For completing my Impetus Tournament army I painted another element of heavy cavalry. I have chosen a patrician family from Frankfurt Weiß von Limpurg and added many banners. The smaller banners were inspired by Frank Becker´s Lannister knights. The smaller banners were a fun to model.
This time I modeled my own lances using plastic bristles from brooms with greenstuff added for the hand guards. These are flexible which is very important for transport and gaming.
During the Tournament this element was our commanding element. We played with the Sigismund´s Imperials list and came 7th from 8 participants. Waldi was my team mate. We learned a lot and immediatly started to think about better combinations for our lists.
I rebased these norman infantry with kite shields in order to build the backbone of my SAGA warband. Unfortunately the battleboard focusses on bowmen and cavalry, what a pity that I have so much spearmen. But on the other hand I have beautiful miniatures to take pictures with.
During finalizing these miniatures the worst case of all painters took place: I took by accident the paint can instead of the varnish can. After that mistake I reduced the brown spray with Acetone and q-tips. It worked quite good, surely because I had varnished the models years before. But try if you managed to make that mistake, too.
The fortified farm house are from Hudson & Allen, I purchased them via EBOB miniatures. They were designed for scotish highlands but I think they also fit perfect for 1066. I painted the model in order to have a backdrop for the pictures and to have a dark medieval feeling on the battlefield.
I added pale static grass to the roofs. This came out very good, if you ask me. I tried cocos fabric with another roof, but these are far to thick although the color looks excellent.
All spears are made from Flexi Pikes.
The crossbowmen were painted this year in order to play SAGA. I did them in a hurry, but they came out not too bad.
Our Club´s annual presentation for this year´s Tactica Hamburg was the Feud of Kronberg, a medieval local conflict between Frankfurt and nearby living Knights of Kronberg. During the Battle of Eschborn 1389 the Kronberg Knights led a charge in against the troops of Frankfurt. There is a myth around this battle. It was told that one of the knights lost his destrier and desparetly searched for a mount in the area. Unfortunately he was only able to find a donkey on which he rode into tha battle.
His charge was so devastating that the Frankfurters were completly demoralised and fled the ground. One stirps of the family has donkey ears in their family crest.
In order to have this myth appearing in the presentation I asked Ebob if he could do me a donkey or a mule because he really sculpts excellent mounts. He did this outstanding mule, thank you so much for this, and I mounted a knight on it. It is very funny that people did not notice it without help. A wrong mount in a group seems to be not very obvious. However it was great fun to paint.
The house and fence is from perry miniatures.
I was asked to post detailed pictures showing the farmer woman and her children and the knights in detail. Here you are.
In our wargaming club Spieltrieb Frankfurt we play occasionally Song of Blades and Heroes. Since we do this with Warhammer Fantasy miniatures, I decided to get some for myself and painted them. I have chosen the Skaven since I really like the style of the miniatures. The colors were inspired by the source book for skaven with plenty of color schemes. Although I usually rant about the book products by GW, this one is really a good idea with tons of artwork.
I painted the fur by hand with single strokes in several colors which came out really good as you might see on the arm of the rat in the front on the left side. The mage was painted by my club collegue Kerstin, as a very good deal unpainted miniatures for one painted miniature. Thanks a lot for this beautiful addition to my collection.
With the few miniatures I decided to build some foto set scenery elements in order to compose more exiting pictures. Learning from Frank Becker I decided to do similar setups but my challenge is, not to use Photoshop for generating great composits. I did three stripes of grass, a couple of rocks (made from excellent Ceramine Rocks by Rusus) and a background. The colour concept of dark dusty volcanic earth with yellow grass was followed both in basing and scenery elements.
I hope you like the composition, taking pictures this way and trying to tell a story in the picture is really interesting. I really need to borrow some oponent miniatures from some mates in order to have battle scenes, too.
Colours
Since I was asked how I painted the Skin of the rats, I just post here a scan of my colour note book.
At the Beginning of the year I played SAGA with Wraith and really liked it. This was an excellent excuse to paint some more of the Norman knights. These models are part of my basing nemesis. Initially they were based for Warhammer Historical, but I did not really fell in love with either the basing and the system. Now I painted them including a model which depicts my Alter Ego Tankred of Tarent with some modifications to make him a knight from Silicy.
The first three SAGA games with my Norman Warband were great fun and I will add some more pictures of the warband in the near future.
I did not post for ages. There was a lack of hobby time and I was unwilling to take pictures until some additions to the picture scenery were made. Frank Becker did inspire me very much to change the picture style a little bit and these are the two first pictures looking a little bit more like paintings. However I think I will try much more to make the pictures a story of their own.
For those of you interested in setups I added this picture of my desktop. The idea of adding grass elements to the front was taken from Frank Becker.
Yesterday ElComandante and me had a nice game together with Thorsten, who gave us helping hands with the 3.0 version of the Flames of War Rules. You need to know that learning rules is a matter of years for ElComandante and me. Therefore we now established a rules corner with big prints of the rule summaries, where you can think of your mistakes, if somebody sends you there.
My first impressions of the rule system were very good. We had several situations where changed rules applied. I will now give you a short summary of what happened and why it felt intuitive and correct.
We played the reworked cauldron mission, which saw changes in the setup area. The cauldron now is at one long table edge, which I like very much and the defender has delayed reserves. Since the attacker has reserves too, there is less material on the table at the beginning. As far as I remember the old cauldron saw incredible much stuff on the table at the beginning.
The new setup was quite good for ElComandante since he had an entire maximum unit of Kartjushas across the Don, and an heavy mortar platoon (anybody happens to know if that is possible?). Since this leads to an devastating template ElComandante was initially lucky with the die result of the cauldron mission.
Since I decided some seconds before we rolled the dice for a scenario that I will field tanks and not an Assault Pioneer Platoon I cursed some times. A minefield could have been helpful against a tank company. However I fielded a hungarian Gépkocsizó Század with 2 platoons infantry, 1 anti tank platoon, 1 weapons platoon, 1 Artillery platoon and 1 tank platoon. I decided to start in the cauldron with two infantry platoons and 1 antitank platoon in immediate ambush. I chose to use off board artillery as ElComandante did.
I decided to act very defensive, which is the usual choice for infantry in a cauldron. ElComandante attacked with infantry and tanks at my left flank. He rolled both units available at the start in the same segment.
Hungarian infantry in the cauldron
Now it came to the first changes in terms of rules. I was able to let my anti tank guns go to ground. If guns do not shoot or move they now have a 3+ save and are gone to ground. Therefore I could position the anti tank guns at the edge of a wood and I could wait, until the tanks attacked my infantry in close combat. Before that rule change it was possible to shoot down anti tank guns with tanks especially when the range of the tanks exceeded that one of the guns. Now it´s less easy for an attacker to get rid off the guns.
Since there were enough options for my opponent to put pressure on my guns with artillery the change felt good. Now it is possible to have guns on the table if there is no ambush option.
First sovjet assault on the hungarian positions.
The next changes came to live when the first assault on my right flank with the first reinforcements took place. ElComandante attacked rather quickly with a T34 company. The new rules are very intuitive since only teams with enemies in 30cm distance may move into the assault, and only teams with enemies in 20cm may shoot defensive fire. Congratulations for these excellent changes. This reduces cheesy movements in FoW by 80% I think. In our case the attacker´s dice where unwilling to win and the T-34 lost the first attempt, which was not very likely. One tank was bailed out, the company had not the morale to attack again and lost one vehicle in combat.
On my left flank the infantry with lots of submachineguns rushed towards my positions. I have chosen to let my infantry fire with the help of two heavy machine guns attached from the weapons platoon. Since I faced only one infantry platoon I decided to change the position of the third machine gun. A rule change made that happen because not the whole second platoon was treated as having moved, only that specific gun team. I moved this one in the woods and therefore had a entire infantry platoon gone to ground on my right flank. A very good change!
With a lucky shot from my artillery I was able to achieve an delay in the advance of the russian Sherman tank company. ElComandante had to reassign a company commander with his Bataillon commander, which draw some movement and diminished the amount of shots I had to suffer. At this flank the changed rules we used a lot were, that tanks may shoot over stationary infantry, which ElComandante used a lot. Same is for gun teams, which also applied, since there were two Maxim machine guns at that flank and a lot of tank rider infantry.
In parallel ElComandante searched the decision on the right flank again. But he was not able to kill any infantry therefore I broke off. In my turn artillery shot a barrage on the tanks, after that I moved the guns through the woods and was able to take down another tank. The movement of light, medium and heavy guns has increased, which brings far more flexibility for infantry based armies.
When fighting a russian infantry company or even more of them it might be very interesting, that the rule of mass only applies for teams that rush into assault. This means, you need to carefully move your russian infantry in an assault in order to have enough teams in action who count. It is a big difference for defending troops to pin down an assault by hitting 5 times or 15 times. It took me two rounds of shooting to get his infantry horde down to the interesting number, which was very important on my left flank.
The modified hen and chick rule was appreciated since movement is now a bigger option for Soviets. They may shoot during movement of 30cm at +1. This is not brilliant since the Hungarians are veterans, but it feels better and leads to a more dynamic style of gaming.
Although ElComandante was extremly unlucky that evening we both liked the new rules. The game was finally a major win for the defending Hungarians in the cauldron and ElComandante failed to use his advantage of 400 Points of tank support. In our campaign this victory for sure will be an important success. On the other hand I am very sure, that ElComandante will learn to combine infantry and tanks very soon.
Having played Flames of war for quite a while I am very happy to say that once more the authors proofed to have an improvement in mind and not the optimisation of sales in another way but to have satisfied customers. Well done Battlefront!
If you happen to read this article I am curious which is your new favourite rule change!
My club Spieltrieb Frankfurt presented a medieval Impetus game during the Hamburgian Tactica 2012. We showed a local setting where the citicens of Frankfurt fought in a feud against nearby operating robber-knights of Kronberg.
Since the Perry twins did not have images of the miniatures in their story, I did not knew, that these models were that outstanding until I saw Antipater´s incredible beautiful Handgunners . He inspired my very much to quickly buy these models and add them to my city force of Frankfurt.
The initial plan was to have another crossbow unit prepared for the event. However sometimes good ideas are born, when something is not at hand. Although I bought three times at Perry Minitures I forgot to buy enough crossbow men. Therefore I suggested our project leader Lemming to use hand gunners instead. He decided to base them as skirmishers, which is more useful for different existing and upcoming lists for the period. But even more important was to me, that he suggested to achieve the look for two elements by using wounded and dead gunners, who sadly experienced the danger of new invented weaponry. So this idea was great and I designed an exploded handgun by using a cutter with a polystyrol rod.
I tried to position the miniatures in a way which makes it possible to put them right in front of each other. This is not very important for the game since skirmishers are used to screen the more important troops, but for display it´s not bad.
The leader of the unit is one a patrician from Frankfurt. Actually I do not know the name of the family, I just saw the crest on a church during a walk through my home town and painted it. The patricians were not noble, so I think that the leader is interested in new weaponry and maybe he understood how important the weapon will be for the future.
Hungarian Medical Toldi Tank; Photo Credit: Csaba B. Stenge PhD; with permission
During my research for the hungarian army project I came along a picture in the Book „Magyar Steel“ which shows a medic Toldi tank, which operated 1943 at the river Don. Since tanks for Doctors are a very unique thing as far as I know I decided to make an objective with this topic. Since the picture in the book was black and white I am not sure wether or not the tank was painted in three colour camoflage. I decided to do so and added a red cross flag. I added a bag on the turret, which was shown on the picture. The red cross was painted on the turret, although I painted it on the other side of the hatch.
Then I painted the last infantry platoon for the hungarians in order to play an infanty company without tank support. Now I can field 30 infantry stands if I want to.
When playing an infantry company fielding mortars is very essential in order to fire smoke or to pin down russian infantry. Therefore painting a mortar platoon was mandantory. My club friend Thomas added lots of crates to his russian mortars, which I liked very much and copied that for differenciation on the gaming table. Moreover it seems more realistic if mortars are surrounded by ammo boxes. There is now only three bases missing for my mid war hungarians, the last platoon will be two Bofor guns.
The first gaming experiences with my hungarian tank company were devastating. I had the same experience the hungarians made at the Don in real life. The 38t tanks are almost useless when facing a soviet tank company, the few german tanks are to rare (expensive pointswise) and the missing stormtrooper move is very hard since the russians have usually more than 12 tanks in a company. In five games I was far away from even achieving a draw.
The last burning ten hungarian tanks brought me back to the painting table. Having both the option to play tanks or infantry gives you more options in a campaign. Therefore I added the very important anti-tank guns. I have chosen the 7.5cm PaK97/38 option, which was recommended by my club mate thomas. These guns come with medium bases and are perfect for ambushes. The huge PAK40 with big bases is far more difficult considering the positioning of ambushes.
Once more I painted transports although they are rarely used. I decided that the 6 different transports I painted in this run are the last for the company since usually only a couple of them are used. I removed the bases from my Botond trucks because I do not like based vehicles in FoW. Hungarian vehicles can be seen on several war time pictures and I think the camo was often different. This time I decided to paint the canvas in british uniform, which is similar to the Battlefront painting scheme.
Everyone who thinks about an hungarian infantry company which is capable of fighting against the soviet tide has to think about a weapons platoon, which provides additional firepower for the combat platoons. 3 HMG teams, two anti-tank rifle teams and two light mortars should give you the option of strengthening the points where an attack is very likely.
The weapons platoon got soviet Beutefahrzeuge. I painted two ZIS-5 Models from the special order, since I really like the models. As far as I know is the variant with two axises was stopped in production 1942, so this car was a veteran, when captured by the hungarians. I added no markings for the case that I decide to have a soviet company, too.
When playing with an infantry company in FoW, it is always useful to be able to distinguish between the different platoons since an intermixing of e.g. anti-tank guns and infantry is very useful. Therefore I added slices of an polystyrene rod wich were glued to the base. These werde painted in different colors. I started with the combat platoons in the colors of the hungarian flag, then I added colors without context. For sure painting a circle would have been enough, personally I like the 3-dimensional style. Moreover I have painted the same colors on the bottom of the base, since I put the models upside down in the model case.
My second Impetus element for our club’s presentation for the next Tactica wargaming show is an element showing Johann, Herrmann, Henne and Siegfried von Holzhausen, all members of an mighty patrician family with their mercenaries. The family crest shows three roses on black. I designed the banners in order to look similar than the on the crest showed in the Dome of Frankfurt.
My plan was to show the patricians on their way to the battlefield. Therefore I depicted a country road and showed the group in loose marching order. In my imagination the only good fighter in the group is the infantrist with the huge falchion walking behind the rich citicens of Frankfurt. His job is to secure that falling off the horses will not end in instant death. As far as I can imagine a patrician was not as experiencend in fighting than their opponents, the knights of Kronberg.
Good to know that the family pevailed some more centuries and wasn´t extiguished during that battle. Adding some local spice to hobby project was again much fun and I will definetly go for more crests out of the region. However I am sure that the base can be used in any other conflict in that epoche like the 100 years war.
