Imperial Roman Army Assembles part 2

For Part 1 head HERE

Since I left you last I have been steadily building and painting my Imperial Roman Legion. The good news is that several units are now beginning to take shape and a big push over the next couple of months should see the bulk of this army completed.

As a reminder my legion will consist of the following

10 cohorts of heavy armoured Imperial Roman infantry. With Warlord figures readily available at a cheap price on eBay these have been my go to range. For the best discounts check out the big army boxes. There will be some of you out there that will wax lyrical about the Victrix models and I can testify that they are beautiful but when building these big armies sometimes quality has to be sacrificed for cost.

Each cohort will consist of 20 figures with four to a base. The bases (warbases) are 5cm x 5cm giving the overall frontage of each unit 25cm. This is consistent with the basing used for the Britons. I understand from some simple research that the first cohort was numerically twice the size of the others so it will be double ranked with 10 stands (same facing). This means I need a total of 220 legionaries…..and guess what, the good news from the Shed is that aside from command, standards and musicians they are all painted. 

The bases still need painting and grass added

I also discovered that a typical legion would have 60 scorpions (light artillery) so it seems entirely reasonable to put one scorpion with each cohort as a separate base. I have 8 warlord scorpions available and two from black tree. These are yet to be assembled etc.

This infantry core is going to need some support so in the plans I have set out the following

Three units of Imperial Roman Cavalry (these are sourced from Victrix). Each pack delivers sixteen horse and riders and with my units 10 figures strong I can field the three units and have two riders spare for command stands. The figures have all been assembled and painted. Just waiting on their horses.

Five units of Auxiliary infantry  (Warlord Plastics) – to cater for the lack of command stands I will press into service some spares I have from the standard legionary boxes. These are all now painted and dipped. Just need to be based and shields added

Three units of archers, these are mix of warlord and black tree metals. There will be two western style and one eastern style unit. No progress on these yet

Finally there are a couple of extra units to be thrown into the mix

One unit of Praetorians (warlord) – a large cohort (40 figures/10 bases) has been assembled and primed. I appreciate the Praetorians rarely saw campaign action but they look nice and pretty. Status – assembled and painted - to be based and shields added

One unit of Marines (warlord) – this is a standard unit of 20 warlord legionnaires that will be given blue tunics and the spare hexagonal shield that came with the Roman cavalry. Status - assembled and Primed.

Finally there will of course be the usual rag tag of commanders and officers

More soon

Escape from Mos Eisley

Earlier this week Alastair had the idea to run a Galactic Heroes scenario (a Fist Full of Lead supplement). The adventure would be based in the Star Wars universe.

For Alastair's much better report head HERE

Using my Khartoum terrain we fashioned together a representation of Mos Eisley complete with landing pad, alien beasts, and of course the iconic Star Wars Characters.

Mos Eisley

This was going to be a four player game with the forces of Good ( one squad lead by Luke & Leia, the other by Han and Chewbacca) versus the forces of dark (Darth Vader and some troopers supported by an imperial paid up group of mercenaries lead by Boba Fett).

The scenario was very simple, the Rebels had to cross Mos Eisley with a droid carrying plans for a new super weapon and escape via the spaceship docked at the landing pad. The Imperials had to stop them.

Han (top left flees Vader and his troops)

This was a fast and frantic game all played out in around two hours. A big thankyou to Alastair for providing the figures, play sheets and adjudicating.

Streetfighting....

Boba Fett reaches the Falcon first

The game was extremely cinematic and in no particular order we had…

Darth Vader wading down a street taking down three rebel troopers and clashing with Chewbacca, sadly the giant wookie is now a nice new rug in the Dark Lords Imperial apartment

One Dead Wookie - Vader at the end of the Alley

Taking Positions

Imperial Stormtroopers armed to the teeth missed everything they shot at

Real Lasers as Han battles it out with Storm Troopers

Leia using the cover of the Rebel troopers

Luke fought it out with his dad, injury him in a close fought duel and escaped - this was far to graphic to show (excuse for no photo ;-)

Boba Fett used his jet pack to get in amongst the heroes but game off worse in a firefight with Han Solo, deciding he had enough he jetted out (the rally roll was a one)

All quiet at the landing pad

Han made it to the starship first and dodged a succession of imperial and bounty guard fire.

Battle for the NOT Millenium Falcon

With a final flurry Darth Vader attempted to wrestle control of the craft through his dark powers only to ‘just fail’ and allow our heroes to escape and fight another day

 

A frustrated Vader

BLAM 2019

Good Morning All

This time last week I was recovering from the effects of a rather wonderful weekend of wargaming, rugby and beer.

Of course, I am talking about the annual wargames convention held in my local pub. For the fifth year in a row I have been priviliged to help organise a smallish event of around 25 avid gamers and members of the lead adventure forum to push figures and roll dice for three three days.

Rather obligingly the pub screened all the quarter final rugby games so nobody had to miss out on the sports either.


The following photos give a snapshot of the games on play - thank you to some folks on the forum for allowing me to pinch some.

Stars Wars: Ewoks attack by Gamer Mac

Sharpe's Bastards by Malamute

Tales of Shedwood by Eric the Shed

A Paleo Diet by Mason

A Victorian Dungeon Crawl by Malamute & Dr De'Ath

Traveller by Sl44de

Rebels & Patriots by Romark & Jeff

WW2 in the Levant - Captain Blood

and here is to 2020..

When Two Tribes go to War

So after six months of hard graft both Mark and I were able to present our two Ancient British tribes to the battlefield. Of course we had to put out everything on the table and, in total around 1500 warriors entered the field.

Mark has painted significantly more cavalry and chariots (he has over 27 of these painted up in 28mm) so to balance up the sides a few of his chaps joined mine. Not that it made much difference....more on that in a minute.

Fortunately when we started this project we agreed a standardized approach to our basing, unit size, and even the colour of the static grass we were going to use. The end result two very serviceable armies painted to wargamer's standards and easily interchangeable.

Did I mention that we are both putting together Roman legions? Once we get into Summer next year the plan is to put out a 50 foot table in the garden and fight a really big battle.

Anyway back to the game in hand. We used Hail Caesar as this delivers the fast, frenetic and friendly game. It also helps that most of the players in the shed are familiar with the rules. Monday night saw us joined by Glen and Alastair.

I was delighted that Glen was on my side as it was his Norman cavalry that overran my Saxon wing at Hastings with some phenomenal dice rolling.

More on my Celtic Army can be found here

Onto the battle....

In the picture below you can see Mark setting out his troops, aside from a few trees the field was devoid of terrain.

Both Armies now face off against each other. It did look rather intimidating.

The two forces stared themselves out and then unleashed war.....

The centres slowly advance...

Large numbers of chariots and cavalry....

Alastair's cavalry launch the first charge and crash into my warbands

Infantry assaults on the far wing

More troops pour forward

Here come the all action shots....

A furious cavalry engagement - these chariots are very tough

Across the field battles are raging...

Its very chaotic and great fun.

By now my right wing has been decimated, and things are not looking too hot for my tribe

The cavalry battles rage on....

More warbands enter the fray...

The opposition survey the damage they are doing to my poor tribe..

More action shots...

The centre's finally meet....

With one massive crunch...

The picture below shows the emptiness of this flank  - some 10 units were destroyed here

The final slog...

So three hours of mayhem delivered a success for Mark's tribe (he had more chariots I moaned)

It was a great learning curve for future games and the nuances of getting warbands, chariots, skirmishers and cavalry to work together will need to be tested, before these chaps meet the Romans.

Talking of Romans I'll be sharing my latest progress in the next blog post.

cheers