Saturday 23 November 2013

Mighty Empires - Clash of Giants!




Some fantastic troops were on display recently at the NWS with a wonderful Clash of Empires game put on by the boys.  The game featured some of the most wonderfully painted 28mm Ancients figures I have ever seen and was a wonderful depiction of everything that is fantastic about our wonderful hobby.





















More photographs a bit later in the week.  Wonderful collections of Big Chris, Guido, Youngy, Marty, Steve and Jake.

Saturday 16 November 2013

Punic Wars


First Consul Carlo with his troops in battle formation


The demise of Warhammer Ancient Battles was quite a kick in the guts for ancient wargaming at our club for sometime.  There is no doubt that we, like many fellow gamers around the globe felt somewhat deceived and cheated by Warhammer Historical with their new WAB rules, army lists and specials only for them to close up shop and provide a semi-professional, hardly finished product in the end.

As a result we turned our attentions to other periods and rule sets.  However we did enjoy some tremendous games with Hannibal, Alexander, Shieldwall and El Cid by their tremendous writers of Curtis, Jonas, Morris etc.

Cookies lovely Gripping Beast Celts from the hand of the great man himself.


Certainly the Punic War games ere great fun with Hannibal and his hordes fighting a series of victorious battles against First Consuls Steve and Carlo over many months and years.

Veteran Spearmen with lovely LBM Shield transfers.

I am sure we must have stolen a victory somewhere along the line however Cookie assures me that we are indeed delirious and have severe memory problems.  As I get older I cannot absolutely challenge that accusation so lets just say that we intended to re fight the games as history has shown us.


Brave Romans prepare to take on the Nellie with some vigour.  All the Romans
are from the excellent Old Glory Republican Roman range and in my opinion are
some of their best work.

Nice view showing the colourful tunics of the Hastati

Mad Spaniards scaring the bejesus out of some allied skirmishers
"I didn't sign up for this Mario!".

Great games with many players, a few drinks and a very light-hearted emphasis on winning the game.  Very good fun in the true spirit of wargaming.

We have since been captured by the very good "Clash of Empires" rules from Great Escape Games and it would appear that Ancients is once again on the ascent at the NWS.

Monday 11 November 2013

Dark Ages in a new light...Gripping Beast at their best!





The Irish on the wrong side of some Viking
payback - "Watch out for the naked bloke with the axe!".
 With the sudden and quite fantastic resurgence of Dark Age skirmish games thanks to the wonderful SAGA rules as well as many other excellent skirmish sets I thought It may be a good time to bring out some shots of the wonderful range of Scots and Irish from the very clever boys at Gripping Beast.

What more do the lads want...a drink, a nice banner to fight under
and a fair few bloody big axes - now where is that Saxon dog?
These were excellently painted by Scott in the Blue Mountains many years ago and are even more lovely in the flesh...lead...metal thingy.


Hope that's a bloody thick blanket around your torso Seamus!

We have started playing a fair bit of Saga at the club in recent times and they really are a lovely simple yet very clever set of rules with some magnificently crafty and subtle variations.  Highly recommended - as are this range of figures.

"You shall not pass...as long as you are armed like the same as us".