “much ado about nothing” this year, w.r.t. Historicon changing locations. My two second synopsis of the Valley Forge location is that it was just fine, and I’d go back again. The only downside I could see was that the club rooms were far away from the rest of the gaming, but that’s not a big problem for me. It certainly wasn’t substantially worse than what I remember about Lancaster.
I stayed in a campground in my parents’ RV. This reduced lodging costs, but the extra driving wasn’t ideal. For future conventions I’d consider committing more completely to “con as vacation” or maybe just a long weekend.
My big mistake was missing the online preregistration period. A smaller mistake that ended up being a major pain was choosing the wrong line to stand in during walk-in registration. The other line moved, mine didn’t: I was there for hours longer than I would’ve been in the other line. This ruined our evening, but at least it was before the convention started.
The game selection this year emphasized periods I’m not interested in, probably due to this year’s theme (Pike and Shot). The changes between the Priliminary Event List available online in May and the program seemed minimal. Luckily I only needed to find a few games to fill my schedule.
The first of my three non-DBA games was a Battlestar Galactica space battle. The rules aren’t published yet, but the working title seems to be Picon Military Academy. It’s based on the Colonial Battlefleet rules that were played last year and published in a lincense-free generic form.
The Iron Wind BSG figures are beautiful! They have a lot of detail and look like they’ll paint up easily while providing excellent results. Unfortunately the gamemaster didn’t have any missiles or torpedos, so we ended up with a lot of markers on the board.
The rules are IGO-UGO. Ships have a current speed, maximum speed, and can change their speed by a certain amount each turn. They are also very maneuverable, and can make one or more 30 degree turns each movement. Fighters go wherever they want. Shooting is done per weapon system using a range system: the gun’s range (including a die roll) must be greater than the target’s distance to hit. Hits roll penetration, and penetrating hits do damage.
Our scenario was very straightforward, and quickly turned into a shoot-em-up. I think it was a bit too early for the gamemaster to be “all there” yet.
I’d play the game again, and I was very tempted to buy the figures; but I’d really like to wait until the rules come out so I can figure out what to buy first. These ships are definitely on my “to buy” list once I know what I want.
My second game was Celluloid Heroes of the West,” a Wild West skirmish game pitting television heroes against movie heroes using the High Noon ruleset and 25-28mm figures.
The basis of the scenario was the Wild West portion of the Back to the Future series of movies: Marty McFly and Doc Brown had to get their time machine onto the train tracks and get it up to speed to travel back to the future. Most scenario gameplay was character-based: each player got victory points for doing the sorts of things their characters did in their movie or TV show.
They had a long table set up with very dense terrain, and multiple games going on along its length over the weekend. The tables were connected with specially built gulleys with bridges and rivers. All the buildings opened up so you could put figures in, on, and around every floor. The end we played on had the towns, and at the other end was desert. We had about 8-10 feet worth of table to work with for our scenario.
This was a great convention game, but nothing I’d try to do at home. The game would fail without the flavor of the scenario. Our particular game was greatly improved by the boyfriend-girlfriend combination on opposite teams constantly trying to foil each others plans’ while maintaining consistency with their characters’ typical behavior (“Does the Lone Ranger really push Silver in front of the train?”
These High Noon rules seem to be the older set published in the 90’s, and not the modern version available on the Internet. Activation is IGO-UGO; every figure can move, but they need to pass an activation test to do something else such as shoot or melee. The stats have enough details that each player can run only two figures effectively. It uses a percentile system with a long list of combat modifiers.
I’d play this game again at a convention, but I’m not inspired to paint Wild West figures or attempt to find or play these rules. It’s just not a great game for only a small number of players without a game master.
On Friday, I got into a game of Disposable Heroes that ended up being almost empty. This was my first experience playing in the Pacific theater of World War II (New Guinea, in this case).
I played two platoons of Japanese infantry, with a tank in support of each, as well as a mule train. My objective was to get the mules to boats on the coast, retrieve supplies, and transport them back past a river; the US Marines across the board from me had different ideas.
The whole board except the beach and road was dense jungle (light cover) and visibility was reduced to 10″. The Marines with their Garands and BARs (I think that’s more appropriate for the Army, who got all the good guns) totally outgunned the Japanese and had essentially no move-and-fire penalty.
The Marines were fast and deadly. In the end, my opponent crushed me utterly, leaving only the mules, the tanks (one disabled), and about 3 infantry. I claim victory, because with everyone dead I no longer needed the supplies.
I was the only player who had played Disposable Heroes previously. It’s definitely not my favorite WWII ruleset at a similar figure scale, but it’s fast, “good enough,” and easy to remember if you haven’t played in a while. The terrain and figures were nice enough that I’m inspired to paint up some Japanese and/or 20/25mm figures, but it’s low on my list.
The rest of the time I ate expensive food and went shopping. Amazingly, this year I didn’t buy any new rule sets or figures for new periods or scales I don’t already own (except for a box of 1/32 scale plastic Vikings for Martine).
The Flea Market did suck me in: I bought a painted Carthaginian army… well, actually it would make four DBA armies or a good start at a DBM army. This force has definitely seen better days, and will make a good “beater” army. I’ll put minimal effort into rehabbing it: I already rebased it so the base sizes are correct, and I’ll be touching up and dipping it all. After that it’s the road to glory: either I’ll get crushed by Romans as they expect, or my victory will be all the sweeter for beating them with an army that looks as bad as this.
If I remember correctly, this is Essex part number TT9: Tent with fire, seated Arab leader with two bodyguards. I painted it for my Arab Conquest army. The fire has a pile of sticks with two plates next to it; on one plate is a chunk of food (meat? let’s pretend) and a knife.
The tent is tiny, only as high as the seated leader. It’s certainly not a general’s campaign tent in most armies I’d know, or a stereotypical arabian merchant’s tent.
However, the cloth sculpting on the tent is excellent. It took drybrushing very well. I’m happy with how this camp and camp followers turned out; I might even like it better than the army itself.
Assuming everything goes according to plan, I’ll be going to Historicon this year. Unfortunately I missed the pre-registration period; they seem to have changed things a lot since I last went to an HMGS convention 6 years ago.
For the non-DBA events, I won’t know what I’m playing until I start the game most of the time, because I won’t get to pre-register many events. But all of the DBA events I’m playing in either have unlimited seats or I’ve already reserved my place because they don’t use the HMGS registration system. The Historicon DBA schedule is on the fanaticus forums.
And now I give away all my precious meta-game information.
Thursday, July 8th, 7pm: Splendor of Persia. I’ll be playing III/25b: Arab Conquest with the bow option.
Thursday, July 8th, 11pm: Midnite Madness. I’ll probably keep playing Arab Conquest, since I only expect to last one round anyway, so it’s hardly worth unpacking another army.
Friday, July 9th, 7pm: Cruel Tyrants: Assyrian Dominance and Fall, 745 BC — 612 BC. I’ve decided to take my Early Bedouin, I/6c, instead of Skythians since I’ll be playing another light horse army on Saturday.
Saturday, July 10th, 9am: Not the NICT. This will be my second matched pair tournament. I want to minimize the number of armies I’m bringing, so I’m considering taking Later Achaemenid Persians (II/7) versus Early Bedouin (I/6c). If I use the auxilia/psiloi options for the persians, the armies will have very similar compositions. The Persians will have one more mounted while the Bedouins have camels instead of horses, but otherwise they’re the same.
Saturday, July 10th, 4pm: The Baltic Crusades. I’m quite looking forward to participating in one of the Two Davids campaign games. I’ve signed up for the Mongol Conquest IV/35, and I can’t see any reason not to take the artillery option.
That’s all I have planned so far. This leaves my days open before dinner on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday’s full except for a small block in the afternoon. I’ll have to eat a big lunch before Baltic Crusades, and maybe hit the vendors and flea market.
Here is another Essex DBA army pack: III/25b: Arab Conquest.
The army is evenly split between mounted and infantry: a cavalry core is supported by warband and bows (or psiloi, if that’s the way you roll). The army list I’m most likely to play is: 5x3Cv (gen), 1x2LH, 4x4Wb, 2x3Bw.
I liked my color scheme until it became too montonous. I intended to go primarily with offwhite/tan, grey-blue, and red, and fill the rest in with various browns. But when it came time to paint some shields, I was at a loss. The brighter blue wasn’t too bad, but I think the green was a mistake.
Luckily I don’t have strong feelings about this army. It took a while to get motivation to paint it, and now that it’s done I’m happy that it’s finished and not upset that it’s not what I’d prefer.
I used the same basing technique as on my Early Bedouin army. The metal bases have a layer of spackle with sand dusted on top. Then I paint them with Vallejo Middlestone, followed by Yellow Tan and finally Buff. It’s a bit weird, but it ends up working well especially after I apply the static grass patches in green and yellow. I based the Bw, Ps, and LH elements prior to painting them, but based the Cv and Wb after they were painted. Spraying with varnish keeps the sand in place before painting the bases, which is convenient. However, overall I think the basing on these is a huge pain in the ass. I’m not likely to continue with this technique in cases where I’ll be using grass-like flock over the entire base. I’d prefer to do selected spots of dirt/sand on an otherwise grassy base. It’s a lot less messy and requires less touchup than applying spackle to bases with already-painted figures.
I tried another new technique with these figures, and I’m very happy with the results. The red tunics and head wraps are done with Vallejo Transparent Woodgrain, a dark maroon-red. I applied this in a single coat over the white-primed figure, and it did an excellent job of darkening the shadowed areas while leaving the highlights lighter without any additional inking required. Adding a bit of water to thin it out produced no ill effects. This is truly a transparent (or translucent) paint: adding more layers of paint darkens the color significantly instead of reaching a final tone the color of the pigment.
If I were picky, I’d change a few things about this army:
However, I’m not picky. Lucky me!
I still have an arab tent camp to paint, but otherwise this army is ready to bring to Historicon 2010.
Neldoreth started a thread on the Fanaticus forums about the workspace we use for painting miniatures.
My main workspace for painting miniatures and other modelling work is a nook in our attic dormer: probably 7’x8′ and 6′ high. I use the rest of the attic for gaming space and general storage.
Points of interest in the first image include:
It’s probably obvious that I lean towards the “a clean house is the sign of a misspent life” school of thought. When I organize my workspace, it is almost always as I’m planning or about to start a new project, and not when I’m finished with the previous one. Organizing my workspace and organizing my plans for the next project go hand-in-hand. If I don’t need to put much thought into the next project, I also tend not to put much effort into preparing my workspace for its execution.
In the second photo:
There you have it! They aren’t the tools of the trade, because this is no trade. They’re the tools of fun!
Here are a few pictures of my scratchbuilt Mongol Trebuchet, before paint was applied.
