The Boys of Sumer

Pat Lowinger hosted another PNW Rampant event at the Gig Harbor library. We had a truncated day due to new library rules about how long anyone can book the meeting room for, but I still got in two games with my freshly-painted, you-can-still-smell-the-dullcote Sumerians that I painted for use with Pat's Chariots Rampant variant to the Lion Rampant rules by Dan Mersey.

The traffic was good driving down from formerly bucolic Lynnwood, WA. I made it in just over an hour and got there early enough to set up before our official 1:00 start time. The plan was to play two games with Scott Abbott; one a Chariots Rampant game against his Mycenaeans and the second being a Rebels and Patriots game with Jubal Tardee's company of butternut-clad Rebs against Scott's blue-clad 6th Wisconsin. Alas, Scott dropped the box containing his Lincolnite hirelings when he was loading it into his car, so we played two games of Chariots Rampant. We'll have to schedule a Rebels and Patriots game for some time later—after the repair work has been done.

I set up the table using my 'desert mat,' which is a piece of flannel with a tan tie-dye pattern that I got at Jo-Ann's fabrics, along with a few old Games Workshop 'desert' rocky hills, some lichen, and a small pond that served as the oasis whose possession was the victory condition for our games. Water is dear in the desert.

Scott's force was the following:

     2 x Light Chariots + expert drivers + bow-armed (like Mounted Yeomen in LR)
     3 x Spearmen (like Foot Sergeants in LR, but no schiltron)

My force comprised the following:

     1 x Heavy Chariots (like Mounted Men at Arms in LR, but can shoot javelins 6")
     2 x Spearmen (see above)
     1 x Archers (same as in LR)
     3 x Skirmishers (like Bidowers in LR)

I designed to force to be shooty with just a we bit of punch (and quite wee it was). I could also have replaced two Skirmisher units with a light chariot and chariot runners. In hindsight, I ought to have done so for the second game just to see how the rule works.

Deployment

Scott's lack of missile troops, apart from his Light Chariots, was decisive. I was able to sit back and let him smack into my Spearmen while the Archers and Skirmishers pelted him with arrows, javelins, and slingstones.

My one foray into aggressive behavior in the first game was when I sent my Heavy Chariots, led by my general, against one of Scott's light chariot units. That got me stuck in a beehive. Scott kept bashing into me with his Spearmen. I managed to bounce most of the attacks and pass the morale checks and dodge the lucky blows, but I kept taking losses unit I had just one hit left before they went. I kept trying to move him back to safety, but several turns running he kept failing his move activation. Finally, Scott got one more blow at him and he was gone.

Leading with my chin

However, Scott lost his general just before that. He'd been smacking away at my poor Archers, which had always managed to pass morale and thus managed to survive the game, albeit much abused. I managed to inflict a bit of harm on his General's unit with every attack, but it took getting caught after trying to evade my Spearmen that did him in.

Attacked by Spearmen

Going...

Almost gone...

The Heavy Chariots were the only unit I lost, however. Even the poor Archers came through. My Spearmen were pretty beaten up as well. The Skirmishers kept to the difficult terrain for the most part and escaped punishment. Scott was aggressive, but not so much that he'd send his Light Chariots into the rough to get at me.

Mycenaean last hurrah

In the end, Scott lost all his units and my Sumerians were able to quench their thirst in the oasis' cool waters.

The end of game 1: Miller time for Sumer

The second game went similar to the first. I was more cautious with my general and his donkey carts. He never got into action at any point in the game. Heavy Chariots are tough (like mounted men-at-arms), but brittle. I thought that keeping him back directing things and giving his +1 to my morale checks was a better use than getting him beat up by a bunch of proto-Greeks.

The bowmen take position in the oasis

My general mastering masterly inaction

Hard pressed on my right

 One big factor in the second game was my skirmishers up on two rocky hills (rough terrain) from which they could shoot at Scott's units with impunity.

It was great to finally get my Sumerians in action—as well as finally finishing them. I started them some time in 2018, but they sat partially completed until just last week when I could pull myself away from the 1672 project long enough to get the last bit done.

Pat is running a dedicated Chariots Rampant game day in March and next month we have a dedicated Dark Ages Lion Rampant variant day. This may be the occasion to work myself into putting together my 20+ year old Old Glory Picts into a proper LR retinue.

Mortal Gods - First Blood (πρώτο αίμα)

I played my first game of Mortal Gods on Saturday. I watched/kibitzed one game and then played in a second. The figures used were Bill Stewart's Gorgon Studios Spartans and Mike Lombardy's plastic Warlord Games Greeks. The first game went slowly as we were learning the rules, the second game went quicker. In both games we did stuff wrong, which we only realized later. By the 20th game or so, we'll have it mastered—except for the stuff we forget.

The game game engine for Mortal Gods is the same one used for the earlier Samurai-themed game Test of Honour. I haven't played Test of Honour, so the system is new to me. It's very straightforward and has a nice amount of nuance to distinguish various types of warriors without adding a lot of fiddlyness.

The basing is unique. Mortal Gods is a skirmish game, but relies on multi-figure trays that differentiate between hoplites and other warrior types (like peltasts and various flavors of psiloi). Hoplites can form three 3-figure bases to form a phalanx, which has benefits (and weaknesses) for combat.

The hoplite was the standard warrior type in Ancient Greece; every man who could afford the panoply was required to equip himself and muster when the city went to war. The po' folk also mustered, but may be equipped with nothing more than a rock and a smile (or grimace, this being war and all). A balanced force—called a lochos (λόχος) in the game—will contain a core of hoplites and a smattering of light missile troops with slings, bows, and javelins.

The majority of a lochos's points will be spent buying hoplites of varying quality. Hoplites vary mostly in how they're armored, but the degree of armor affects movement and defense. Some types of hoplites have better morale (Spartans) and experienced hoplites have advantages in combat, defense, and morale. You pay in points for what you get. A 3-figure stand of veteran hoplites cost 45 points, compared to a 3-figure stand of unarmored hoplites (called peripoloi, which literally means "around (peri) the city (polis)" but in context something like "patrol" or "watchmen," they being less experienced—and less armored—hoplites in training), which cost a mere 27 points. The latter move fast (8") and are cheap, but have very little to go with when defending.

The biggest single expenditure of points will be for your lochigos (λοχαγός), or commander of the small force. The title is pretty much equal to a centurion in Roman terms. Lochagoi are also differentiated by armor—which affect movement and defense—but otherwise share the same abilities. I learned from positive and negative experience in our games that a lochagos is a good thing to have.

The values for the warriors are shown on roster cards along with any special rules for the type.

When you build your lochos, you have one roster card for each stand or individual figure. You'll mark damage and activation on the card using the damage dice and activation tokens. Keeping track of which card belongs to which stand can be tricky when everything gets moved about in the scrum.

Other chrome to the game are omen, gift, and injury cards that can apply to warriors. Omen cards are are drawn whenever a red activation token is drawn. (There are three red tokens, a turn ends when the third token is drawn.) Omens can be good or bad. They can apply to one's own lochos, a single warrior or group, or all warriors, or specific types of warriors, on both sides. Omens typically apply only to the turn when they're drawn. Gift cards can be bought for points when building your lochos. The confer some advantage to a specific warrior or hero in your lochos. Injury cards are used when, by rights, your lochogos should be dead, but is only mostly dead and manages to survive with an injury instead. Although, not every injury card lets you live.

Not only dead, but ongoingly so—and for the rest of the game

I almost nearly killed Eric Donaldson's lochagos, but he survived with a non-head injury instead.

I'm pretty impressed with Mortal Gods. It's an enjoyable game system that also gives a good feel for the historical nature of the fighting. Phalanxes are a good defensive formation, but are vulnerable to their flanks and rear. Light troops are annoying, but can be chased off by light hoplites/peripoloi.

The game also gives me something to do—finally—with all the Wargames Foundry Greeks that I've had sitting around for nearly 20 years. I bought piles of them around 2000 or so when Kevin Smyth and I were working on a project for gaming the Peloponnesian War. I started some, but most of them have been sitting in a box in my garage gathering a heavy layer of dust.

I have more than enough to build two or even three lochoi. I just got in the mail a supply of Little Big Men Studios shield transfers. I have a lot of AWI to work on in the next few weeks (game coming up and I gotta have units completed for it), but I'll start working on these soon.

I'm getting inspired to re-read Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War and go browsing through the five volumes of W. Kendrick Prichett's The Greek State at War, among other books I have on Greek warfare. At one time, I was digging pretty deeply into the subject. Gaming Mortal Gods will inspire me to get back to it.

Postscript: Errata et corrigenda (σφάλματα και διορθώσεις)

Per Bill's comment, I've corrected my statements above about which figures were used. We spoke during the game of which figure makers' figure were used. It all went over (or through) my head, apparently. To quote Casca from Julius Caesar, "those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me."

Among the other things we muffed during our first play, the ability of a leader to give their actions to another unit is more limited than how we played it. My attack-attack-attack-attack against Eric's lochagos was impossible. It turns out he would have been less nearly almost dead than I'd hoped.

Is three enough?

I know it's crazy, but I've just acquired my *third* copy of the old Al Margolis Legion ancients rules that were published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1976. In my defense, I thought I was only acquiring a second copy.

Legion was one of the first sets of ancients rules—really, of any miniature wargame rules—I ever played. I mentioned them in my previous post about Al Tilley. For a time, they were our go-to ancients rules. They have the advantage of not requiring enormous numbers of figures to build armies, so you can get gaming with minimal effort and build from there.

Units are either 8 or 6 figures. Legion uses the same base size as the WRG Ancients rules, so based minis would be interchangeable. Heavy and medium infantry are two 4-figure bases; light-heavy, light-medium, and most cavalry are two 3-figure bases; light infantry and light cavalry are three 2-figure bases.

Legion is old school. Not that that's a bad thing. Far from it. I like old school, but it's different from the norm of today. The rules use a D100 for combat and moral. (This is something Legion shares with the venerable Square Ancients we played at Al's—except at Al's we used his nifty random number generator.)

Missile fire is a pretty straight up percentage chance for inflicting a figure loss, though casualties on the shooter plus other modifiers can bring than number way down to a minimum shot of 5%. Shooting isn't a big killer, but with so few figures per unit, one figure lost can be significant and tell against a unit's combat ability and morale.

Melee combat is more involved, which is where the old-schoolness comes in. Like in WRG Ancients, the combat value of a weapon type depends on the type of armor/formation it fought. For example, a unit armed with pilum fighting SHC (super-heavy cavalry, like cataphracts) has just a 20% hit, whereas the same weapon against MI (medium infantry) has an 80% hit. Modifiers also come into play, so a unit may have a better or worse shot. Once the basic melee hits are resolved, there's a slightly more fiddly procedure to determine the overall victor of the melee round. I won't go into it, but it involves math, the kind of math that people like me never use except for wargaming. The result of all the mathifying is to get a victory quotient that runs from 1.0 (even up) to 5.0 (they're so screwed). Each quotient corresponds to a probability from 50% (for 1.0) to Automatic Elimination (for 5.0). The roll of D100 subtracted from the probability produces a result.

Things can go south quickly. The more figures you lose in a unit, the more you're likely to lose. Although I can recall a few games where battered units hung in after taking a lot of punishment.

Despite its hoary age and old school pedigree, Legion is still a very playable game.

The illustrations throughout the rules are by Roy G. Krenkel, a contemporary and sometime collaborator with Frank Frazetta. Krenkel did a lot of the illustration for Edgar Rice Burroughs books as well as some for Robert E. Howard and others. The Legion art is pretty much sketches. Krenkel's more formal art is more impressive, which isn't to say that the rules artwork is anything to sneeze at. There's a fluidity, energy, and dramatic composition that belies its apparent simplicity. Krenkel illustrated a few other FGU rules, notably Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age.

Now that I have *three* copies of the rules, what will I do with them? Good question. I've entertained making a project with them for the past several years when I had only two copies (or just the one). I have a lot of Peloponnesian War era Greeks. Mostly unpainted Wargames Foundry lead. I could easily do up some small Spartan and Athenian forces without having to shell out for any figures. I'm also eager to paint some Aventine Miniatures figures, just not a lot. Legion doesn't require many figures for a decent game, so some Pyrrhic War gaming is a possible project for 2019 or so. (I'm kinda full up on buying new minis right now, which I'll detail in upcoming posts.)

Prodigious, Purple, Pricey: DBA 3.0

Well, I just had to do it. Even though I sold my DBA armies a few years back with the thought that I would never play DBA again (which may still be true), I couldn't resist the allure of the new DBA 3.0 rules.

I balked at the idea of purchasing them after I looked online for them from the sole US reseller and discovered the price was $47.00(!). The slick, glorious, glossy rules from Warlord Games are cheaper than that. My balking at the price of things doesn't tend to last long, however. I have every edition of DBA from 1.0 on, so I thought I should get it just in case.

I heard that The Game Matrix in Tacoma, WA had them in stock and I set out to get a copy this Saturday. After morning mass in Bothell, I made a stop at Eltana Bagels in Seattle for a breakfast nosh, then down to Tacoma. Traffic was good and I got to the Game Matrix much quicker than I thought, arriving just a bit after opening hours. I didn't see any of the South Sound stalwarts around—in fact, almost no one was there. (I might have intuited that right off by the fact that I could park within 100 yards of the door.)

I trotted back to the section where historical rules can be found, wondering if they'd have any left. I might have called first, but needn't have bothered anyhow. There were two stacks of them dominating the rules shelf. They're big. It looks like A4 format (210mm x 297mm), though I haven't measured. They're also hardcover. Both size and binding are big departures from past editions of DBA.

Oh, they're also very purple (which is, appropriately, the liturgical color for Lent, but I don't think the Barker's had that in mind.)

And, they're $47.00, which is three times what DBA 2.2 cost.

I had a browse through them when I got home to stately Chez Dave in bucolic Lynnwood, WA. Unlike most of the people on the Fanaticus forum, I don't have DBA memorized, so I can't spot offhand how much they've changed. However, from the look of it, 3.0 is not a major revision. What they have done is:

• Add diagrams for some of the more opaque rules situations (as an alternative to just writing the rules in Standard Modern English?).
• Expand the army descriptions, so you don't have to go to Wikipedia to look up what Blemmyes are (in which case you might think they were an army of headless people).
• Change the army compositions, which must cause a few groans from people who have 100 DBA armies that they need to change in order to be valid.
• Tweak a the rules regarding rear and side support.
• Changed some of the combat outcomes.
• Change the measuring system to be multiples of the base width.
• Revise the terrain setup rules.
• Change the army deployment rules.

That's all that I can see from what I've browsed. There may be a bit more that I don't notice yet; I'm a bit obtuse sometimes, so I expect I've missed a lot.

These aren't the Blemmyes you're looking for.

I have, I think, some 15mm DBA armies in a box in the garage. Unpainted, of course. I'm not likely to paint them any time soon. I have, however, a bunch of the 28mm Cutting Edge Bronze Age minis from Warlord Games. I bought these last year because I couldn't resist. As a recovering ANE student, I'm pretty jazzed about having accurate figures available for the period. From Akkadians to Amorites, they've got it all. But I've been wondering what to do with them.

Maybe a 28mm DBA project...

My last 15mm DBA project was painting the armies and enemies of  Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom Egypt. I could do a similar project for the Age of Hammurabi (ca. 18th c. BC). The figures aren't bulky, so I could easily fit them on the official base sizes (60mm wide) for larger scales.

Mounted on the standard bases, I might also be able to repurpose anything for DBA to be used with the old Al Margolis Legion rules published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1976.

Postscript: Eltana Bagels

Eltana is a new favorite spot for me. It's on the edge of Seattle's Wallingford district and not far from where I used to work when I was at Adobe and later Sakson & Taylor. It's also just up the street from the Pacific Inn Pub. The best dive bar in Seattle with the best fish & chips in the world.

Eltana makes their bagels Montreal style in a wood fire stove. They're chewy and slightly sweet. The only comparable bagels are Siegel's Bagels from Vancouver, BC, but that's too far to drive.

When I was in between jobs last summer, I went down to get a bagel on several mornings. A toasted bagel with schmeer and lox is the best way to start a day. I wish they'd open a shop up north by me.

Lo, the lowly slinger

Maybe it's because my name is David, but I've always had an affinity for slingers in wargames. There's something intriguingly primal about smiting your foe with a rock, even one flung from a distance using mechanical aid.

In every ancients wargame I play, whether big-battle style or skirmish, I make sure that I take any slingers I can get from the available troop types in an army list. These figures are also among first ones I paint. In fact, it's always a matter of deep chagrin for me when I get interested in a range of ancients figures only to discover that they left out our friend the slinger. So, this post is my humble paean to a humble weapon.

The sling in warfare through the ages

Slings are one of the earliest known weapons, being essentially an extension of throwing a rock by hand. Though likely used first for hunting, they became common in prehistoric warfare. They go back to Neolithic or even Paleolithic times. Like the earlier developed atlatl, the sling was an application of the principle of mechanical leverage long before Archimedes invented defined it.

Petroglyh of slinger from Çatal Hüyük ca. 7500 BC

Evidence for the use of slings can be found in the archaeological record in places all over the world, mostly from pictographic evidence. However, evidence from skulls dating from Mesolthic and Neolithic times show indentation wounds that must have come from stones that were hand thrown or slung.

Petroglyph of slingers from the island of Naxos, ca. 2000 BC

There is also physical evidence. Even though slings, which are made from organic material, don't survive over time, slingstones do. However, slingstones can be difficult to identify. Unless the sling bullet is formed from clay or otherwise shaped, it's difficult to say that a roundish stone found at an archeological site is a projectile rather than just a rock. Excavations of the Neolithic/Early Bronze Age city of Hamoukar in Syria have uncovered more than 1300 projectiles that were apparently used in the violent overthrow of that city.

Clay sling bullets in situ at Hamoukar, Syria ca. 3500 BC

In the ancient world, slingers were either highly regarded as elite missile troops or generally despised because they used a peasant weapon—yet one with great asymmetrical effect, as Goliath of Gath learned to his dismay.

You're laughing now, but wait for it...

Slingers appear in Homer where the Locrians are said to have "...trusted in bows, and slings of well-wound sheep’s wool, the weapons they brought to Troy, and with these they fired missiles thick and fast, trying to break the Trojan lines." (Iliad XIII)

Slingers on a silver rhyton from Mycenae

The Israelite tribe of Benjamin had a corps of 700 deadly-accurate left-handed slingers, as related by Judges 20:15-16. Assyrian wall reliefs showing the siege of the Judean city of Lachish in 701 B.C. depict slingers to the rear of archers, which has been interpreted to mean that slingers outranged them. It could also mean that the slingers used a high enough trajectory to shoot over ranks in front of them. It's interesting that in no ancients rules I'm aware of are slingers allowed overhead shooting, nor do they out-range bows.

Assyrian slingers form up behind the archers

Recovered slingstones from Lachish show what a wallop these things could inflict. The large size may also be due to their use in a siege rather than in the field.

Slingstones bigger than meatballs

In the Anabasis Book 3:3, Xenophon relates how his troops suffered from the Persian slingers and bowmen. The Greek missile troops consisted only of Cretan archers and some peltasts with javelins. The Persian archers out-ranged the Cretans (perhaps because they used composite vs. simple bows) and the Persian slingers outranged the Greek peltasts. After a fruitless attempt to drive off the Persian missile troops, Xenophon enlisted from among his ranks 200 Rhodians, whose skill with the sling was legendary, to become an elite corps of slingers. Because they used lead bullets in their slings, versus the fist-sized stones of the Persians, the Rhodians far outranged and neutralized the Persian slingers.

Rhodian slingers continued in use by Greek armies; Pyhrrus had a corps of 500 of them at Heraclea. Hannibal employed slingers from the Balearic Isles in his campaigns in Italy. Rome employed both Balearic slingers and Rhodian slingers after these areas came under their control. Some lead sling stones recovered from archaeological sites have inscriptions on them in Latin or Greek that say things like "catch!" or "take this!" A practice not dissimilar to writings on ordnance in modern times.

Roman slingers from Trajan's column ca. 113 AD

Slings continued in use through the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages. The Prophet Mohammed was wounded in the face by a slingstone at the Battle of Uhud in 625. The sling gradually fell out of use in Europe during the middle ages, although it was retained at least into the 14th c. in Spain.

At the Battle of Kappel in 1531, Swiss soldiers carried stones in their pockets to use as close-range missiles. Although not an example sling use, it still shows how the ballistic use of stones could have an effect. The Swiss stone-throwers were credited with stopping a cavalry charge at one point. (Kappel, by the way, was the battle where the Swiss reformer heretic Ulrich Zwingli was killed. He was badly wounded and found on the field where he was finished off by an enemy captain fighting for the canton of Unterwalden named Fuckinger—no doubt from Fucking, Austria (the comma here is important!).

The Spanish conquistadors in the 16th c. encountered slings in the hands of the Aztecs and Incas whom they conquered. These missiles were more feared than the native arrows and javelins because, unlike those weapons, the slingstones had deadly effect against the armored Spanish troops. There is evidence that Coronado's men used slings themselves—in addition to their arquebuses and crossbows—in his 1540 Cíbola expedition in the American southwest.

Clay figurine of a Meso-American slinger ca. 300 AD

Meandering nostalgic digression: I had some old Minifigs Aztec slingers from their 70s-era Aztecs range. I quite liked them, but I don't know what happened to them (as, alas, I have no recollection of how I came to lose a lot of long-lost things), but I recall them in a type of overall suit with a shield and head-gear that made them look a bit like Big Fig from the old Fig Newton commercials: Hit it, Hal! Apparently, these figures are still available, so I've ordered a few. Minifigs tells me that there's a two-week casting time and then shipping after that. I'll post an update when they come.

The staff-sling supplemented, and later superseded, the shepherd's sling that was in common use for so many thousands of years. The staff-sling simply attached one end of a sling to the end of a pole with the other end slipped over a peg at the top of the pole. Using the weapon was similar to the action of a trebuchet. Although the actual range of the staff-sling may have been no greater than the shepherd sling, it was handier for throwing larger projectiles and even incendiaries in siege or naval warfare.

Slingers in wargames

In reviewing a set of ancients rules, I always have a keen eye about how slings perform in them. I'm not really looking to see whether they perform better than bows, only that they perform differently and not be lumped into a group with bows as long-range missiles (as opposed to javelins and darts, which are short-range missiles). Unfortunately, the latter is often the case.

There are a few rays of light, however. I was pleased to find in the skirmish rules BattleLust by Columbia Games that slings and staff-slings are separate missile weapons. I even found that staff-slings are less accurate at close range than slings, but have the advantage of range and outperform the humble shepherd sling at longer ranges.

WRG Ancients (6th ed.) had separate stats for slings that gave them better effect against armored troops than bows, even if their range was shorter. The WRG 5th edition ancients rules separated staff-slings from the rest, but the humble shepherd sling was counted among the bows and javelins.

Rogue's Gallery: Slingers I have known

The following are a few of the slinger figures I've painted and played with over the years.

Balearic slingers
These are from Crusader Miniatures. I blogged about these guys earlier when they were painted for a 28mm version of Field of Glory. I abandoned the FoG project, but not the figures. I've since re-based them on single-figure stands for use in skirmish games.

Bronze Age Europeanoids
These are from Monolith Designs 40mm Prehistoric Europe range. I completed these figures as part of my Bronze Age Europe skirmish project. The Song of Blades and Heroes rules I use don't give slingers any kind of distinction; they're just like anyone else with a distant shooting weapon. Although, SoBH is versatile enough to allow my own tinkering with special slinger rules…

Greek slingers
These are some of the beautiful  figures from Foundry's World of the Greeks range sculpted by Steve Saleh many years back. I've played with these figures in my De Bellis Velitum games. Alas DBV counts slingers as any other "shooter" no different than bowmen, cross-bowmen, staff-slingers, or even the fabled Lithuanian bat-dung hurlers.

Naked Guy With A Rock (βράχος-ρίψης γυμνιστών)
One notable figure from among my Greek slingers is the bollocks nekkid guy holding a big rock (so, not actually a slinger). In one of our DBV games, he took on all comers and walked away. Legend has it that he retired with his trusty rock to an island in the Cyclades where he entertained tourists with lurid tales of taking on an army single handed with nothing but his rock and a smile.

What does one wear to a rock fight?

Rock flingin' Picts
These excellent figures, made by Black Tree Designs, were a very nice addition to my Pictish forces for Pig Wars, which are otherwise from Old Glory's Age of Arthur range. Old Glory doesn't offer Pictish slingers, so I was quite happy to find the Black Tree figures in a blister pack at The Panzer Depot stall at an Enfilade! convention long ago (so long ago that John Kennedy, proprietor of TPD, was actually at Enfilade! selling things instead of sitting it out like Achilles among the Argive ships).

On deck
I've got several other packs of slingers: Saxons, Irish, Byzantine (staff-slingers), Spartans, etc. that I'll eventually paint and get into games. I'm rather keen, now that I think of it, to do something with Aztecs and Conquistadors. I likely won't use the old Minifigs "Big Fig" slingers, but Eureka makes a nice range.

I've also got a lot of 15mm ancients still in the raw lead. Some of these are the excellent Rhodian slingers from Xyston. I just don't have an application for them yet. The mind, however, churns...

Slinging.org, etc.

While fiddling about on the Interwebs for information about slings, I discovered the website slinging.org, which is devoted to reviving the sport of slinging. The site has lots of information about modern-day slinging with links to other sites. Some of the sites linked to offer slings for sale. I couldn't resist. I ordered a split-pouch sling made of woven paracord from David the Shepherd. It's advertised as being ideal for slinging golf balls, although until I learn how to aim and control the sling, I'm sticking to marshmallows. They won't stop Goliath, but they won't go through a neighbor's window or drop some ill-fated passerby either.

Sling and sling-mallows

So far, I've only slung marshmallows around the house. My success is marginal; mostly I just alarm the cats. Part of the problem is that the marshmallows—and I even got the jumbo ones—don't have enough weight to seat properly. They tend to fly out in the wind-up. I think that once they go stale, I'll have an easier time with them.

I've also looked into getting a Balearic style sling made of woven sisal from T.J. Potter Slingmaker. This is a lot more like the ancient weapon and is modeled after the slings still in use in the Balearic Isles of Spain, where annual slinging contests are still held in honor of the islands' history of producing the finest slingers of the ancient world.

The big problem with slinging in these modern times is finding a place to sling—especially to practice—that is open and far from anything/anyone that could get hit by a stray shot. I expect stray shots to be my standard release for some time.