WAB again

Well, this is my second battle of WAB, this time played with 1.500 points. 

My Romano-British at the bottom with all units deployed except for two cavalry units reserved for flanking. I thought of defending from the hill with the Sagittari on top of it but the Saxons deployed most of their army on the opposite side.

I decided to lure as much of the Saxon units as possible with my skirmishers, hoping my opponent would roll many ones on his warband activations while I wait for my cavalry on the opposite flank.

My cavalry arrived on the third turn and I hoped I could charge the back of the Saxon army while they were fighting my infantry units, but soon their archers in the woods started to fire at them.

And my infantry was still too far to engage them.

My archers finally walked down from the hill and started to move toward the enemy.

Saxons stopped moving and fire with all javelins and bows and I lost my first soldiers.

 But my skirmishers on the left flank made flee one of his Doguth units.

My other unit of Rustici and the Sagtitari rushing from the hill toward the left flank.

The Saxon cavalry was threatening mine and as I couldn't charge the enemy infantry, I moved it up the hill. The clash between the two armies was imminent.

Saxons finally charged my allied Duguth unit and one unit of Milites on Shieldwall. On the left my Rustici annihilated one unit of Saxon Duguth with their javelins, helped with some arrows from the Sagittari.

But two Saxon units of Gedrith with WS4 and Strength 4 plus light armour were too much for my poor Milites, and they steadly trashed my units turn after turn. Meanwhile, a fresh unit of Milites was trapped in the forest, unable to help his comrades.

It seemed that the battle was lost but suddenly my mounted Commanipulares charged down the hill and killed six Saxon riders in one go, and in their pursue they caught them and then charged on the flank of another unit of Duguth!

At that moment we had to stop the game and decided to call it a draw. I'm loving WAB and wondering why I didn't play it before.

More 1/72 Zvezda Vikings

This is the second sprue I paint from the three that come in the box, plus the two command figures. This time I decided to paint only the ones with cloaks as Rohirrim and the rest as standard Vikings.

I tried some black lining on the general and the standard but I'm not convinced with the result.

I tried striped trousers on these two and I like how they turned out. I'll be doing more like these two.

A shot with the new painted ones. Just one more sprue to go!

1/72 Zveda Vikings as Rohirrim

I decided to paint one sprue from the Zvezda Viking box as Rohirrim to match them with the Steppe Cavalry from Dark Alliance miniatures as they don't sell infantry from Rohan.

I think they turned out okay but I won't be painting the rest of the box as them because I also want to use these miniatures as actual Vikings and I like Vikings with not so dull colours.

These are all the miniatures contained in one sprue. The box includes three sprues like this one plus a little one with two commanding figures, a general and a standard.

An unforgiving close up showing some hand painted shields from Rohan.

This figure with the cloak is the most similar one to those from the movie.

COVID and painting

I've been quiet lately because I got COVID and then passed it to my children and so we have passed the last two weeks with a strong flu, but luckily nothing worse happened and I'm grateful for that because I'm immunodeficient.

Now that I'm regaining strength I started painting again and here are my latest work, four Romans that I needed to paint to complete a unit of 20 for WAB. I also wanted them to be used as one point of guards for SAGA, and I swapped their heads for Goth cavalry ones to try to simulate Wolftail warriors.

Goth cavalry LBM decals

Here is a picture of my little Late Roman/ Romano British army. Not finished yet as I have an unpainted box of Goth cavalry and a ballista to paint.

1/72 Emhar Saxon warriors

This is the beginning of a new project of Dark Ages in 1/72 scale. After this box from Eimhar I'm painting a Viking box from Zvezda to have some skirmishes with both of them.

These Saxons from Eimhar have been already reviewed by Plastic Soldier Review so I won't say much about them except I found irritating to have to clip all spears from the sprue as they come separate. One of the reasons I like this scale is that you don't need to glue the miniatures as they come in one piece. Also, they are so thin and delicate that inevitably some weapons will snap when you clip them from the sprue.

Apart from that, the plastic is quite hard and take spray priming rather well. Also, the plastic has memory so you can bend it in any position and it won't change, which is something that allows you to make many variations of the same pose if you want.

All in all, a good box of miniatures worthy to buy them.

The whole box painted, 50 figures in total.

These are all the different poses from the box, 13 in total.

And these three the ones whose weapons snapped when clipping them from the sprue.

First time with Warhammer Historical Battles

I never played WAB before because I have never had a 28mm historical army to play with, but I thought I could try it with the Late Romans I painted for SAGA and yes, I had enough for a 1.000 points battle.

We played with the supplement The Age of Arthur with my Romans versus some disgusting Saxons in a pitched battle.

Armies displayed. Saxons on top and Romans bottom. The Saxon army consisted of two units of Duguth and one of Gedrith with their general in it, plus skirmishers with slings and bows. The Romans had two units of skirmishers with javelins, two of shock cavalry and two of infantry with heavy throwing spears.

Movements after first turn. I moved forward skirmishers and placed infantry in line with the hill, while I positioned the cavalry to charge the Saxon's flank. Saxons move forward, and a unit of skirmishers with bows threatened my cavalry on the flank.

On second turn I only launched forward my two skirmishers armed with javelins to stop Saxon's left flank while I dealt with its right one. I placed my general close to the skirmishers to give them his leadership but this later proved to be a fatal mistake. Besides, later I also learned generals cannot use his leadership on skirmishers.

Saxons charged and my skirmishers fled into the wood, leaving alone their surprised general facing an unexpected charge. Oops!

The General lost the melee and took one wound, and also failed his leadership test and panicked. After that, all the units within 12" also failed their tests and panicked and fled, with the unit of infantry with spears almost exiting the board!

In my turn, all of them could luckily rally, but the general suffered another wound from enemy javelins. He was now with only one wound left.

But then the Saxons madly charged uphill and lost the melee two to three casualties. Far on the Roman's left flank, the cavalry had charged and put to run the Saxon skirmishers with bows and it was now threatening the Saxon exposed flank. Things started to get better for the Romans.

Charging Saxons had to move backwards and while I chased them I hit the left flank of their General's unit. I also charged with my two units of shock cavalry to the other Saxon unit.

I won both melees and the Saxon General's unit fled. On the other flank my two skirmish unit rallied and concentrated on the decimated Saxon unit while a fresh Roman unit moved forward in their support. This was turn six and we called it a day, with a marginal victory for Rome.

The game was tense and exciting, and we had so much fun that we decided to play another game as soon as possible, this time with 1.500 points each!

Summer holidays

It's been a long time without publishing anything as I've been busy as hell but now I'm officially on holidays and here's my first painted miniature. 

Nothing special, just to warm me up. A new addition to my Chaos Warriors unit.