Kings of War Kingdoms of Men Army

This weekend, I went to a Kings of War tournament called Refugees of the Olde Worlde in Rexburg, Idaho. It was a great time, but I realized that the army I used, which I had painted over several years, has never appeared on this blog.

I originally built this army years ago as a Burgundian Ordonnance Army for DBA, which is why most of the miniatures are on 60mm bases. Some new units, especially the fantasy types, and the Kings of War sized sabot bases, were added recently. I ended up running it for the "Kingdoms of Men" faction in Kings of War. I'm very satisfied with the way the miniatures turned out, even though the army is not competitive in actual game play, being one of the rather overlooked factions.

Household knights with ducal banner. All miniatures are from the excellent Perry Mounted Men-at-arms plastic kit, along with the paper banner. These are mounted on sabot bases as knight regiments in Kings of War.

The first unit of Burgundian Ordonnance pikes. Again, all are Perry plastics, with some conversions, from their European Infantry plastic kit. These are used as a pike regiment in Kings of War.

The second unit of pikes, from the same source with no conversions. Some of the men, like the other units of infantry, are single-based, to conform to the size of Kings of War bases. They have to be 100mm wide, and so can't take two 60mm bases.

To have a somewhat competitive list, I gathered some random Swiss halberdiers and Burgundians with sword and buckler into a "militia mob" regiment for Kings of War. This ruleset very much needs "cheap chaff" units as a part of gameplay.. Again, from the same Perry kit as above.

A large unit of knights on foot. These are mostly from the Perry Foot Knights box set, with a few armoured command figures from the other plastic infantry sets. This is used as a foot guard horde unit in Kings of War.

A large unit of longbowmen, with all figures from the Perry War of the Roses Infantry set. In Kings of War, they are a horde of archers. Unfortunately, there are no special rules for longbowmen or any other type of elite archers for humans in the game, so their performance is rather lacklustre.

A couple of Burgundian cannons. The crews are converted Perry plastic infantry with metal Foundry cannons. In the game, I actually run them as proxies for ballistas, due to those being cheaper and more competitive.

The human army by itself is very uncompetitive game-wise, and I had to add some fantasy-based punch (as well as flair) to it. I made some generals on winged beasts (dragonlings or small dragons in this case), with 3D-printed bodies and wings, and Perry knights riding them.

Another useful unit is a hero on pegasus, which is much cheaper in game points and more flexible (expendable!) than the bigger flying generals. This is a standard Perry knight with 3D-printed wings.

To add even more fantasy theme are a pair of wizards riding pegasus, as spell-casting is an important part of the game. These are more complex conversions, with Perry Light Cavalry bodies, Frostgrave wizard bits, and 3D-printed wings.

There is an interesting unit in the Kingdoms of Men list called a Monarch, which is a large command unit that provides a lot of useful buffs. I made a version of this unit with the Duke riding an armoured bear, along with his banner-bearer and trumpeter. The bear is 3D-printed, with the other figures from  various Perry sets. The figures are all removable as I can also use the armoured bear for another fantasy unit, the beast cavalry.

I have enough miniatures built for a unit of Swiss pikes too, although they don't fit in my current army list. I'm building more to have Burgundians and Swiss as two opposed sides in other games, such as Never Mind the Billhooks.

This is the only non-Perry infantry in this army, a 3D-printed Swiss horn blower from a file sold by Wargames Illustrated magazine. I used him as an additional hero who is a special character for this tournament.

The entire army together on a gaming mat, quite impressive looking if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take too many pictures of the tournament itself, but it was definitely an unforgettable experience, with a lot of other well-painted armies for me to play against.

FallCon 2019

This past weekend, I went on my annual visit to Calgary for the FallCon gaming convention. This was the third year that they've had the convention at SAIT, and I've gotten used to the new location and parking opportunities.

On Friday night, I went to the Calgary DBA players' hosted event. This was a refight of the battle of Telamon, between Romans and Gauls. There were several tables depicting the same battle in different scales.

I played the 2 mm version of the battle. The miniatures were near invisible, but they provided a good sense of scale. I lost the battle as the Romans from some pretty unlucky dice, but it was a lot of fun.

On Saturday morning, I ran a game of Imperial Skies with my newly painted aircraft miniatures. The scenario called for a Royal Navy aethership fleet to chase down an Irish pirate ship and locate its hidden base.

When the game started, the British ships were in hot pursuit of their target, the Fenian Ram, and managed to damage it rather badly.

The Fenian Ram deployed its fighters to harass the pursuing British destroyers while it made its escape.

With the British ships distracted by the fighters, the Fenian Ram was able to damage, then destroy, several of them.

Here, a light cruiser went down in flames.

 A destroyer was also shot down.

Eventually, the British fleet closed in on the pirate base, but we ran out of time and had to call the game. Unfortunately, I didn't design the scenario objectives quite right, and the Fenian players simply flew their ship around without landing in the base, which didn't give the British players enough opportunity to locate it before time ran out. This probably made it too difficult for them.

Later on Saturday, I participated in the annual Alberta DBA Open tournament. The dice were not with me that day, and along with some bad decision-making, I lost quite badly. I did play against some nicely painted armies though.

This weekend turned out to be quite cold in Calgary, and it was snowing most of the time. On Sunday morning, the streets looked like this.

I played in Dennis' Flames of War introductory game, with a scenario set in the African desert between the British and the Germans.

Due to the game's rather ahistorical rules, our side, the British players, started the game aggressively close to the German tanks in the middle of the table. This allowed us to take out some Panzer IVs early on, which made the game easier later.

In the end, our side took a lot of tank losses, but managed to destroy enough German units to make them reach a breaking point and lose the game. This was my second time playing this game, but it gave me the same impression that I had the first time - it's a good game, but not that historically accurate or realistic.

All in all, this was another great weekend spent on gaming.

Mayday 2017

On Saturday, I went to this year's Mayday convention held here in the Edmonton area. Jonathan, the organizer, found an excellent community center in St. Albert that served as a new location for us, and we managed to gather a decent crowd.

This time, I ran a game of Imperial Skies. This is a steampunk Victorian flying battleships game created by Brigade Models. For the miniatures, rather than Brigade Models products, I used ship models from an unrelated board game called Leviathans, an interesting product that unfortunately didn't do well commercially.

Newcomer (to EWG but not to gaming) Derek and long-time EWG member Dan played my game, which involved German battleships attempting to destroy British forts on Mars. Derek played the British fleet and Dan the German.

Dan sent his German warships on board in several columns, with Derek's smaller British fleet attempting to maneuver and cross the Germans' "T".

Initially, the Germans did some damage to the British fleet, destroying a destroyer and a cruiser that wandered too close to the German columns by themselves, while the British did relatively little damage, mainly owing to Derek's dice initially performing badly. However, Derek finally managed to get his battleship into position, and blasted one of the two German battleships at close range. "Crossing the T" is quite nasty in this game.

The battle descended into a swirling melee where generally the British managed to cross the T more and did more damage over time.

Dan finally got his remaining battleship close to the British forts and demolished one of them. However, the forts were heavily dug-in and proved hard to destroy, while the British blasted the German ships one by one. At the end, we called the game at the time limit and Germans were not getting any farther. Both player enjoyed the game quite a bit though.

Next, I played in Dennis' DBA tournament, where each player had three games against different opponents.

I played using one of Dennis' armies, the Anglo-Irish, against Rob and Don from Calgary, and Dave from right here in Edmonton. Things went poorly for me due to die rolling in the first two games, and I lost them both. However, in the third game, Dave's dice were even worse than mine, and I managed to win. It really reinforced the view that DBA is very dependent on single die rolls, leading to a lot of player frustration.

Later that night, Dennis ran a big-battle DBA game of the Battle of Ilipa, between Romans and Carthaginians. I think I like the big-battle version quite a bit more, since there are more die rolls for PIPs (i.e. action points), and so the game is less dependent on single die rolls. Also, more miniatures are involved and the whole thing looks a lot more like a large battle.

All in all, this was another great Mayday, and I hope we can stay at the new location, which proved to be a very nice one indeed.

FallCon 2016

Over the last weekend, I went to Calgary again for this year's FallCon gaming convention. It looks like the Calgary DBA group has become more active, and they're trying to recruit more into the fold. Overall, the convention still seems quite popular despite some bad economic times.

On Friday night, the Calgary DBA group ran a tutorial event for several potential new players, and I joined in on some of the games. Hopefully this means there will be more players in Calgary.

Don and Mark from Calgary were instructing new players on the mechanics of the game.

 Here, I guided new player Wayne in a game with Medieval French against my Komnenans.

On Saturday morning, we played a number of games with the theme of ancient Greeks and Romans versus Asians. Various Asian armies were pitted against ancient Mediterraneans in several separate tables. I was glad to see some of the new players from the previous night's event joining in.

In this picture, I had a game against Dennis' Qin dynasty army with my Celtiberian army.

There were a few other miniature games running at the same time.

There was a superheroes miniature game. I saw this board with the Batmobile coming in against some dastardly criminals. No doubt there was plenty of "Kapow!" in the game.

There was also a demo game of Fireball Forward, which looked quite intense with a bombed-out urban WWII setup.

In the afternoon, Dave P. ran a series of walk up and play WWII naval games. I watched the first one, but ultimately didn't have time to join in. I had played the same scenario before on club nights, so I was fine with that.

Instead I joined an introductory game of Steampunk Rally, an interesting boardgame. You had to build racing contraptions with cards representing components of your machine, propellers, boilers, etc., and those components provided you with power and motion to allow you to win the race. The picture above is one of my rickety contraptions.

This is a shot of the racing board, marking where the characters are in the course and some of the hazards on the track. Overall it was quite a fun game and I had a blast.

Sunday morning, I played in the Alberta Open DBA tournament. Things didn't go that well when I kept rolling 1s. Fortunately in the last game I ran into another player who did the same thing, so I managed a 1-2 W/L ratio.

Since I already have so many things to paint, I avoided getting too many extra minis this time. At the flea market, I grabbed a copy of Smallworld Underground, a variant of Smallworld which I used to play at work. It's quite a fun game.

Once again, I had a great time at FallCon, and I'm looking forward to next year. Also, the Calgary guys promised they'll come for DBA next Mayday, so I'm looking forward to that too.