De Bellis Antiquitatis and Hordes of the Things

Austin LHSM members and friends gathered at Dragon’s Lair on March 25^th for an introduction to De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) and Hordes of the Things (HotT).  I provided the armies and terrain.

We had a total of eight players, a good turnout for a week night, ranging in age from 6 to Grognard.  Most players were either new to DBx, or were being re-introduced to it after a hiatus.  After a very quick explanation of movement and combat, the games began.

Although DBA has a long tradition of time-travelling match-ups, for this event we had four historical pairings:

·         Seleucids versus Parthians

·         Early Germans versus Early Imperial Romans

·         Burgundian Ordonnance versus Later Swiss

·         Noldor Elves versus Orcs of the White Hand

(Okay, that last one is not quite historical; the Noldor date to the First Age of Middle Earth, not the Third).

Without further ado, here are some pictures:

Seleucids versus Parthians

Light horse skirmishing on the wings

Early Germans versus Early Imperial Romans

Hairy Dudes…people should know when they are conquered

Will the center hold?

It did not…

Round Two: The Germans’ flank is turned

Burgundian Ordonnance versus Later Swiss

 

Swiss mustering---who’s in charge here?

The Swiss Keil strikes!  (True to history, the Burgundians broke in two turns)

 

Noldor Elves versus Orcs of the White Hand

Elven knights charge home!

Hopefully this will be the start of more regular DBA and HOTT gaming in Austin.  As always, thanks are due to Pete for helping organize our games, and to Dragon’s Lair for hosting.

DBA War of the Roses Lancastrians (10mm)

After neglecting this blog for the better part of a year, here is a new post at last. This is my recently finished 10mm Lancastrian War of the Roses army for DBA. I chose to do Lancastrians because I figured everyone else would be going Yorkist so they could field the Kingmaker.  The infantry and artillery are by Pendraken, the knights are a mix of Pendraken and Magister Milletum. Flags are by Freezywater; they are 15mm scale, but look okay to me with 10mm figures, and I couldn't find the flags I wanted in 10mm anyway!

I started painting these guys about a year ago, in preparation for a War of the Roses-themed tournament at Millenium Con last November.  They were only half-finished at the tournament, which probably accounts for my lacklustre performance.  I finally completed the army in March of this year.

First up are two pics of the entire army:

I based the figures on Warmaster bases, and pretty much in a style consistent with that game, though still usable for DBA.  So each infantry stand has a dozen figures on it, the knights have six, and the artillery element is equivalent to two Warmaster bases.  I might at some point paint additional infantry stands to make Warmaster units of three bases each.  The army presently has three units of billmen, and six units of longbows, so if I paint up six of the former and three of the latter, I'll have a total of three Warmaster units.  I could similarly add a couple half bases of knights to create two Warmaster knight units, and the artillery is already the right size for Warmaster.  Adding more billmen would also allow me to field them in the DBA army in lieu of the knights.

I divided the infantry into three different retinues or contingents, each from a different, important Lancastrian leader.  I don't think the three I chose (Exeter, Beaufort, and Roos) ever actually fought in the same battle, however.  The first is Lord Thomas Roos's retinue.

In each contingent, the lord's standard (the long one with rounded tails) is carried by the billmen, while one stand of archers carries a square livery banner.  However, I didn't have a livery banner for Lord Roos, so his archers are accompanied by Roos's personal banner.  This is a bit unusual, but leaders sometimes deployed their personal banners separately from their persons, so as to confuse the enemy.  A good explanation of the different types of banners can found here.

Next is the contingent of Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter.  I made him the general, since he had a distant claim to the throne. This is reflected in his coat of arms, which is displayed on Holland's personal banner, carried by one of his knights.  His archers have a livery banner, which simply depicts the livery colors of white and red, and one of Exeter's personal badges, a spike of wheat.  Small versions of the badge would often be worn on the liveried troops' surcoats, however, I didn't attempt that detail with 10mm figures!

Another shot of the Exeter lads.

The final retinue is that of Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.  The Beauforts were particularly staunch Lancastrians.  The scandalous rumor as to why recites that Henry VI's heir was in fact a Beaufort.

Again, in a defensive formation.

Finally, here are a couple elements which don't belong to a particular retinue: a company of mounted knights, and the artillery.  The artillery were presumably mercenaries from the continent.  Although such troops probably didn't wear livery, I have painted them in a burgundy and yellow scheme, because (1) it looked better than random colors, and (2) it's possible a mercenary company would have gone for a consistent look in order to improve esprit d'corps.  I put the knights in a wedge formation purely because it looks cool.

I'm looking forward to trying out this army with the new DBA 3.0 draft rules, because blades and bows have undergone some significant changes under the current draft.  And maybe they will win a game, now that they are fully painted!

DBA Han Chinese, with Scenery

These are the Spear and Psiloi elements for my still in-progress Han Dynasty Chinese army for DBA. The figures are 15mm scale, and are all Black Hat (formerly Gladiator, and originally by Metal Magic). 

The Han dynasty came immediately after the Chin dynasty,which is famous for the terracotta army.  These four elements represent a third of the entire DBA army, the remaining elements being heavy cavalry, horse archers, and crossbows.

Most people paint their Han Chinese like this plate in the Osprey book:

This plate (and a couple others in the book) are apparently derived from figures from the Yangjiawan terracotta army.  Like the more famous Chin dynasty terracotta army, it is a collection of terracotta soldiers, discovered in a tomb.  Unlike its more famous predecessor, which was buried in the tomb of the Chin emperor, the Yangjiawan army accompanied a military official and his son into the afterlife, not an emperor.  Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Yangjiawan figures are smaller than lifesize, being only 50cm tall.

Although the Osprey book depicts the Han army in fairly uniform red, the actual terracotta figures were not very uniform. 
However, their palate is somewhat limited--mostly red, black, and white or cream.

I wanted to depict an Imperial Army, not that of some local potentate, and so proceeded to take some interpretive license.  I kept the palate of red, black, and off-white, but used black exclusively for the spearmen's coats because that was the Imperial color in the early years of the Han dynasty.  This is admittedly quite speculative, and it's more likely that they would not have all worn black in real life.  The Chin terracotta army, from just a few years earlier, wears a wide variety of colors, without any apparent uniformity.  Accordingly, I tried not to be entirely uniform, and their shirts, pants, leggings, and shields are done in various combinations of red, black, white, and off-white, following the diversity of the originals.  The archers (class as "Psiloi" in DBA) got the more conventional red coats.

Although I finally painted these guys recently, I sculpted their distinctive halberd blades out of Greenstuff more than ten years ago (the otherwise excellent figures did not include this detail).  Seeing that this (and the other prep work) was already done was a very pleasant surprise when I dug these out of storage and resumed working on them.  Way to go, me of the past!  Here's a pic of an actual "dagger axe" blade, made of bronze:

The biggest liberty I took with painting these was doing the armor in bronze.  The Han definitely used bronze extensively for weapons, and other items, but no bronze armor has been found.  The standard view is that it was probably leather or lamellar.  But bronze looks great, it's a possible interpretation, and it fits my theme of an imperial army.

The trees are homemade, using florist wire and colored flock.  They are meant to have an Asian look.  My mom helped me design and make these, and not for some school project either!  Thanks mom! 

Here's a shot of just the trees, and some of the picturesque, vaguely-Asian looking rocky crags as well.  These are normally islands for Pirates of the Spanish Main, but are rather scale-less, and work well in this context too!  I've got some other great scenery for this army, including a building and a fishing boat that my mother brought back from a trip to China, but they are packed up at the moment, and will have to wait for another post.

15mm Seleucid Light Horse

This is an element of 15mm-scale Seleucid Light Horse (LH) for DBA, my favorite game.  They are technically "Tarentine" cavalry, so-called because equipping light cavalry with a full-sized hoplon shield originated in Tarentum, Italy.  As part of the Seleucid army, these guys wouldn't be actual natives of Tarentum, just Graeco-Macedonian settlers armed in that manner.











They have anchors on their shields because that was the symbol of the Seleucid monarchy.

Figures are by Black Hat Miniatures, and are from the former Metal Magic line sculpted by Josef Ochmann.  The light brown horse is from Old Glory 15s though--I used it because the Black Hat set came with only one pose of horse.  It was cast without any saddle blanket, so I sculpted one with greenstuff.

The bases are homemade, my friend Jerry Boling helped cut them, and I used a jig that he made to go with my Dremel tool to bevel the edges.

By way of visual comparison, I used the same static grass on these as on the 10mm Civil War figures, and the base is a 40x30mm base, so the  same frontage as the Civil War units.  In other words, 15mm figures are a lot bigger than 10mm ones!