the Rus

Managed to hang on for a fingernails off the table edge sort of draw.

phew!

www.madaxeman.com

Sunday mornings game

And I'm playing Rus.

Or to use their full name, Fecking Rus.

Hoo bloody rah.

Maybe i should just get an earlier flight. My last DBM competition could end without s single win!

www.madaxeman.com

Heres the kind of photo you take after too much Guinness

So, where was Dave Madigan

Dave Madigan is a notable omission from this DBM swansong

But at least he was here in spirit




I'm also guessing the "food served daily" contains some fried elements

Game 3

ends up as a close 6-4 win against Chris Smiths Pechenegs.

A terrain free table is swept across by my spear wall, but some terrible dice in bounds 2-5 and some dogged defending by the Pecheneg light horse and wagons means I only get one command and am about 2 moves short of being able to flee another command off table.

I am now languishing with 2 points out of 9. You may be wondering who's in the lead - well, I dont really know, and as we all sit in different rooms in the rabbit-warren like building to play frankly the leaders may as well be on another planet
!!

Here are my spearmen trying to shove some light horse off a gentle hill



A couple of chariots beat themselves senseless against a wall of wooden wagons



Pecheneg is a large army. But you can fit it all in a fairly small space if you try


0

Right, now its time for a night on the lash!

Here's lunch

Just to prove its not possible to have too much Guinness and fried food.....

2nd game

A 5-5 draw against a shato turk army commanded by Mr Hessian.
48% casualties on both sides and both of us 1 element away from victory.
And a proper lunch hour in the pub, with Arsenal Man Utd on the telly to boot.
But my capacity for fried food is already being severely tested.

www.madaxeman.com

The Irish welcomed many foreigners

Some in-game pics

My blades wade into Tilmans bows



Two mounted generals get intimate in the rough



The Art I are not quite as clever as they hoped!

Heres some we drank earlier

In The Airport


0

In a pub

Heres Ruddocks sandwich

Nice of him to return it to the tray.

Fortunately, with so many wargamers around, it wasnt to last for that much longer

Friday night latest.

So, one game and one loss. Due to Guinness fuelled incompetence in losing a general who I probably didn't need to risk in an attempt to try and win the game early and have more bar time. A Burgundian army was my opponent if that's important.....

However its now eytinh close to double figures of Guinness pints. So the important things are going well.

Maybe get some photos up tomorrow.

www.madaxeman.com

now here in dublin

looking for a bar, and also looking for the venue.

Usefully, I forgot the directions. and the iwf website is down.

ok

at least a bar should be easy to find

2 pints

In the airport

European DBM Championships, Dublin

Yes, its 10am on a Friday morning, and after a late night at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, (don't ask) my body and stomach is facing up to the prospect of Gunniess in the near future as I plan to head out to Heathrow to fly to Sunny (cloudy) Dublin!!

Luckily I had a handy translation guide to the local lingo..




Now, will we have time to do some shopping this afternoon?

Warhamster Battle Report

My Devizes battle report has generated a fair bit of interest on the TMP
site - but mostly between myself and one other bloke talking about the
shooting rules.

No reaction from the Yahoo WMA group, nothing on BHGS Yahoo, and one comment
on the Yahoo DBMlist. I'm surprised there is nothing on Yahoo, as I havent
seen any groovy battle reports posted there before.

I should really have set up traffic monitoring so I knew how many visits
there were, but its a bit late now.

Devizes warhamster Results

The result is... that I won!!

Nicked it from the far more experienced Clice with a massive 960 point
victory in my last game (he scored about 600 in winning his last game) - so
I won 3 games and lost one.

Even so, I still remain to be convinced about the rules !

10mm ACW photos

I spent a chunk of the weekend photographing and uploading the pics of 10mm unpainted ACW figures, taken from the large batch of Pendraken stuff that arrived about a week ago.

Having this many photos has allowed me to implement a "full" searchable site for ACW 10mm photos, with sub pages for all the different manufacturers I am aware of - you can link to it from here.

There are pics of at least one figure from every manufacturer, and a full set of compare and contrast photos with different manufacturers side by side.

I'm expecting a load of Minifigs to arrive any day now, so that will also be another large addition to the directory - having painted models may be some time away though!!

10mm Romans nearing completion

I'm almost at the end of a seemingly interminable project to paint up a 10mm
WMA Roman army. Its one of those thats dragged on and on - and now as the
first batch of 10mm ACW stuff is here, I'm desparate to clear the painting
table to make room for them !!

Almost done - but I keep finding new sets of straps and belts to add to the
"to paint" list before I can base them

still not decided if I will keep or sell them however1!

Swedish Wargames Competition Terrain

The Scandinavian DBM Open 2007 kindly provided free "Rough Going" terrain for all competitors:

Pieces came in a standard 1 FE format, but could be nibbled to size as required.

This became much easier after application of a little cream cheese and a slice of smoked salmon.

Me within minutes of arriving in Stockholm

Hmmm... The Ten Poond Roond never tasted so good.

The end of The Nordic Championships

Well, in a weekend of much excessive behaviour + well cost and wargaming wise anyway + the Vikings just about stagger away from Stockholm counting the cost in every way possible.

4 Games

2 wins, 2 losses

Out of 400 percent (of my army over 4 games) I suffered 297 percent in casualties

I had my largest command broken in every game, and this includes being totally eliminated (all killed in combat) in 1 of them and having none of its elemmemnts left on table in one other.

Ive managed to spend over 15o poinds on, erm, booze and a kebab. And I dont feel like Ive gone that mad....

cant wait to be back at work next week !

First game

A 91 win after losing 33 out of 34.5 elements against abbasids.

Combat in bound 1 !!

A 27.5 ee command (of mine) totally eliminated!!!

THe Vikings have definately landed....

And we are now in the pub.

Sweden

Having breakfast now, after spending over £50 on beer last night. Each. And
we only had a kebab.

£5 for 400ml of beer is a bit severe isn't it?

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Stockholm 'Nordic Championships' 8-10th June

Here is an updated list for the coming weekend....
1. 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 Early Samurai III/54
6. Tero Särkijärvi Minoan I/18
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 know...)
13. Greg Mann Papal Italian 1283 AD III/72
14. Sebastian Routh
15. Andy Routh
The mystery armies are still in there. Not sure what Routhish will have in
it !

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.