Following January’s game, I had the urge to scratch the WW1 itch again and fixed up a game with fellow Great War enthusiast Tom WD. This time, I decided to run something very loosely based on the Ypres battlefield we had visited in November 2018, where the Mk IV tank ‘Fray Bentos’ broke down while attacking a series of farms that had been fortified by the Germans.

In the last Chain of Command game I ran, I hadn’t allowed enough support for the British (please note I am improvising my own scenarios here rather than using the templates, so all design errors are my own). This time around, I wanted to see whether a single British platoon would have a chance of taking a dug-in German position with a decent amount of support.

Using the supplement ‘CoCing Up Through The Mud And Blood’ from the 2014 Lard Christmas Special, I gave the British a 1917 platoon with the following additional support: Mk IV Tank (Male), 13 pdr gun with 5 crew and junior leader, Vickers MMG, pre-game bombardment (the standard one from CoC which inhibits deployment of enemy units during the first turn).

The Germans had a standard platoon with the addition of a Maxim MMG with 5 crew.

Terrain-wise, we were playing up the length of a 6 x 4′ table. The British deployment area was liberally scattered with craters and trees which we counted as Soft Cover, Broken Ground (and Soft Ground for the purposes of the tank bogging down). The area in front of the German-held farm was partially blocked with barbed wire and designated as ‘Abysmal Terrain’ (using a set of modifications to CoC from Storm of Steel‘s Alex Sotheran; the net effect of Abysmal Terrain is that a dice roll is made when units move into it, giving random hindrances to movement. As it happened, the British barely made it into this area of the table, so it was a moot point).

I decided to pre-set jump-off points given the nature of the scenario; Germans and British both had four each. Following this, we rolled for Force Morale, getting an average 9 for the Brits and below-average 8 for the Germans.

I took the first phase as the attacking player. Traditionally, my favourite tactic is ‘charge’, but recently I’ve been reading Mark Bretherton’s blog and Len Tracey’s ‘Fire and Manoeuvre’ article in the 2023 Lard Magazine which have both encouraged me to take a less hasty approach! I had several good command dice rolls right at the start and decided to make best use of these to get my support units onto the table. With the tank’s slow movement – and having to deploy on the rear table edge – I brought this on first, closely followed by the field gun (on Overwatch) and Vickers MMG.

Tom rolled multiple 5s for the Germans and was content to sit back racking up the CoC points while I got on with it. However, I’d decided that I needed to push forwards while the German deployment was restricted by the barrage. 

Next up, my ‘fire’ units – Lewis gun and rifle grenade sections – came out in cover to the left and right of the German position.

With no action from the Germans, I was possibly over-hasty in deploying my bombers and finally my rifle section and Sergeant well forwards, albeit on tactical. 

Then it all went a bit Pete Tong!

Firstly, my tank rolled a double 6 and bogged down in a shell hole, needing to wait until the end of the turn to attempt to free itself. This also neatly blocked the line of fire for the field gun in the meantime. With all my units deployed, Tom decided to spend his first CoC dice to end the turn, meaning that my barrage ended just as the first Germans started to appear. While I was now free to try to get my tank out of the shell hole, it also meant that all the tactical and overwatch markers I had placed on my units were lost. 

This, of course, was followed by the Germans rolling a double phase and getting their machine guns into action….

Despite a few good saving throws from the Brits, casualties and shock began to mount for the forward assault units; the bombers in particular took an absolute hiding, had their junior leader killed, and then broke and fled, causing the first hole in the Force Morale. I hastily used my only CoC dice to avoid a morale test for the junior leader getting wounded (rather than the more serious setbacks that followed) and was left on the back foot.

Fortunately, Capt J. Hunt (in command of the Mark IV) was able to get his driver on the case and revved his way out of the shell hole. The tank’s 6-pounder then caused some consternation amongst the Germans, followed up by fire from the field gun and Vickers at the back of the field being commanded by Lt M. Walker. 

Unfortunately for me, the Brits were on the back foot having lost enough Force Morale to lose a command dice. My troops were stretched too thin and a few duff command dice rolls meant that the Germans were soon having a field day. The rifle section found itself trapped just in front of the German trenches, and both attached leaders were wounded. In a triumph of awful dice rolling, Sgt J. Clark was hit twice in succession, then rolling the maximum -2 Force Morale for ‘senior leader wounded’ each time. We were now down to 1 Force Morale (compared to the Germans’ 7) and the end was inevitable. Despite bold attempts to shell and bomb the German MMG, which was pinned and came close to breaking, the continual fire on the rifle team eventually broke it and ended the game.

Lots of fun, albeit a game of two halves, and a good couple of hours with decent banter with Tom in between. I felt that I probably should have held my assault units back slightly longer than I did, but overall this scenario might have been better suited to Big CoC with two attacking platoons rather than one. Certainly, the fact that the support options did not come with any additional command dice meant that it was hard to activate them once the front units were engaged, but that’s how CoC is – it forces you to manage your resources very carefully.

Time to go and root out the unpainted Great War Miniatures and plan another game!

‘That looks like The Last Supper,’ remarked my wife as she passed the painting table, looking at ‘El Cid’s Battle Council’ from Reconquer Designs. Well, I don’t actually think that she’s too far wrong given the level of artistry in the sculpting! 

I regret that I have only painted a few pieces by Reconquer Designs – having collected a substantial El Cid force in metal back in the 2000s, I don’t really need any of these 3D printed wonders – but these are just too good. It’s easy to tout STLs and 3D printed miniatures as the next big thing, though I think it’s fair to say that the technology is still being learned and that great historical sculpts are not yet widely available; however, Reconquer Designs sculptor Marcos is absolutely nailing it for medieval Spain. 

Marcos is a fan of realistically-proportioned models, so Reconquer Designs minis follow this aesthetic. You can buy the STLs to print yourself although I purchased ready-printed models from Iron Gate Scenery in the UK; these were very fine prints with excellent detail and nearly all the supports removed (there were a couple of tiny supports I needed to trim away, but preparation was incredibly quick). 

Care has to be taken with the finer parts – El Cid’s sword (from The Duel vignette), for example, is quite vulnerable to damage. His opponent was provided with a resin spear but I quickly replaced it with a metal one from Northstar – a very easy process, as the hand is printed open and required no drilling out.

Each figure was then superglued onto a small piece of plasticard (the models come without bases) and undercoated with matt white primer.

I shan’t bore you with the details of painting, but everything was done with a mix of GW Contrast Paints, traditional acrylics and inks. The detail on the minis is quite extraordinary and with realistic gaps cut away that would be filled in on a traditional metal model (for example, straps hang away from the body and stirrups have gaps above the foot), they reward some careful painting.

I’m no Kev Dallimore but spent a little bit of extra time adding details where I could, though I still draw the line at painting eyes!

Once all the painting was complete and models varnished, I assembled both vignettes on irregular MDF bases with chamferred edges. 

I decided to arrange all the figures in El Cid’s Battle Council to all face in one direction – slightly contrived but great for photo opportunities!

I can’t recommend these models highly enough and will probably be back for more in the future. The range continues to expand with some very interesting models for the 12th and 13th centuries, as well as plenty of characterful vignettes.

It’s a little-known fact that, when I got back into historical wargaming 30 years ago, I kicked off with some armies in 6mm. 

Despite always having loved 28s, 6mm allowed me to create something that looked like an army – on a budget. Irregular Miniatures and Heroics & Ros provided me with a pretty spectacular force of Romans and Ancient Britons which took to the field for many a game using the DBM rules.

After recent tinkering with 15mm Saxons and 12mm Great War, I’d been considering a smaller scale diversion for my ongoing Trojan Wars project. 10mm was a distinct possibility, but the biggest selling point for 6mm was the incredible resin walls available from Leven Miniatures. These would remove me from the insanity of trying to make a wall section in 28mm at a fraction of the cost and hassle!

With some of these ordered, I started laying in samples of 6mm minis. I went back to old favourites Irregular Miniatures for some Minoan spearmen. 6mm guru Daniel Hodgson kindly advised me to have a look at Baccus, who don’t have a specific Trojan Wars range but have several ‘Biblical’ codes that could be pressed into service, so I ordered up some sample units of Hittites and Sea Peoples. Last but not least was the 6mm range from Rapier Miniatures which includes specific Trojan Wars models including chariots and a Trojan Horse!

Here’s the Irregular Miniatures Minoan spear block. I like the fact that these are cast in strips with multiple variants, making them ideal for massed units. 

The downside was that the bases had a lot of flash so required quite a bit of cleaning up to get them to sit flat. The minis are ‘true’ 6mm and therefore a bit smaller than Baccus and Rapier, but none the worse for that. 

Rapier Miniatures are a ‘big’ 6mm (more like 8mm) and full of character. The models are cast singly, which is good for heroes and skirmisher bases, but less so for ranking up big units, for which I prefer figures cast in strips. 

The moment I opened the box from Baccus, I could see why they came so highly recommended. Very neatly cast minis in strips with minimal flash meant that I was able to get them undercoated and ready to paint in short order.

Although the minis were cast in strips of four, I cut a few of these up and added some Rapier Minis for variety. Some minis also made it into separate hero bases or thin strips of spearmen to stand on the walls of Troy.

Baccus Hittite spearmen were subbed as Mycenean warriors with a few extras added from Rapier Miniatures. 

I’ll definitely be getting some more units added to this project in the very near future and it would be good to source some beached ships for the Achaean camp. Anyone know of any good STLs (without oars)?

Seeing as it’s the festive season, it’s probably time for the pics of the Draugr from Ragnarok Miniatures. I’ve never been a massive fan of undead but the current crop of outstanding miniatures has been slowly crumbling my resolve; the rather wonderful Oathmark Revenants, alongside skeletons from Reaper, Oathmark and Wargames Atlantic have all found their way onto my painting table in recent years.

These ten minis are the Draugr Hearthguard in tattered robes, led by a Draugr Lieutenant and a Necromancer Warlord. Coincidentally, one of the sample force lists that I’ve written for Midgard Heroic Battles is an undead horde under to command of a necromancer by the name of Ulric Deathwhisperer, and I’m wondering whether this is the mini for the job.

These are chunky 28mm sculpts from Colin Patten and very compatible with most of GB’s other ranges. After painting a fair bit of plastic and resin recently, it was fun feeling the heft of a metal mini again. The castings I received were very clean and required only minimal clean up, quickly pushing their way to the front of the painting queue! Plastic bases for Saga and cast metal weapons are provided, though I used Northstar wire spears alongside the metal swords and axes.

I hemmed and hawed about whether to go with GW Contrast Paints on these (requiring a white undercoat or black with white dry brushing) or traditional acrylics over black. Eventually I went with the latter, but then spent some time being slightly unsure of what I was after. Colin Patten’s painted examples are incredibly good but I wanted something with a little more colour. However, my first attempt probably had too much bronze and blue.

After taking some advice from chums on social media, I revised the bronze armour idea (which doesn’t really work as they’re meant to be Viking age) and went for a lighter skin tone. 

Having used a dry brush of Army Painter Gunmetal as the basic armour layer on all the models, I tidied up the undercoat and then used a base layer of white acrylic on all the skin. When dry, I used some GW Contrast Paints to pick out the skin, followed by a thinnned-down highlight of acrylic white. This gave me a stronger contrast between skin and clothing. I cut down on the blue clothing of the test mini and went with black, grey, blue-grey and off-white instead.

Several folk recommended Kev Dallimore’s guide to painting the Oathmark Revenants, which in turn sent me hunting for green ink in the painting cupboard.

I found dug out some elderly bottles of ink: Oldhammer fans will recognise the venerable example on the left and I suspect the right hand one dates back to my student days. Both were still perfectly serviceable!

Some thinned-down washes of the green ink really did the trick, tying the models together and giving an unnatural tinge to proceedings. I also weathered the armour with a little brown ink to suggest rust and age.

Shields received some Celtic-inspired spirals painted in light grey and then highlighted in white. It’ll sound crazy to some of you, but I really enjoy hand painting shield designs – it’s challenging at the start of a session, but once I get into it, I find it very therapeutic. 

The eye sockets were shaded in black before I dotted in the eyeball with a light blue and a final highlight of white for that ‘restless undead’ look. After a coast of matt varnish, I added a few extra highlights and then based them up in a fairly neutral scheme that should work both on grass and snow mats for gaming.

After the initial prevarication, I’m pretty pleased with these and am sorely tempted to knock up an undead horde! One for 2024 maybe? Season’s greetings to you all!

I was delighted when old chums Gripping Beast became the distributors for the Ragnarok range of Norse fantasy minis, sculpted by GB co-founder Colin Patten. I already have a number of Colin’s Dwarves from various companies, so while I didn’t really *need* any more longbeards, the Durinn’s Folk range had to be sampled!

In the pictures, you can see a collector’s pack of Hearthguard Attacking With Heavy Weapons plus a Warlord. The hearthguard are supplied with separate mattocks (very Tolkien) and double-handed axes, but I couldn’t resist replacing a few of the weapons with a sword and a pair of halberds borrowed from Front Rank medieval weapons packs (also available from Gripping Beast).

As I already have a Dwarf army painted in a blue/ grey colour scheme, I didn’t want to deviate from that. With the armour and helmets on these chaps – heavily influenced by the early medieval Vendel culture – I went for a black undercoat, drybrushed all the metalwork with silver, and then built up layers for the main colours. 

The shields come with a nice moulded hammer and anvil design which I highlighted in various shades of blue before blocking in the metalwork and adding a few rivets for variety.

These are cracking models and entirely compatible with all of Colin’s previous work for different companies. 

The Fall In convention took place on November 4th and 5th in the US and amongst the many games was this fantastic Middle-earth battle in 10mm, presented by Chris Grau. Chris had spent some time planning his own version of Helm’s Deep and decided to run with my forthcoming Midgard Heroic Battles rules.

Over two days, this stunning terrain piece played host to 21 players and four games, with a pair of victories apiece for Rohan and Isengard. Chris had adapted the rules to add siege weapons and gave the Isengard players a menu of options, so each battle ended up slightly different.

Some of the highlights included:

• Isengard not bringing a battering ram and instead trying to set off the “Fires of Orthanc” in front of the Hornburg gate. When the devilish device didn’t go off right away, Theoden’s personal guard charged out to drive off the Uruk-Hai and just kept winning combat all the way down the ramp for the rest of the game!
• Isengard sent a unit of Uruk-Hai scouts to climb the mountain slopes above the Hornburg, causing chaos when they descended directly into the Hornburg’s outer wall.
• Everyone’s favourite archer – Legolas – died in 3 of the 4 games. He was somehow a magnet for arrows and Uruk-Hai blades.

Little Wars TV also included some footage of the game in one of their videos of the event, which you can watch here – Helm’s Deep features at 2:40.

I had a number of messages after the event from players and onlookers – clearly Chris had done a great job demoing the rules. Many thanks! Release date is TBC but will be 2024 – keep watching the web!

I’ve always enjoyed painting minis but never really got the hang of taking photos (generally because I had friends who were better at it than me), but one of the things I picked up from numerous photo sessions at Wargames Illustrated magazine was simple: backdrops massively improve your shots.

Jon Hodgson has always been adept at creating landscapes that have a strong narrative quality – seen to great effect on his work for The One Ring RPG (Cubicle 7) and Beowulf (Handiwork Games) – so it was a pleasant surprise a few years back when he branched out into miniature backdrops.

Originally available as part of Jon’s Patreon, these were later made available as packages on Drive-Thru RPG and Wargames Vault. However, they all required the user to download and print them out; not a big deal for some of us, but definitely not as accessible as they could be.

Jon has a history of running successful Kickstarters and decided to put together a trial project – a spiral bound book of the backdrops that could be propped up and used for miniature photography straight out of the box.

With the project being wildly successful, I was pleasantly surprised when my copy turned up early, and couldn’t resist getting outside to get a few snaps on the next clear day.

The printing is absolutely gorgeous – unsurprisingly, these are better than the versions I was printing myself at home. Although the book is slightly smaller than I’d like (A4, but I understand that the logistics of a bigger print would have made the project and postage unviable),

The book is brilliantly easy to use. As you can see from the pics 0f the Elf Cavalry below, I had fun quickly changing the backdrop between shots to see how the atmosphere changed between different pieces of art.

There’s nothing fancy being used here – I just placed the minis on a small terrain piece in natural light, propped up the book behind them and got snapping using an iPhone.

As well as the 32 pages of art, the book contains two useful short guides to photography – one technical and one starter level.

There is also a Sci-Fi book currently available alongside the Backdrops book. You can find both books at Handiwork Games and also Bad Squiddo Games.

Following on from his successful ‘Fords of Isen’ game at Historicon 2023, Chris Grau of Feldgrau Productions will be running four games of Midgard Heroic Battles at November’s Fall In event (3-5th November 2023, Lancaster, PA, USA).

Midgard can be used for a wide variety of historical, legendary and fantasy settings, but has been popular with several play test groups for gaming some of the bigger actions from Tolkien’s Middle-earth. With a grounding in historical tactics but an emphasis on heroic leadership, Midgard is very much at home with games set set in the world of the Lord of the Rings. The rules – due to be published by Reisswitz Press – aren’t out yet, but Chris is kindly running preview games to give you a taste of what to expect.

Chris has a fantastic set-up using 10mm miniatures and has been busy building his own version of Helm’s Deep, shown here in play testing.

It’s refreshing to see a model of this famous battle that isn’t just a copy of the one shown in the Peter Jackson movies, and the small-scale miniatures allow an epic feel to the game.

Apparently, the pre-booked slots for the games have already gone, but Chris says ‘I’ll accept walk ups if I have open spots. It’s not uncommon for at least one person who signed up to not come. I’m also happy to have people watch and learn the rules,’ so sounds like it’s worth dropping by if you’re interested.

Pre-registration for the event is available here

Many thanks to Chris for running these games – please let us know how you get on!

Tom WD and I are big fans of Osprey’s Of Gods And Mortals game, published ten years ago but still getting played by us on a fairly regular basis. Fortunately Kev Moon and friends at the ELMS club in Leeds are also regular players, so we like to get together every so often to throw dice and deck each others’ gods.

In case you missed it, OGAM is a skirmish game where you play a mythological pantheon. Each player controls a God, several Legends (heroes or creatures) and around 20 Mortals (who fight and pray for their deity). Written by Andrea Sfiligoi and using some of the mechanisms from A Song Of Blades And Heroes, it’s published by Osprey as one of the ‘blue book’ series. Games last about 90 minutes and are invariably fast-paced and somewhat wacky.

Although we usually pit Gods from the same pantheon against each other, Kev had decided that this event was going to be ‘open season’, so we saw Greeks, Celts, Norse, Egyptians, Japanese and pre-Islamic Arabs taking to the gaming table. With 11 players, we each played three games against different opponents.

I took the opportunity to pull out some of my Celtic mythological figures that don’t see the light of day often enough. Crom Cruach, the Bloody Crooked One, is a Celtic god of death and destruction who features heavily in 2000 AD comic’s Slaine series. Fortunately I had recently painted a mini for him, so he became my God.

For followers, I didn’t need to look any further than the Skull Swords from Slaine. Warlord Games produced a superb range of models for these for their Slaine Miniatures Game last year, also including a fine Drune lord (Slough Throt).

Following on with the Slaine theme, I also added two units of Half-Dead warriors from the Alternative Armies range. These weren’t going to have much fighting impact but would provide valuable power for Crom Cruach during the games. Forces for OGAM are usually built to 900 points – I managed to bring this in at just less than that. Here’s the roster if you’re interested:

Once gathered at the venue, the eleven players put out their Gods for a quick photo shoot. There were other Celtic pantheons alongside Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Japanese and pre-Islamic Arab – quite the variety!

The ELMS club had kindly provided all the tables and scenery. Each table was set up with a different scenario and ready to play, so all that was left to do was to pair off and get started.

My first game was against Dean’s impeccably-painted Greek warband, led by Zeus and featuring Herakles backed up by some Spartans, Dryads and Centaurs.

The scenario was a fight to the death around some barrow-mounds, one of which had an undead inhabitant who wasn’t pleased to be awoken. This chap could be activated by the opposite side as a reaction during the game, but didn’t make much impact as things turned out.

OGAM has an unusual deployment rule in that, in most scenarios, units can be placed anywhere except within a certain distance of enemy units and objectives. This led to a situation where Crom Cruach ended up in fairly close proximity to Zeus. When I won the initiative – and knowing from previous games how powerful Zeus can be – I mounted a pre-emptive giant worm strike to try to peg back the big guy.

This was successful beyond all expectations as Zeus was banished on the first turn! He didn’t stay down long as his followers prayed to summon him back, but I managed to resist his lightning bolts and then send the Lord Weird Slough Feg on a mission to take out the Dryads with his ‘Culling of the Weak’ ability. This was, once again, unusually successful (it needs to be said that Dean’s dice were absolutely shocking throughout the game).

Turn 3 saw a very premature end to the game as Herakles mounted an attack on one of my Skull Sword units. I was hoping to get off lightly with just one casualty and a retreat, but Herakles rolling a 1 vs a 6 saw the great hero laid out on the deck. OGAM is very fast-playing, but the Legend characters can be vulnerable, and this was a case in point.

A further attack from Crom on Zeus saw the Olympian God banished yet again, and his followers fleeing the field, so Dean decided to call it a day. A tough one for the Greeks.

Game 2 was ‘The Stone Circle’, a variant of the ‘Sacred Grove’ scenario from the OGAM rulebook. The scenario involved trying to get possession of the eponymous ancient monument, although the first unit entering would face an attack by the guardian spirits.

My opponent for this was John with his Norse warband, followers of the lesser-known deity Vidar.

Predictably, pretty much everyone hot-footed it for the stone circle, resulting in an epic scrap between the Gods and Legends in the area.

My Skull Sword Champion went down fighting, but Crom quickly gobbled up both Valkyries in short succession.

A moment of black comedy occurred as I spotted an opening and rushed forward the Drune Lord Slough Throt into the stone circle. Naturally, I had forgotten about the guardian spirits! Once dodgy dice roll later and Slough Throt was toast…

Slough Feg once again unleashed his Culling Of The Weak on to the enemy Mortals (Troll-Wolves in this case), and the Viking warriors scarpered en masse as Crom took down Vidar.

Another victory for the followers of the worm!

At this point, I had to get a couple of photos of other games. Frost Giants vs Samurai was on the table next door.

I like my Frost Giants but this mini was absolutely insane! He was being fielded as Utgard-Loki, inside whose glove Thor and Loki sleep in one of the Norse tales, mistaking it for a cave.

Here’s Tom’s Epona-themed Celtic force taking on the Undead Egyptians – more on these later.

The final game of the day was Pandora’s Box – a scenario where you have to get to the centre of the ruined temple and then randomly determine what treasure lies there!

My opponent for this one was going to be Anubis and his Undead Egyptians, played by Oliver, who had some lovely Warhammer models making up the bulk of the force.

Undead can be a tough nut to crack in OGAM as they are immune to morale tests. I therefore decided to adopt the tactics of taking out as many Undead as possible before going for Anubis himself.

The tactic worked, although those Undead were damned hard to shift, especially with Anubis using Raise Dead every turn! Crom Cruach eventually crunched his way through enough skellibobs to turn his attention to the jackal-faced deity.

Slough Throt got through to Pandora’s Box inside the ruined temple and rolled to discover that he would now have the ability to make poisoned attacks. Which would have been magic, if he wasn’t fighting an entirely undead force!

My Half-Dead were set upon and somewhat mauled by the Sphinx (a cracking Reaper Miniature from Oliver’s collection).

And a sneak attack by my Skull Sword Champion ended embarrassingly.

The game eventually ended with a God v God battle inside the ruined temple, exactly as it should. Crom got the better of Anubis and had managed to deplete his followers to the extent that he wasn’t coming back.

All in all, a terrific day’s friendly gaming in a great venue. Tom and I found playing ‘out of period’ (yeah, I know, in a fantasy game) slightly odd, and I left with a hankering for a themed event next time out. OGAM is still a brilliant game though and will need more playing very soon. Many thanks to Kev and the ELMS group for hosting. We’ll be back!