More random musings.....

Hi again, I'm back with more inane ramblings and such things.

Following a post on the Too Fat Lardies yahoo group by Rich Clarke about how he got into wargaming, it made me think back too my beginnings in the hobby that quickly became an obsession.  I started back as a young lad of 12 in 1981 with roleplaying games, as did many of my era.  Then Citadel Miniatures appeared in a local craft shop and Warhammer appeared.  After gathering masses of Dwarves and Orcs, 40K appeared on the scene and Orks replaced Orcs.  It was just after getting into 40k that I found a book in the local library, Alexander the Greats Campaigns by Phil Barker.  This literary tome opened my eyes to the world of historical wargaming and I have never looked back since.  It took me a good few years to collect my first "army" as such and I must admit to a hiatus period, during which I played rugby, drank copious amounts of ale and met young women, one of whom became my wife.

After settling down, due to too many broken bones, too many hangovers and way too many nagging mornings, I got back into wargaming.  Now down in sunny Devon, I joined a now defunct club that met monthly in Torquay.  It was there that I first met Nathan/Stumpy and have been afflicted friends with him ever since.  It has gone from strength to strength since then, with good friends and good games a plenty, both locally, nationally and internationally.  My sister even married a wargamer who she met in Nigeria!  Luckily both my sons seem to have regained their wargaming habit recently as well.

So, enough of the ramblings.  For the last few weeks we have got out our 28mm ancients figures and had at it, using the Crusader rule set.  A fairly generic set, we "generally" like how they play, with one exception, but he likes DBA so we ignore him. The first game was a refresher, to get us back up to speed with the rules.  On Monday we started another battle, Romans with some Barbarian allies facing off against a combined Sassanid Persian and Germanic force.  Nathan and Zob(aka DBA man) took the latin speaking invaders while I had the Persians and Andy had the Germans.  They have a definite edge in the quality of their infantry, but we have better cavalry and lots more skirmishers.

Persians face off the advancing Romans

 The Persians faced off against the Roman infantry and Cataphracts, while the Germans readied themselves to see off their sell-out brethren.

6D10 needing 8+ to hit!  Ouch!

Highlight for me was my clibanarii charge at the Romans, rolling 6D10 needing 8+ to hit.  Five 10's later and the Romans were in retreat.  Hehehe

Barbarian flank, lots of fighting going on here.

 On the other flank, Andy was charging with as many troops as he could as often as he could.  The German noble cavalry made short work of the low quality horde the Romans had hired, but the warbands were more evenly matched and slugged out a closer fight, although the Germans were gradually pushing back the Roman mercenaries..

A lot less Romans than there were.

 At the end of the evening the Roman legions had advanced, but their auxiliary troops had taken a pasting from the Persian horse archers and the charge of the Clibanarii.  However, one legion unit was now in position to flank charge the impetuous German unit that had got carried away chasing the auxiliary archers.  On the other flank the Roman cavalry had been forced to turn to face the German cavalry while the warband's battered lumps out of each other.  It could be interesting next week.