Rheged Beware! The Irish Raiders are Here... Part Two!

 It’s been a bit of a slog getting the rest of my Irish Raider Warband based this week but, finally, the job is done!

Having said that, I think I’ll be going back over some of them at some point, because the edges of some of the bases are looking a little sparsely covered. I decided years ago that I would apply a watery coat of modelling glue over the flock once it had dried, to prevent it wearing away too quickly; if you apply this glue wash too soon the flock appears to contract and leave the edge of the base showing through. The lesson I’ve learned this week, is to be a bit more patient when basing!

However, on with the parade… all the infantry in my warband are from a box of Wargames Atlantic Dark Age Irish Warriors (40 hard plastic figures, although 10 of them are canines for some reason, for just 25 of our Great British Pounds) and the cavalry are metal figures from Footsore Miniatures. Conveniently, Footsore cavalry come in sets of four and are currently £12 a set. I’ve not painted much metal recently and I struggled to get the paint to stay on the horses, but it was worth the effort, and the cost, to get figures that are clearly the real deal!

The main body of the warband are the Raiders. There are three Groups of six Raiders and they differ from Warriors in that they are harder to kill but, are more susceptible to Shock. They require a “6” to die, but gain Shock on a roll of 3, 4 or 5! They will withdraw from the fray when they have more Shock than men remaining in the Group and they have a definite proclivity for looting!

If you’re not keen on skirmishing troops, then this is probably not the army for you! As I mentioned in Part 1, this warband has a Noble specifically included to command the skirmishing infantry and there are two Groups of four javelin armed figures for him to lead. The skirmishers are the same figures as the Raiders but without the shields.

When you’re raiding foreign parts, you sometimes have to improvise and a convenient rock can be just as effective as a pointed stick.

The final Group of infantry are four missile troops armed with slings. You can only make four slingers from the Wargames Atlantic set, so that fits in perfectly for your Irish Dux Britanniarum warband. The slings provided in the box are the best I’ve ever encountered… they look as though they could do some serious damage, being substantial weapons with a hefty lump of rock about to be hurled at the opposition.

At this point, the Irish Raider Warband deviates significantly from their Late Roman and Saxon counterparts with the inclusion of mounted warriors! First up are the Skirmish Cavalry, which essentially operate in the same fashion as the foot skirmishers. They move faster but evade from contact in exactly the same way.

The Warband is completed by a Group of Noble Raider Cavalry, which are Elite troops and, unlike Raider Cavalry, don’t have the option of skirmishing. They lack the hitting power of Shock Cavalry, but they will attempt to exploit weaknesses in their opponent’s morale and will get an extra D6 in close combat for each point of Shock on the enemy Group.

My Noble Raiders are Footsore metal figures, but I decided to give them shields from the Wargames Atlantic box, in the hope that they might look as though they belong to some kind of noble brotherhood; a sort of Irish version of the Knights of the Round Table!

Back at the beginning of this project, I couldn't decide whether to put this warband together or use the figures I had ready to make a Saxon Warband. I’m glad that I made the decision I did and went ahead with the Irishmen, but the Saxons are still waiting in their box and, at some point, that will be my next Dux Britanniarum project.

Rheged Beware... The Irish Raiders Are Here!

 Throughout this past winter, I have embarrassingly succumbed to the temptation of a host of skirmish rules sets, to some degree or other, but, in spite of these enticements, I have managed to press on throughout with my Irish Raider Warband for Dux Britanniarum. The final brush strokes were applied last week and all that remains now is the basing. Rather than present the warband in its entirety, I thought I would split it into two parts; firstly, the command and, secondly, the warriors who follow their lords into battle.

The command structure in the Irish Warband is a tad unusual compared to the British and Saxons. The Nobles are made up of a Status III Lord, with his champion of course, a Status II Noble and a Status I Noble, who commands the two groups of skirmishers in the warband.

The Lord of my warband is Donnabhan. He is 36 years old, with an average build. He has a reputation for being cruel and has a Lust for Power. Donnabhan is of the men across the water, an aristocrat born in the lands of the Britons. In wealth, he has a thief’s horde. 

My Status II Noble is Senach. He is 31 years old and also has an average build. He is an honourable man, a son of the sons of Mil Espaine, born from the line of Noah.

My Status I Noble, who commands the warband’s skirmishers, is Rechtabra. He is 21 years old and, yet again, of average build. He has a reputation as a good man and the constitution of an ox. He is a King’s Son and has joined Donnabhan’s warband to gain experience in the ways of the raid.

Finally in the command group is Donnabhan’s fearless Champion, Oengus and, although a champion is not technically a member of the nobility, I like to roll for a couple of their characteristics, just to give them a bit of a personality. He is 22 years old, tall and strong. Armed with sword and blackthorn shillelagh and carrying a shield of the Brethren of Donnabhan, he is clearly a man not to be taken lightly by the champions of the Lords of Rheged. 

So, that is the first part of my Irish Raider Warband. Basing Donnabhan’s warriors continues a pace and they should be ready to make their first public appearance in the very near future.

BARONS' WAR SKIRMISH RULES AT A LOCAL LEVEL!

Smaller Scale Feuds in the Age of Magna Carta…

It goes without saying, that when Warhost and Footsore Miniatures released their Barons’ War skirmish rules, the dwindling pension fund was going to take another hit. Having purchased and read the rule book, I started thinking about how I could build a setting for the game, which would tell a story of events on a much smaller scale than the huge political turmoil caused by the Barons’ War itself. Stories of local feuds and vendettas are the drama that I love to base my games around!

After a bit of searching around the internet, I came across a story which I believed would fit the bill perfectly and, in more ways, than I originally thought.

The star of my story is Sir Geoffrey de Lutterall, the ancestor of the more famous Geoffrey de Lutterall of Irnham, responsible for the commissioning of the Lutterall Psalter in the 1340s. Geoffrey was born sometime around 1158 in the village of Gamston, North Nottinghamshire, about six miles away from where I live. Relishing the prospect of setting my wargame stories in the local area, this was a character that would be worth investigating further.

Sir Geoffrey was a long-time adherent of John Lackland and supported him in an unsuccessful rebellion against Richard I. The consequence of this injudicious action was the forfeiture of some of his estates in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, only for them to be returned to him when John became king in 1199. I haven’t been able to find out what happened to those estates, but medieval kings were known to hand out such confiscated properties to their loyal supporters and, if this was so in this case, the lucky recipients would not have been particularly impressed when they had to surrender them and hand them back over to Sir Geoffrey. If this was how events transpired, then what may have followed, could have been a lovely local feud between the rival claimants to these disputed estates.

The Luttrell Coat of Arms

This then is the background to building a Retinue to use in Barons’ War skirmishing games. I have yet to discover who the dispossessed parties in this tragic saga may have been, but I can start to build my first retinue based upon what I imagine Sir Geoffrey’s forces to have been. Certainly, a small group of local knights, hoping to feather their own nests, would have supported someone who was held in such high regard by the king. Sir Geoffrey’s forces may possibly have been reinforced by members of the Paynell family, from Hooton Pagnell in Yorkshire, into which he had married. As these dramatic events are taking place in and around Nottinghamshire, a strong contingent of archers would certainly form part of the retinue and Geoffrey would have access to the local levy, although these may have been of questionable loyalty.

Wybert Claytone... Veteran Sergeant in the Retinue of Sir Geoffrey.

More to follow, as the retinue begins to take shape…

A Day in the Life of a Bewildered Wargamer.

No colourful pictures of wargames figures today… just some musings on a four year journey searching for the perfect set of Ancient or Medieval skirmish wargame rules!

Back in March 2017, I started searching for a set of small scale Ancient/Medieval skirmish rules and drew a complete blank. Lion Rampant, published by Osprey, was probably the closest I got to finding what I was looking for, but it didn't quite fit right with the earlier period games I wanted to play. At the time, the only options appeared to be modifying rule sets for other periods or committing the ultimate blasphemy and adapting fantasy rules to fight small scale historical actions! A year later, I had given up the search and began to work towards expanding my Victrix Carthaginian forces into a big scale army for Swordpoint rules.

Then suddenly, over the past two years, my book shelf has begun to groan under the weight of a rash of skirmish rule sets designed specifically with us "Ancient" gamers in mind. First to arrive there, in April 2019 was the Too Fat Lardies classic, Dux Britanniarum. These remain my favourite rule set of all time! I've painted a Romano-British warband for Dux and, at the time of typing this missive, I just have another three skirmish cavalry to paint to complete my Irish Raider Warband. Dux is very period specific and there is little opportunity to mess about with the composition of the warbands, but it does whisk you away, back in time to the uncertainty and barbarity of post Roman Britain.

August 2019 saw the arrival of S.P.Q.R. from Warlord Games through my letterbox. For a short time, I was in skirmish heaven, and began to plan the multitude of warbands I was going to build but, S.P.Q.R. suffered from the same drawback that had lead to my abandoning Bolt Action in favour of Chain of Command; the game was all about building the perfect warband and giving your characters endless superpowers that you could upstage your opponent with.

Then, about a year ago, along with Covid-19, came, what will probably become, the ultimate small force ancient skirmishing game of all time; Clash of Spears! Clash of Spears lead to some hurried re-cycling of those Victrix Carthaginians I had started to base for Swordpoint and I now have two Clash warbands, having completed a Celtic force as well. With things being as they have been over the last twelve months, my Clash warbands have spent most of their lives in the boxes I bought to transport them in, victims, like the rest of us, of lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Summer 2020 saw the arrival of yet another “must have” rule set; Infamy! Infamy! by those Too Fat Lardies again. For a time, Infamy! completely took over my life as it gave me the opportunity to build a warband of filthy, dirty Ancient Germans; the barbarians of all barbarians. Those nasty Germans played a significant role in two of my favourite historical events; the destruction of Publius Quinctilius Varus’ legions in the Teutoburg Forest and the Batavian Revolt of 69/70AD. When you combine the arrival of Infamy! with Victrix putting out a set of Germanic Warriors (a bit too pretty to be honest) it was like every portent and omen of good fortune had aligned with discovering next week’s Lottery numbers spelled out in a tin of Alphabetti Spaghetti! My beloved German warband has, like my Clash warbands, remained locked down in their storage box; another victim of these trying times in which we live.

By Christmas 2020, with things looking even more dire than they had in April, I had started to think that I probably needed to look for a game system that was quick, simple and small scale enough to build two warbands and be able to play solo at the dining room table! Through the letter box came Mortal Gods… fulfilling all of the above and all about another subject that I could get excited about, especially when there was the option to include figures from Greek mythology! Well, those excellent plastic skeleton warrior figures from Wargames Atlantic that I’d been drooling over for weeks would fit in perfectly with scenarios based around the story of Jason and the Argonauts!

And so, we come right up to date, with the final addition to the stack of skirmish games lined up chronologically on the book shelf, since that plea back in 2017, for someone to publish anything that an “ancient” skirmish wargames fan could spend his pension on. The Barons’ War by Andy Hobday, complete with a whole range of associated figures by Footsore Miniatures! Yet again, this a subject that I have a real interest in; what’s not to like? Knights, heraldry, chivalry, bows, crossbows, long pointy sticks and all the treachery and mayhem associated with a civil war! So far, I’m still at the reading through the rules stage and I’m only slowly getting the urge to splash some cash and start building a retinue or two. Having said that, I have identified two likely knights from my localish area, who could engage in some raiding and pillaging and I have dug out some long forgotten Fireforge plastic figures that could comfortably make up the bulk of some perfectly acceptable retinue men to do the dastardly bidding of said knights. Two negatives so far are the system for building retinues which, although much more flexible than Lion Rampant, has the potential to become a bit of an arms race and lead to the quest of building of the perfect retinue. The other gripe, is the format of the book; A5 and bound in a way that means it just wont stay open at the page you need to refer to in the middle of game! If I had a ring-binding machine, I’d take it apart and put it back together with a nice plastic binding.

So, four years on from that forlorn search for a set of small-scale ancient period skirmish rules, there are now so many that I’m like a penny in a barrel, rattling around trying to settle on which one I should spend my time and money on. With my second Dux Britanniarum warband so near completion I really have to get my head down and get the last few figures painted and then get them all based up ready for action. After that… The Barons’ War is beginning to rise to the top of the charts and seems to be the one that has the flexibility to make it most achievable. Let’s see what the rest of 2021 brings!