A Man with Two Blogs is Never Sure

It was clear enough when I started this blog, it was about building the armies for a particular not precisely historical campaign. It has wandered a bit since then from everything pre horse and musket to nothing at all but as I continue to shrink my collections (they aren't projects since they have neither an endpoint, other than death or disability, nor a plan to get there.) I am once again dedicating this blog to just things relating to my fantasy/early medieval Kingdoms of the Five Winds setting. (Why 5 not 4? One day I may have an answer.)

Which still begs the question of whether this Portable Ancient Wargame test game using my Elastolin armies of the Five Kingdoms should have​ been posted here or not. Anyway if you like the Elastolins please check it out there!

De-radicalizing the Hosts

For a while now I've noted that my medieval/Renaissance troops rarely get off the shelf. I've been hoping that it was purely due to other commitments but at last as Huzzah approaches, I've had to admit to myself that, deep down, I'm not really happy with the way the rules have gone with generic everything, no units, vague, clinical language and so on.

Somewhere in France c1544.

So, after a single turn of a test game, I decided to stop and start over with something more conventional. Something with units  but with the old Rough Wooing variable moves and combat dice per stand.  The draft rules need a bit of work before posting, filling in blanks etc but the ensuing game was fun and felt right.

The fighting begins in earnest. 
(Which is to say before I kept forgetting to take pictures.)

Felt like another actually! I'll have another test game played and the rules posted by the weekend and hopefully a battle report.

Coming Soon, a new adventure

All is quiet at home. What is a Warrior Prince to do? 

Duke Stephen leads a British force to save the stronghold of Bellemont and meets an old enemy!

At last the call comes! Rome has been assailed by the hordes of Attla! Who will come to her aid?

A Hasty Gathering

Another year ending and what have I done?

Well I haven't finished any of my expanded Elastolin armies but after long but periodic internal debate I called closure and forced myself to make a "final" decision which is to base them permanently rather than either sticking with the trial magnetic bases which just didn't feel satisfying or going back to single figure skirmish games and that has allowed me to finally make some progress.

Elastolin Romans repainted to better fit the image in my head.
A few shields left to finish.

Occasionally I feel like I should have an urge to  do more semi-roleplaying skirmish Prince Michael games but to be honest the ones I've done were more fun to write up than to play and the stories were basically built around the bare events of the game after the fact rather than having been part of the game as "should" have happened with a talented GM and a group of players.  It would be as easy to add the narrative to a Gathering of Hosts game.

More than any other period, my views on what Ancient Warriors should look like were formed early and deep. This illustration is from the Living World of History which I got for Christmas 1964 when I was 9.

That done I was planning on finishing any repainting and conversion work before basing but I was stalled and REALLY wanted to play and not with figures half stuck on scraps on cardboard. More than that, I'm not going to do complete repaints on any figures. Just some touch ups to help them all look like they belong and I can do that on the based figures since they aren't in tight formations. So, I gathered what cut bases I had, organized the Romans into units with similar shield shape and design, glued, sawdusted and applied a base coat of green. Over the winter I'll finish the last couple of stands which need conversion and painting from scratch and do the various touch ups but at least I have a basic force for small games.

The last Roman Hosting: 5x2 infantry, 1x2 archers, 1x2 Light Cavalry, 1x2 Heavy Cavalry, 1x2 Artillery. There are 2 Generals, 1 with the Heavy Cavalry, 1+ Eagle with an infantry unit.
Hmm could use some barbarian light infantry perhaps.

Now, the plan was/is 1 stand is a unit and no grid but......... it just so happened that the figures divided nicely into groups of 2x4 man bases each forming a distinct, recognizable   unit which just happens to fit the new 6" grid. Hmmm. This may take some thought  and experimentation.

A Barbarian Horde to follow.

Happy 2017 to all the oh so patient and amazingly persistent readers of the sporadic GofH blog!

A Redirecting of Hosts

It has become clear to me that the proposed effort to stage a joint 25mm massed fantasy battle at a convention is unlikely to come about in the near future. However, I like some aspects of where the proposed game has led the Gathering of Hosts rules and I am going to continue developing them  to suit myself with an eye for using them  with both my historical 16th Century and my Medieval/Fantasy armies. In effect they will become a new, improved, broader version of the Rough Wooing rules.

I somehow manage to delete all copies of the original photo on all platforms so here's an alternate view.

I intend to keep each stand as a unit but to once again have explicit multistand formations and to  focus a little more on the role of commanders.

With all that in mind I have a game on the table but I'm not ready to get rolling dice as I try to picture how the game should feel and how the rules will need to be shaped to deliver that whether played solo, one on one or as a multiplayer game.

So far there have been a number of "Aha!" moments followed by "oh not quite right". That in itself is a sign of progress though.