Orctoberfest

 It's Orctoberfest in November! Late as usual, I intended to post some Orcs during Orctober, as many Fantasy Bloggers do, but better late etc.

So here's the start to my collection of 10mm figures from Mark Copplestone (click here).

The Witch King of Angmar arrives on a Pale Horse

I've always been interested in the Northern bit of Christopher Tolkien's Map of Middle Earth which alludes to the deep history of his Father's creation.

CT's map (see here)

Wargaming the war between Angmar and Arnor seems like a nice little project for the Winter!

Skulls are a popular motif this Orctober

Realty

 A quick post to share a couple of recent purchases from Warbases. (Just to clarify, I don't work for them, I'm just a satisfied customer!). I have bought bases from them for quite a few years now, and last visit I thought I'd try some of their other items.

On seeing them, I took an immediate fancy to the MDF 10mm size buildings. These come in kit form as illustrated in the following picture. I purchased a couple of the smaller ones to try as I'm not gifted when it comes to model making. 

The main parts are laser cut MDF; the "half-timbering" is laser cut card, and the roof is also a piece of scored card. How simply, and neatly, the parts fit together is demonstrated by the fact that I made (including painting) one of them this morning.

The house by the lake (with 10mm Norman)

This is the "Cavendish Cottage" with Stone Foundation option. I simply painted the walls off white and coloured the half-timbering with a trusty Sharpie (other fibre tipped pens are available). The roof is a bit plain so I think I'm going to tile it.

The Lake in the above picture was also from Warbases (see here). The set of MDF Ponds or Lakes, depending on the size of your figures, is illustrated below.

As they arrive (scale in cm)

Ready for play (scale in inches)

Every time I look at the Warbases site they seem to have added new bits and pieces that I probably "must" have, so there may be similar posts in the future!

Exeunt

 

Turn 6 saw Legion IV advance in the centre, the Brocolii tribe and Legion II recuperating in the North, while in the South Legion III marched after the retreating Coronithi and attacked them.  

The Fifth Battle

Coronithi v Legion III

The Coronithi Chief was determined to stall the advancing Vard Legions with a hit and run battle hoping to fall back to the Capital with as many men remaining as possible.

The Vard General decided that the landscape he had just advanced into favoured a more defensive stance and fought the battle with this in mind.

The Vard control the hill and have their archers in the woods. The Coronithi attack somewhat halfheartedly.  

At one point the Vard are drawn into an attack...

but their General is cautious, wanting to preserve numbers for an attack on the enemy Capital

The Coronithi withdrew with both sides suffering some losses.

Turn 7 saw further movement by Legion IV and recuperating forces on both sides

Poor Army movement dice throws for both sides stalled the Vard advance on Turn 8, however the recovered Legion III was able to advance to the enemy Capital

The Sixth Battle

Coronithi v Legion III

A very reduced Coronithi tribal force, plus the Capital's town garrison, faced the Vard Legion III.

The Vard General employed the same tactic that had won him the last town, firing on the garrison (who are not able to move) and avoiding a frontal assault until they have been sufficiently weakened.

The Coronithi Chief's plan was to march down the Vard's left flank and tackle the archers before the garrison was shot full of arrows.

His plan almost succeeded...

With the garrison slain the Vard were able to occupy the Capital

A last desperate fight took place

but the Coronithi Chief finally surrendered.

With the fall of the Capital the long awaited mobilization of a fourth tribal force evaporated.

The Brocoli (the last surviving tribal force) decided to accept terms. The Vard had successfully expanded their territory and were looking for a new Hare & Hounds board to invade.

Bob's idea for using a Hare & Hounds style board for mini-campaigns has certainly worked for me. It would be interesting to try this in a Horse & Musket setting at some point.

Crisis

 Turn 5 of the Hare & Hounds board Mini-Campaign did not start well for the beleaguered Tribal Confederation. The Mobilization dice roll at the end of Turn 4 was very much in favour of the Vard Republic...

Position at the start of Turn 5

A green die roll of 1, added to 4 for the current turn number, meant that a new Vard Legion could be mobilized at the beginning of Turn 5, whereas the tribesmen will have to wait until Turn 9 to see another force appear. 

Two battles took place in Turn 5. The Brocolii attacked Legion II, and Legion III attacked the Coronithi again.

The Third Battle

The Brocolii v Legion II

Starting positions

A familiar battlefield (see game 1) awaited the adversaries, however the Brocolii Warlord was much more cautious than the impetuous (and now deceased) leader of the Anacondi tribe.

Early stages of the battle

Once casualties started to rise, both sides withdrew at a point where the fighting had lulled due to retreats (a dice roll was used to determine this).

The Fourth Battle

Coronithi v Legion III

Legion III advanced into the square containing the Coronithi tribes town. In the Campaign rules Towns have a garrison of 1 (poor quality) Infantry that must remain in the town but may obviously defend; Capitals have a garrison of 2 (average) Infantry. To give the defenders a slightly better chance, 2 (poor quality) Infantry garrisoned the Coronithi town. A total of 2 units plus a General may occupy the town.

Opening positions

The Vard Legion III had two units of archers, and under the supervision of their General, they started to pepper the town garrison with arrows whilst the Infantry units held the Coronithi main army on the flanks. The Coronithi warlord took refuge in the town, though may have wished he'd supported units in the field. The town counts as a defended built-up area - assume there's a palisade around the huts! 

After losing a third of his force, plus the bulk of the town garrison, the Coronithi chief decided that he would be better served by abandoning the town for a while, and withdrew. The Vard Legion III took the town intact.

Time to leave!

The position at the end of Turn 5 looked like this

With the remaining tribal armies being pushed back towards their capital, and another Legion on its way, the Confederacy is in crisis...

 

Consistency

 The second battle of my Hare & Hounds mini-campaign has been fought.

The overall position before the battle

Legion III of the Vard and the Coronithi tribe face each other, generally, across a battlefield with a wooded area in its centre. 

As I'm only allowing Archers to enter woodland, both generals place their archers opposite the wooded area, hoping to get their missile units under cover.

Army composition has been randomly determined prior to the start of the campaign.

Legion III has 4 Infantry units and 2 units of Archers. The Coronithi have 3 Infantry, 1 Cavalry and 2 Archer units.

The luck of the initiative die sees the Coronithi take possession of the woods and a fire fight ensues - both sides locate their c-in-c with the Archer units to obtain a bonus. The Vard infantry advance on both sides of the field.

 
 The damage from arrow fire is fairly equal, despite the Coronithi being in cover. The rest of the forces engage in hand to hand combat. The Coronithi general keeps one eye on the melees as he is understandably concerned with so many enemy forces being to his rear.

As the day wears on, the Coronithi decide that discretion really is the better part of valour and begin to withdraw.

At the first opportunity then the Coronithi have disengaged and left the battlefield to the Vard.

The situation at the beginning of Turn 3

During Turns 3 and 4, Legions II and III and the Coronithi tribe recuperate; the walking wounded are treated and those who have become detached from their units return (sometimes under pressure). In other words, the Army strengths are returned to their starting positions. To do this they must remain in the squares that they were in at the end of battle. The Brocolii tribe, having not yet entered the fray, are free to move and do so, approaching the now re-established Legion II.

The situation at the end of Turn 4

Before moving on to Turn 5, one slight change to my original Campaign Rules has been made. At the end of Turn 4 both sides roll a D6. The number scored is added to 4 and the total equals the Turn Number on which a fourth Army is mobilized; originally this was going to automatically appear on Turn 10 but I thought an element of randomness might be more fun.

The mobilized army will be made of retired veterans and raw recruits so will consist of mainly poor quality units.

The Vard have so far proven to be consistent in their fighting ability; will the Brocolii turn the tide?

Expansion

 Having got a small window of time between work and domestic duties, I have made a start on my version of Bob Cordery's Hare & Hounds Campaign set up. 

The setting is an imaginary "Ancients" situation, with the expansionist Republic of Vard seeking to subdue various tribes who have formed a confederacy to resist them. 

The H&H board was created by randomly generating a number of 3x3 Portable Wargame boards. I haven't drawn on the links but they follow the same pattern as described by Bob's illustration.

I'm using a pin board to keep track of the Army movements (8 Euros at Tesco!):

The Vard (Green pins) start with two Legions (numbers II and III) up near the frontier. The tribal armies are near their respective settlements. The composition of the Legions/Tribal Armies has been predetermined using a table similar to the random army tables in Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames. Each Army has 6 units and a General.

Turn 1 sees the Vard cross the frontier. 

On Turn 2 the advancing Legions are opposed....

The First Battle:

 Legion II V The Anacondi Tribe.

 

The initial set up sees the Anacondi to the East (top of the picture) with three Cavalry units and three Infantry. The second Legion of the Vard Republic have three Infantry, 2 Cavalry and one Archer unit.

The Anacondi are aggressive and advance at once.

The Legion push the Anacondi back on the right while the centre holds with their left flank protected by dense forest.

  Pushing forward, the Chief of the Anacondi realizes too late that he has enemies to his rear

 the remaining tribesmen are surrounded, and the tribal force is annihilated! 

The surviving members of Legion II must now recuperate and wait for reinforcements before moving again.

The next game will see Legion III pitched against the Coronithi tribe.

Further to the last post, I have made a change to my conditional formatting to add a wooded hill instead of the second wood/forest grid. Thanks to Jonathan Freitag for suggesting this. I haven't adopted a separate town on a hill option - I may dice for this!

Random

 A recent discussion on Bob Cordery's blog, regarding generating random layouts for Portable Wargame boards, led me back to an idea I had some years ago for using MS Excel's conditional formatting function to do just that. Put simply, when a condition is met by the content of a spreadsheet cell, another cell will automatically be populated, say by a coloured fill. This enables a PW Grid to be randomly populated with colours representing scenery. 

The following demonstrates this using a 6x6 grid, a system I'm currently trying using 3x3PW rules.

Two identical grids are made, one contains a random number generating function, in this case set between 1 and 20, though this can easily be altered. The other has the conditional formatting set in each corresponding cell.

The sheet I have generated will populate the squares using the above values - I put two possible options for wooded/forested squares which I may edit. The hills and woods are universal across all 36 of the grids; the lakes are restricted to the middle two rows, and the Built Up Areas are restricted to the centre 4 squares. This was just a preference for my own purposes. The type of terrain to be generated can be tailored by the settings of the formatting.

Following are a few random examples that were created with the above settings:

Adding other features such as roads or rivers automatically is currently beyond the scope of this spreadsheet, however Lakes need to be fed by a water feature and settlements usually have some sort of track/road going to them, so these can be added as makes some sort of sense.

 

Having generated a number of boards, these can be brought together to be used as ready made battlefields for a Mini-Campaign in the style of Bob's Hare & Hounds game plan.