Showing posts with label Wargames Holiday Centre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wargames Holiday Centre. Show all posts

Thursday, 25 October 2018

Loading for the Wargames Holiday Centre


At dawn I'm off to Basingstoke for a Wargames Holiday Centre weekend at the Holiday Inn! Here are 82 boxes of minis and terrain. I think it will all fit in the car.... it's certainly the most minis I've ever shifted. I'm very much looking forward to some serious gaming... :-)

Thursday, 6 April 2017

Fun at the Wargames Holiday Centre

The Metuarus
Last weekend I decamped to the WHC "Annex" with a fair proportion of my collection, for a jolly weekend's gaming. I call it the "Annex" because there were too many games to fit in the WHC proper, so Mark and I hired a suite in the hotel where the gamers stayed. This proved very comfortable and convenient, and maximised both gaming and drinking time! Some of the gamers took full opportunity of this and looked a little ragged on day two, mentioning no names, Andrew.  ;-)


Above is the pre-game packing, and below the fully-loaded BigRedBatmobile. Minis and terrain for four games (AndrewBrentnall brought the fifth).


Here are photos of the games, in no particular order.


The largest battle was Ipsus 301 BCE (above and below).  This had over 2000 miniatures and was 18' long, played on a special mat which Deep-Cut tell me is their largest they have ever made. I've just sold another one, so there are two of them, now! Below is a new elephant in his first battle.



Above is a view of the central sector of the Ipsus battlefield.


Chum Andrew Brentnall ran a splendid Edgehill battle in 12mm, above and below. This was very popular- we will be running it at Partizan in May, and for the Uxbridge boys (who missed out on the chance to play) if I can think of a way. The new ECW rules worked seamlessly.


Flanked!


More shots of Ipsus, above and below.


Above, scythed chariots inflicted terrible blue-on-blue casualties in several of the Ipsus games. Ipsus is so large it can take up to a dozen players at a time- most of the other games took six.



Above my new Persians, painted by The Shauns (Watson at back, McTague at front).



This battle above and below is Ruspina, 46 BCE. It's a an interesting, asymmetrical game with hordes of Numidians surrounding Caesar's recruits. It was very popular- fought four times I believe, with victories to both sides.


Above- Romans attack at Ruspina- you can see the playing cards that most people use with To the Strongest!


Ruspina- the Romans glimpse the cornfields beyond the ridge-line, and a mass of Numidian reinforcements (including elephants, below)!





Ruspina again- Roman baggage can be seen, below. I have lots of pack mules now.



Above and below- the Metaurus. Velites above race Gauls (below) for the ridgeline- the velites take it! I am very proud of my heather.



And last but not least is the Frigidus, the Eastern and Western Empires slog it out to see whether the Christian East or resurgent pagan West would triumph.


Above, the Leones Iuniores defend the valley for the West. Below, there were lots of Goths in this battle.


...and lots of cavalry!  The unit in the left foreground, below, is on my 20cm grid deep base- the back strip has been placed at an angle, to show that it is disordered.



So these are the only photos I managed to take, I hope you enjoyed them! I now have a relative lull until the next WHC event*, which will probably be in October. I'm thinking about games for this- one will be definitely be Leuctra with a super-deep Theban phalanx.. If you fancy coming along drop me or Mark Freeth a line and we'll let you know dates.

*(Aside from finishing the ECW rules and basing my ECW army).

Thursday, 8 December 2016

Turning out the lights


Over the summer and autumn, I've been refitting and extending my Numidian army. The above photo is of the light troops, who will form just over half of the completed army. So far, I have 22 units of nine light infantry and 22 of  five light cavalry, grouped into pairs (for TtS! players, they will be 2 hit light units each with 4 ammo). None of the bases are properly flocked, yet, I have that joy to come!


All are based on my magnetic "bat bases" which are 19cm wide. They fit together in pairs with a disguised seam. The cloth they are on is the sagebrush steppe design (which is much greener than the Deep-Cut photos suggest) and which is great for North Africa.


A lot of the minis were painted by Shaun McTague and Nick Speller, others came from eBay. I even painted a few, myself.


The minis are a mix of the excellent Foundry Numidians, Foundry Greeks and some A&A miniatures for variety. I do love the Foundry range- next time I see them I'll suggest they add some more minis to round the range out.


The other half of the army (not shown) will comprise King Juba I, General Petreius, Marcus Labienus, Spanish and German heavy cavalry, a mass of formed infantry and, of course, the elephant corp.

The completed army will have its first outing on the next Wargames Holiday Centre Ancients weekend- 31st March to 2nd April 2017. This time Mark Freeth and I have booked a large room at the Basingstoke Hilton hotel to accommodate what promise to be four (perhaps five) extremely large games. I'll talk more about the other games in the coming weeks, but they include a rather larger Successor game than was Raphia. We have a maximum capacity of 20 but are already more than half booked so if you fancy coming please email me or Mark, ASAP.

Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Raphia and other battles

...so last Friday I drove to the Wargames Holiday Centre and with Mark Freeth, set up the five games from the boxes in last Thursday's post. Along the way we set up the phalnx and Mark shot a video; here's a link to the video on Facebook with an explanatory voice-over.

The largest of the games was Raphia and I shot quite a few photos because, after six months preparation, I was more than a little excited about seeing it on a table. I should say that I have plans to make the terrain more arid for when I next run it, since the site of the battle was probably covered in sand and scrub. Jeff Jonas tells me there were limestone outcrops and cacti!


Here's the game set up, as the players were arriving, shot from behind Seleucid lines. We had sixteen or eighteen players over the weekend who each played around five games, which kept me and Mark very busy. All of the 25-odd battles were fought using my "To the Strongest!" rules.


Above is a shot of the Ptolemaic Machimoi, in three units each of 96 miniatures. We had a very entertaining rule to depict them; if they killed any enemy units, then the Seleucids would win a moral victory (as the cocky Egyptian peasantry would have revolted after the battle). I don't believe they did kill any units, but they came close! They were commanded by Sosibus the Eunuch, who died in at least one of the four games.

Below are the Seleucid Arab allies painted by Craig Davey, they got a lot of admiring glances.



Above are the Ptolemaic Galatians, who did sterling service, hacking their way through the Medes in all four games. Below; from behind; break out the Factor 40!


The below shot caught the spirit of the game in action. The Ptolemaic cavalry are desperately manoeuvring in the foreground, whilst a Seleucid elephant threatens a flank charge. 


My personal high was this charge by Echecrates the Thesslian which snatched victory form the jaws of defeat- we only had two victory medals left at the point of victory.



We fought Raphia four times; there were three Seleucid victories and one Ptolemaic. Antiochus Megas died twice and Ptolemy once; go figure!


There were other games of course, Leuctra with Epaminondas' phalanx (above) and below Sotium with Caesarians and, well, Sotiates.

And finally here are some of the players; the extrovert is Mark Freeth who runs the Wargames Holiday Centre and who is a super host. it was a terrific weekend, certainly the best so far. I shall return in the autumn with a new set of games!


Thursday, 12 November 2015

Last weekend at the Wargames Holiday Centre

Last weekend I had a super time running a weekend of To the Strongest! at the Wargames Holiday Centre with Mark Freeth and 14 gamers, many of them veterans of previous events. I'm afraid I was too busy to take very many photos but here are a few that I snapped during brief lulls in the fighting. All photos are clickable.


Above, we ran four games at a time (eight in total). The below game, set in the Peloponnesian War, was one of my personal favourites. The Athenians have the Spartan lights penned into a corner of the table - they chased them off and they returned several times. I believe that Spartan discipline led to them winning most or all of their games. For this game we used a pair of the 20 cm gridded DeepCut mats.


Below is a shot of the action; being flank-charged by Thessalian cavalry whilst double-disordered is no one's idea of fun! That's one of the hills I've re-flocked in the foreground.



Above the three-dimensional nature of the WHC terrain is a nice change from flat boards. Below, a one hit-unit of Roman Principes is flank-charged by Celtic fanatics. Gulp.


This game featured Germans (I used my Celts as proxies) fighting Polybian Romans at Arausio 151 BC. The Germans rather had the better of it, but then they did back in the day, too.


Finally I have a few shots of the Late Roman scenario, which featured Huns and Goths ambushing a Roman baggage train near Chalons in 451 BC.



Above the Martenses are inspired by Bishop Germanus of Auxerre (who died in 448BC, but then, who is counting?). Below is a charge by massed Gothic horse by painter mate Shaun.



Above an ala of light horse lurk improbably in the woods. Below, the Roman baggage train escaped in this game but was "bagged" in the other.


We had a great weekend- I reckon we fought around 2 dozen battles. Even I got to play in a couple of games, notably an epic uphill struggle against Emperor Baz' Spartans, in which he gained a moral victory. There are more pics on his blog.

A fine time was had by all, many thanks to Mark Freeth for hosting. Mark and I have set a date for another TtS! day in the spring, on the weekend 23rd to 24th April. I'll be bringing new scenarios and a lot of new troops, too. We are almost at maximum capacity for the venue so early booking is recommended! Mark can be reached at the Wargames Holiday Centre.