Sunday 25 October 2020

Man O'War Orcs (and Brettonnian Pegasus Riders)

Since we've been playing Man O'War for the past few weeks I thought it a good time to get some more of my unfinished fleets completed.

I have been working on three Orc Hulks for most of the week and didn't think I'd get chance to use them today as I also needed to get three Bigchukkas painted and some Wyverns. However I surprised myself by getting the Bigchukkas completed last night and the Wyverns completed this morning. So we're on for a game using Orcs my complete Orc fleet today.





Also last week I completed my Brettonian fleet with a squadron of Pegasus Riders.


Brendan chose to play Dwarves in the game this afternoon. We extended our rules to include Flyers and he chose to use some War Baloons. We both had fun dropping bombs on each other as a result. The scenario was the Treasure Fleet and the Dwarves had the treasure. I set up a defensive line of Bigchukkas supported by Hulks and the Drillakillas swept around the flank. The line proved tough for the Dwarves to get through and the Hulks, Wyverns and Drillakillas were very effective, though the Dwarves made the Orcs pay in blood for their very close Victory. This was loads of fun!




Sunday 18 October 2020

Dragonstone Castle

I've been looking around for islands to 3D print for use with Man O'War (etc).

I came across this rather wonderful and well scaled model of Dragonstone Castle from Game of Thrones.

It was the longest print I've done yet and came out brilliantly on my new Prusa Mini. The model has a recess which has allowed me to add lighting to it.

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We used it for the first time today as the main island in the Treasure Island scenario. Brendan used Empire again, this time with the addition of the expansion ships and a Sea Dragon. I used Dwarves with a Kraken. 

Brendan set my Dreadnaught on fire in the first turn, disabling it for the entire game and landed sailors from his Wolfships on the treasure island finding the treasure straight away. He then attempted to sail away with it but my Kraken jumped on the Wolfship with the treasure and killed all its crew.

In the mean time I devastated Brendans Ironfists and Wargalleys with my Nautiluses and Ironclads, but my Monitors were all destroyed. 

In the end there was no way I could get enough battle honours to win despite having stolen the Treasure from his re-crewed Wolfship, so I conceded the game and took consolation in having at least got the gold.

A fun game as usual.

Friday 16 October 2020

Back to 1813 - Bavarians

It's been a while since I had painted any of my 1813 miniatures. I started again a couple of weeks ago, but those were just more standard French infantry and conscripts so I didn't bother photographing them.

This time however it's something a little different. Some Bavarian Infantry and Artillery for XII Corps.

6mm Heroics and Ros for use with Blücher as usual.



The whole of XII Corps.


Sunday 4 October 2020

Man O'War - Bretonnians vs Empire

Having finally finished my all-3d-printed Bretonnian Fleet it was time to try it out against my old Empire Fleet, controlled by Brendan. Since it's a long, long, long time since Brendan played we decided to play a fairly simple game, 750 points of basic ships each with a single Master Wizard each. Nothing from any of the expansions.

The Bretonnians can get a lot of the tiny Buccaneers in a 750 point fleet, which makes it actually rather powerful. They act to mask the bigger ships with the larger firepower whilst not being worth many Battle Honours themselves. My fleet has the full 12 Buccaneers in it along with 3 Corsairs and a Galleon. All are 3d printed on my FDM printer apart from the Galleon which was 3d printed on a resin printer and bought from Etsy.


The Empire fleet is the one I started Man O'War with back in the '90s. It's all original ships and all painted by myself at that time. It's a similar make-up to the Bretonnians, but because the Wargalleys are twice the points of the Buccaneers there's only 6 of them. Also there is a squadron of Wolfships and a Greatship.


Wind was very important in this game. To start with the wind changed to be in my favour and my sails filled. Brendan's ships had to switch to oars, which meant they still made progress, but left the Greatship behind. Then Brendan's Wizard cast Wind Master and changed the wind to be directly at me. My whole fleet stopped dead in it's tracks and had to try and turn out of the wind. 




Brendan's Wargalleys then reached my front line of Buccaneers and rammed them, several were sunk, but there were still loads left. Being so close did mean my catapults could not fire though.


Whilst his best way of attacking was to ram my Buccaneers with his Wargalleys he couldn't keep doing this for long and eventually he was too close to ram. After a couple of bad boarding actions he decided that the way to deal with the Bucaneers was to stay just within close range and shoot them. This was very slow progress and was pretty much a stalemate.

On the other flank I faced off against the Wolfships. To start with I couldn't get very close, though my Galleon did get a couple of good broadsides off immobilising one. But then the wind changed and I was able to break through and attack properly. I brought the Galleon around the side and destroyed another Wolfship. My wizard then got lucky and pushed the third one into the island sinking it!


The Corsairs also broke through and the Greatship became surrounded. Because of the masking that the Bucaneers had done the Corsairs and Galleon were untouched at this point and the Greatship was easily sunk. With most of his fleet in tatters and only a few Bucaneers sunk to show for it, Brendan's Imperial fleet struck it's colours.

I had warned Brendan that this Bretonnian fleet is a very tough one to crack and it proved to be so. Even though in the early stages of the action the wind was against me it proved very strong indeed. I'd be interested to see how it fares against the other races.