Ancient Germans & Romans - Progress Mid July

Despite working on my Ancient Germans and Cesarean Romans methodically over the last month, I haven't taken the time to record my progress.

Foundry Ancient Germans, painted and ready for basing.

Wargames Factory Romans awaiting bases.

There are roughly 80 figures on my work table being based now, hopefully enough to run a few more tests of Hail Caesar without resorting to proxies.

Historicon 2011

This awesome Antietam board was but one of the many ACW games this year.

Scheduling a full four day wargame vacation wasn't in the cards this year, but I did manage to make a one day excursion to Historicon 2011. Despite only having a limited window of time on site I still had a great time. Pics and a brief report after the jump.

I had a very specific set of goals heading up to Valley Forge for the show: hit the vendors to pick up more terrain and figures for my growing Ancients armies, get in a game on some beautiful terrain, and take a quick spin of the various games to gawk. Failing only to bring my camera (doh! I had to resort to my phone cam!) I managed to check off everything from my list.


The Games

There was an astounding number of games going on at any one time. The majority were ACW and WWII but I did find a handful of ancients games. Lots of DBA and FoG, a few Clash of Empires, and another rules set I didn't recognize. Sadly I didn't see any Hail Caesar games going on, but I did check out a Black Powder scenario involving a Union / Confederate clash in the swamps of Florida.


An Uncivil War
Lucky me, I managed to get a spot in a pair of demo games of Architects of War new ACW skirmish rules, "An Uncivil War". I've been an admirer of the AoW terrain and blog since hopping back in wargaming, so it was a real treat to get to play on some truly beautiful terrain with Ernie and Les.

"Uncivil War" skirmish game

The scenarios we ran appear to be typical for An Uncivil War, and i found them particularly unique. The combat rules, morale, and weapons are all detailed as you'd expect in a skirmish game but AUW adds an extra lair of strategy by including on table "loot" that can be collected towards each scenario's victory conditions. I really enjoyed the tactical decisions required in trying to collect or protect loot, while also engaging in combat. Uncivil War also stresses a "Hollywood" sense of fun that is present in the rules and scenarios: vengeful Southern belles wielding frying pans, hungry and desperate Rebs chasing chickens and goats about while dodging gunfire, and the straying eye of the Southern belle's suitor which could see him dashing out of the player's control should he find himself too close to his lady love.

The game was a lot of fun! I played in two scenarios, one in which my Southern messenger was attempting to bypass a Union party who were raiding a local farm, and another in which my Southern constable and his posse were rounding up Confederate deserters. A nearby table with four players had a larger conflict involving infantry, cavalry and the hunt for spies. Talking to the AoW guys it seems Uncivil War can handle up to 100 figures on the table. As someone considering getting into ACW the thought of a skirmish game that's playable with less than a dozen figures but scales up to one hundred is great. An easy way to try out a period while building up troops for games that require hundreds of figures.

Larger "Uncivil War" skirmish game.

I also thought there was a lot of potential with Uncivil War rules to expand into campaign play (with loot gathered effecting the next scenario played) or as the basis to reskin into other periods (I'd really like to take a shot at using the rules to run the inter-tribal war the Celts engaged in). Fun game, neat ideas, lots I think you could do with it. Looking forward to the full rules being published this Fall.

The Haul
Finally I hit the vendor hall. I checked out the Architects of War stall and was really drawn to their desert terrain. I started thinking about games set in North African between Carthage, Numidia, and Rome or Caesar in Egypt.

I love this well and donkey wheel.

Architects of War stone wall

 With elephants being a key feature of the Carthaginian army I'm working on, I've been keen on finding a good north African elephant. I've been leaning towards Aventine's, even though they specialize in the elephants used by the Successors, but I happened to stumble on a manufacturer I hadn't noticed before, Sgt Major Miniatures.  I only managed to snap this quick phone pic, but I really like the weight and energy of their "Numidian Elephant".  I'd ditch the crew and add a howdah, and it's probably larger than a true north African ellie, but this model in the flesh was just what I was looking for.

Leaving the pachyderm for another day, I picked up some Celts, a few generals for my ancients, a foam cutter, piles and piles of bases, and a few bonus sprues in the Historicon goodie bag. Oh. And some loot pigs :)  All in all, a fun day of wargaming stuff.

Historicon 2011 haul

Wargames Factory Romans, First Set Painted Up

Fella on the left just saw 10,000 naked gauls come charging out of the woods.

I managed to finish of the first two groups of Wargames Factory Romans I've been working on this weekend.  I've never completed any mass, assembly style paint jobs on 28mm miniatures before so this was an interesting test of getting good results out of repetitive painting.  I can see room for improvement, but I'm fairly satisfied with these wargame level paint jobs.


When I was researching manufacturers and paint schemes for Romans I relied on other gamer's websites.  Scott Macphee's in depth review of the WGF Romans was particularly helpful. I thought I'd add on a few more comments and provide some comparison shots for anyone in the same boat.\


Roman Infantry

The box set comes with two styles of bodies (one crouching, one upright) and several varieties of arms (gladius at the ready, gladius upright, pilum preparing to throw and pilum upright).  There's also a single style of shield arm. Based on Scott Macphee's difficulties getting both the "gladius at the ready" to look right and the troops to rank up, I took care in positioning the arms. I found that the gladius at the ready only worked when it was stabbing over the top edge of the wielder's shield, which required the upright body. To help with the issues of ranking up, I positioned the shield arms with the hand as low as possible so that the shield was held close to the body.

While I was successful with the striking gladius poses turning out well, in my test positions of the finished legionnaires I'm  having trouble ranking them. I think it's going to take some finesse to get the multiple poses to rank up well.

Although the detail is soft on the infantry poses I thought they painted up well enough. There was enough detail present to pick up drybrushing on the armor, or to allow an Army Painter wash to flow around the raised areas of the flesh or tunic. On the other hand, the command figures were a bit rougher.

Roman Centurion

The centurion was the highlight of the command group, but the sculping on the single officer body seemed quite a bit "squattier" than the rest of the figures.

Roman Optio

"I lahk them frinch fried pertaters."

The only part that differentiates the optio from the centurion is the head, and sadly it's a step down. The optio's features are exaggerated into a cartoonish scowl. I gave it a quick highlight over the basecoat, picked out the eyes, gave a wash of blue/gray to imply stubble and filled in the gaping mouth with a bit of black.  I could've continued detailing the face but I didn't think the weak sculpt was worth it.

Roman Cornicen and Signifer

The cornicen and signifier are the weakest of the poses, primarily because of that weird left are with it's flipper like hand that doesn't quite fit with the other pieces of the figure. After struggling to get two of the signifers to hold their standards with both hands I think I'm going to switch to signifers holding the standard with one hand and a buckler in the other.  Having just started in the ancients period I don't have any on hand so I'll need to keep an eye out for an extra or create one from card.

Messing with Hail Caesar

Testing out Hail Caesar with 20mm proxies

It's been a very busy few weeks for me but I did manage to get in some work on my ancient armies.  I was still fretting about basing so I took some of my shelved 20mm ancients, quickly glued them to bases with PVA and started pushing them around a table while testing out the Hail Caesar rules. Playing solo, it wasn't much of a game since I was simply trying to see if I had grasped the rules and wanted to get the feel of moving multiple bases around to see how fiddly they felt.  Despite spending most of my time looking up rules, not having enough elements on the table, playing myself with only the most basic strategies, I actually had fun. Really looking forward to playing a real game.

Some thoughts from my first test

• There were a lot more counters on the table than I had anticipated. Towards the end of the battle, nearly every unit had at least 3 wound counters.
• Perhaps it was only because I was playing both sides, but I forgot which side was due the "winning" bonus from round to round of prolonged melees. I'm thinking of making a small marker (like a flag or standard bearer) to mark the winning side of a round.

Production line painting

I'm also making encouraging progress on my figures. I've got a 32 man unit of Germans that just need basing, 32 figures of Caesarian Romans ready for basing, and various other minis being cleaned and primed. And next week : Historicon!