Impetus Command Stands

OK I know Impetus does not use command stands, the commander is with the unit, but that's how Barry and I roll. I wanted to take advantage of other blogs ideas and one that I liked and has been done in a fair few places was round command stands. Now I was not going to cut a roundish one out so had to order some from Warbases. These arrived on Friday so I quickly set to. I still need to varnish them (later today) and then they will be added to the boxes waiting for the army to be completed. I have five more bases with plans to make two more bases up when I do more troops.

You have seen these guys recently, but now they are finished! I thought the base was going to be a little bit to small but in the end i think it looks just right.

I like the flow of the figures and felt they painted up without any trouble or stress. The detail is nice and crisp, just look at the grain in the shield.

I know you have seen Mr. Dolphin before but here he is in all his glory supported by his bodyguard.

The last Command base and rather colourful shields they all have. The last two command stands be a Elephant and a Light Horse, this should give me a nice mix. It also gives me three spare round bases which I have already got a few ideas for.

It's been a week of getting really. The HaT light horse I got a few weeks back that had the wrong items in (each had just the one correct sprue) had the replacements delivered. I asked to keep back the two correct sprues and sent back just the wrong ones. The E-bay shop has sent me full boxes back in replacement which was very nice. These being GB Models, Liverpool. I fully recommend them as they were great and quick with their response's and were quick to offer to pay postage cost to me (not required as the box remained unfranked).  I also got 16 WWII figures from Black Tree Design so I need to get busy with these sometime soon.

Full on Impetus AAR.

Rules are funny things, the first game of Basic Impetus I felt was good and a possible challenge to Field of Glory. The second playing left me with a feeling of being cheated. The rules did not stack up and for me to play a third time I felt they needed some major surgery. Barry on the other hand felt better about the rules than the first sitting and decided to buy the full rules after all. I welcomed this as they would obviously fill in a few holes at least. I just was not interested given the high cost compared to FoG and by that point was happy with these rules. Once Barry had the rules he was full of how they did indeed fill gaps in the basic rules and how they brought in elements that was not even hinted at in the basic free rules. So I was looking forward to having a go at the full version and mentally committed to building an army of my own at some point. So finally we both are able to get a game in and we started off with a 300 point army which seems to be about the same as a 600 + point FoG army. What follows is a potted version of events.

Both armies line up. The Dacian army on the right is commanded by Barry whilst I get the Romans again, which is fine by me.

My army spread across the table, I had a few units tucked up as reserves and doubled up both legions to make large units. All my cavalry were positioned on my left, yep two light and one medium, just wow. I was using my casualty markers to represent my DVP, this was one less thing to look up so worked well. Barry used the down loadable casualty markers.

Barry placed all his horse on his right, he was playing hardball with a bunch of cataphracts. I was scarred, I mean two light horse and one medium. Reminds me of a Beatles song! I think Barry has a sponsorship deal going on as he slyly gets the rules into shot.

The table was a little small for the number of units on it which did lead to some straight in combat but it helped to speed up the game. Any larger and it's over to Maelstrom to use one of their tables. I only supplied the cloth and hills as Barry had not only supplied the two armies but also the down loadable terrain. Here I am about to test the rules for the first time as I try to get ahead by charging the skirmish bow troops Barry was annoying me with. I needed to do a double move, one to get round the brush and then charge home. To do more than a single move you need to pass a command test. I failed the test, this did not stop me charging but did disorder me.

Which led me to be the first player to loose a unit. My light horse needed a bit better than average dice but threw really badly, Barry rolled boxcars on his two dice causing two casualties. Now a Doors song is playing in my mind. Whilst I did not mind losing the unit too much it was the rolls that made me a little on edge. Not the poor rolling as such, no it was that you have to roll low on 1D6. Say you have a strength of 4 and loose 2 casualties then you need to roll 1-2 on a D6 not to loose a casualty. a 3 will loose you a single loss whilst a 5 would loose you three (6 would be 4). A 1 will always be a pass a 6 a fail. Th problem in my mind was that this one die roll could have drastic effect and did so during the game on more than one occasion.

Having lost one unit destroyed I now was facing a Super Heavy Cavalry armed with Lance whilst sitting on little more than donkeys with not so pointy sticks. Clearly I had issues. At least I could retire and not have to die but this was rather leaving my Medium Cavalry out to dry. My left was looking worry some. The middle was much better as Barry had kept all his troops in the centre away from my troops as he has to react to being within charge reach.

I started to move forwards in the centre and all the way over to my right flank moving the supporting Auxillia out wide. I drew the falkesmen as they failed a stand test and these charged forward. Barry at this point really needed to give his army it's head but held the rest in position. This was to prove a big mistake as whilst the Falkesmen are really nasty in the charge 5 DVP 5 Impetus and 2 extra for supporting rank for 12 dice, once I survived the contact he lost 5 dice! however I managed to throw Pilum to start reducing his rear rank and then with strong support on each flank was able to start to grind him down.

Meanwhile on my left I had to face the charge of the cataphracts into my medium cavalry. These stood up to it better than expected. Sure they were pushed back, sure I lost casualties but they did not break and with flank support ready to help out things looked fairly good.

After chasing off the skirmish troops in the centre the Auxillia were to far forward and exposed. Barry seized the opportunity and went after them. But in a series of bizarre roles I was able to repel the first attack even though I lost the original combat the casualty rolls were opposites. Bad for Barry and good for me. I failed the rally roll but was still forward and standing. Meanwhile the Falkesmen were being steadily reduced in strength as their number of dice continued to drop.

On my left I charged the Cataphacts in the flank causing first disorder then a retreat after winning the melee. Not enough to rid myself of them but enough to stall the attack in this area. Barry had sent all his Cataphracts through the area atop the hill and at the time I felt he should send some wide. This turned out to be true as he just did not have the space to attack freely and this was very much to my favour.

Close up of the moment the Dacians realised that yes that Legion had something to say. The coin's designed to be terrain markers pulled double duty as I used them to mark disorder.

A fresh charge from Barry finally brought the end to my Mediums game but in doing so had driven the Cataphracts further down my line and into the waiting arms of my Axillia. These would charge into the flank of these tanks on the hoof, something they would not enjoy.

The double regiment were forced to charge my double Legion (both his cavalry formations were forced to charge). I did fairly poor (OK I did total crap) with the pillum but made up for it in the melee removing the rear rank and leaving his horse fairly shattered.

Back in the centre, I was slowly losing the battle with my one axillia directly to the centre but at quite a cost to the Dacian Infantry. Just to the right of this though I was a little more speedy with the dispatch of the Dacians facing my Legions. I had support but also the flanking Axillia was now in position to move down the line and drive into the flank of any troops emerging from the reduction of the other Auxillia unit.

The Dacian Gods require a blood sacrifice, I went for a quick fix of a goat myself, seems in a sick version of Paper Scissors, goat wins. Failed to get a close up of the goat boys.

What was to be the end game. Barry was breaking through the middle on a single unit frontage (but would have 3 units to exploit) whilst the mauling of his Cavalry would have left him with two very weak units best running from contact as they were in real danger of being destroyed. My half of the centre and right was all mine. These would swing to face the three units coming through the line.

I still had plenty of units at full strength for the final fight, Barry was close to destruction and as such would have been wise to try and get away at this point. What he could have pulled out was questionable. For sure it was looking bad at table height.

From our point of view it was a blast. I am sure we did plenty wrong that will be picked up next time but really I don't much care as the overall day was about getting a feel for the rules and fun. Both were achieved. I still think that dice roll is really powerful but I believe you have a fate roll yo can use a few times which we did not this time. I can live with it though. These rules are not FoG and I am happy they are not. FoG have removed the written record of 6th Edition WRG but retain so much of the flavour and a game will always have an element of study. Impetus to me is far closer to DBM. It's a mark of how far DBM went away from 6th that two sets of rules can come out and feel so very different in their approach and yet fit between the two predecessors. I really have no issues playing the two newer rule sets, I have found my ancients grey matter replacement of 6th Ed whilst Impetus has kept all the fun that DBM promised but wrapped it up in a set of rules that seem to feel the period better. Of course this is first playing bliss, lets hope once the honeymoon has ended were still going at it!!!

HaT's off to the Little fellows?

As I mentioned about a month ago I had bought a couple of boxes of plastics just to try them out in preparation to starting a army to face off against Barry's slowly expanding armies. Having not even decided an army it was always a bit of a punt. More important was the experience of painting the figures as the last time I painted plastics was around the age of 16 and really and in Enamels, so not really comparable. My first mistake was really just buying them, the price on the box was £4.99 whilst Harfields sell the same boxes for a little over £3 but it was only a couple of boxes so no harm done. Sure when I know exactly what I want it will be through these guys that I go.

So I have started work on the one Roman Auxiliaries pack number 8065 so what are my first observations?

Detail Quality. The detail is not as crisp as metal but it's there. Some area's such as the bottom of the chainmail vests is thin but other like the necktie is really crisp. Overall not bad at all, better than some metal castings not as good as most.

The flash is mostly reserved for the mould lines and it took me awhile to get used to how easy it is to cut away and get the touch right so all I would take away is the flash. As in some metals some of the figures have flash running through the faces, this is a real pain but what can you do.

Pose. Nice mix of standing and action. If you use the whole box you will have some great mixed posed troops in the process of engaging the enemy but also a unit or two that look like they don't want any part of the battle. The figures are cheap enough just to bin the less warlike poses I guess but are too wooden to make good casualties, though I might try a little heat experiment to double them up etc.

Problems. My box of these were missing two sprue, I did not count at the time but I should have had 45 figures but received 35, so down by 10. It seems this is a bit of a problem as Barry recently bought a box of HaT that had a Prussian Naps sprue in the box instead of the correct one. Given this was just test painting it was no big deal but a concern given the small test pool all having issues. Next problem was all down to a lack of prior knowledge. The figures come with separate spears and shields that need gluing in place. First I bought Plastic weld which had no effect on the parts what so ever. Next was normal plastic cement that held a little before pinging off. In the end I bought a glue gun and after about 20 minutes of trial had enough control to not make a total mess of it. Really not ideal so I really need to work something out for later. I plan to try harder plastic figures which should stick better and are easier to paint.

Overall the painting of them whilst not as pleasurable than metal was fine. I could have got them done quicker if I had got the gluing down in one go but I can paint them fairly fast so getting an army together should not be an issue aside from picking it, and getting it into the schedule as all other painting is off whilst I get the WWII stuff sorted (well maybe get my camp done for FoG).

Overall I was pleased with the result. I really like the mix of poses and as I have not stuck to rigid lines they have the look of about to make contact. Whilst I copied the box art for these two units (I did not research at all for this!!) the shields are missing two little half moons next to the boss, this is because I did not trust myself not to make a mess of them and I really liked the results I had achieved on the shields as it was. Shown are two units based for Impetus.

Conclusion.

Not 100% happy with HaT, the shields did not fit the plugs on the figures hands but I did like the idea of having two so you could vary the pose. Also the difficulty of gluing was a pain but looking at the price and range HaT are still a good buy. But even so I will try my hand at a few other ranges and see what I come up with. Right now I plan to just get what I have worked through some and then go after my 20mm army. In the meantime I will happily continue to play with Barry's figures.

Bring Out Your Dead

These figures are just the start of a group of casualty markers that will be used in both FoG and Impetus. I probably have as many as I need for Impetus as I have 13 but for FoG you need up to 2 per unit so I plan to double the number at least but possibly triple. All are 15mm and whilst I will be also using them as markers on 20mm I think it will still work. If not then I guess it's back to dice or card markers but I think these look much better.

Being hexagonal bases, these lend themselves to the 1-6 strength levels really well. I have a fair mix of troop types and they do even more. Next convention I go to I hope the supplier is there (I have forgot the name!!). They also were fun to paint so it's an all round win I guess.

All 13 as seen from above. I wonder if anyone will be offended? I know a small storm was kicked up last year but that also included a scene of a civilian being hung, but this has animal death as well, much frowned upon. Me, well I really don't mind, anything goes really. I have a hangman's base for my ECW that I bought and painted years ago but I am fairly sure it did not come with a figure to hang from it. Now I need to crack on with painting some of the living.