Sunday 21 April 2019

Men of Bronze

Men of Bronze is the latest set of rule from Osprey Wargames, and is aimed at battles set in Ancient Greece.


To me, hoplite warfare seems to be tricky to convert to a game. The clash of phalanx upon phalanx can lead to some boring engagements, and games that focus on a broad sweep of ancient history naturally tend not to give this problem too much thought. Men of Bronze is one of two games that have been released very recently, Mortal Gods being the other, designed with this period in mind. Hopefully one of them, at least, will give us a good game for hoplite warfare. 

Overview - the book.

Men of Bronze is a 64 page book. After a few pages covering ‘first principles’, ie what you need to play, basing, measuring, rounding etc, 4 pages are dedicated to a brief history of the warfare and soldiers involved.
The core rules take up the next 17 pages or so, with a further 4 with advanced and special rules.
The 13 unit types are then described, followed by 9 lines of battle, or army lists, and 7 sample armies.
The book finishes with 5 pre-generated scenarios, rules for complications that further modify the scenarios, and 7 historical scenarios.

Overview - the game

Units

Each player controls an army comprising a number of units. The scenarios in the book have armies of between 4 and 8 units in size, with 5 or 6 being more common. The ‘Lines of Battle’ section gives lists for various nations so that you can create your own forces to whatever point limit and number of units you choose.

The size of a unit is not set in stone, use whatever suits or whatever you have to hand. The author suggests ten figures per unit, and the photographs throughout the book use this standard, with individually based figures. It would be possible to use figures based on elements, but you would need  some way to show whether they are in open order or phalanx formation, such as having two elements per unit.

Another consideration for players using multi-based figures is the movement rules. The game uses base width (BW) as the standard for measurements in the game, and it is implied but nowhere stated (as far as I can tell) that the base width is that of a single figure rather than the whole unit. A base of 4 15mm figures on a 40mm element would have a base width of 10mm.

Each unit has a leader, from which most measurements and lines of sight originate. The author has taken the decision to place the leader at the centre-front of each unit rather than the historical front-right. This is probably sensible in the context of a game, but I’m sure I will try it the other way at some point to see if it makes a difference.

Activating units

Players decide who goes first by bidding a number of Arete Points (AP). These seem to be quite central to the game and function a bit differently to the activation points in Dux Bellorum. Each player calculates the number of available AP each turn, based on the number of units they have.

The player with initiative can start activating units to either move, fight or shoot. At any time after the first unit has been activated, the opposing player may attempt to steal the initiative for 1AP. This process continues until both players have activated all their units, even if some units have been activated to do nothing.

AP can also be used the get a unit to charge (a double move that allows a unit to both move and fight), to rally, to use a special rule, or to re-roll one dice. No AP are carried over at the end of a turn, so use them or lose them. Timing the use of AP seems the be an important part of the game.

Movement

Units generally move in Open Order. Some types of unit have the special rule “Phalanx”, which allows them to form into a phalanx at the cost of 1AP. While in phalanx formation a unit may only move straight ahead in open terrain. Advanced rules cover phalanxes drifting to the right, and also allow for drilled phalanxes to move sideways or backwards.

One of the rules influenced by Dan Mersey’s Lion Rampant rules (and similar sets by that author) is the zone of control. Although toned down from the similar rule in Lion Rampant, I still see this as being a contentious rule among players, which some will no doubt opt to ignore.

The rule states that no unit, friend or foe, may come within 1BW of another unit without either stopping or engaging in melee.

Personally, I like the rule in Lion Rampant. It makes you think carefully how you position your units and presents some interesting tactical choices. The zone of control in the rule here is smaller than the 3” in Lion Rampant, but one possible problem I see is that it would prevent your phalanxes from forming a continuous line. This could be an aesthetic concern only, and may not turn out to be a problem once the game has been played, we’ll see.

Terrain falls into 4 categories: Open, Difficult, Dangerous and Impassable. These present the usual concerns for troops moving through them, with the added wrinkle that dangerous terrain may cause a unit to lose a point of Courage, which is used as as an indication of how close to routing a unit is. You could lose a unit to the terrain!

Fighting

So how do we kill each other? That’s what the game is all about surely? Again, there are similarities with Lion Rampant here, but more than enough changes to provide a different experience.

Units in contact are lined up front to front, if they were not so already. Units capable of supporting the melee may then be moved directly behind the fighting unit, if the player chooses. These will provide a bonus in combat and suffer the fate of the unit they are supporting. Moving units as drastically as this during a game may be quite jarring; a unit to the side of a fighting unit could move a considerable distance to line up behind like this.

Units in combat each roll a number of d6 equal to their Attack score, modified if they are in Phalanx Formation, Charging, in support, or flanking.
Scores of 4+ are counted and compared to the defending unit’s armour (in a similar way to Lion Rampant), with hits being removed from the defending unit’s Courage. Both players’ units fight simultaneously.

Units whose courage is reduced to 2 points (and again at 1 point) make discipline checks, needing to score more successes than the number of points of Courage lost in the previous melee, with failure causing the unit to receive the status of Wavering. When Courage reaches 0, a unit routs. At this point, it is simply turned around. They will be removed during the End Phase.

Finally, a surviving, losing unit is pushed back: the famed Othismos of phalanx on phalanx action! The winning unit may follow up, remain in place or retreat and regroup.

Shooting follows a similar pattern to melee.

The End Phase

During the end phase, all AP are discarded, armies check for Morale and Collapse, and unit alignments are checked.

Morale is represented by a discipline check by a unit whose leader is in sight of a unit that routs.

Collapse checks come at certain trigger points relating to losses. All units must make discipline checks, immediately routing if they fail.

You then ‘Finalise Unit Alignments’, by reviewing all ongoing melees to ensure they are in proper formations. Without having played the game, I don’t see how often this will be needed. Also, routing units are now removed.

After checking for victory conditions, the turn is over.

Advanced and Special Rules

There are 4 advanced rules that add a bit more period flavour to the game. They cover the loss of leaders, phalanx drift, firing over friendly units and pursuing routed enemies. All are simple mechanisms that could easily be included in your first game.

There are 7 special rules. These are rules that apply to certain units and will be listed in the stat block for those units. These are: Phalanx, Drilled, Counter-charge, Pursue, Evade, Move and Shoot, and Skirmisher.

Of interest to me is the Pursue special rule, as it represents the Ekdromoi, or light hoplites that were used to chase off skirmishers. This is only the second set of rules that I’ve seen include these troops, and is one of the reasons that I think this game might have the necessary period flavour that I’m looking for.

Units and Lines of Battle

As previously mentioned, the game includes 13 types of unit.

Melee Infantry includes Elite Hoplites, Drilled Hoplites, Militia Hoplites, Light Hoplites, Macedonian Phalanx, Elite Infantry, Drilled Infantry, and Warband Infantry. Not nearly as many types of Hoplite as the game Hoplomachia, but more than enough, I’m sure!

Missile Infantry includes Psiloi, Peltast, and Archer/Slinger. I like using plenty of light troops in my Ancient Greek battles and feel that historically they were used in greater numbers than many rules allow. It will be interesting to see how these three differ and how to best use them.

Cavalry includes Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry. Finding the right use for these will also be an interesting challenge.

The Lines of Battle section provides army lists for Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth/Argos, Greek City States, Greek Mercenaries, Persians, Barbarian Tribes and Philip of Macedon. The Barbarian Tribes appears to represent Thracians and other fringe ‘states’. 

To return to my preference for large numbers of light troops, I am reassured to see that most Greek armies allow for around 3 units of lights. The sample armies list a ratio of around 2 units of lights to 3 of hoplites , which seems reasonable enough. Of course, all of the Greek lists allow for any number of certain types of hoplite units, so if you’re making your own forces, so you can of course make it how you like it. 

Battles

Here we have the 5 scenarios, which provide enough variety to prevent each game being a ‘line up and have at it’ type battle that otherwise might be all too common, apart from the first, which is just that. The usual deployment areas, scenario set-up, special rules (relating to relative sizes of the antagonists) and victory conditions are all present.

There then follows a table of Complications that can be applied to a scenario. A 2d6 roll will provide a little twist to the game, such as bad omens, dawn attacks, hungry and thirsty troops, a herd of goats and more. I must source those goat figures!

Here also are the 7 historical scenarios. The battles covered are Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, Sphacteria, Leuctra, Cunaxa and Chaeronea.
Interestingly the author hasn’t been tempted to make these games huge in terms of the number of units, which makes them accessible to players with fewer figures. The largest army is that of the Persians at Thermopylae, with 8 units to the Greeks’ 4 units. The smallest army is the 2 unit army of Spartans at Sphacteria  vs the Athenians with 5 units.

Well, I’ve waffled on a bit more than I planned and I don’t really know how to best sum it all up.

Hopefully it will help you decide whether it’s the sort of game that will appeal to you, but in the end it’s only when a game is played that all the little nuances and intricacies can be appreciated.

I’m certainly looking forward to getting it to the table.


Saturday 29 September 2018

Crom’s Anvil

Well, the writing isn’t going so well (see last post, two months ago!), although I have got a RuneQuest Glorantha campaign underway since then, so some writing has taken place. I will return to Tales of the Reaching Moon soon, honest...

In the meantime, I have been painting, as ever, but recently my wandering eye has landed on a sparkling gem I have been eyeing for quite a while now. Crom’s Anvil, run by Michael Stockin, formerly of Angel Barracks fame.



I remember the site going live almost two years ago and since then the range of Hyborian Age style buildings has grown, and is still growing, into a most impressive range. There are some great adobe buildings, walls and general tabletop ‘clutter’ for a desert town, the town of Simurgh,  some mud huts and wooden palisade style fencing for the village of Utuseb and general open steppe type terrain elements such as camps, oases, rock formations and a ruined temple.



All of this is beautifully realised and I still covet it all, but there are also figures. Wonderful little 15mm people that dwell in the places described above. I had to buy them all because 15mm is very affordable!

Aside from the characters, there are the town guard, resembling some pseudo-ancient-middle-eastern types as you’d expect to find in Shem or perhaps Turan, and some tribesmen, more akin to Howard’s “Black Kingdoms” than his Picts.



Some priestesses, a priest/monk, a sorcerer, a merchant and his bodyguard are also available and stunningly realised, but perhaps the icing on the cake are Erland and Eydis. A pair that are as close to Conan and Valeria as you’ll find in 15mm. It was this latter pair that I had the urge to paint late last night, and they paint up very nicely. There is a surprising about of detail on these figures, but they’re not overburdened with fiddly bits that can make some smaller scale models awkward to paint.

The products Michael has in his site (and I believe he makes the buildings himself) really evoke the Hyborian Age, to the point where I have had to go and get the books out and start re-reading. As well as his own skirmish game Burnings Sands, the range will be a perfect compliment to the Conan rpg by Modiphius.

I’ll leave you with the url to the site and a photo of who I shall be calling Conan and Valeria.
Go and have a look at the site. And when you’ve had a look treat yourself to it all.

https://cromsanvil.co.uk/shop.html




Friday 11 August 2017

First ever Space Marine

I don't know quite how this happened but I played my first ever game of 40K this week.

I really enjoyed it. 😱

I had a box of Blood Angels that I'd recently bought to paint and sell. I think I'll be keeping them now. A friend at my gaming club is also building a Blood Angels force, so I'll be switching my focus to Thousand Sons, but I do like the Blood Angels. Some of their elite units look rather good.

Anyway, here's my first ever 40K figure. It's still wip, I need to finish his jumppack and standard whilst I think about what should go on his right shoulder.







Monday 7 August 2017

Games Workshop Undead

These two figures are the first 'modern' Games Workshop miniatures I've painted and I'm impressed.

Small kits of around 6 parts on a single sprue may be common knowledge by now, but it's a real novelty to me.

The figures go together easily and are a joy to paint. The plastic kit format allows for sculpts that would be impossible to cast and otherwise far too chunky to properly represent a spectral being like these.

Luckily I had the presence of mind to undercoat them while still on the sprue. It saved a lot of potential awkwardness trying to get the paintbrush into places it won't fit easily! That more than compensated for a bit of scraping to ensure a plastic on plastic bond when they were glued.

I am selling both of these on eBay at the moment, the links are below.

First up is the Cairn Wraith. A truly horrific sculpt that really is the best wraith type sculpt I've seen. This was the figure that tempted me back into a Games Workshop premises.








The other figure is the Tomb Banshee. Having been drawn in by the Cairn Wraith, my eyes wandered until they landed on this spectacular model. Another really creepy figure that uses the plastic kit format to good effect!







Saturday 15 July 2017

Cthulhu Wars - Hastur



After a brief hiatus, I am back on the Cthulhu Wars trail, this time with Hastur.



I probably enjoyed painting this chap a bit more than I should have; for a predominantly yellow beast, I used a surprising amount of green, purple and red washes. If I didn't have more to paint, I'd probably still be adding to him now!



Petersen Games are about to start their third kickstarter for Cthulhu Wars, so this is quite timely.
http://cthulhuwars.com/

Tuesday 4 July 2017

The Beast Handler, finished

Finished.



At just over 70mm tall, the biggest head I've painted if you don't count my own, and let's not go there.



Really enjoyed my first bust and I know which one I'll be painting next. Watch this space...



...or don't, it doesn't really matter.



You can get The Beast Handler from http://thegoldfishofjustice.com/shop



Monday 26 June 2017

The Beast Handler

Still a work in progress, this is my first attempt at painting a bust. It's something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been able to decide which one to try.

This piece came up on my Facebook feed, I think it was the first bust by this company. It was quite inexpensive and available for pre-order so I thought I'd take the plunge.

 

This is the result of the first afternoon's work. I'm pleased with it so far, but the photos highlight parts that need improving more so than simply looking at the model does.

 

I may not get back to this piece for a week or so, but I hope I can then patch it up, particularly the five o'clock shadow, smooth out some of the skin tones and finish off the clothes.

It's been good fun so far.

 

The Beast Handler is available from http://thegoldfishofjustice.com/