Re-Mystified on Tour :: Stoke Challenge 2015

As you can see I did not come away empty handed from this year's Stoke Challenge.

Having said that I had a very mixed day. Best described as follows:/p>

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Cities (1859)

My newly painted, and very recently completed, Safavid Persian army made their competitive début and were promptly and repeatedly trounced. If you are interested my army list is available to view. I scored a total of 5 points in three games! By far my worst competitive performance to date. Consistently rolling 1s in Field of Glory Renaissance is never a good idea.

It's Been A While

April in the UK was warm and sunny. So apart for enjoying the weather I've been getting on trying to finish a 650 point Field of Glory Persian army for the Renaissance competition at the Stoke Challenge. I've even gone as far as writing my list and ticking off the battlegroups as I finish them.

At the moment, I have a few Turcomen to finish, along with a dozen heavy and four elite cavalry. Sadly, the last two involve horse armour with complex patterns. So far the elite horse armour is taking me 2-3 hours each! Luckily I have a quicker method for the heavy cavalry.

Mercenary Gunners In Persian Service

I finished some of these this week:

The crew is from Donnington and the guns are from Museum Miniatures.

Almost There

A few weeks ago I wrote about my new plan for 2015. Well it seems to be working.

This morning I finished four more Islamic Persian musketeers and have the heads and hands finished of the remaining eight. Once these are finished, and based, I will have completed all the firearm infantry for my long delayed FOGR project. Plus, last week I finished four cavalry figures which means I have completed one third of the Turcoman cavalry bases I need and have more underway. Little bits and often seems to be working for me.

I would do more tomorrow but I'm planning to attend Vapnartak at York Racecourse where I'm going to give the tabletop sale a try. I'm not sure how well I will get on but if I don't try I'll never know. I'll report back next week.

Wargaming In 2015

I've been promising myself I'd write about my experiences of playing Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) over the last two years but my day job kept getting in the way.

The recent changes to VAT for ebooks and Corvus Belli's decision to suspend production of their 15 mm historical ranges ensured that I was propelled headlong into Christmas and kept busy until today.

After much thought I've decided to take a break from regular wargaming in 2015. "Shock horror" I hear you cry! Let me briefly explain why:

Re-Mystified On Tour - Northern League R5

Sunday, 07 December dawned bright and early as I headed for Walkden for the last round of the Northern League in 2014. As before I was looking forward to playing in the Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) competition.

I had decided to take a class three variant of my TYW Danish army. Effectively this meant one less battlegroup of heavily armoured, superior, pistol, pistol.

I managed 18 points over two games with one winning draw and a big loss. This brought my total to the year to 62 points in 6 games. Averaging ten points a games isn't too bad at all and it's an improvement on last year. Overall I was placed eighth out of nineteen for the year.

At this stage I'm not sure what I'll be doing next year but I will collect my thoughts and post my plans later this month.

Luck Or Strategy?

Graham & I were sat in the pub last Sunday having our regular post game debrief when I asked Graham what turned out to be a key question: did he win by luck or better strategy? As we all know this is the perfect topic for a chat over a pint or two but this time it was different. Firstly because it lead to an second discussion about rolling "good, or bad, dice at crucial moments" and secondly because we'd recorded every dice roll in the game.

That's right, in our 800 point game of Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) we recorded over 1,000 dice rolls in a three hour game. That's just the number of spots nothing else. Sad, I know. I don't want to go into the specific reasons why we decided to do this at this point other than to say we've done this before and found it really helpful.

TYW Danish Marines

Here's some photos of some of the Danish TYW Marines based and ready for their first outing on Sunday:

Almost Finished

When I switched from DBR to FOG Renaissance I was shocked to find that I didn't have enough painted figures! In almost all instances I have been playing FOGR with armies based on what I have painted.

Needless to say, for the last two years I've been painting various battle groups just to provide more balanced armies and a modicum of  choice. No wonder my Persian project is so far behind.

My Danish TYW army is a case in point. I can field a historically balanced army but only have the bare minimum of infantry. Until now! Today I finished the last 12 figures in a batch of 56 (yes 56!) TYW heavy infantry. When based this will provide 12 elements of Danish Marines and 2 command elements.

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Review

Whilst writing the previous post on my latest Northern League adventures it occurred to me to review all my competitive games of FOGR. I started playing at the beginning of 2013 so it's not that many. This is how I've done:

Competition	Northern League	Stoke Challenge
Points	800	650
Wins	2	1
Draws (Winning)	0	0
Draws (Losing)	3	2
Losses	3	3
Total	8	6
Average	0.25	0.17

At first sight it looks like I've got to get more practise in but what I really need to work on is converting the losing draws in to winning draws and picking up more points along the way. You can see this by looking at the total points scored and the average points per type of game:

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Halifax 2014

It was a good event!

On Sunday I took 800 points worth of Italian Wars French for two enthralling games of Field of Glory Renaissance (FOGR) in the third round of the 2014 Northern League.

The army was dated 1523. This turned out to be important because this season Northern League armies before 1570 have been given a boost by an alteration of the army classification system: they are allowed to drop a class. This is to encourage players to field earlier armies and go some way towards compensating for their poorer weapons and tactics when facing later armies.

My army contained just over 400 points of superior troops and would have been class 1 but now it dropped to class 2 with the incentive that they could gain 2 bonus points by beating higher class opponent. All I had to do was win a game!

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Stoke Challenge 2014

I've finally recovered from Sunday's 650 point Field of Glory Renaissance competition. The day was organised by Ray Boyles and Keith Spedding who worked well as an organising team and the day went quickly and smoothly.

Between games I got a chance to take some photos of the very well attended DBMM competition which gives you a flavour of the venue:

Speaking of flavours the smell from the canteen was awful and lasted all day. Yuck! Naturally, the only photo I got of the FOGR competition was between rounds:

As far as the games went I, or rather the Early Lithuanians, had a terrible, if enjoyable(!), day with only 15 points from a possible 75. Here are the reports:

Yet More Fame

I sent Ian Kay of Irregular Miniatures a photo of one of my Persian camel gunners. I promised him one for his web site:

He's now given it pride of place on his web page.

Having painted quite a few MIP14 & 15 recently I can recommend you investigate the range if you're interested in building a Renaissance Persian army.

Indo-Persian Armour - Photo Resource

I've been following a very useful board on Pinterest:

The term "Indo-Persian armor" includes armor from Persia, Ottoman Empire, India and other nearby countries made in the Indo-Persian style. In the past terms such as "Eastern", "Oriental", "Islamic" have been used to differentiate between this type of armor and European armor types. "Indo-Persian" includes non Muslim cultures such as Hindu, Sikh and Christian use of this type of armor. Nearly identical armors can have different names depending of the country/culture of use.

Indo-Persian armour - pinterest board.

Plus there's another I've just spotted and will be following from today:

Prints reflecting the people, culture, clothing, weapons and armor of the Ottoman Empire, Persia, India and related areas. The term "Indo-Persian" includes Persia, Ottoman Empire, India and other nearby countries. In the past terms such as "Eastern", "Oriental", "Islamic" have been used to differentiate between these types of prints and prints from other regions . "Indo-Persian" includes non Muslim cultures such as Hindu, Sikh and Christian.

Indo-Persian prints - pinterest board.

 I always find resources like these help inspire my painting, especially when I get painter's block. I hope they help you.

Victory Or Defeat

One of the of the hardest things to do during a competition is work out the b****y score. It's especially difficult at the end of a hard fought game that's just "gone the distance" and it seems to get harder as the day goes on.

In Field of Glory (FOG) games are scored out of twenty with a five bonus points for breaking your opponent army so you'd think it would be simple; wouldn't you? Well you'd be wrong. Look at this typical example of a helpful cross reference chart (click image for readable version):

I had a quiet half hour today so I sat down and tried to figure out why this is so confusing.

Recent Projects

New posts have been a bit scarce since early May. This is partly because I've been busy:

1. Painting the Turkoman cavalry and Persian shot for my Safavid Persian army for Field of Glory Renaissance.
2. Writing another article for Miniature Wargames which should be in issue 376 on sale next month.
3. Painting samples for work. I've set myself the target of painting a further three packs from my 18 mm Napoleonic Ottoman range.

I am over one third of the way through the 54 Turkoman cavalry and two thirds of the way through 72 shot. The big breakthrough came when I realised that I can use Donnington Timurids to add variety and provide command figures for both of these units which are mainly Navwar. I also have used some command figures from Irregular's Renaissance Persian range for the infantry.

Re-Mystified on Tour :: Walkden 2014

I'm sorry for the recent hiatus but the last 6-8 weeks have been hectic as it included the financial year end of my business and, as always, there was a lot of paperwork and financial analysis to be done.

Even so I managed to play in the first round of the 2014 Northern League on Sunday, 16 March. I decided to try my 1625 Danish TYW army once again. As always there was a welcoming and friendly atmosphere throughout:

Camel Gunners Finished!

Today I finished the last camel gunners for my Eastern renaissance armies (Safavid Persians & Moghuls mainly). As I've mentioned before I now have more painted camel gunners than I can possibly use.

The Field of Glory Renaissance (FOG R) list for the Moghuls has a maximum of 10 camel gunners. The Safavid Persian list has a maximum of 4. After buying another two from Irregular at Vapnartak earlier this month I have 14 and all of them painted! This means I could actually equip both armies at the same time. Such is the madness of wargamers.

When painting the last two figures I wanted to represent damascene metal work on the shields so I decided to practise first. I ended up using standard drawing pins pushed into a wine cork.

15 mm Gabions

In preparation for the start of this year's competition circuit I've been experimenting with my 650 point TYW Danish list for FOG R. One option is to include some field fortifications to protect the compulsory artillery. The only problem being that until yesterday I didn't have any. As you can see I do now:

These are resin models from Baueda. Two packs were enough for eight bases of field fortifications. One of the advantages of running Vexillia Limited is that I didn't have to wait for the postman to deliver them: I just went to the stock room.

Islamic Persian Camel Gunners Part IV

I have finally finished the six Irregular Miniatures camel gunners I bought earlier this year. I posted photos of the first painted figure in June. However, I was unhappy with the shoulder cape which I initially painted to match the coat. After a limited amount of research I decided it was more likely to be leather armour and so I re-painted the first one and the remaining five to look like this:

"True scale" photo:


Warts 'n' all photo: