Nordic Championships Runners & Riders

My Viking army will go to Sweden in June to play in the Nordic DBM
Championships
The runners and riders so far are:
Jesper Ohlsson Later Carthaginian II/32
2. Niilo Kalakoski Pictish II/68
3. Hannu Uusitalo Fanatic Berber III/74
4. Kimmo Ylinen
5. Mika Mäkelä
6. Tero Särkijärvi
7. Arne Björk Order of St. John IV/56
8. Ulf Olsson Abbasid Arab III/37
9. Chris Smith Medieval O'irish IV/58
10 Me!!  Norse Viking III/40
11. Brian Holmes Mithridatic II/48
12. Ludvig Uhlbors Iazyges II/26
I'm not sure if numbers 4 thru 6 are the players or their armies !
My Viking list is the proper thing - Bd F, pre 850 AD.
Coals to Newcastle !

The Result

A crushing victory for the cathaginian - the filler plus skirmishers plus 3 units of killer cavalry (inlcuding an elephant unit) worked well as they picked apart an Alexandrian army with far too few skirmishers.

 

The Numidians even managed to devastate a unit of Argyaspid Pikemen, killing 1/3 of them in one round of shooting from 3 units of light horse.

 

The Alexandrians had no answer to shoot-evade tactics.

 

Still not convinced though - not really working as a simulation of ancient warfare at 1000 points. It needs more points or a "play nicely children" rule added I fear!

Warhamster Tonight

Going to be trying out a highly mobile hard hitting Carthaginian army tonight, with elephants, 2 units of shock cavalry and a core of compulsary infantry and optional warband to bulk it out

My theory is that the game revolves around a bit of messing about coupled with some decisive rounds of combat from the uber troops. So expendable ubertroops due to a cute army composition, plus a mess of skirmishers might just work

PBI Last Weekend

Played PBI in Portbury this last weekend, giving the mighty 1939 Belgians a run out - and they actually did quite well, coming 2nd overall.

 

With 3 defensive games they managed to hold off 2 sets of Later War Germans (both with Volksturm impressed infantry and elite panzers) and then a wall of Italians dashed themsleves against the Maginot line for a large victory for the Flems and Walloons

 

Pictures and a report to come

 

 

 

 

Warhamster

Played another game of Warhamster on Tuesday - the 2nd with my new whizzy 10mm figures. My Greeks just about beat an Indian army, after we both worked out that shooting is only one attack per base, not the number of attacks given in the army lists (which must be for combat only).

10mm figures look really good - if they had been around 15 years ago, I doubt there would be much 15mm being played now - or then again maybe we'd be onto 8mm or 7mm instead!!

I remain to be fully convinced by Warhamster - nice simple game, and definately has some more depth than it first appears, however the ability of bodies of troops to jump around the table still feels odd - or certainly not in line with my view of what ancient warfare consisted of.

In many of the games I have played it also is a lot of dancing about, and then one "super-unit" charges in and knocks down 2 or 3 enemy units and then bounces off, either alive or dead - and that seems to decide the game. It will be interesting at Devizes to see how the rules stand up to competition - I can't help feeling they are fine if people "play nicely" but whether they work as well when people want to win remains to be seen.