Age of Bronze - new Project started

New Kingdom Egyptians in the making

This "pile of lead" should tranform into a wargaming army this year...

Follow the progress in my project page here

Kingdoms in the East: Round 5.

Practicing War

As the fifth round of our campaign started I was holding the third position among our eight players. Jaakko B. (Anglo Danes) and Sami (Teutonic State) were leading me just a bit. I managed to "help" in creating a situation, where Jaakko and  Sami are now playing against one another. My game was against my (secret) ally and neigbour Mikko and his Goth horde. Since were allies and all, we agreed that the battle would a mere joint practice with wooden weapons. Read on to learn how it all went down and what were the results of this round all together.

Unit of Byzantine allies I finished for the game (and some Medieval Russians too)

EPIC FIRST CRUSADE HAIL CAESAR BATTLE

Battle of Dorylaeum 1097

The Battle of Dorylaeum took place during the First Crusade on July 1, 1097, between the crusaders and the Seljuk Turks, near the city of Dorylaeum in Anatolia. - Wikipedia.

Introductory video here.

Conquering England - Battle of Hastings 1066

Nopat & Taktiikka Club's Traditional Summer Cabin Trip

It was once again time to enjoy the Finnish summer by heading to the country side with good friends, dozens of beer cans and hundreds of toy soldiers... and to stay crammed in a small cabin for hours and hours drinking the beer and rolling the dice. The companions were:

King Harold (Sebastian) and his brothers (in arms) Juha and Antti 

-proudly displaying the new Club T-shirt (and Karhu-beer, in English bear-beer)

...and commanding the defending the Anglo-Saxon fyrds

And the somewhat more crazy AND arrogant Norman lords:

Duke William (aka Kalle) and his vassals my self and Aleksis

What madness would follow from this you wonder... read on to find out! (Sorry about the unsharpness of some of the pictures - lightning conditions were very challenging.

Fate of Eirik Bloodaxe, end of his Saga aka Battle of Clontarf

Today we fought the historical battle of Clontarf to conclude our club's Britannia Campaign. Campaign was played with Saga ruleset, but this battle was fought with Hail Caesar rules.

Read on to learn whether history repeated itself or not...

Mare Nostrum: Final Game

Ptolemy & Rome vs. Antagonids & Sparta

Sixth and final round of our Campaign was to be played in 4 player team games. I wanted to have a grande finale with bigger battles!

My ally was Risto's Rome and our adversaries were Marko's Antagonids and Mikko's Sparta. I had to use all of my cunning to get Marko, whom was leading the campaign with a very tight margin, to play against me. Even the pre-game was already furious so the game was loaded with high stakes: should either me, Marko or Mikko win with 4 campaign points, we could win the campaign (= have the largest empire).

My army arrayed for battle

Read on...

Mare Nostrum battle report: Macedonian Successors vs. Carthago (Hail Caesar)

Former allies turned against each other!

Political life in ancient Mediterranean can be treacherous! Once all other challenges for our Mare Nostrum Campaign were done, I was left only one option: to challenge my former ally Carthago!

(The word on the street was saying, that maybe Ptolemy wasn't happy with the performance of this ally, or even, that being allied had only been a smoke screen..., who knows?)

 The game we played was a cityfight. Read more to find out how it went? (WIP)

Unboxing Victrix's Warriors of Carthage

Victrix recently had a 30% discount on their website and I couldn't resist anymore...

So here's the unboxing and some excuses...

More terrain for Mare Nostrum

Pantheon of Gods and Hoplite Statue

Our Mare Nostrum HC-Campaign is running it's 5th round and designing a "city fight" -scenario for it got me inspired to produce some more terrain. See the pics...

Mare Nostrum Battle Report: Macedonian Successors vs. Late Hoplite

Battle of Giants

Mikko and I were on the top 3 of our Mare Nostrum campaign and he was expanding strongly in North Africa, despite the best efforts of my Cathagenian allies:

Even if I knew I'd be facing a tough and slightly larger Spartan Army -  I just had to put an end to this expansion! Read on to learn, how it all went down...

Mare Nostrum: Heavy hitters fine tuned for my Macedonian Successors

I have a game against Campaign leading Sparta tonight and thought, that I need some extra punch to even have a fighting chance against those 300...

So I've been painting a one more heavy scythed chariot (from Gripping Beast) and fine tuning my Agema Heavy Cavalry and their horses. Looks pretty decent now...

Mare Nostrum: Seleucid vs. Rome (1st campaign round game finally played)

Secure the strongpoints!

One of our campaign players (Risto) had missed his first round game due to busy workschedules. Since I didn't have any games scheduled for this week, I suggested we play a game. It was nice to play a game without any pressure, due to the fact that game didn't have any impact on my campaign game. It was also Risto's first HC Game. He's a keen DBM player and had played few Black Powder games though.

Game was good and quite close fought... read on!

Mare Nostrum Hail Caesae Campaign: Round 3. completed, Round 4 started!

Status after Round 3.

Player	Tiles	Buildings etc.	Total	Note!
Gusse	7	1	8
Joonas	7	2	9
Tuomas	7	4	11
Risto***	8	0	8
Mikko L	8	3	11
Ludde	8	2	10
Marko	10	5	15	Ilmainen Diplomatia
Teemu	10	3	13	Haaste yhtä aikaisemmin
Kalle	11	4	15
Mikko K.	11	7	18

Battle reports:

http://25yearsofminis.blogspot.fi/2015/09/mare-nostrum-most-boring-hc-game-ever.html

http://napoleon-complex-gaming.blogspot.fi/2015/09/hail-caesar-battle-of-pydna-168-bc.html

Events and Challenges for Round 4.

Haasteet ja eventit, kierros 4.
Kustaa	Tiedustelijat	Tuomas	Kaikki tai ei mitään
Risto	???	Ludde (Hawkeye)	???
Mikko L.	???	Joonas	Great Leader
Kalle	Veteraanit	Marko	Rakennusbuumi
Teemu	Maan nappaus	Mikko K.	???

KITBASH! Building Thorakitai for Successors

Thorakitai shall rule the battlefields of Mare Nostrum!

I wanted to build some more Thorakitai for my Alexander's Successors army for our Mare Nostrum Hail Caesar Campaign. I would have build them from Victrix very nice Carthagenians, but they weren't available in our local games store :-(, hence I bought a package WLG's Caesar's Legions and started kitbashin' them with bits from different hellenistic sets. Read on!

Mare Nostrum: The Most Boring HC-game ever.

Long run  for nothing

Our Mare Nostrum Campaign is running it's third round and I had challenged my neighbors and arc enemies aka K's Persians.

Game itself was actually pretty ok, it just ended way too soon. Hence I'm going to write this report so, that it includes both the actual 6 rounds (too few!) played and "what if 7th round). Not surprisingly that will lead to a conclusion, where my heroic army finally wins the somewhat cowardly Persians (dressed as Romans) after a hard fight...

Mare Nostrum Campaign page updated

Mare Nostrum Campaign page updated

Campaign's 3rd round is starting. New rules and order of challenges updated here

Mare Nostrum Campaign 2nd Game: Ptolemian vs. Seleucid

Fighting my neighbour

My dear neighbour decided to throw a challenge at me so off to war we went - pikes against pikes!
The game was played with Hail Caesar -rules from Warlord Games

Read all about it!

Something for the barbarians to fight for (or over)

A Holy Place?

Of course I had to make a shrine for the barbarians as well, since the scenario of the  second round of our Mare Nostrum Campaign  is about protecting / capturing holy places. 

See more "production" pictures in this blogpost.

Mare Nostrum Campaign - Building Greek temples

Making of NOT RUINED Greek buildings

Our Mare Nostrum Campaign got me started on producing more terrain, mainly building for our games. This included putting together two resin temples from Scotia Grendel and upgrading one of them and an earlier production (Hirst blocks) with a roofs and fronts with reliefs.

Mare Nostrum Campaign started - Battle report: Macedonian - Successors vs. Gauls

Finally our long prepared campaign started (see a separate project page for backround info)!

Two games were played in the opening sessions: My Ptolemians faced an angry mob of Gauls from Riihimäki and Marko gave an introductory game for a new HC-player: Hoplite Greeks vs. EIR,