FoGgy day in Gig Harbor

I played Field of Glory on Saturday at Bruce Meyer's house in Gig Harbor. We were going to have a FoG day at The Game Matrix in Tacoma, but we got faced out at the last minute by a War Machine tournament. Bruce offered his humble abode at the last minute. And by humble, I mean a huge gaming room in a detached building.

There were eight of us and instead of playing four separate games, we decided to play one big game using two armies on a side. The clash was Romans and Gauls versus Carthaginians and Spanish.

I was on the far right commanding a mid-republican Roman legion plus two Roman heavy cavalry units. Facing me was Tim McNulty with the Spanish cavalry and caetrati and Mike Garcia with some Spanish heavy caetrati. Mike also commanded some Spanish scutarii and more caetrati (there was a world of caetrati on that battlefield) facing my fellow Roman Gary Griess.

On our left, Bruce commanded the Gallic cavalry and Scott Murphy commanded the vast horde of Gallic warbands. They faced Dale Mickel and Al Rivers who commanded the Carthaginians.

Tim, a neophyte to ancients gaming as a whole and FoG in particular, started out by charging his light cavalry into my heavy cavalry. A mistake, despite initial success in the impact phase. Superior Roman armor and weaponry told in the ensuing melee. We both added second units to the fray, but the end result was predicatable: two routing Spanish light cavalry units and two Roman heavy cavalry units threating the Spanish flank.

At one point, Tim charged his Spanish medium cavalry against my supporting hastati/pricipes unit but after getting fragmented in the combined results of impact/melee, he had to break off in the joint-action phase and lick his wounds.

Further to the left, Mike charged his heavy caetrati into one of my hastati/principes units. "Hah!" I laughed. However, he got very good results in the impact phase and I was disorganized and minus one stand as a result. I was able to add a supporting hastati/principes unit and put the triarii behind for supprt as well as attaching a general. The additional morale support helped avert disaster, but the "easy" win against the lighter Spanish never happened. For the rest of the game we were locked in mortal combat with ups and downs on both sides. I eventually lost a second stand, but still hung in. Mike lost stands, too, but he started as a 12-stand unit with a third rank absorbing losses. My losses reduced my dice, his never did.

Even further left, Gary charged his Romans into Mike's Spanish scutarii. After just a couple turns, Mike's spanish were running. This is what should have happend for me against the heavy caetrati. If I were a legate, I'd have decimated my feckless hastati/principes.

In the Gallic-Carthaginian match-up, Bruce ran the Gallic cavalry roughshod over the Carthaginian right. while the Carthaginian Libyan spearmen s-l-o-w-l-y advanced against the wild-eyed Gallic warbands.

We called the game after a few hours of gaming when things looked very bad for the Carthaginian-Spanish coalition. They had several routed or destroyed units to very few losses, and no routed or destroyed units, for the Gauls and Romans.

It was a great way to spend a cold, rainy Saturday in late June.

Persia triumphant

Today we held a Field of Glory game day at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA. Every time I host a game, I think of the old 60's slogan, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" When I arrived at The Panzer Depot just past 11:30 this morning, I wasn't sure anyone else would come. By just after noon, we had eight players, three of whom were new players, so we're generating more interest in FoG.

With all the new players, we broke into two multiplayer games. I ran and played in a game that pitted my Sassanid Persians against my Dominate Romans. We had two brand new players, Chris and Rick, as well as Mike Garcia, my antagonist from last week's Germans v. Romans game. Rick and I ran the Persians and Mike and Chris ran the Romans.

I walked Rick and Chris through initiative, terrain setup, and deployment. We fought in agricultural terrain with some open and closed fields on the Roman left (Persian right),  a vineyard pretty much in the center, a steep hill about in the middle of the Persian deployment area, and a gentle hill off on the Roman right.

The Romans deployed with most of their cavalry on their right commanded by Mike. Chris took the Roman infantry and a unit of Huns on the left.

The Roman deployment

The Persians deployed with the cataphracts, two units of asavaran, the light horse archers and the daylami infantry on the right, commanded by Rick; the remaining asavaran, elephants, and the levy infantry on the left commanded by me.

The Persian deployment

The Romans advanced across their front toward the center of the field. On their right, Mike aggressively pushed forward with the Roman cavalry hoping to strike a blow with his better-armed catafractarii and equites. Chris pushed his infantry forward and moved the Huns around the left side of the vineyard.

I moved my asavaran up to engage the Roman horse with bowfire. On my left, I used the elephants to counter and neutralize Mike's equites sagittarii, which spent the whole game shooting at the elephants without effect. Rick, meanwhile, ran his two units of asavaran against the Huns, who were outgunned (outbowed?) and outmatched by the asavaran, so it wasn't long until Rick chased them off.

In the center, Rick charged his cataphracts against the Roman legionarii, who held up against the onslaught more than once. Each charge, the cataphracts and the legionarii scored the same number of hits or the legionarii won by a single hit more. Mike's cataphracts fell in cohesion once, but were soon bolstered. However, he lost two of six bases, while the legionarii remained unscathed.

The Persian cataphracts smash into the Roman heavy infantry, to no avail

On the Persian left, I engaged Mike's equites Illyricani with bowfire from my asavaran. I managed to kill one stand and reduce his cohesion to disrupted status without any loss of my own. I charged the Illyricani with one unit of asavaran and later brought another up to support it in melee. I expanded another unit of asavaran into a single rank so I could skirmish with Mike's catafractarii. I knew I couldn't take them in a straight-up fight, so I had to get clever.

Cavalry action on the flank

Mike charged his equites against the asavaran unit that was supporting my fight against his Illyricani and charged his catafractarii against my skirmishing asavaran, which evaded. In the ensuing combats, my asavaran managed to rout the Illyricani, but Mike's equites routed the asavaran unit they were facing. 

Mike's catafractarii, continued to press the third asavaran unit, which evaded again and drew the catafractraii deep into the Persian left. Meanwhile, I had another cavalry unit that I had positioned on my far left, which was now in position to threaten the flank of the catafractarii. Also, the first unit of asavaran had broken off its pursuit of the Illyricani, who kept running until they were off the field, and turned back to threaten the rear of the catafractarii.

Impending doom for the Roman catafractarii

I finally managed a good turn of shooting against the heavily-armored catafractarii with my three units with the result that its cohesion dropped to disrupted status and they lost one base. Unable to back out, Mike opted to charge ahead instead, but I intercepted his charge with a charge to his flank and rear. The fight didn't last long. In the impact and melee, the catafractarii were routed and eliminated.

Catafractarii's last stand

Mike's victorius equites had smacked into the Persian levy, which managed to hold on and even inflict a base loss on the much-superior Romans. Meanwhile, Rick's asavaran, had routed Chris' Huns and were banging away at a unit of auxilia palatina that Chris put up to guard his exposed flank. They weren't having much luck, but a second unit was coming up to help in the fight.

Action on the Persian right flank

With his legionarii engaged against the Persian cataphracts, Chris didn't have much else to counter the threat to his left flank. By this time, the Romans had lost three units and the Persians one. On the Roman right, their cavalry was nearly gone. The equites, down to three bases, were stuck into the Persian levy and soon to be taken in the rear by the Persian cavalry that had destroyed the Roman catafractarii. The writing was on the wall and the Romans threw in the towel. Yet another emperor to serve as a Persian footstool!

Caesar and Fritz

On Sunday, I played a game of Field of Glory with Mike Garcia to teach him the rules. Mike played once earlier this year when several of us got together to play some multiplayer games in order to learn (and argue) about the rules. Other than that, Mike has been a DBM player for several years and was feeling that he finally got it--and then everyone switched to FoG.

Mike played an early German army against my Dominate Romans. You can buy a lot of cheap warband scum for 800 points. Mike's army was cobbled together from the DBM-based stands he used for a Teutoburg Forest game. He had several units of warbands and two units of javelin-armed skirmishers, no cavalry, and just two generals (which may not have been a legal list, but who's counting). In any case, there was every freakin' German in Germania on the table facing me. I know how Varus must have felt.

We fought on a field full of difficult terrain. That hurt his warbands, which were all heavy foot and thus would be severely disordered by the steep hills, marsh, and forest. None of the terrain helped me either, but I had three units of medium foot who were only disordered in this terrain. What the terrain really did was break up any cohesive mass of warband battle lines that might come against me. 

The Roman center facing the big swamp

I deployed my heavy foot in the center guarding a gap between a large forest and a swamp that dominated the center of the table. I had my equites sagittarii and Huns on my right supported by auxilia palatina. On my left I had the catafractarii, the equites, the equites Illyricani and another unit of auxilia palatina. My plan was to skirmish on my right with the horse archers and look for a chance to attack a flank with my heavier cavalry on the left. I held fast in the center and waited for him to come to me through all that nasty terrain.

On my left, I faced two smaller warbands (eight bases each) and one unit of javelinmen. I made some good effect against the warbands, but it never lasted. One warband had been worn down to fragmented status, but I couldn't push it to broken and Mike eventually bolstered the warband back to steady.

Horse archers skirmishing on my right

On my left, Mike advanced his other unit of javelinmen against my equites Illyricani. We skirmished a bit until he failed a cohesion test and fell to disrupted. At that point, I charged him and sent him running back behind his warbands. All the while, I was advancing my catafractarii, auxilia, and equites. I figured the catafractarii could take on a whole warband of 12 bases, I thought the equites might need more luck. I worked the equites over to my extreme left, which put them in a position to attack the flank of his rightmost warband if he moved it up too far.

Imminent action on my right

It was here that I got stupid. My equites Illyricani were skirmishing against his rightmost warband. My equites and auxilia were within 4 MUs of the warband when he declared a charge against the Illyricani. I should have simply evaded, which would have drawn out the warband into a position where my equites would have struck their flank. For some reason, which I don't understand in retrospect, I feared that his warband's variable move might take it into the auxilia, so instead I intercepted the warband with my auxilia and equites. I didn't have the flank attack in my favor, so in the impact phase he had the advantage. Both my units lost the impact and following melee combats. However, my cohesion held and I passed my death rolls, so no base loss.

The catafractarii about to go into action

On my next turn, I charged the catafractarii against his other warband and the skirmishers he'd brought up next to them. The skirmishers had to evade and the catafractarii smacked into the hairies in a one-on-one fight. This fight, too, went against me, although without cohesion or base loss.

Now I have to admit that my second stupidity was forgetting the break-off rule. Instead of backing up my equites and catafractarii because they were in contact with steady foot at the end of the turn, I kept them in. This had a double-edged effect. The catafractarii wore down the warband it faced inflicting 25% base loss and reducing them to broken status. However, the equites and auxilia were having the same done to them by Mike's rightmost warband. They didn't lose cohesion, but I lost enough death rolls to lose 50% of my equites and, eventually, more than 50% of the auxilia (both units were rated superior). When the auxilia autobroke, both the equites and catafractarii failed their cohesion tests in response and fell to disrupted status.

By this time, we'd been playing for more than three hours and had to call it. He had one broken unit, I had one broken unit and one unit that was nearly broken due to lost bases. It might have been difficult for me to do more to him. Those 12-base warbands die very hard. On the other hand, for him to get at my main line of legionarii, he would need to plod through marsh and forest getting severely disordered en route, which I don't think he'd do.

I think the game reconciled Mike to the inevitability of FoG taking over the ancients gaming scene. Much of his learning curve has to do with making the paradigm shift from DBM and I think he's well on his way. In our post-game wrap-up, he admitted that there was nothing he disliked about FoG and a few things he liked very much. As he wrote later in an e-mail, "FoG has definitely left a good taste on my palate. I'm eager to play again ASAP." You can't hope for better than that.

Painting the Punic pachyderm

I finally finished elephant #1 for my FoG Carthaginian army. I actually finished it last week, but held off posting until I took pictures. This was the first 28mm elephant I have painted. It seemed like a daunting task at first, but I learned a lot in my first try and I expect that elephant #2, which will complete the unit, will go more quickly and smoothly.

As I posted earlier, the Crusader Miniatures model doesn't exactly look like an African elephant should. It's a nice model, as elephant models go, but the round porcine body makes it look a bit more like Shep from George of the Jungle than a real elephant. But I have to say that that's par for the course with elephant models. I can't think of any other manuafacturer's model that looks any more like a real elephant. I also think that if any manufacturer came out with a real-looking elephant model, people would complain that it doesn't look right.

My first task was partialy assembling the model. The elephant itself comes in three parts, the howdah in five parts, and the crew are three figures: mahout and two fighting crew. I built the elephant using the miraculous Gorilla Glue super glue and a bit of ProCreate professional scultptor's putty. The Gorilla Glue is my new favorite. It works great and is impact resistant so you don't lose spears or see your model fall apart on the tabletop after a wee bump. The two-part sculptor's putty is pretty easy to use, but stiffer than I thought it would be. Long ago, I picked up some steel sculpting tools on a whim (I had no idea what I'd do with them, but they were really cheap). I finally found a use for them shaping the putty after I applied it to the assembled elephant model. Then, after the putty fully cured, I carved off the excess with an X-Acto knife and went over it all with a bit of fine sandpaper. The result was a smooth, seamless look.

I left the howdah separate from the elephant for priming and painting. It's easier to work with the parts separately. I didn't assemble the final model until after the elephant, howdah, and crew were painted separately.

In progess: elephant on its base with the howdah being painted separately

I started by painting the elephant's skin and eyes. I used a base color of Vallejo Basalt Gray over which I drybrushed lighter versions of the same color. I used Vallejo Ivory for the tusks and toenails with a dark gray wash around them. While painting the elephant's skin, I could hold onto the blanket part, but I didn't want to grasp any part I'd painted while painting the blanket and howdah straps. So, I decided to attach the elephant to the base for further painting.


The business end of the Carthaginian elephant corps

I terrained the base first using the coarse pumice gel medium. Only two of the four legs of the elephant touch ground and I wasn't sure how sturdy it would be while painting, so I drilled a hole in one of the feet and used a short bit of brass rod to connect the model to the base. I'm not sure how much more secure that makes it, but I thought it would help keep the elephant on the base. I use magnetic sheet on the bottom of the base and line the storage box with metal. It can be a pretty good stick and I fear that pulling the base off the steel may put strain on the model if I pick it up that way. (I'll need to line the box in such a way that I can easily pull the model out by the base.)

The base I used was 80mm square (I'm using bases for the 28mm figures that are twice the dimensions of the 15mm base sizes). Painting the elephant on that base was pretty awkward at times, but I managed. I opted for a yellowish tan for the blanket with a blue border. For the straps, I wanted to use Reaper Paints Oiled Leather, but my bottle had dried out and I couldn't find more anywhere in the greater Seattle area. Instead I used Regal's Realms Leather Work paint. It's not very opaque, so I had to use several coats to get it right. (I finally got the Oiled Leather paint, so I'll use that on elephant #2.)

I painted the howdah's interior Vallejo Dark Red and used Vallejo Red Leather for the exterior. I also drybrushed lightened Red Leather over the exterior to bring out the texture.

I decided to go with a darker flesh color for the crew. I figure the mahout would be Numidian and the crew Libyan (although, really, they could just as well be all Numidians). In any case, I figured they would be darker than Iberians, Guals, Italians, etc. I went with Howard Hues Middle East Flesh as the base coat. I think it turned out OK, but I might have wanted a shade lighter for the Libyans. From what I've read, ancient Libyans were lighter skinned than one might imagine, but not exactly caucasian.

The elephant's crew

After finishing the elephant, I attached the fully-painted howdah and mahout, but not the howdah crew, and gave it coat of polyurethane as a protective coat. It's pretty glossy once it dries and I had to apply several coats of dullcote to tone it down. I sprayed the howdah crew separately with the polyurethane and dullcote. Then I completed terraining the base with the rocks and various layers of Woodland Scenics turf.


Somewhat aerial view of the base

Finally, I put the crew in the howdah. Up to this point, I was never sure they would both fit, so I was very happy to discover that there is ample room for both fighting crew.

I still have to get elephant #2, which John is having a hard time getting from the dustributor. There must be some kind of run on Carthaginians since I started painting my army. I've already talked to three people in the Seattle area who are working on armies. We may have a Carthaginian civil war brewing...

Dear dice, all is forgiven

On Saturday, I played Field of Glory (FoG) at The Game Matrix with Chris Rivers (son of Al). I used my Dominate Romans against his Early Achaemenid Persians. The game started with a miracle: I won the initiative roll. I chose "developed" as the terrain type and we wound up with a village and a plantation on my left and an enclosed field on my far right. Otherwise, the field was wide open, perfect ground for lots of cavalry.

Chris set up widely scattered across the width of the board. Having an army of mainly "shooty cavalry" including a lot of light horse, he wanted to be in position to harass my open flanks. His center consisted of his three heavy cavalry units, one of which was his elite guards, controlled by his inspired commander. In front of these were two units of bow-armed skirmishers. On his left, were two units of bow-armed light horse. On his right were three units of bow-armed light horse and his three medium foot units, including the vaunted Immortals, who were on his far right.

I set up using the plantation on my left as an anchor. I put the larger of my two auxilia palatina units in front of the plantation with the idea of running it into the rough terrain to hold it against all comers. To the right of that were my two units of legionarii, a unit of auxiliary bowmen, and the smaller of my auxilia palatina units. In the center were my heavy cavalry, the equites on the left and the equites catafractarii to their right. On my right, I put all the light horse: the equites Illyricani, the equites sagittarii, and the Hunnic mercenaries.

Chris started the game by using double-moves to get his skirmishers as far out as possible to engage me on my side of the table. On my right, I outnumbered his light horse with mine, so I turned the whole battleline towards his horse with the intent of smashing it. In the center, I advanced my heavy cavalry toward the skirmishing infantry that covered his cavalry. I figured they'd be a pestiferous nuisance and I wanted to chase them off as soon as possible. On my left, I moved the legionarii, bowmen, and auxilia steadily forward against Chris' light horse.

Chris' intention with these light horse was to try and plaster the legionarii with arrows and soften them up for his foot, or at least to render them ineffectual through cohesion loss. However, the shooting of the light horse was far from withering. I kept advancing or charging against the light horse and pushed them steadily back. In addition, my bowmen consistently put the hurt on one of his light horse units, rendering it pretty useless as a missile force.

Chris pressed his heavy cavalry into the center and his left, but without mutually supporting each other. He originally deployed them formed in a single rank so they could skirmish. This formation maximized his firepower and allowed him to evade with them, but made them less effective in close combat. One unit bore towards my light cavalry. This forced me to peel off the equites Illyricani to face them. Chris veered his elite guard cavalry towards my left and the remaining cavalry unit went up against my catafractarii.

On my right, the dice favored. In an exchange of shooting between his 10 bases of light horse and my 10 bases, I disrupted one of his units and later put it to a fragmented cohesion state with no loss to myself.



This forced Chris to move his now fragile light horse back in order to bolster its cohesion back to steady. His heavy cavalry had been aggressively forcing back my equites Illyricani and now, with his light horse retreating, I could move my equites sagittarii against the exposed rear of this cavalry.

In an exchange of missile fire, my 12 light horse managed to reduce his cohesion to disrupted without ill effect to themselves. The stage was now set for me to attack. I passed the test that let the Illyricani charge home against heavies and the sagittarii struck on the flank. In the ensuing impact and melee phases, I managed to reduce his cavalry to fragmented cohesion and eliminated one of his four bases, but at the cost of my Illyricani also being disrupted; however, they were later bolstered back to steady.

In the same turn, I charged Chris' elite guard cavalry with my equites and a unit of auxilia palatina. It was a bit of a gamble for me. My equites had been disrupted by the guard's bowfire and pitting medium foot against mounted is pretty brash. However, I counted on greater numbers to prevail; also, both my units were superior. Even with the points of advantage (POAs) against me, the auxilia did yeoman's service and inflicted serious pain on the guards. The equites also held steady. Even though reduced to fragmented cohesion status, they still meted out punishment.

Chris' problem was that, even though his quality was superior to mine by a notch, he had to split his combat between two units who together outnumbered him by more than 2:1. Because he was in a single rank and I was in double rank, in the melee I rolled twice as many dice at first until his losses reduced his dice further. In the final combat before the guards disintegrated, he was throwing one die against my seven. Still, my rolling was very good. The auxilia, needing 5's or 6's to hit, inflicted two or three hits each round out of four dice. The equites, although fragmented and reduced to two dice, still scored at least a hit each round and sometimes two. Although losing every round of melee, the guard cavalry never lost a cohesion step. Even after losing bases and taking catastrophic loss in a melee round, they still held on until they were reduced to one stand and auto-broken.

On my left came the only reverse of the day. Chris' intention was to run his Immortals against the my auxilia palatina in the plantation, smash them, and then turn my flank. He started by trying to reduce the auxilia's cohesion through bowfire--every single unit in Chris' army had bows. However, as with almost all of his bowfire in this game, the immortals couldn't do any damage at a distance, so he decided to close in. In the initial impact, I got a respectable four hits out of six dice rolled. However, Chris rolled six for six, an automatic stand loss for me. In the ensuing cohesion test, I failed by one and went down to disrupted. The bright side was that Chris failed his death roll and lost a stand himself. In the melee rounds that followed, the auxilia got beat up some more and soon broke. In a game of miserable dice rolling for Chris, all his luck focused on this one combat.

Although not entirely.

In the initial break move, the Immortals caught up with the auxilia and inflicted another stand loss. In the ensuing rout moves, I rolled 1's for my variable distance, which meant a rout move of only two inches. His attempts to pass a test to cease pursuing failed several times in succession and his victorious Immortals were drawn deeper toward my table edge and away from any effect on the other fighting.

The fight between my light horse and Chris' heavy cavalry on my right continued for several turns. Like the fight against his guard cavalry, I kept inflicting grievous loss, but the cavalry wouldn't break. Reduced to fragmented status and down to two bases, they still rolled boxcars for their cohesion test, the only roll that would have saved them from breaking.

Chris' attempt to turn his light horse back against my light horse as it was beating up his heavies was foiled by mu Huns. Extending them out to a single rank, I figured I would sacrifice them in order to hold off a rear attack that would disrupt my attempts to break his heavies. It didn't work as I thought. Chris' 10 stands of light horse, in two ranks, charged my Hun's single rank of four bases. My combat dice were split evenly between his two units. two dice against each, with 10 dice coming back at me. When the bones were done rolling, I had inflicted four hits against him to no hits back on me. In the ensuing melee round, Chris rolls continued to be pathetic.

In the center, my catafractarii continued to advance against Chris' remaining heavy cavalry unit. He opted for skirmishing and managed to cause a cohesion loss to the catafractarii. He finally decided to stand against a charge and, although disrupted, the catafractarii inflicted a base loss and cohesion loss against the heavies in the impact and melee rounds with no loss to themselves.

Eventually, the heavies my lights were fighting died the same turn the guard cavalry did. With two of his heavy cavalry units lost and the third dangerously on the ropes, Chris threw in the towel. He may well have fought and still inflicted some harm on me, but his only effective unit was his Immortals, who were off by my side of the table edge working their way back. The units I had fighting his heavy cavalry were now released to run roughshod over the light units that remained. His other two foot units were only protected medium foot with spears in the front rank and bows behind. They couldn't have held up against the legionarii and the best Chris could hope for was that the Immortals would get there in time to attack one legionarii unit from the rear.

]

Analysis

I'm not sure how I might have deployed better than I did. I got the terrain I wanted, which allowed me to anchor my infantry on a secure flank and put all of my cavalry on one side. Chris outnumbered me in mounted units, but I managed to have the local superiority against him on my flank. The three light horse units that he used against my legionarii accomplished nothing. He would have done better to use his light foot skirmishers on that flank and release the light horse to operate against the cavalry in my center and right. The foot skirmishers would still have held up a rapid advance by the legionarii, and I would have been hard-pressed by the increased threat to my cavalry's flanks.

Chris was failed spectacularly by his dice while my dice were surprisingly good. Apparently, they don't hate me or my Romans--at least not consistently. As much as I carped about the six hits with six dice he scored against my auxilia, his failure to inflict a single hit with 10 dice against my Huns was disproportionately unfortunate.

As I mentioned above, every unit in Chris' army was armed with bows. It's the shootiest army I've ever faced. Nevertheless, he made almost no impact against me at all with his bowfire. I had only three units with bows and one with javelins out of 10 units total, but I did more damage to him with my fire than he did to me. That's due to better dice rolling on my shooting, better dice rolling on my cohesion tests, and poor rolling on his shooting and cohesion.

One other thing that worked in my favor was the support I worked between my units. The loss of his elite guard cavalry and the other heavy cavalry unit could not have happened if I didn't have two units to his one in each combat. Ironically, that lesson was drummed home to me in my game against his father. In that game, I was superior to Al in cavalry and yet lost badly in the combat because I failed to support my cavalry.

Punic firepower (We will rock you)

Hot on the heels of the first two bases being completed for my Spanish scutarii, comes a complete unit of Balearic slingers, which is only impressive until you realize that it's only 12 figures--and easy figures at that. Still, it's something.

The figures are Crusader Miniatures, like all the rest of the Carthaginians I'm painting. However, I saw pictures of the Companion Miniatures range online and was very impressed. They looked like the business. 

Balearic slingers were some of the premiere mercenaries of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Crusader, who market their figures as "Spanish slingers," designed them to look a lot like shepherds who've taken a break from abiding in their fields to lob rocks at someone. They've got their tunics, their bag o' rocks, a sling, and a small knifey thing at their waist; just a bit more military than Hillary Clinton (but not as menacing). 

The Companion Miniatures, on the other hand, bear a caetra (a wee shield) and carry a falcata in addition to their slings. They are much more as you'd expect buff BC mercs to look. This means that I may at some point transfer the allegiance of my just completed slingers to Rome and paint a new unit for Carthage using these figures. Field of Glory (FoG) rates these guys superior quality; they should look the part. Nevertheless, in a wikipedia article about the sling, the illustration of a Balearic slinger looks just about like the Crusader Minis.

In any case, I have my first complete unit painted for my Carthaginian FoG army. In fact, it's my first completed 28mm FoG unit at all.

Slingers are a fairly potent force for Punic War armies. The western Mediterranean didn't produce massed missile troops. The most typical skirmish weapon was the javelin. Roman velites, Italian states' skirmishers, Numidians, Gauls, and Spanish caetrati were armed with them. Even the Greek states used javelin-hurling peltasts as their main light infantry troop type. But the javelin lacks something in range, which the sling makes up for. Ancient sources, such as Xenophon, Strabo, Cassius Dio, and Vegetius, claim that a sling-shot outdistanced a bow-shot. Yigael Yadin claimed the same from the evdidence of Assyrian reliefs that showed bowmen in front and slingers to the rear. Nevertheless, most writers of ancients rules sets pretty much consistently give slings a shorter range than bows; FoG is no exception. Slings shoot 4 MUs (movement units of 1" or 25mm) while bows have an effective range of 4 MUs, but can shoot out to 6. Slings are otherwise as effective, or ineffective, as bows in FoG, but I'm not sure that this should be so.

In WRG 6th edition ancient rules, slings had better shooting values against armored targets; in some cases dramaticallty better. However, their maximum range was half that of bows (12" versus 24"), but unlike bows, they never suffered for long range, which bows did for any shot over 6". Also, WRG, gave staff-slings at 24" range. FoG doesn't consider the staff-sling as a separate weapon type and instead just lumps them in with slings. It's too bad; they should be separated and given a longer range. FoG is a great set of rules, but I find myself scratching my head sometimes over a detail that strikes me as an oversight. This is one of them.

I have to admit that I'm something of a slingophile. I just like 'em. Every time an army list gives me a chance in to use slingers, I will. I painted these fellows with plain tunics, though with a variety of colors. No units in an ancients army has any business looking uniform. I like how they turned out, except that the faces, as usual, aren't what I want them to be. The eyes are a little bit like what you see in Japanese anime.

I just hope these fellows don't fail miserably in their first game and get forever cursed. 

Scutarii first fruits: A tale of two bases

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I completed the first 10 figures of the Spanish mercenary scutarii unit for my nascent Field of Glory Carthaginian army. Since the basing I'm using calls for four on a base, I've still got two odd men out, but the other eight are fully based and ready to rock and roll.

I used 80mm x 40mm Litko bases (3mm thick) with a magnetic base stuck on underneath. Litko bases are a godsend. They are cut precisely to size within 0.0001mm. I used to manage all kinds of quadrilateral shapes when I was cutting bases out of plastic. I even managed to trim off bits of thumb as well. Litko is a vast improvement.

I glue the figures to the base using superglue, partly because it does a great job binding the wood and metal, but mostly because it inhibits me from ever rebasing (on which more in a later post). After this I slather on a coat of Golden's good ol' coarse pumice gel medium. I apply it with a medium sized palette knife. I always make sure that there is a little bit of the medium overhanging the base so when I trim it later, there's a nice edge. I let the gel medium  dry overnight. If I get too eager, I wind up ruining things.

Once the medium is dry, I trim the edges with an X-Acto knife to get a nice clean look to the base. I paint the base coat on the medium using watered down Mud Brown from the Vallejo Air line of paints. Ater that dries, I dry brush some Howard Hues Colonial Khaki to bring out the highlights of the rough surface.

Now I attach a few rocks. I like the look of them on an individual base because it adds character like a vignette. However, too many per base and the unit, once complete, looks like it's straggling into combat through a boulder field. I use the model railrod talus produced by Woodland Scenics. They come in four grades. For these bases I used the coarse grade, but I will likely mix in some extra coarse and medium as well on other bases. The trick with them is to file down the side you'll attach to the base. This makes it look like the rock is partially buried in the earth, which is natural. Speaking of which, I use the natural color of the rock. I can stain it any color I want because the shade is neutral. For these bases, I applied a very thin wash of Vallejo Desert Yellow, just enough to settle into the crevasses and create a textured hue.

Once the rocks are on and stained with the wash, I apply multiple coats of Woodland Scenics turf. I used two coats of Blended Earth turf. I allow several hours between the coats; preferably drying overnight. I use Mod Podge, which you can get in craft stores, to glue on the scenic turf. It dries slowly and maximizes "stick." The first coat is straight out of the bottle. The second coat is watered down and daubed over the turf from the first coat. The two coats add depth to the texture of the base. In some cases, I've added three or even four coats to get the look I want. Finally, I topped off the base with patches of coarse turf. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Painting the figures was pretty straightforward. The sources I read, spoke of off-white tunics with magenta trim. Some few of the sources said it was a national costume. I did a few off white, using Howard Hues Linen, with various colors of trim, but I prefer a more varied array of color for the infantry. I don't want uniform unitl I get to the 17th century.

I painted the shields my self, but I got the inspiration from the Little Big Men Designs shields. LBM decals are very nice, but I feel like I'm cheating if I don't paint my own shields. 

Finally, the faces look a bit better than lipstick on a pig. This is a cruelly close picture of one of the best results, but no one truly wants to face his day with this mug. 

Fortunately, the figures are smaller in real life and most of the gamers I play with are older and have poor vision. 

Now I have the remaining 14 figures, which I've started. I'll finish six first and get another two bases complete (along with the orphans from my first batch), and then finish with the remaining eight. I think this scheme of painting in bits rather than attempting to do battery painting on all 24 figures at once is working.

My dice hate Romans!

After last week's sorry showing in my Field of Glory game--for which I blame my dice--I wasn't too sure what to expect from said dice when I played this Saturday. I used my Sassanids against a local player named Eric, who used my Dominate Romans. We used the same dice, my very cool, and sort of expensive, Ancient Dice. 

I've amassed 14 of them and use them for playing Field of Glory, which qualifies in my book as a "bucket o' dice" game. You may find yourself throwing 14--or more--dice in a single combat.

The upshot is that I rolled well with these dice and Eric rolled poorly with them. So, my suspicion about last week's game is correct, the dice were to blame. Except that that don't hate me, they hate my Romans. I might feel good about that, but I plan to play with the Romans often. I need better dice mojo or, heave forbid, different dice.

Today's game was played on a very busy field. Eric won the initiative and chose to fight on woodlands. The area was choked with four forest areas, two scrub areas, and two gentle hills. The forests were off to the sides, which narrowed the center area. That's what Eric was hoping for, but there were gaps in the forest areas on my right. I deployed my light horse archers followed by two units of asavaran (Sassanid heavy cavalry with bows, a.k.a. "shooty" cavalry). I ran my horse archers through the gap on turn one and in Eric's second turn, he charged them with twice my numbers of light cavalry. In an amazing display of dice-fu, I beat both of them thanks to my good rolling and Eric's lamentablty poor rolling. By turn 3, both Eric's light horse units were routing off the field and my horse archers and the shooty cavalry were advancing against Eric's wide open flank.

On the other side of the woods, I moved another unit of asavaran up against Eric's equites, backed by my cataphracts. I got one shot at him that caused his cohesion to go down one level. After that he charged into me, but again, I had the better rolls and in a few rounds of combat, he was routing off the field, chased by one of his generals unsuccessfully trying to rally them.

On my left, Eric had advanced his bowmen and a unit of Huns against my daylami infantry and elephants. After a few turns of ineffective shooting, I charged his Huns with my daylami and his bowmen with my elephants. All the advantages were on my side. Eric chose to stand with his Huns rather than evade, a.k.a., skedaddle. In the initial impact, the daylami put the hurt on the Huns, but the elephants and bowmen came to a draw. As the melee continued next round, the Daylami broke the Huns, but the bowmen killed the elephants, my first dice failure in the game. 

In the center, I advanced cautiously, but I wasn't going to get my remaining asavaran entangled with Eric's legionarii and catafractarii (yes, the legendary ones). However, I did advance my cataphracts against the auxilia palatina (superior medium infantry) that was at the left end of Eric's center. Eric moved the other auxilia palatina unit up on a hill to hold off the four units I had coming at his open flank.

I moved up against Eric's auxilia on the hill with all my shooty cavalry and started a devastating barrage against him. He lost a base in the unit and went down a cohesion level. On my left, Eric's super bowmen, flush with élan from killing my elephants, decided to take on the horde of levy scum that made up the last line in my array. He first tried to shoot them, but he wasn't successful in inflicting enough hits. They're a execrable mob, but they can absorb a lot of arrows before it hurts. So he decided to do the next best thing and charge them. Maybe he thought his bowmen were all like Legolas from Lord of the Rings.

Alas for him, they weren't. After a couple turns of drawn combats, the horde finally hit back hard, mostly due to superior numbers, but also due to superior protection. His bowmen were fragmented and destined soon for destruction.

On my right, Eric feared that he would be shot to pieces by my asavaran and horse archers, so he charged down the hill at them. In a few rounds of fighting, the auxilia palatina were crushed. Just next to them, my cataphracts broke the other auxilia palatina unit. That was game.

In the center, Eric finally got his catfractarii and legionarii into action, to my dismay, but they were too late to save him. He had only two steady units left. Four had routed off the field, another one had just broken, another two were fragmented, and a eighth was disrupted. For my part, I lost the elephants, always a hit-or-miss proposition in FoG, and had two units fragmented (nearly routed) in the center.

The biggest factor for Eric was the initial combats on my right. Poor luck on his part and good luck on mine settled the issue. With his flank blown out, it was just a matter of time...

I blame my dice

Today's Field of Glory (FoG) game was a fiasco from just after the start. I can own up to some poor generalship, but--honestly--my dice failed me miserably. We played at The Game Matrix in Lakewood, WA as part of the monthly "historical miniatures day" there.

The game was between my Dominate Romans (ca. 390 AD) and Al Rivers' Carthaginians (Hannibal in Italy ca. 218 BC). So, not an historical matchup. Al had a center of superior African spearmen upgraded with captured Roman armor. On his left were a Gallic warband, some Campanians, and a light foot unit of Numidian javelinmen. On his right was the cavalry and elephants.

My deployment was flawed from the start. I had a village in my deployment area about 1/4 of the way in from the right edge. I intended to use it as the anchor of my line, but I have no light foot in my army, and every other troop type is disordered in the village. So I deployed on both sides of the village and left some of my best units out of the fight. I had my legionaries and archers in the center:

On my left were the cavalry, except a unit of Huns, who were on the far right with the auxilia palatina. In the dead center of the line were my legendary catafractarii. 

However, they are only legendary because in my DBM playing days, they sucked rotten eggs in almost every game. The jury is still out about their performance in FoG. This game, as events will show, did nothing to polish their lustre.

The game started sort of well for me. My equites illyricani (light horsemen) were putting the smackdown on some Numidian light horse on my far left. The illyricani were "supported" by a unit of equites sagittarii (horse archers) on their right. Al charged in another unit of Numidians plus some heavy cavalry towards my sagittarii and I decided to evade rather than even try to stand. But this exposed my almost victorious illyricani to a flank attack by the Numidians and in short order the illyricani were running back to Illyrium.

The equites sagittarii made a brief stand against the victorious Numidians, but before long, they too were routing off the field. The only cavalry left were my equites (heavy cavalry) and the legendary catafractarii. It was looking grim. I moved the archers over to the right of my catafractarii and moved the equites over to counter the Carthaginian heavies. 

In a straight up fight, my heavies were crushed by their Carthaginian opponents. This left my left flank wide open. Al's Numidians and heavy cavalry were reforming for an attack on my center. Meanwhile, the elephants were coming up to meet my catafractarii. I was successful in getting my archers moved up against the elephants. After a couple turns firing, I managed to disrupt them. This made the fight between them and my catafractarii more even for me because the disruption of the elephants balanced out my disorder caused by facing the elephants. When the crunch came, my catafractarii were hit simultaneously by Al's elephants and a unit of heavy spearmen. In the initial impact, the catafractarii held on, but failed to do any damage to their opponents.

The catafractarii continued to hold until the game's end, although in a fragile state. The clash of heavy infantry lines in the center was initially a draw. The melee lasted a couple turns, but my penchant for rolling snake-eyes on my dice did me in. The right-hand unit of legionaries was at near-broken status, while the left-hand legionaries were broken.

On my right, I had advanced the larger of my two auxilia palatina units and it got it caught between Al's Gauls and Campanians. Attacked in the flank by the Campanians when they attempted to charge the Gauls, the auxilia was slowly ground down and in a state of near-rout. Meanwhile, Al's victorious Numidians and heavy cavalry were poised to strike at my exposed left flank.

That was game. Al lost two stands and had one or two units in disrupted status. I had four units broken and another two fragmented (almost broken). Technically, this was one attrition point shy of an official loss, but even my eternal optimism had to bow to the inevitability of destruction. There was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces as I viewed the carnage of lost units off to the side of the table (in Elysium?).