Peter Pig 15mm Tuaregs

Peter Pig Tuaregs in 15mm

Back in 2013 I ordered some of Peter Pigs Tuaregs from their range 0303 to make up an allied contingent to go with my other Arab armies. Despite it being ready to use I still have not ever played a game with them! The figures required some cleaning up and assembly. See http://www.peterpig.co.uk/ancients.html I ordered a mix of codes 03031, 03032 & 03033.

The large shields were all separate which means you can get some variety with a limited number of figures. I decided to take the army list notes literally and they were the famed milky white colour. I also have a ton of other camels from Irregular painted with brown hides to act as troops for the LPIA army and as mounts for infantry if needed. The one thing that really annoys me about the LPIA list is that all of their generals are mounted on horses which means that operationally you cant move though dunes using a small command due to the adverse effect dunes have on horses in DBx.

I could field a Tuareg army by using all of the camels but have never felt brave enough to try it! 

Here are two pictures of the finished Tuaregs which are now four years old and have never left their storage box to fight. One day maybe?

Baueda 15mm Medieval Tents Review

Baueda 15mm Medieval Tents

I spotted a bargain on EBay last week and whilst I knew better I bought them. I paid a total of £28-30 for 6 x 15MDV Nobles Tents, 1 x 1 x 15RNS Nobles Pavilion, 1 x LGS1 Ancient Supplies, 1 x LGS2 Generic Supplies & 1 x 15WFN Wattle Fence. The retail from Baueda for then all is €36-00 which converts to £30-47 plus delivery. So whilst I got a bargain I still ended up with so more items I dont know what to do with at the moment. I already have one of each of the LGS 1 & 2 packs meaning I now have four of them spare. I will be keeping the Wattle pack and will use it to create Temporary Fortifications for Dark Age and Early Feudal armies in due course.

I really like the Baueda range of baggage items [see http://www.baueda.com/index.html ] and I had been thinking of replacing my current medieval baggage with new elements. I have just completed them and have put them in the baggage box in lieu of the older items I had. Whilst they are clean resincast items with minimal flash they take a steady hand to paint them well enough to avoid you ending up with a messy looking set of tents.

The replaced baggage elements are now on EBay as they are surplus to my needs and they will offset the cost of the new tents despite their being Baueda castings. [Pictures below]. I guess that sometimes I am just a bit too picky for my own good as theres nothing wrong with them really.

The EBay link is here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192107489673?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

15mm Stuff on EBay

Decided To Have A Bit Of A Clear Out On EBay!

With new things to paint in the pipeline and Project Lead Mountain reaching the stage where I have completed about 90% of the things I want to keep and the remainder left being things to sell I had a look through the storage boxes for things I no longer want to keep and have put a load of lots on EBay. Its all 15mm scale.

My EBay seller name is DYSON690

Heres a link to one of the lots http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192105925297?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Currently I have the following lots on sale.

Baueda Medieval Tents

Essex Crossbowmen Psiloi x 10

Essex Early German Wb O x 8

15mm Wagon

15mm Wagon

Essex Bactrian/Sogdian Cavalry x 4

Renaissance Gunners

Wickerman 8EE Baggage/Camp Feature

Minifigs Later Byzantine Auxilia & Psiloi

8 Generic Baggage Elements

12 Elements of Feudal Archers

4 Elements of Unarmoured Mounted Archers

Baueda Tents

Baueda Tents

Baueda makes lots of excellent resincast tents, buildings, accessories and now metal figures. I am a sucker for a nice piece of baggage and have far too many pieces already but I decided that I just needed a few more for variety! So I ordered four more to add to my own collection to enable me to create a set of six similar elements. I personally prefer immobile baggage elements so am happy to buy tents. I already had a pair of the Greek Tents so ordered two of the Ottoman and two of the Persian tents as the name on the bag is only a guide! see http://www.baueda.com/ for their website.

Below are the finished items. I used a Linen colour and a Chestnut wash to give them a dirty look. Being resin they need a good wash using domestic washing up liquid to give the surface a clean finish so the undercoat takes proper hold. I finished them off using Plasticote Spray Matt Sealer which should give them a good protective coat for many years.

15GRK Greek Style Tents 

15OTM Ottoman Style Tents

15PRS Persian Style Tents

If I need more than six elements I can easily just use some of the other elements I have in my collection.

Eastern Franks - Swabian & Bavarian Knights

A Long Delayed Project Finally Completed

Way back under DBM v1.1 I purchased a Norman Army for 1066 AD. One of the ideas was for it to morph into Eastern Franks. The last two years of Project Lead Mountain saw me clearing more figures from the unpainted pile at a ration of four to one. I have also been buying new figures but the amount of unpainted metal is now down to the state that its all bits and pieces with a few exceptions and none of it is of any use to allow me to morph an existing army into something new.

Having cast around for suitable mounted kite shielded knights armed with swords I settled on Donnington New Era Normans specifically their http://shop.ancient-modern.co.uk/nmc11-heavy-cavalryman-2918-p.asp castings. I emailed Damian and asked him if he could make sure I got 24 of each casting and selected 24 each of the HH01, HH02 & HH03 mounts for variety. I am unsure if I will ever use 24 Irr Kn I Swabian Knights but they will double up as other Milites from this era so wont go to waste. I am very pleased with how they turned out. It took be about two months to do them all because I also had other things on the go at the same time and I hate painting huge batched of identical castings if I can avoid it. The mounts required some fine cleaning up of flash as did the riders. The figures came with separate kite shields which were a bit of a pain to glue on to the figures. This of course means that these casting are also perfectly suitable for other similarly armed knights from the Dark Ages by the simple expedient of using different shaped shields.The castings are full of detail and they paint up really well.

So now I have 24 elements of Irr Kn I in my collection which can double up for other knights if necessary.

Donningtons NMC11 Norman Knights on HH01, HH02 & HH03 horses

Delhi Sultanate Crashes Out Against Medieval Vietnamese

Delhi Sultanate Crashes Out Against Medieval Vietnamese

One of the club mates wanted to try out his new "pseudo" Medieval Vietnamese army today. 

He threw together all and sundry to put the army on the table and if you didn't look too closely at least it was based correctly. I don't have any far eastern armies and since I am still gaining experience with my Later Muslim Indian army I said I would use this again. We used 400 AP and DBM v3.3 rules. We both were Ag 2 and I rolled 5 to Bob's 3 meaning I invaded. Since I have some naval elements I choose to dice for a Waterway, which I got. There was no weather effect. Upon reflection I should have waited until the third terrain phase rather than use the Waterway.

His army was organised as follows:

Command 1 - CinC Regular

16 E/16 EE/ 6 D [25% = 4 EE]

Command 2 Regular Sub-general

16 E/16 EE/ 6 D [25% = 4 EE]

Command 3 - Irr Sub-general

16 E/15.5 EE/ 5.5 D [25% = 4]

Command 4 - Irr Sub-general

16 E/15.5 EE/ 5.5 D [25% = 4]

Army Totals

64 E /63 EE/31.5 B

To break the army I only needed to break two commands and an odd element but it wasn't to be. Despite a series of poor combat throws I eventually managed to take down 13 EE from his army but they were spread over all four commands. I had a bad run of combat dice which lost me the right flank command and a double overlapped Irr Bw I died the next bound to break the second command and with it the whole army. The final score was 10 - 0 to Bob which converted to 30 - 2 BHGS.

I wasn't too upset to lose as I need to gain more skill coordinating this army.  I did feel a bit annoyed that I had two 1's on the trot with my Cav S against his Reg Bw I which was what broke my command as I only needed to equal his score to take out the archers and with it that command. 

But you cant win them all! We played for a total of 4 hours 30 minutes until we got a final result.

I think his list wasn't best organised due to the lack of any cavalry and four equal sized commands but we each play our own game style. 

My army sits in the box ready and waiting for the next game.

Here are a series of pictures taken through the game.

Delhi Sultanate Crashes Out Against Anatolian Turcoman

Not a Good Day to Invade Anatolia

It was our club AGM and I needed to throw together an army at short notice for a game.

I used my Delhi Sultanate list and ended up fighting against an Anatolian Turcoman MM2 list

This army has a lot of very tough troops that are difficult to kill but also lacks the usual killer troops found in most armies.

My opponent took loads of Irr LH S and Cv S plus Ax O and Ps O.

I invaded and there was a Strong Wind blowing in my face.

We fought long and hard and after about 5 hours I finally lost a command to his superior numbers.

Apart from hard flanking a couple of Ps O and getting my Irr Bw I into range which allowed me to take out a LH S and a pair of Ps O his army was almost invulnerable.

When he rolled a 1 I rolled a 1 yet sods law meant when ever I rolled high so did he!

I eventually managed to get my elephant into combat and killed a Cv S but two bounds later it was surrounded and swept away.

Eventually I just ran out of luck and the Bd F and Ps S were overwhelmed by superior numbers. we ran out of time and the game ended 7-3 which converted to 21-11 due to my much higher casualties.

Anatolian Turkoman is certain not an army I have ever seen used before and given its dreadful command structure certainly not an army I would have expected to have ever seen across the table. It was a refresher game for him having not played a game of DBM for a very long time. He had a few issues getting to grips with the DBMM2 lists and made a couple of writing errors in his list which I helped sort out before we started. 

In a strict time limited game I cant see it actually managing to achieve much as the two internal allies are a liability in case they turn out unreliable and unless the owning player throws caution to the wind and just charges forward as fast as possible its likely to end up delayed and delayed until the clock runs out.

A few pictures of todays game