WAB Year of the Four Emperors

I advise an historical gaming club at the school I used to teach at. The club is now in its fifth year. During that time, I've probably had fifty kids involved, but only about 20 have actually finished an army. Usually I end up fielding part of the armies myself.

Today we had a club battle at the school. Two of the students are building early imperial Roman armies for Warhammer Ancient Battles. They're close to being done with their armies. This was their first game with their newly painted figures. We played a 2000 point battle from the year of the four emperors.

Here is Matt with his 1000 point Roman army. If he looks proud, he should be. He started painting his first army just two and a half months ago, and he's done. Now he's working on increasing it to 2000 points.
This is Matt's heavy cavalry unit. I taught the students a simple block painting technique, but Matt has already moved on to drybrushing his chain mail. And those are hand painted shields.

Here are Matt's two legions, his army commander, his army standard bearer, and part of his unit of archers.

Matt's Auxilia were decisive in our battle.

Matt commanded one side in the battle. Forrest and Nathan commanded his wings.

The battle opened with the brothers Green moving their skirmishers into contact. Forrest's Romans are painted and based, but they don't have shields yet and aren't flocked.

The brothers Green watch as Imperator Matt and his generals plan their attack.

Matt's cavalry won an early victory over the Greens' cavalry. The legion on the far left of the Greens' line was able to chase them off the table.

The legions clash in the center of the table. Three of these units are mine, and one is Matt's.

Just as you would expect in a Roman civil war, the legions stayed locked in combat until the battle was decided. Both sides' auxilia tried to get flank attacks on the legions' main lines.

The game was a grueling slugfest in the center. Here the legions are pounding each other to dust.

As the battle continued, the casualties mounted.

Here is the table at the end of the game. Most of the units were destroyed. Matt's army won a marginal victory, but his own army was nearly destroyed.

WAB works well as an introduction to wargaming. The students get to build armies of moderate size, and they do like rolling so many dice.

15mm Napoleonic Austrian Light Cavalry

I'm building an Austrian army to fight the 1809 campaigns in Age of Eagles. I figured I would start with the Wagram OOB and adapt it to other battles. For Wagram, I need three brigades (5, 4, and 6 stands) of chevauxleger and one brigade (7 stands) of dragoons.

My buddy Austin (hello, Austin!) sold me some AB chevauxleger/dragoon figures he had, and I rounded them out with a few more figures from Eureka USA. These 44 figures took me over a week to paint, but I think they were worth the effort.

All four brigades from the front

All four brigades from the side

Closeup of chevauxleger in green and white coats

Closeup of dragoons in the back row

I usually use Old Glory or Battle Honors figures, just because they're so cheap here in the US. I often pick up Minifigs when I can find a deal on eBay. I like the Minifigs' uniformity. These AB figures were pricey. It cost me $63 for the bare lead for these four units. With Minifigs, it would have cost $51. With Battle Honors or Old Glory, it would have cost $27 (I'm part of their special buyers club).

The figure painter in me enjoyed these figures, but the frugal Scotsman in me will probably buy Old Glory next time.

Piquet 28mm Napoleonics

I painted these two armies in just under four months. On the table are 240 Austrian infantry, 24 Austrian cavalry, 10 Austrian guns, 30 Austrian gunners, 6 Austrian generals, 180 French infantry, 24 French cavalry, 8 French guns, 24 French gunners, and 6 French generals. That's a total of 474 foot figures, 60 mounted figures, and 18 guns.

Almost all the figures are Old Glory. There are a handful of Sash and Saber Austrian artillerymen. All the guns are Sash and Saber except for the Austrian horse artillery, which are Front Rank.

It was a fun project, and it won the "Best Diorama" award at the local IPMS show last October.

Piquet is a great system for solo gaming, and I've enjoyed pushing these figures around the table.

French legere regiment with the army commander observing

Austrian horse artillery

Austrian 58th line infantry regiment

The whole table

Long view of the Austrian line

Another view of the whole table

Battle of Foy

On Saturday, January 19th, my gaming group played a World War II scenario using the Battlefront rules.

A battalion of 101st Airborne Paratroopers, worn down by the siege of Bastogne, attempted to take the German-held villiage of Foy, Belgium. The Germans had a severely reduced company defending the town, but it was a strong defensive position.

In real life, the airborne pushed the Germans out of the town, but they had to commit a second battalion to do so. The 506th PIR suffered heavy casualties.

In our game, the airborne pushed the Germans out of the town, but they had to have help from a company of Stuarts. E and H companies were almost totally destroyed, and I company was torn up pretty badly. It was a very close game.

Figures are a mixture of Battlefront (Flames of War), Command Decision, Peter Pig, and Quality Castings. Buildings are all from JR Miniatures.

You can see more pictures of our battle at http://www.angelfire.com/id2/macp/Foy_1.html

Legionnaire Poses

The Old Glory pack comes with four different advancing poses. All are serviceable, although the two waving their pila up in the air are a little silly. The first pose gets the 360 treatment so you can see what the sculpts look like. The shield really cuts down on the scurrying effect.

Old Glory Marian Romans

My next ancients project is to build an army for the Roman civil wars of 49-30BC. I ordered up some Old Glory legionnaires, and I was pretty disappointed when I opened the pack and looked at the figures. I'm an Old Glory fan, but even I have to admit that their figures frequently do not march, but scurry around the battlefield. These Romans seemed to have a bad case of the scurries. When my buddy got his Gripping Beast Marian Romans, I was pretty tempted to chuck the Old Glory figures on the lead pile and start over with Gripping Beast.

I'm glad I didn't. I have to remember to say to myself, "figures always look better with paint on them." And then repeat it three times. And then just paint the darned things. Because once I put paint to metal, these figures started to look really good.

The command figures are almost identical to the Punic Wars Roman command pack. Only the centurion with the vitis and the signifer with scale armor are unique to this pack. They're both nice figures, but I don't like the inclusion of a Corinthian helmet on the centurion. Surely he would have the same Montefortino helmet as the men