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.

Tower Aeternus - 3D Printed

When I first started 3D printing I looked around at what was available to print. There's quite a lot out there and a lot of it is free. However some of the better bits are paid for items and I was drawn to the collection of models on Printable Scenery. I've been slowly building items from their OpenLock collection, including the tower I completed a couple of months ago, which is the start of a much larger castle project.  However there's a lot on the site that is not OpenLock.

Having quite an extensive Mantic Elf army I was drawn to their Elven terrain collection and decided that I had to print at least one of the items from that. Thinking this may be the only item I'd print from that I decided I might as well go big and choose the largest building, the Tower Aeturnus. 

I bought the STL files for this back in late June and have been printing it since then. It's a big model with a lot of detail and I've had a lot of stress getting it finished. I had initial success and then for a while my printer was failing to print any of it. This was due to me installing a very poor steel nozzle, which I replaced in mid august and since then I've been able to print things properly again. I managed to finish printing the model a couple of weeks ago.

I've just finished it off and now it's time for a few photos!

My Mantic Elf Army loves it's new tower.

The Elf Prince can now see the enemy from afar.

In Middle Earth, Galadriel and Celeborn also see the advantages of the tower.

There's a fair bit of internal detail visible from the outside.

The tower breaks into 4 pieces to allow
 access inside and easier transportation.

The tower really is huge and dwarfs all my giants
even the huge (unpainted) Mantic Giant.

Looking at how well this has come out I may have to do something else from the range... though at some point I have to print some of their historic ships!

Man O'War Norse

It's been a while since I painted any Man O'War models, but I decided it was about time I got some of the ones I've had primed finished off.

The first of these are the Norse. 

Liber Militum Tercios - Defenders of the Realm

My blog posts are like buses. There's none for ages and then two turn up at once.

The second post today is about the 6mm English Civil War game we just finished this afternoon. It was the 3rd scenario in the Liber Militum Tercios : Kingdoms expansion book and was the reason I had to get that Walled Town Set painted up. 

In addition the town was a bit too big to play on my usual board so I had to get the new cloth painted up for a larger battlefield. It's intended for use with the larger Blücher scenarios as well and is about 8ft x 8ft in total size. Though we used 6ft x 4ft of it. Hills were placed under the cloth and I was pleased to see they produced no creases at all.

The scenario is based around an assault on a stronghold. A fort is suggested, but I couldn't find a nice 6mm star fort that I liked to 3D print, so I went for using the walled town as the stronghold.

The attacker gains points for damaging the stronghold and the defender gains points for destroying attacking units. The clever sliding scale of game length and victory points that is one of the best features of the rules comes into play to make the scenario work really well.

The defender can put 4 units in front of the stronghold to act as a shield, the rest is in a reserve towards the back of the table. The attacker gets their whole force up front.

I was the defender as Royalists and Brendan the attacker as Parliament.

Royalists to the left, Parliament to the right.

Brendan advanced all the way across the front. Because the Stronghold actually blocks movement and line of sight I had to send my troops around the sides

The troops in the centre stopped at the hedges and commenced firing at the defending troops shielding the town. The flanking troops were headed off by my reserve forces on both sides and combat was joined.

Eventually I pushed back the cavalry on my right flank repelled the infantry on my left, but the shield was very thin and Brendan's artillery managed to get a few plum shots on the town.

I rushed the flanking forces around the front. The New Model Army troops stayed behind the hedge and I was able to shield the town. Brendan was trying to bombard the town with artillery rather than assault it with infantry.

In the end it was a very close "Pyrrhic Victory" to me as in the last turn I destroyed several of Brendan's units and he failed to hit the town.

Another really good scenario and quite a unique one with a siege-feel to it. Very well designed indeed.

Total Battle Miniatures - Walled Town Set

I've been quiet recently. I have been busy though. Mostly I've been painting 6mm English Civil war and playing Tercios as previously. I've also been busy 3d printing, though I've not got many models to show for it.

Anyway, yesterday I finally finished something worth blogging about. It's the Total Battle Miniatures "Walled Town Set" from their 6mm Pike and Shotte Big Battalions range. 

The main base is actually a big resin cast unlike their other bases which are made of rubber. I've mounted it on a sheet of 2mm MDF to blend in with the battlefield better.

This will be the centrepiece of our Liber Militum Tercios game this afternoon.

This takes the same 30mm based buildings I've already got for use with Napoleonics, so changing a few over makes it usable for nineteenth century Europe as well. I'm thinking it will work nicely for some of the larger towns for the 1813 campaign I have planned for Blücher.

3D Printed Additions to My 28mm Medeival City

Though not the reason for getting the printer it was inevitable that I'd make some additions to my medieval city with it. There are so many free and paid-for designs available.

Right back when I first looked at getting extensions to the Dungeon I had considered 3d printing as an option, but discounted it because the Hirst Arts option was so much cheaper, easier and faster. This is true even now and unless I'd already got the printer I'd not be doing this.

So anyway, I have chosen to print up a couple of test pieces. The first is the free design from the City of Tarok Kickstarter by Black Scrolls Games. This stood out to me because it seemed well designed and looked pretty... plus was free. I had to split the model up because the build-plate on my printer is just slightly too small for it. This I first tried in Blender, but really struggled. In the end I used Meshmixer and that was a lot easier.

It's a great model with slots for window glass and movable door. Although it does have internal detail for some reason the chimney does not have a fireplace! It has painted up nicely and should fit in well with my other buildings

However because of this lacking of internal detail that also seems to happen with some other ranges and the issue with having to split the model up I doubt I'll be making more of this range.

The other thing I've been looking for was a castle set. For this I decided to give the Rampage Castle set from Printable Scenery a go. This is a modular set. You print out individual sections and fasten them together with some special clips. The system is called OpenLock and the basic structures are Open Source so anyone can make stuff to work with it and put their designs online. As a result there are a lot of options available.

I have started with their basic tower, the parts should be able to be used in other designs. You have to purchase sets of files to make the pieces and this is quite expensive to start with, but I've become quite addicted to making these. I expect that I'll be making a lot of this over time. Each piece is small and has a short print time making them ideal for sneaking in whilst I'm in the house rather than the 11 hours plus print times of some other buildings!

Again there are moving hatches and doors in the designs. I've painted the tower up to match my Hirst Arts stuff and I think it looks good.

6mm English Civil War Village or Farm

When I got my 3d printer a couple of weeks ago I looked around for some buildings to use with my 6mm ECW games. As you can see in earlier blogs I've used some with my existing village bases, but I've been inspired to do something better.

With Liber Militum Tercios a unit effectively completely occupies buildings, or in my case the entire village. With that in mind I decided I wanted something specifically sized to take one of my units.

I'm really pleased with how this has come out. It's really given me chance to make a little diorama. I think I'll have to do a few more like this.

One of the buildings, that garden and the cart can be removed to allow a unit to occupy the farm.

The farm was built from the Eskice Miniatures buildings with quite a bit of modification in Tinkercad.