The Hurley Burly Has Been Done.....

"Which Gathering Host has lost or won ...."
"hmmmmm"

"Will be told to all upon the Mon....."   
"-day..hmmmmm"

"Constable! Where did you find this Bard?....."

Coming Soon to the Gathering of Hosts

 If all goes well, Boxing Day will be a Battle Game day on The Gathering of Hosts!

To be continued..

Wrapping Up 2025

I've settled on three of my collections to take part in the last games of 2025. The first will be a 16thC  Red Book scenario with an English raid trying to get safely back to Haddington. 

Already laid out.....

The second will be another raid from the Midlands into Valdur, Hopefully, this time I will manage a report,  before a year goes by!

And for the final game...........wellll.....we'll see but it just might take place in the Days of King Arthur.

Stay tuned!

Rising From My Death Bed and Making Plans

 Alright!  We are back on our feet. (Me and the wee warriors surrounding me.) 

I haven't come up with the next game yet but I have a list of requests and some vague ideas for the last few games of 2025. 

Prince Valiant just might appear in a cameo in the last game of the 2025 but hopefully, there will be one or two more small games in other settings before then. 

Stay Away From My Cows! (2021)

For some reason, I have an urge to revisit the 16thC Rough Wooing collection, doubtless because of the recent additions and the last game, so some sort of answer to that last ambush is called for.  

Ambushed!

There were some requests for another visit to the Land of 4 Winds and while I had considered a return raid on the Wild Folk, the Midlands armies could use some exercise now that they have recovered. 

I'll work on a scenario......

Ready To Go

I needed at least 1 more stand of Valdurian levies before I tabled the game and after sifting through some old Garrison and Prince August castings and a few spare painted, long service, just needing a touch up, Ral Partha figures, I got what I needed.

Now the game is ready to go.

(And yes it's that, oh so comman, classic CS Grant scenario.)

Coming Soon to the Gathering of Hosts blog

Next up on the Gathering of Hosts blog will be the first clash in this age between the Woods folk and Valdur. Will the Duke and his household come to repel the raiders? If it is an invasion, will the rest of the Federation respond as they did when the Midlish armies invaded?

The hairy Beast coming out of the woods is a young offspring of the original Gruach Mor who gave his life at the Battle of the Ford, five years ago (!?? really 5 years?). (See The Bloody Ford).

(Aside: our B____y internet connection went down as  I was working on the drafts for the next postings on the 2 blogs. What actually happened were incomplete & inaccurate posts getting posted, but that is now fixed.)

Ah HA!

I was trying to think up a scenario for my Gathering of Hosts, something different, and drawing blanks. Then a certain reader from Tragardland requested a reappearance of the Great Beastie, that made it even harder, until I finally remembered that the Midlands did NOT have to appear on every battlefield. In fact, the Free Folk were supposed to be as opposed to the Federation, esp Valdur, as to the Midlands. 

Problem solved! However, Valdur in particular is a little short on table top troops, Luckily, there are still a few veterans from the '70's, and new recruits from here and there, all needing modification, repair, and/or painting. 

Oh look! Rain!!!! We haven't had rain since early June!    Ohh, well, I'll just have to forgo outside chores and get on with repairs and painting, and a scenario..... work, work, work :)

A Traveller Brings News of a Battle

The battle has been played and blogged. 

For those who are interested there are 3 posts: (click to be taken there)

The Prologue

The Setup

The Battle

Up next: Henry VIII sends the Duke of Belmont to France.

Now The Hurley Burly's Done

 Now the Battle's Lost and Won.....

The sun is slowly setting but the Battle is not yet decided....

.... But not yet blogged. Report tomorrow on the Gathering of Hosts site.

The Battle Has Begun.....

but has not yet ended........

I hope to finish tomorrow and post a battle report on my Gathering of Hosts blog.

Coming Soon

 To a blog near to this one: Gathering of Hosts.

The Gathering of Hosts.

If all goes well, I'll have the battle played and posted by .Sunday evening (Atlantic Time)

Ooops!

I just realized that I had not yet posted a battle report from last summer on my Gathering of Hosts blog!

The details have slowly leached away by and large but the pictures pretty much tell the story.

 They Shall Not Pass!

Meanwhile, I'll keep trying to decide what I want to do next: paint, play, organize books, figures, etc., shovel yet more snow.......... (OK that last one is really low on my list since I'm not quite finished clearing all of the 50 cm that came down on the driveway, dog yard, etc last weekend.)

1/2 Century of Service

"When the world was young, there came a race of warriors from the White Plains. They were like giants to the Aerphix  warriors who preceded them as today's warrior's are to these heroes. 

Long years they have slept in the caves, waiting the call to return to serve the King again."
 
"Excerpt from the Book of the Four Winds" 

Minifigs, bought, painted and 'bloodied' in the service of Valdur in the winter of 1974. (WRG 3rd),
(Except the Ral Partha guy in the back rank, not sure where he came from!)
Now, at last, called upon once again to take up arms and face the dice.

It was back in the fall and winter of 1973/74  at Military College that Simon MacDowall  (see Legio Wargames blog) ordered a copy of the 3rd ed of WRG Ancient's, built small armies of Airfix figures, soon joined by Minifigs.  We haven't stopped yet, and neither have these lads though they haven't marched under my command since 1976/77. 

When I graduated, I was posted immediately to a ship in Halifax for on job training. I managed to pack a few of my favourite figures but left the bulk for the Wargames Club to use until I could collect them. Well, that time never came but over the years I would periodically bump into some of them in friends' armies, where they were well and happily employed.  Not too long ago, I was surprised when a package from Simon showed up including some old Minifig castings and....... some of my original Minifig Britons! 

Veteran Warriors: still ready for battle 1/2 a century on!

I replaced a few broken weapons, and a missing leg and stand, touched up the occasional scuffed paint and they are once again ready for service to the King, pardon me, the now Duke of Valdur, on my Gathering of Hosts blog.

And Now For Something

 Almost completely different:

A botched up, impromptu, stop action, 3 part video battle report, my first ever. Obviously a bit of planning and preparation, a script, and mastery of the software and hardware tools would all have been of benefit. 

This morning Rob from the Sharp End of the Brush blog and I, played a test game using discord. There is no proper battle report but it went reasonably well for a first go, 

However, for various technical reasons, I have no pictures to share, hence the improvised experiment with about 30 seconds of planning and preparation, not even something as basic as writing a script.  I also had some technical glitches like hitting stop instead of pause or not hitting the pause properly, thus exposing the hand of the Friendly Giant at work. Dispite the technical glitches, I did not have a precise record of specific unit's actions but over all it reflects what happened in this game that was up in the air right up until the last turn.  

Due to those stops I ended up  with 3 videos and no software that I could find on phone or chromebook that would let me splice and edit the videos. 

   

To be honest they weren't really worth editing but it was kinda fun and I might be tempted to do a properly prepared one with a script after having the right tools on hand and a better idea of how to use them.

Now That the Fog Has Lifted A Bit

Having had my 3rd or Booster anti-Covid shot on Tuesday, the after effects yesterday, including a rather fuzzy brain, meant a rather unproductive day. Still, one must do one's duty for community, family, and self so I don't begrudge the 1/2 lost day or the result of trying to be productive with a fuzzy brain. 

After a long pursuit, Lord Rosius, Satrap of Ballimont, caught up with the remnants of the Roman expedition. He had an uncanny feeling that he had been here before, in a dream perhaps, or another life? He shook his head, muttered a prayer and ordered his troops to advance.  

Today I'm more or less back to par and had a quick replay of my watering hole scenario using the updated, fog-bound, version  of the Gathering of Hosts rules that I had worked on yesterday. It went OK, fast with some tough decisions and moments of tension and choices outweighing luck, but obviously the rules were nowhere near ready or complete. Even I couldn't quite follow them and had to improvise.

The Hunnic mercenaries seemed rather reluctant to tussle with the Romans when not under his direct eye but their attempts to flank the enemy helped force them back sooner than they attended. If the mercenaries defending the watering hole would hold, he could wipe out this band of brigands!  

To skip over the details, it still feels like the right path for me to get to where I want to be, but they need a helluva lot of editing to make sense of them and I need to expand them with nice clear troop capability charts. I also need to guard against some bad habits such as tweaking things to conform to a pattern at the cost of a reduction in flavour and tactical options, and unintentionally hiding stray rules in introductions or thinly related places leading to questions like "what the hell was I thinking?" and "I thought I had...". 

It'll help if I go back to pairing simple core rules with army lists giving unit stats including any special rules, rather than working with generic movement and combat charts with scads of modifiers. Luckily I still have copies of several of those from the early versions of The Gathering of Hosts.      

The mercenaries put up a stern fight but the Roman infantry cut them to shreds. The fighting in the centre had also been fierce and bloody for both sides. There was still a chance that one last charge could crush the Roman scum.

Lastly, I need to focus on the aim: simple, flexible rules, clearly written, which can be easily adapted to various "Shock Era" (to use Joe Morschauser's term), armies.  The resulting games should be quick to play with the emphasis on tactics (in the general sense) and a contest of wits, spirit and luck, between the players, with enough colour to inspire a story. 

Alas, it was not to be. The Huns declined to do more than shoot while on the right, some barbarian knight in Yellow, an ally or mercenary perhaps,  charged out with a few companions and slew one elephant while spooking the rest. With such a Hero, he could have won he thought to himself while ordering the trumpeter to sound the retreat.  

Is that too much to ask?

The Winds of Change

A new year, always as good  a time as any to revisit things. 

The Satrap caught up with the Duke before they reached the oasis. A running fight ensued. 

PS: For those who haven't noticed, if you click on the pictures you will get the large version.)

There was a time that I was all in favour of having just a few basic rule systems with adjustments for various periods but for much of the last decade I have been struggling to carry out a proposal to have a different style of rules for each collection of figures. This led to far too much time spent tweaking and re-tweaking too many sets of rules for too many collections (I refuse to say projects since I have no formal plans and no  goals beyond enjoying the process where ever it goes). 

The Roman cavalry managed to hold back the enemy's light cavalry but the Roman infantry had to turn and fight their pursuers before they could attack the Oasis. The Roman archers however, kept themselves busy by shooting arrows into the trees, the bushes, the pool....anywhere except the enemy! 

I don't "do" resolutions but do often think about time past, the present and the near future.  Last year I finally started on reducing the number of collections and figures my plan showed as active. Having been reluctant to let go of yet more beloved figures, I have been trying to get as many of my current collections as I could onto the table each year. Alas the only way to get anywhere near to that goal was by constantly changing horses with the usual result of not being able to really "get into" anything or get a proper campaign going, because I was always "flipping the channel". 

Casualties mounted on both sides but the Romans could not seem to get closer to the oasis.

For the the pre-musket era that Morschauser called the "Shock" period, I had three sets of figures and three sets of rules. The Elastolin Prince Valiant figures seemed to call for skirmish rules since I didn't have any. I don't really enjoy roleplaying or skirmish games as much as battle games, so I've struggled constantly with this! 

To be honest, I'm much happier just playing a simple conventional game and then using my imagination when writing up the blog posts to turn the game into a tale, adding motives, colour and so on as I write.  

For a time the balance hung by a thread but at last the Persians were starting to waver and the Duke was able to order a cohort of legionaries to clean the mercenaries out of the oasis. The Satrap decided not to risk an assault with what remained of his force.

So,  I have decided to  roll the clock back 5 years and resume my intention to use an updated version of the Morschauser inspired Gathering of Hosts rules to serve for the 25's, Prince Valiant and my 16thC 40's. 

Having played this scenario with constantly fluctuating rules, I'm now updating the rules to cover all three collections ranging from the 5thC to the 16thC as well as medieval fantasy which is how they began 5 years ago.   As soon as that is done, I'll replay the scenario.

Now The Battle is Lost and Won

 The battle has been fought and a report posted on the Gathering of Hosts blog.

Interruptions Always Interruptions

The first couple of turns have been played, reinforcements  have begun to appear, and Federation scouts are discovering that the recent rains have raised water levels leaving few practicable fords.

Then "real" life intervened...sighh.....the game will continue!

Now, Where Was I?

Oh yes! The hosts have gathered, the table is set, and one day this week I plan to play the game using the revived Rough Wooing rules since they are close to the Gathering of Hosts rules and cover basically the same general troop types and weapons. The fewer rule sets I have to remember, and tinker with, the better!

The following is a direct copy of today's post on my Gathering of Hosts blog.

-----------------------------------

Rumours are constant on the frontier. Few are true but none can be ignored so the garrison at Eastford has been on alert for a week. A call for reinforcements has gone out, and mounted patrols of the river have been doubled.  Then one day.....

Alarm! Enemy in sight!

The local frontier garrisons are used to small raiding parties but this looks like an army marching towards them. The men peer over the palisade and some could be seen clenching their fists, shaking them and then opening them like men throwing bones in a tavern while muttering: "Lady Luck be with us".

---------

ECW Battle Preempts Solo Fantasy and Leads To Building Boom.

 A Game! A REAL game against REAL PEOPLE!  In PERSON! First one since the summer of 2019. 

The game will be ECW hosted by Paul at his house on the other coast...of Nova Scotia, about an hour's drive from here. We'll be using his 25mm army but I'll be bringing along some terrain. The scenario requires a village and a church. I don't have much 25mm terrain anymore, but since the ones I built for my 40's are deliberately under scale and compressed,  I thought they'd do and Paul gave the thumbs up. 

However, I didn't actually have  a church.......so:

Hammer Hammer Saw Saw...

So, quick and dirty and the cottage is wider than intended...but I think they'll serve. 

Hmm, the cottage wasn't supposed to be that fat! Oh well, once I paint the door it'll serve.
btw, if you're wondering: Yes. In real life my handyman work is just as sloppy and practical.

Well that's the plan for Saturday, which is still 2 days away so anything could happen, but....... 

Our last ECW game, played in October 2018

 

Meanwhile planning for the  Great Raid continues on the Gathering of Hosts blog.

My 15mm Scots have been idle since they chased the English right out of Nova Scotia so I though a few of them might serve as map markers. 

One way or another, there will be a game this weekend with a battle report to follow!