Aspects of the Hobby

A few weeks ago (months almost!) I was wrapping up my rebased units in home move preparation. Of course having them all out and the fleece battlefield to hand I couldn't resist to get a few snaps of the African and Italian heavy infantry. I'm eagar to get more gaming done so I'll really have to get cracking with the rebase when I get settled in the new place, fingers crossed that will be soon! With a dedicated area that I potentially can leave slightly messier I can do a mass rebase of the Roman legions.

The move or lack thereof has drained me quite a bit and hobby mojo has been very low. I had been working on a homemade Lost Battles "board game" set. I'll eventually post them up and did a refight of Zama with the hastily and crudely assembled pieces again there is a write up to come eventually although it may be brief as the game notes are to the point and my memory is terrible.

Recently my mojo was returning slightly, I was missing painting. I grabbed the last thing that was started and did some work on them. We were on holiday the other week and came across a art supply shop that's usually closed when I've been that way and grabbed a few Citadel Contrasts to try (another post to work on). So have been enjoying a few nights painting but its back to reality the stress of moving has taken over again and might have to start the packing again.

Another bit of hobby activity lately has taken the form of writing down some Ancient wargames rules I think this could be the closest I've gotten to finishing one, not that the bar was high in the first place. However as I was watching wargaming videos, reading various rules and general research came across a few bits on Strength and Honour a ruleset under development by Mark Backhouse. Strength and Honour seems to already have a Facebook group and what I've gleamed (not sure if I am 100 so far from that and this Youtube video is; very grand scale, one base looks to be a full legion, grid based, variable turn length and seems to have 6-12 units per side. Clearly it's visually suited to very small scales 2mm being used by the author! So far I'm very intrigued and will keep an eye on the development of it, although I wouldn't be getting 2mm troops, although it would lose the Kubrick's Spartacus visual appeal by using larger scales, it should still work as a set of rules I'd imagine. 

Re-basing Project: Format

I decided to write this rambling post to get my head around what I want to achieve with the base sizes and figures that will be stuck on them! I like the Imptvs style of 1 base = 1 unit philosophy and I was going for that with my original style but I felt it didn't "look right". Mainly playing Lost Battles on our 5x3ft table with a view to trying other rules namely To the Strongest! I wanted to have a single base have more of a heft, however because of lack of room I could not push it too far. In then end I have settled for an 80mm frontage as the previous posts show.

Now if I were just sticking with TtS! I would be done and all units would be 80mm wide to fit into 80mm+ grid boxes, however playing Lost Battles I would like to represent, to a certain degree at least, the aspects of the various units represented in that ruleset. 

For those not familiar with Lost Battles I highly recommend the book as required reading on classical era warfare, it covers from the Peloponnesian War to Caesar's Civil War which provides a good analysis of the eras battles. It aims to provide a way to model battles based on the ancient sources and provides the rules as an appendix. 

It is a very abstract game with a few quirks that would make it seem alien to more free form tabletop games. One of these is a very broad grid 5 wide by 4 deep the opposing forces interact across the squares and does so by activating for attacks. Each square has depending on the scenario 3-5 unit "attack limit" and each unit counts between 0.5-2 towards that limit. Also the quality of the unit determines the numerical strength, for example, if an average infantry unit is 1000 strong a levy unit is 2000 strong and a veteran 500 (this can change scenario dependent but the ratio is constant). Furthermore average cavalry is half the size of an average infantry unit with the same double & half strengths for levy and veteran respectively. So with attack limits reflecting a units "frontage" and its numerical strength roughly being used to determine the amount of figures I decided to go with the following: 

    ❋1 base of 12 figures for average heavy infantry. 

    ❋Levy infantry units will need 2 bases, 1 behind the other. Although twice the size it compensates its fragility by an increased depth  

    ❋ veteran infantry will then be represented by 6 figures. They have a few bonuses one being they only have an 0.5 attack limit allowing extra attacks so I will go for 40mm frontage for these. This has lead me to go through the scenarios and working out what veteran units I "need" to paint up on these smaller frontages. 

    ❋There is a special case for veteran legionary units which represent the same strength of a veteran infantry unit but lack the 0.5 attack limit bonus. It is a bit of a gamey fix to encourage the use of their superior manoeuvrability so my thoughts are 6 figures spread across an 80mm base (more confident to fight in a looser or thinner formation perhaps).   

    ❋ Light infantry have an attack limit of 2 so my light bases will have 6 figures spread across and 2 bases side by side to represent them. This is despite the fact that light infantry units attacking first in that square has an attack limit of 1 again a fix to encourage their historical use! Like the heavy infantry levy lights double up in depth (2x2 bases) and veterans have a smaller frontage (1 base).

Cavalry basing, I decided to rebase my heavy cavalry units (3 on 4 bases of 60x40mm) onto 2 x 80x40mm and 2 x 40mm bases. This allows me to maintain the current formation whilst making them into 80mm frontages. In Lost Battles terms:

    ❋ Average cavalry although representing half the numbers in an average infantry unit have double the attack limit. This is rationalised as cavalry units needing manoeuvre room and I am going for 6 figures so 1 x 80mm and 1 x 40mm, which keeps the figure ratio right and reminds visually of the higher attack limit.

    ❋ Levy double that of above.

    ❋ Veterans really should be 3 but they will have to suit my basing choices so 1 base either 4 figures on 80mm front or 2 on 40mm. Ideally 80mm option as the attack limit is 1.

    ❋ There should be a special case for cataphracts, they attack with half the limit of their respective quality cavalry units owing to a denser formation. However I will just follow the same format and attempt to remember they are cataphracts with special rules. 

I think I will keep elephants on 40mm frontage, 2 can make 80mm for TtS! and I can team them up with light infantry bases to make accompanied elephants for Lost Battles. Chariots will hopefully fit onto either 40mm or 80mm base I'll see when I start building some. Characters as some may have noticed will be appearing on round bases they look more attractive and will make the generals stand out,

So to conclude this post will be a handy reference to go back to. I originally started writing it in June but a combination of factors lead me to kicking the can down the road. One of them being combining my blogs and starting to revamp it which is partly done. After experimenting a bit with some heavy infantry and characters I am ready to get the rebasing mission underway after our relocation if all goes well.