Byzantines, Blood Bowl and Shermans

I promised my mate, Alan, a full after action report of Friday night's Blood Bowl game between his Norse and my valiant Dwarrow Boys Dwarf team, and I will get to it, once I stop howling and gnashing my teeth at the injustice of Nuffle, the God of Blood Bowl.

So, as brief interlude, here are some pics of the rest of February's output of painting that I haven't previously posted-

Some more Byzantine Cavalry Command figs

Still too flashy. I'll need to try Big Lee's suggestion for a flash diffuser here

I know the Standard is too big. The guy's wife says he is over compensating for deficiencies in other areas..............

The full Byzantine Cavalry Command set all together at long last

Byzantine Light Cavalry Archers

Part of the Chaos Blood Bowl team that I said I would get painted up February 2011

A squadron of 10mm British Shermans and Firefly

And another squadron

An ickle 10mm Firefly next to it's 20mm cousin

And finally

On the hunt for Captain Kirk



Byzantine Cavalry

As mentioned way back in my post "Favourite Units of Mine No.4" during my first year at Dundee University, I bought my first Ancients Army - a Nikephorian Byzantine army (for WRG 6th Edition rules).

(Don't ask me why the General figure's head is almost turned 180 degrees to the rear - that's the way he was cast!!)

The figures were made by Asgard Miniatures (long since gone although the castings are still available from an American company - The Viking Forge) and stood a lofty 18mm tall, which towered above the paltry 15mm figs that my mates were using in their Carthaginian and Roman Armies. Alas as related in said post, I had a bittersweet love affair with the Byzies, they never quite did the byziness for me over the years that I fought with them either at 6th Ed or DBM and DBA.

However, once bitten, I knew I could never give the Byzies up and a couple of years back Santa brought me the Thematic Byzantine army pack produced by Gripping Beast.

As usual, due to my snail like pace of painting, it took me ages to finish the first unit - Byzantine Skutatoi, and then the Byzies took a seat on the back burner. However, with my new found painting zeal, I have made a start on the cavalry, well okay 2 of them -



So 2 down, 26 to go.



Byzantine Skutatoi

Although I have collected wargames figures for many, many years, up until recently, the majority of my 25/28/32mm figures have been fantasy figures. I do have some Viking figures, but they were bought initially as part of the "Kremlo the Slann" Warhammer deal, one of the very first "army deals" that Citadel ran, just shortly after the release of 1st Edition Warhammer (I must have a look for Kremlo, he's in a box in a cupboard somewhere in my room).

The Norse were a recognised race in Warhammer in those days and so I added to those figures by picking up a few painted figures at Bring N Buys over the years but never enough to field a decent sized army. And then, of course, latterly the Norse disappeared from the Warhammer mythos (although an unofficial Army Book is available thanks to the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum).

And although I picked up Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) when it came out (and 1.5 edition) I never really got round to doing a historical army in the larger scale. Regular readers of these ramblings will recall that I have a 15mm Nikephorian Byzantine army, purchased in the early 1980's during my years at Dundee University and some Macedonian figures as well but that was really the only Ancient period armies I had, and when they did make an appearance after my University days it was usually DBA or DBM that was played.

Then about 2 years back, I got it into my head that I needed to get hold of the WAB army books before they went out of print.

And so I did.

All of them.

Within a space of about 3/4 months. Thankfully, most were eBay purchases otherwise, Mrs Kingsleypark would have been filing for divorce if I had paid full price for the books, but still it was a fairly irrational spend as WAB had only made a couple of appearances at Kirriemuir Wargames Club and then it soon transpired that the fabled 2nd Edition of WAB was due to be released and no one knew at that time what effect the new rules would have on the Army Books.

Okay, I could play WAB with the 15mm guys, but again in another bout of irrationality, I got a dose of figure envy and was eyeing up all the fabulous pictures of 28mm Ancients Armies that populate the interweb. So as Xmas was approaching I decided to write my letter to Santa and I knew I would ask the old fellow for a 28mm Army. Which one? Well there could only be choice as far as I was concerned and that was a Byzantine Army, and I suggested to Santa that he looked at the wonderful army deals that Gripping Beast offered on their web site. And so it was that Xmas 2009 saw the arrival of the 28mm Byzantines to Kingsleypark Manor.

Not a big army, it was the Thematic Byzantine Army Deal 1 which consisted of a unit of Heavy Kavallaroi, a unit of Light Kavallaroi, a couple of units of Psiloi, a unit of Skutatoi (they call them Kontaratoi but I can't stop using the WRG 6th Ed terminology) and a Mounted Command pack. But it was enough to be getting on with and filled with new found zest, I decided to paint up the Skutatoi.

I would like to show you the rest of the Army but they don't look very interesting with just a black undercoat.....

Favourite Units of Mine No. 4

Imagine the scene -

You are a peasant soldier, serving in the army of your King, Samuel, Tsar of the Bulgars. You are standing in line with 20,000 of your fellow Bulgars, armed with your spear, the point of which is blunt, your shield is held together by rusty nails and you stare out over the ground before you to the rise just ahead. There is a sound, almost like the soft crashing of the surf on the beach, growing steadily louder. You look nervously around, your neighbours about you shift uncomfortably, what lies beyond the rise you wonder?

Your hands grip ever tighter on your spear, the sweat on your brow starts to seep into your eyes.

The sound increases like a crescendo, now like thunder, then all of a sudden a thousand glints of light break the horizon, but these are not stars, but the shining points of lances, borne by a host of armour clad horsemen.

You are transfixed, frozen to the spot in fear and wonder at the sight as the horsemen  move closer and closer, now over the rise you see them in all their glory for the first time, huge mail clad warriors riding horses encased in leather and steel. The plumes of their gleaming helms flutter in the wind, and then you notice their faces, all clad in steel mesh with only the sockets of their eyes visible, staring out towards you, cold, determined, deadly.

Your friends start to waver, some start to turn to flee from the oncoming tide of death and destruction. The sound of the hooves of the steeds is now deafening, your friends shout in terror and alarm, then as one the shining points of the lances lower and a roar erupts from the horseman as they crash into your lines, the clang of steel on steel,  the neighing of the steeds, the screams of dying men. Suddenly you are released from your stasis as you become aware of one of the horseman, his lance now discarded having impaled one of your hapless brethren, now crashing towards you, arm raised high with mace in hand.

You turn away, you must flee from this herald of death, but there is confusion all round, a press of bodies, unyielding, you can't get through. You turn your head to see the rider your last vision on this earth as the mace arches down and crushes your skull to a pulp..........

All hail the Klibanophoroi!

The Elite arm of the Byzantine armies of the late 10th and early 11th Century, they were a return of the Cataphract Cavalry that had not been seen since later Roman times.

Their armour was a design of overlapping plates, known as Lamellar, usually made of iron, but sometimes of leather or horn, and their horses were encased in similar heavy coats of leather armour. The corselet formed by these plates was known as a klibanion from which the troops got their name. The rider's body was fully protected from the head to foot in plates of armour and mail. They were the Emperor's finest troops, their wedge formation in battle would bludgeon into the enemy lines with first, lance and then the heavy steel headed maces.

In WRG 6th Edition, these were the stars of the show for the Nikephorian Byzantine list, Regular A, Super Heavy Cavalry (SHC) they even carried Darts (no not the Phil Taylor type, but heavy lead-weighted missiles) which could be thrown into the ranks of their foes to cause mayhem, while the charge struck home. These were not filthy mercenaries who fought only for gold or ran away when the going got tough, these were the rock upon which the Byzantine Empire would be built. They were a symbol of Byzantine wealth and greatness and the terror of the Bulgar and other Slav nations who stood in their way.

Unfortunately for me though, none of the guys at the Dundee University Wargames and Role Playing Club had Bulgars, or Slav or any of the other traditional Byzantine enemies. Instead we had Carthaginians with Elephants, and Indians with Elephants, and Swiss with Halberds and Later Romans with Scythed Chariots. Talk about a pile of woe and disaster for my Byzantine Super Stars, they were doomed to become known as the "Scythed Chariot Magnets".

Everytime I played Jim, the Mad Doctor, who had the Late Imperial Romans, it was uncanny. You plotted the position of your troops on a plan before deploying on the table. Everytime we put the troops down, there they were, the Scythed Chariots, standing directly in front of the Klibs. I'd put them in the Centre - the Chariots were there, I'd put them on the flanks, the Chariots were there. Jim always denied that he had been peeking at my map before deployment and I always checked his map, but everytime the Chariots were where he had put them down on the table.

And these were not the sort of Scythed Chariot that you saw in Ben Hur or were driven by Boudica, Oh No! These damned things were pulled by horses who were clad in armour and driven by drivers encased in the same armour as the Klibs. These were Super Heavy Scythed Chariots!!

Desperately, I would always try and manoeuvre the Kilbs to safety but almost without exception it was doomed to fail. The Chariots would crash in and with their +5 bonus against SHC, they would invariably send my prized warriors to meet their makers.

I never won a battle with them against Jim's Romans and while occasionally I would have success against  some Auxilia or some Libyan Spearmen if I was fighting the Carthies, they were an expensive flop.

But, they just looked so cool..........

The guys above are now based for DBM were they now languish as a Reg KN (knight) (I) - Inferior!!! What happened to my highly paid, creme de la' creme, Emperor's Finest pin up boys? Guess Phil Barker must have heard how crap I was with them.

Favourite Units of Mine No.1

Given that the painting output has slowed to a crawl again, I thought I would start an occasional look back at some of the units, figures, models in my collection which have been either fun to play with, won a spectacular combat (not many there I'm afraid) or have been fun to paint.

So first up are - "The Stupid Pechenegs"

Way back in my first year at Dundee University, a few of the guys in the Dundee University Wargames and Role Playing Society were playing WRG 6th Edition Ancients with 15mm figures. I have to say that over the years that I have played wargames, 6th Ed WRG has to be pretty near the top of my favourite rule sets.

As a newcomer to the club and never having played Ancient wargaming before, initially I had to rely on borrowing an army from 1 of the guys or being a sub-general if the game being played was large enough to accommodate more than 2 players. I knew I had to get my own army but the question was what to get?

I spent hours pouring over the 3 Army List Books that WRG produced for the rule set. Early Libyan was quickly ruled out as a possibility. We already had Carthaginian, Aztecs, Early Imperial Roman (which was then replaced by Late Imperial Roman when the army's owner, Jim "The Mad Doctor" left his tool box of figures on the train between Dundee and Aberdeen and never recovered it - God that was a day of national mourning I can tell you), Swiss, Mongols, Indians. I wanted something different but, and I freely admit it, had to be good enough to win with, despite my terrible Generalship.

So the decision was made to go for the Nikephorian Byzantines. Reading about the thrashings handed out by Basil "Bulgar-Basher" to the Empire's Bulgar neighbours, the blinding of 10,000 Bulgar warriors which led to the Bulgar Tsar, Samuel, dying of grief at the sight of his maimed army, the intrigue and plotting of the Byzantine Court, they were the Superpower of the 10th and 11th Centuries, the professional Cavalry army including the fully armoured Klibanophoroi Cavalry which looked totally cool on the battlefield, the Varangian Guard with their 2 handed axes, the impetuous Norman Allied Cavalry, the Greek Fire siphoners and the drilled ranks of the Skutatoi Infantry, the army had everything, I could not fail to win with these guys, they were hard as nails.

But they also had the Pechenegs.

Okay, under the lists, you didn't need to include Pechenegs, but given that the Regular Byzantine Cavalry, the "Trapezitoi" was 2 1/2 times the cost of a Pecheneg Light Cavalryman, and given that the flanking and scouting ability was so important in the game, the Pechenegs, almost by default, became obligatory in the Army List.

The bulk of the figures that I purchased for my army were from a company called Asgard Miniatures. They are long gone now but the moulds live on, having been purchased by a company in the States called The Viking Forge. Unfortunately, I don't think they ship to the UK as they only seem to accept payment by way of cheque (check for our colonial readers) or money order. Still it is comforting to know that they are still available. Not that I need any more figures for the army, for at the time I purchased enough figures to field every possible option available on the list, including the full 40 Pechenegs allowed plus General. I supplemented some of the units by buying some figures from Minifigs and also from Mikes Models, although the latter were noticeably smaller than the Asgard and Minfigs models which were nearer 18mm in size as opposed to 15mm .

I had also obtained the excellent Men at Arms book from Osprey Publishing entitled "Byzantine Armies 886-1118". The Minifigs Pecheneg models were very closely based on the plates of the Pecheneg warriors included in that book which were drawn by the late, great Angus McBride.

The Pecheneg Light Cavalry by Minifigs

The Riders are depicted as having a knee length coat, which on the Minifigs figures was sculpted pretty well but which on the Asgard figures looked like a pair of pyjamas, not helped by the bright colours these coats tended to be

The Pecheneg Light Cavalry by Asgard

But I quickly got a unit of 16 cavalry painted up - in 6th Ed WRG, you did use figure removal, 1 figure being removed for every 20 casualties suffered and as Light Cavalry units could use such wonderful formations such as the "Cantabrian Circle" and the "Skythian" formation, they were originally based singly (they are now based for DBM).

And they were terrible.

Being Irregular "C" light cavalry, they were very, very fickle and if the slighest thing went wrong in their vicinity and I was forced to take a morale test for them, I would inevitably roll so badly that they would flee off the table. Eventually, it became a standing joke that I didn't need to roll the test, I should just pick them up and place them off table as inevitably that's where they would have ended up. But as a result, they did actually become fun to play with as their unreliability meant you never knew what to expect with them.

In their own army list in Book 2 of the lists (list no.109) Phil Barker describes how the Pechenegs inspired the proverb "As stupid as a Pecheneg" and so that is how they came to be known as in my army.

With the transition to De Bellis Multitudinis and the dropping of the morale classes, the Pechenegs did become a bit more useful, being now classifed as "Irr LH (F)", but they could still be relied on to do something stupid. And they no longer form part of the Nikephorian list but instead take their place in the Konstantinian Byzantine list which covers the period 1042AD to 1071AD, so no longer would my Super Heavy Klibanophoroi Cavalry have to look on in mild amusement as a pile of Pechenegs ran past them, usually in the opposite direction towards the nearest friendly table edge.

1071AD, saw, of course the Battle of Manzikert, but as a Byzantine player we don't talk about that..........