The "Greenfish" returns and I have to make a shameful confession.

 Scratting about in the cupboard I found a box containing some old Warhammer figures from the first boxed set I bought nearly thirty years ago. It was the fifth edition starter set with the Bretonnians and their deadly enemies the Lizardmen. The Bretonnians see daylight quite regularly but the lizards have been buried for donkey's years mainly because I never had enough of them for much of a game. I only had the plastic lizardmen and skinks and couldn't afford the metal figures needed to make a decent force for Warhammer.

But SAGA is a different beast, looking in the box I reckoned that I could make a canny little warband with my wee collection. All those years ago when I painted the figures I put most effort into the Bretonnians and took a big short cut when I painted the lizards putting a black wash over the bare grey plastic, painting in some detail and putting a high gloss varnish over all.

Getting them ready for a game of SAGA was easy, I just painted out the Goblin Green base edges and tickled in a few highlights.

Here are some posed shots of the toys, note the Stegosaurus near the back.

The Stegosaurus is a whole 'nother story, a shameful confession has to be made.

Back in the late 1990's my mam had been round the charity shops and brought our little lad a few cheap toys, one of the toys was a bright green rubbery Stegosaurus. Wor little lad called it "Greenfish" and played with it and the other toys for a while, then I did did a bad thing.

After looking at the "Greenfish" with my wargamers eye and appreciating it's dimensions I wheedled it from my beloved son.

There!, I said it, I shamefully pursuaded the bairn to give me the "Greenfish". What a tw*t!.

Well, the "Greenfish" got painted and had a run out on the wargames table and then went in the box with the rest of the gang for years and years.

I am using the Lords of the Wild list and Battleboard for the lizardmen.

Lizard warriors.

Scaly little Skinks.

Charge.

"Don't you stick your tongue out at me!".

Warlords fight it out.

The Battleboard with some of my home made dice.

Well I had a cracking game with the Lizardmen winning bigly, the "Greenfish" did very well enduring a veritable storm of arrows and keeping the Bretonnians under pressure.

SAGA in the Old World

 I had a try out of SAGA Age of Magic tonight using some of my old Warhammer soldiers.

I didn't manage many photos as I had to concentrate on the new units and the magic side of the game.

I used Orcs and Goblins as a Horde force, and Empire as a Great Kingdoms force...

I had a good game, missed a couple of things but nothing too drastic.

Champion!.

Victory Without Quarter

 I have often fancied playing Victory Without Quarter English Civil War rules by Clarence Harrison, they are available as a free download link  but I never got around to making the cards required to play the game. Well, I have now managed to extract my digit and make some cards.

I have had a few games now and they have all been good fun.

Here are some pics of last nights game.

Rupert's Blewcoats break Cosgroves Greencoats.

Colonel Dove defeats his Royalist opponents.

But Colonel Oliver and his Ironsides are defeated.

Sir Marmaduke throws himself into the fight but falls dead as he gains the victory.

Rupert's Blewcoats are on the run having been roughly handled by Old Robin's Tawnycoats.

Lord Brooke's Regiment are in trouble.

The last unit in Col. Olivers wing are broken.

Lord Brooke's Purplecoats are shattered.

Sir Lesley Forster's Bluecoats creep up on the Tawnycoats and shoot them in the back!.

The Roundhead centre is crumbling.

The Tawnycoats scatter Bolton's Horse.

Sir Thomas Rainborowe's Foote are in dire straits.

Colonel Dove's horse are steadily being driven from the field.

Sydenham's horse are seen off by the Royalist Foote.

Old Robin's Regiment is charged in the rear.

Lord Charles joins Allen Apsley's Foote and charges in to break the last unit in Suffolk's battalia.

And Lord Charles gets the victory proving that he's no dummy!.

A grand game, I made a few house rules but nothing too drastic.

Midgard

 Inspired by the fine chaps at the Tyneside Wargames Club I have had a few games of Midgard. I joined the club recently and been made very welcome. I have had a couple of grand games, Death in the Dark Continent and Midgard. 

The former was completely new to me in both the rules and the setting, I have since downloaded a free low page ruleset provided by North Star Nick so I can have a better look at the game. 

Midgard is a set of rules that I bought when they first came out, I played them solo a fair bit then and I revisited them last year and played a series of battles with my Warhammer toys. But having a solo knockabout and seeing them played by experienced players who know the finer points of the game was an eye opener for me, I just had to give Midgard some more table time so X Wing got the bum's rush and out came a bunch of Viking Raiders and some Byzantines...

First blood, just for a laugh the Norsemen issued a challenge, Phil the Greek bonked Ulla on the head hard and reputation gained was more than lost.

Then Basil's boys advanced.

The Vikings were raring for a fight.

And counter attacked.

Basil and his Kataphraktoi broke through only to be confronted by a second line of Vikings.

And most of his horsemen were falling back or routing.

The already wounded Viking chieftain was killed in the fight with Basil's Kataphraktoi.

But the Kataphraktoi were routed and a wounded Basil had to find refuge with his Kavallaroi.

Despite losing their leader the Vikings win 8 to minus 4.

A good game with lots of heroic actions, wounded heroes and dicey fun. I learned a few things too.

Down in Flames

 Last year and this year I have been lucky enough to discover three wargames that have become firm favourites of mine. SAGA and X-Wing I have featured in recent blogposts, the third is Down in Flames which is a card game I got for Christmas last year.

It's a cracker, I played it exclusively for four months solid, it isn't a solo game but I can manage it with a few house rules.

There are several iterations of the system, this one is from 2008 and is simpler than some of the other versions. link I went to town with it a bit and bought a couple of expansions, I then photocopied cards and downloaded anything I could. In a dogfight game I like to use four cards for a "squadron" which is the sweet spot for me, six a side is too many to handle for me playing solo.

Some of the images I found only had the front "undamaged" side of the card so I printed off numbers and flame images and used a marker pen for smoke, see the Chaika on the left. The unofficial SB-2 I did digitally.

Here are two of my homemade Spitfires flanking the published card.

Finding images on t'internet let me expand the game and provided a lot of fun.

It wasn't all plain sailing though I don't know what caused the ghost image on the left, I had the same problem with some of my early SAGA dice images too.

I made a "Red Tails" P51 squadron.

I introduced Tank Busters and nightfighters.

I added some of my own pilots real and made up and gave them a chance to parachute to safety.

I added bomber crews to the game too.

There are campaigns included in the box and they're OK but I prefer setting up my own scenarios so I made target counters and cards for the bombing missions, I like to use a squadron of four to eight bombers with two or three escorts against a squadron or two of defending fighters.

Then I added some postwar jets.

Then off to Korea, I don't know how accurate my stats are but it's a bit of fun.

Great fun, the game is very abstract but the cardplay feels more like the cut and thrust of a dogfight than any other air wargame I have played.