Battlelore Heroes – Common sense prevails…

Whilst we have to wait until the end of October before this much-awaited expansion is released in the UK, at least due to FFG’s stance of releasing PDFs of the rules for their games, we can get to see what we can expect from this latest expansion.

Overall so far, it looks pretty good.

However, anyone who knows me will know that although I am a huge fan of this game, there is one thing that I have a big problem with…and that is the rules for boldness and melee battle-back. The simple fact that units can attack enemy units in hand-to-hand combat without risk of losing casualties of their own just seems plain wrong.

Well, I’m very glad to say that this has finally been addressed in this new expansion, as they have introduced a new rule – Battle Savvy Troops. This rule allows any unit to battle back, as long as it is not forced to retreat or is eliminated, which puts the game back on par with Commands & Colors: Ancients, IMO.

OK, it means that bold units loose some of their appeal (their only advantage is ignoring a flag) but I think it’s a major step forward for game balance and common sense.

Hurrah!

Battlelore revisited

After several weeks of trying, I finally managed to get a game of Battlelore face-to-face with Jere last night.

It was Jere’s first game, but I decided that he needed to be shown the full capability of the system, rather than just playing one of the introductory scenarios – therefore we used the full impromptu set-up rules from A Call To Arms with all of the available expansion units.

It’s the first time in ages that I have played a face-to-face game with a full War Council and all the expansion units available, and I’d forgotten how good a game it looks.

The game also plays very well – set-up time was quite long, but once we got going, it was a really good game.

It looks like Battlelore is back on the gaming menu, so more figures to finish painting

SOA Battle Day

Well the day finally arrived! Saturday 26th April was ‘The Battle of Poitiers’ day, and saw 4 of us from Scimitar Wargames Group head down the M1 to Bletchley for a day of gaming.

The day actually went very well, and I must admit, although we were somewhat the odd ones out (having taken a boardgame with figures to the day, rather than the normal terrain and figure layout) the games were quite well received.

…and though I do say so myself, the Battlelore board complete with painted figures does look rather pretty.

We managed to get 4 games played in the day. I played 2 each as English and French. Whilst a full report of the day will appear in Episode 32 of the ‘Meeples & Miniatures’ podcast, suffice it to say that the luck I have been experiencing as Scipio in our club C&CA games continued, and I managed to loose every game!

I’ve taken several pictures of the games that we played, along with examples of the other games played during the day, just to give you some idea of what was going on. These can be found on My Picasa SOA Album.

Overall, a good day out, and some very useful things learned about the HYW Battlelore system.

SOA Battle Day – It’s tomorrow!

Well, in time honoured fashion, I completed the painting of the last of the models just in time today, when I finished my Heavy Cavalry.

What is more, I’ve even had time to complete a shading wash on all the models, which has given some nice depth of finish. I didn’t get chance to do any highlighting though.

OK, they won’t win any prizes, but they are perfectly serviceable as game pieces and will make a tremendous difference to the look of the Battlelore game when compared to the ordinary grey plastic ones.

I’ve even had chance to add a coat of varnish to help protect the finish!

I’m going to (hopefully) take lots of pictures tomorrow, and so I hope to be posting some in-depth reviews of the event over the next few days.

SOA Battle Day – 5 Days to go

Well, 109 down, 12 to go!

After a very productive weekend, the end is almost in sight.

Friday night saw me completing my Medium Infantry (above) and Archers (below) – told you they would look different with painted bases!

I also completed my Medium Cavalry. This is the first time I have painted horses – a bit daunting, and to be honest a little slapdash, but on the whole I’m happy so far.

Only the Heavy Cavalry left to do now. I’ve run into a problem with these, as they were undercoated black and I’ve had to add a couple of coats of white paint to the models so that I can paint the barding and surcoat a decent shade of red.

This has wasted some time, but it looks better for it.

The problem I now have is this – whilst the block colourling on the figures is adequate, it’s not great. As they stand, the figures lack definition. Normally I would wash the various areas of the figure with respective shading washes, and then drybrush highlights. However, with only 2 or 3 evenings left of painting before the show, I simply haven’t got time to do this – not with over 100 figures, anyway!

So, I am faced with the option of having to do a ‘universal wash’ – which some would call ‘dip’ style method. I’m not happy about doing this, but I can’t see another way around it at the moment.

So, once the Heavy Cavalry are painted, I’ll be looking at doing a Brown Ink glaze – I’ll trial it on a couple of units and see how it looks…

SOA Battle Day – 11 Days to go

As promised yesterday, here are the latest ‘work-in-progress’ pictures of my Battlelore figures for the Society of Ancients Battle Day.

The Archers are about 80% done, mainly the hair and bases to do. It’s amazing the difference that even just painting the bases will make, so look for a major transformation with these soon.

The biggest encouragement has been the progress on the Medium Infantry. I was dreading these, as there are so many of them, but after two nights work the are over half done. As you can see from the close up (below) I have painted the plate and leather armour, and also base-coated the faces. I’ve even started the shields on the first few figures.

I’ve tried a different colour undercoat with these figures, so it will be interesting to see how they come out. The armour definately needs a dark wash to give it some definition, but otherwise they aren’t looking too bad.

With 21 Cavalry left to do after these figures, I’m finally starting to think that I may get everything finished.

SOA Battle Day – 12 days to go!

Really starting to feel the pressure now…

Only managed to get a little painting done over the weekend – still haven’t finished the Archers, though they are probably the most complicated unit to paint…not fiddly, just lots of colours!

Anyway, decided to leave them for the moment (they still have hair, 1/2 a quiver and the base to paint) and concentrate on the Medium Infantry, as these are the bulk of the remaining troops (44 figures). Luckily, they are also the least complicated having only 6 colours for the entire figure. Managed to get all the mail armour painted last night.

The plan is to paint all the leather armour tonight, which will complete most of the figure (Pictures tomorrow – hopefully!)

SOA Battle Day: T-Minus 21 days

Well, its less than 3 weeks to the Society of Ancients Battle Day on the 26th April, and so far the painting is not going quite to schedule. So far the only unit I have actually come anywhere close to finishing is my Heavy Infantry (see above).

My Halberdiers, Spearmen and Crossbowmen have all had their block colurs completed, but need at least a wash before being somewhere near complete.

I’m current about 2/3 of the way through my archers, which will leave me with the Medium Infantry plus the Medium and Heavy Cavalry to complete.

I can see this is going to be somewhat tight…

SoA Battle Day 2008 – Poitiers, 1356 AD

The Scimitar Wargames Club, to which I belong, usually takes a trip down to the Society of Ancients Battle Day – this is being held on April 26th 2008 at Bletchley near Milton Keynes.

The theme of the day this year is the Battle of Poitiers, which took place on 19th September 1356, during the Hundred Years War.

We’ve been chatting about how we are going to approach putting on this battle for several weeks now. The plan was to use the ‘Battlelore’ rules from Days of Wonderas a basis for a large miniatures battle – I have a collection of HYW figures in 28mm. However, once we worked out the forces, it still meant that I had to double the size of my army and get everything painted…so we finally decided against that.

Earlier this week, we were issued with the Battle Pack for the event, and finally decided what we are going to do. Battlelore has a supplement for the Hundred Years War, and in that game there is a scenario for the battle of Poitiers. Whilst the set up for the scenario is slightly stylised, in keeping with the terrain set up for the game, we thought that this would make a suitable ‘quick play’ game to take along with us. We are also puuting on a larger version of the battle using Commands & Colors: Ancients rules and 15mm figures, but with adaptions taken from Battlelore for the use of longbows and crossbows etc.

 

It was at this point that I was struck by a horrible thought. A brief exchange of email confirmed my fears – I was going to have to paint my Battlelore figures for the battle! Arrgh!

Definitely something that I didn’t have planned. I went back to the scenario book and sorted out all the figures that I needed:

• 4 Units of Heavy Cavalry (12 Figures)
• 3 Units of Medium Cavalry (9 Figures)
• 3 Units of Heavy Infantry (12 Figures)
• 1 Unit of Halbadiers (4 figures)
• 11 Units of Medium Infantry (44 Figures)
• 2 Units of Spearmen (8 Figures)
• 3 Units of Crossbows (12 Figures)
• 5 Units of Bowmen (20 Figures)

Which comes to a grand total of 121 figures, which I need to get painted in about 6 weeks – not my strong point, painting fast. So it looks like my Napoleonics are going to be put on hold for a few weeks whilst I get this new project sorted out.