1/72 Fantasy

It looks like the area of 1/72 scale fantasy is really heating up.  In addition to the existing Caesar and Dark Alliance packs, Dark Alliance has recently released their Orc Warg riders!  There are two packs available, a light and a heavy set of Orc cavalry.  Needless to say, I ordered some as soon as I could, and I just received them today.

These are the riders from the light Orcs box.  They are very nice for Dark Alliance figures, with very little flash and good detail.  The size is comparable to their two boxes of Orc foot soldiers.

These are the heavy riders.  They are much more heavily armoured than the light Orcs, with mostly scale armour and some mail, so they can probably provide the heavy punch in an Orc army.

Both boxes have the same set of two 6-Warg sprues for the rides.  These are quite amazing for soft plastics, especially from this manufacturer.  The details on the barding and fur are very crisp and will probably take dry-brushing well.

Previously, when there were no 1/72 fantasy cavalry, I bought some Eureka Miniatures 15 mm (more like 18 mm) Orc riders for cavalry.  One of the Orc lancers is on the left compared to a Dark Alliance heavy Orc rider on the right.  As you can see, the plastic Orc is the right size, but the metal Orc can fit well as a 1/72 scale goblin rider on a smaller wolf.

It'll be a while before I paint these up, as I have some other projects ahead of them, but it's getting exciting to be in 1/72 scale miniatures!  Now if they'll only start making 1/72 sci-fi...

FallCon 2012

This last weekend I went to FallCon in Calgary for the first time.  This is a major yearly gaming convention in Western Canada, with a lot of people in attendance.  Several other gamers from Edmonton went at around the same time, for example Mark and Terry.  Don Ray and others from the Calgary Camp Followers organized several DBA-related events that I attended, and I took quite a few photos.

 

A great venue for the convention.

When I arrived on Friday night, the first event at FallCon that I attended was the "Friday Knights" DBA tournament, a Medieval-themed series of games.  I used my Komnenan Byzantine army.

Before the tournament started, I happened to finish a fortune cookie that hopefully foretold how well I would do.

 

The first game, I played against Don's Anglo-Normans.  This was an interesting game where the bad terrain in the middle of the board was bad for both of our armies, and my archers on the left flank faced off against his archers on his right flank.  Things ground back and forth for quite a while before some lucky rolls allowed me to narrowly win.

Here, you can see my archers on the left, having eliminated his archers, trying to contend with some dismounted knights.

 

The second game, I played against an army with quite a few spear elements.  However, I don't quite remember which one it was.  The spears on my left fared badly against my knights, and I think I won a comfortable victory there.

 

The third game, I played against a colourful Medieval French army.  I refused my right flank and engaged his right, hoping to take out his artillery.

However, his artillery was tougher than expected, and killed one of my light horse attacking it, even with a closed door!  Eventually though, I got rid of it, and destroyed enough of his knights to eke out a win.  The funny thing though, is that the overall winner of the tournament turned out to be Mark, who used an army that didn't even have any knights! :)

After a fun Friday night, on Saturday morning I hosted a 3 vs. 3 HoTT game.  Since this was HoTT, any thing could go unit-wise, and we sure had quite a variety of them.

 

Mark, Terry, and I all had our fantasy armies from the current EDBAG campaign, but the Calgarians in the game had a combination of Arabic, colonial British, and Indian units, which they based on 60mm wide temporary bases.  We coached them through the game as I think all of them are new to the rules.

 

My side in the game lost when the center (with fire-breathing camel behemoths!) broke and Terry's army was able to break through.  A fun time was had by all.

On Saturday afternoon, we had the "Pirates of the Aegean" DBA tournament, and on Saturday night, I participated in a game of "Werewolf", a great social game.  However, I didn't take any pictures for those events, which is too bad, since I won "Pirates of the Aegean".

Sunday morning was the time for the Alberta Open DBA tournament, and I entered it with my West Frankish/Norman army.

 

The first game was against Mark's Norse-Irish.  He used the terrain to his advantage and managed to block my knight-heavy army, who are afraid to charge into bad going.  He managed to win by killing a couple of my units and hold out until the time limit ended the game.

  

The second game went better for me.  I played Dennis' Seleukid army, which despite being a fairly good anti-knight army, lost enough units to give me a narrow victory.

 

The third game, I fought against Marco's Christian Nubian army, which also had home-court advantage in a terrain setup with dunes and rough going.  However, my archers managed to defeat enough of his psiloi and warband in rough going to win.

This was a great convention, and everyone had a great time.  I look forward to going again next year!

Parthians!

Getting ready for another DBA campaign with the local group, I managed to finish my long-planned Parthian DBA army last week.  All of the miniatures are from HaT.  They are decent enough, but not as detailed and crisp as Caesar or Zvezda.

I didn't make all of the possible troop type combinations for this list, but there's enough to get several good combinations.

These are the main striking power of this army, the cataphracts.  The DBA 2.2 list actually allows five stands total, but I only painted four here, including the general.

 A close up of the general stand, with a standard bearer and drummer.

The horse archers, the backbone of this army.  The list actually allows 10 stands of them, but I only have 8 here.  In DBA, light horse are very hard to handle, and it really doesn't pay to have too many of them.

A close up of a horse archer stand.

Another horse archer stand showing the famous "Parthian shot", where the horsemen shoot their bows behind them.

The DBA list allows foot troops too, with a total of two psiloi and one auxilia.  However, I only have one of each.  The other psiloi cuts into a cataphract stand, and I don't want too many horse archers.

Here's the entire army.  I've been lucky playing with it so far, but an army with this many light horse has serious control issues.  Oh well, it'll be a challenge in the campaign.

1/72 Romans for DBA/HOTT

I've finished painting the DBA Marian Roman army using 1/72 miniatures. This can also be used for Hordes of the Things pretty much as is. Well, maybe I'll figure out some mythological elements to add to it.

Here are the general and cavalry elements. The general and the standard bearer are from HaT's Roman command set, and the rest are HaT's Celtic cavalry, representing this Roman general's mercenaries. (At this period in time the Romans' own equestrian class was pretty much gone.)
A close-up of the general element.

These are the two psiloi elements for the army. They are from HaT's Alexander's light infantry box and represent generic ancient Greek archers.

These are the blade elements, the backbone of this army. All the miniatures are Caesar's Republican Romans. They are nicer miniatures than HaT, but I don't think they're up to the standards of the best Caesar has done. There are 8 blade elements in total, and they are some of the most powerful units in the game.


Close-ups of two pila-armed units, in the previous pictures they were hiding in the back.

Finally the Roman camp, which I built hastily and is still unfinished. I'm going for a palisade march camp type of thing, maybe with some more content in the middle. This is meant to be a DBA camp, but I'll use it as a HoTT stronghold until I can think of something better.

I had a lot of fun painting for DBA, and I'll be doing more of them in both 1/72 and 15mm.

I'm Alive, Really

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I've actually been refocusing my efforts to DBA, both in 15mm (no!) and 1/72 scale. I've finally come to the conclusion that DBA is better to play than Basic Impetus, and I'm going to base everything for DBA instead. Currently, I'm working on a 1/72 scale Marian Roman army that can be used for both DBA and HotT. Photos to come...