De Bellis Antiquitatis at C.O.G.S.

After enjoying my initial experience of having a go at playing "De Bellis Antiquitatis" (DBA) with 6mm miniatures at the "Joy of Six" wargames show a few weeks ago, I ordered the rule book, and printed out a set of paper tokens to try and get my head around the rules. The rules aren't very long, but the text is quite dense.. and a bit hard to fathom. Still enthusiastic however, I made contact with the DBA players at the Chesterfield Open Games Society via their Facebook group and asked if I could get in on a few games with them.

Nick and Simon from C.O.G.S. were keen to play and teach, and they roped in another chap (didn't catch his name) as a fourth person, so we had two games going on at once. It is much easier to learn by playing with someone patient who is already familiar with a game than trying to figure it all out from scratch from a book.  I ended up playing 3 games altogether and had a great time.

 

We played with Simon and Nick's miniatures and scenery, 15mm rather than 6mm this time (They use the same sized bases - just less miniatures per base)..

 

Game 1 - Swiss Army vs French Ordonnance Army (around 1500 AD)

Swiss pikemen anticipate a charge from the French cavalry

Game 2 - Marian Romans vs Revolting Sicilian Slaves (around 100 BC)

I was the Romans... It didn't go well for me!

The game going on next to me... Samurai vs...?? - all Nick's beautifully painted miniatures.

Game 3 - Romans vs Sicilians again - a much closer game this time...
 but Simon's Sicilians were triumphant in the end..

I am going to work on a couple of armies... Romans for sure, as they have so many enemies! - and Ancient Britons I think to start with. I think I will go with 6mm for my first two armies, as the miniatures are pretty cheap...

Thanks again to Nick and Simon for teaching, and letting me play with their stuff!

Frostgrave - "The Silent Tower" scenario

A successful adventure for my Orc Witch and his warband... It was the "Silent Tower" scenario from the main rulebook and we used the Ulterior Motive cards... mine was "capturing starlight" and Lizzys was "Rescue mission". Off to a good start - both my archers took out members of the opposite team with high rolls on their first shots! Both teams managed to get two treasure tokens each off the board with out any trouble... a couple of skeletons wandered onto the board at one point, but were soon finished off by Lizzys thugs...my apprentice made it to the runic stone at the end of the third turn, just as the sky went dark reducing all line of sight to 12", and successfully completed the "capturing starlight" mission. 

 

 

The table set up for "the silent tower"

Then things started to go badly for my opposition... Lizzys Apprentice tried to make it to the magic gateway to complete her Ulterior motive, failed twice to roll a success, and was quickly intercepted and finished off by a couple of my team. Whilst Lizzys wizard was being harassed by one of my archers, my Witch made it to the top of the tower and picked up the special treasure... at this point an angry bear wandered on... Lizzys crossbowmen tried to get into a position where they could get a shot at my slowly descending witch, but they couldn't get a clear shot... the angry bear spotted Lizzy's weakened wizard and ran at him adding to his misery by bitting of his toes leaving a permanent injury... my Witch then made it off the board ending the game. The special treasure was worth 3 rolls on the treasure table... so I ended up with a couple of new grimoires, a nice amount of gold and some magic "robes of arrow turning" which will be handy against Lizzys team of crossbowmen in future battles!

 

 

 

Dungeon Saga - more Adventurers...

These are some of the extra adventurers that come with expansion sets for Dungeon Saga.

 

Joy of Six 2018.... 6mm wargames show...

I found out about the "Joy of Six" wargames convention last year, unfortunately it was after it had been on. I made a determined effort to get there this year (which wasn't too hard as it is held at one of the Universities in my home city of Sheffield!). The "Joy of Six" is a convention specifically for 6mm scale wargames... which means tiny figures... but lots of them - and scope for playing all kinds of battles.

 

 

I would estimate there being around 150 people there, there were 24 games on the go, and about 10 stalls selling 6mm miniatures, scenery and rulebooks...

 

I got to play two games whilst I was there; A game of "Commands and Colors Ancients" - actually a boardgame by Richard Borg quite similar to his "Memoir 44" game - but we played on a handmade board with 6mm armies replacing the tokens, which was very cool! And I got taught how to play a game of "De Bellis Antiquitatis" by one of the Chesterfield gamers from C.O.G.S. which I really liked. A quick tactical battle game played on a small 24"x24" board. I really enjoyed both games, and I have now ordered the De Bellis Antiquitatis rulebook. The C.O.G.S. guys play "DBA" regularily, so I'm hoping I can get over and play some more with them...

 

Commands and Colors Ancients

De Bellis Antiquitatis

 

It was a really great day out, I met some really nice people, saw some very impressive scenery, and got to play a couple of excellent games. I picked up a couple of cheap Osprey skirmish rulebooks from one of the stalls too - "Broken Legions" and "Dragon Rampant" which look very interesting.

Here are some more random pics I took on the day:

FROSTGRAVE - More Barbarian Re-inforcements...

After my first Frostgrave game with my new Barbarian Warband, I thought it would be good to have a few more options... They are a mixture of bits from the Frostgrave plastic soldiers and barbarians sets.

 

 

Barbarian Crossbowman

Barbarian Treasure Hunter

Barbarian Treasure Hunter

Barbarian Crossbowman

Barbarian Barbarian!

Frostgrave at C.O.G.S....

The Chesterfield Open Gaming Society meet every Monday evening. A few people in their group have been playing Frostgrave regularily over there, and I've been wanting to go over and join in for a while now. Due to family stuff I can't usually get out on a Monday - but something came up, and I did manage to get over this week at last! It's only a 25 minute drive from my house - The C.O.G.S. meet in a church hall near the football ground in Chesterfield. On the evening I went, here were quite a few different games going on; board and card games as well as some interesting looking 6mm wargames , and 3 games of Frostgrave...

 

I had told the Frostgrave guys I was coming via their Facebook page, so they were expecting me - they were very friendly and welcoming. One of the guys had prepared a new starter warband to play against me. We had a great game - It looked like things were going my way until a wandering zombie scored a critical hit on my Wizard!  

 

As you can see from the pics, they had some fantastic scenery - all made by one of the guys there... the buildings were all scratch built and have removable roofs... and all the stonework stuff was made using "Hirst Arts" molds - very cool! - And really nice to play on.. They got set up in about 20 minutes, from boxes in the back of a car - to this table set up!

 

Apparently they've started playing Gaslands regularily at their club too...
I'm hoping I might have a few more chances to get over again in the school holidays to get a few more games in...

 

FROSTGRAVE - New Warband... Barbarians!

Knowing that I had an opportunity for some more Frostgrave gaming (more on this in another post!)... I decided to start a new warband. My friend Lizzy and I have already started a Frostgrave campaign and have been levelling up together, so I needed to start a new warband. I already had primed a bunch of the official Frostgrave plastic barbarians and soldiers.... so last weekend I painted up these guys... A Barbarian Elementalist and his swarthy crew... I went for earthy paint colours and they all have the same coloured hair and blue warpaint...