Cherilea Vikings and Saxons Clash in a Secondhand Lion's Old School Battle

 Ragnor Lothbrok and his brother Rollo have arrayed their hyrd in a defensive position near the river and await the tribute from King Aella.

 

 

 

Floki goes for the devious end around assault on Aella's right flank.

 

The Saxon host is taking the high ground just beyond spear range and raining arrows down into the camp.

Rollo goes impetuous and is way out in front on the Viking Right flank.

There would be no "indians in the woods this night."

DBA Bretwalda Campaign

 

 

Every other Monday, I get to play DBA with a small group of wargamers that I have known for years.  We play 15mm with a variety of professionally painted armies.  Steve, our primary army provider is an historian, artist, wargamer.  It is a unique privilege to be included in the gaming and discussion in his small gaming group.  The method of play has always been to include some type of campaign system from DBA and we have been through two or three very in depth map generated  events.  Our current  style of campaign started with a Roman "First Man in Rome" style of campaign where each player was given his home army of Republican Roman Legionaries and would fight in turn each of the Roman's enemies.  Scoring was standard DBA of stands killed versus stands lost and an additional 2 points for killing the enemy general or capturing the enemy camp.

 

Under this system of play we are now doing a 1066 campaign with each player playing the Anglo-Danes and taking on all enemies from the 6 army list found in DBA 1.1.  The armies are mine and were painted some 22 years ago.  They are from the Minifigs 1066 line of 15mm miniatures.  Getting to use 6 of my armies for this campaign is a real treat for me.  We are referring to the armies as "throw-back" jersey wargame miniatures.  Here are some pixels of the latest evening game.

My Huscarls stand ready to receive the Norse-Irish host.  This was a hard fought game with a lot of posturing.  A loss for me, however I have kept myself in the running as I was able to sack the enemy camp for 2 points.

At this point it could have still gone my way....but a very tough opponent wouldn't roll his dice "right".  In the end I lost 4 to 1 but as mentioned I did get a camp capture.

Battlestar Gallactica Sorta

Launch Vipers.  We have incoming contacts on two sectors.

Ceylon raiders approaching.  Move to intercept....

FIRE!  Zap! Blamo! ZZZZRRRPP!

Another nifty little one off game using US Toy Spacers and a Thrifted Battle Cruiser....

Poker chip, dry wall, ship....

Pipe cleaner measurements were, green means go and red and yellow is fire. Hit modifiers were 1 length  4,5,6, 2 lengths away 5,6 and three lengths away hit on a 6.  We kept flights in sets of three and when you took a hit you removed a fighter.  When the flight was totalled you could bring it in on the game edge again for the Ceylons and the Vipers could launch another flight from the Battle Cruiser.  The Battle Cruiser only had 10 hit points and when it was completely full on hits the game ended.

We Don't Rent Pigs

Jake Spoon: A man that will talk to a pig ain't no better than a farmer.
Gus McCrae: I expected you to own a bank or at least a whorehouse by now Jake. It seems life has been a disappointment to both of us.
Jake Spoon: That might be so, but by God, I ain't never said a word to a pig.

Gus McCrae: Well we don't rent pigs and I figure it's better to say it right out front because a man that does like to rent pigs is... he's hard to stop

Secondhand Lion's First Crusade Part III and the Conclusion

The faithful followers of the Lion's Den gathered once more to fill our Thursday with mirth and mayhem.  The evenings entertainment would be the finale of our Crusades mini campaign.  Loyal followers will recall that each club member was assigned a march order in a long march column that was heading for Jerusalem.  Each club member would take it in turn to be the tip of the spear trying to retake the Holy Land.  Above we can glimpse Baron Van Pelt the German contingent arrayed for battle and attacking Jerusalem.  It was a tough fight against a better trained Saracen warlord but Baron V. managed to stomp a 10 AP victory from the Saracen army.

Here the steady German Blades elements await the onslaught of the Saracen host.  We stand firm and this is where the battle was really won.

Death alley.  This terrain conundrum was to cause much consternation for each side but once committed the knights had no other recourse than to scrum with the riders and make a back and forth push.

Out in clear terrain the knights could put a proper fix on the riders.  This was perhaps the beginning of the Saracen downfall.  These light troops were committed to a wide ranging flank maneuver that was countered by Baron V. personally!

The end of the Saracen line from the red D6 upward to the remaining warband commander there are a lot of missing Saracen warband that crashed on the Crusader shields and were vanquished!

And now on to the Grail contest.  Each club member was asked to bring in a "grail" cup for an extra D6 of AP.  The winner was Ken with a roll of 3 adding to his 10 AP for the campaign names him the Lord Protector of the newly instated Kingdom of Jerusalem.

 

Which cup in your opinion would make a suitable trophy for a campaign game?

Answer as a reply and your vote will be counted:

CUP 1

CUP 2

CUP 3

CUP 4

CUP 5

CUP 6

CUP 7

All the pretenders to the Grail Contest lined up in a row.  Which would you choose as a Grail cup and Trophy for the Campaign?

The final scores and the tournament style ladder we used to play out the campaign.  Arrows on the map were marked as each commander won his battle, thus advancing the club on toward the victory in Jerusalem.

Battle Ball Game

BATTLE*BALL GAME

The Future of Football

Hello followers,

Today we are going to tour through my collection of Battleball conversions and a nifty dice tower that I make from spare boardgame boxes.

 This was my first conversion of the figures that come with this game.  Battleball is a futuristic footballesque game of die movement, ball control, and objective achievement.  These figures are a team of 11 poses and the colored bases determine the type of die used to move and "combat" with the miniatures.  What you are looking at is a converted paint scheme and decal for a fictitious team called "The Polaris Northmen"

This is my home team for competition in the Recruits-Convention annual tournament sponsored by Secondhand Lion's member Ted Conn.

This is the championship team from 2010.

Here I am showing some 3D carnage tokens that I converted from a spare set of figures.  Basically these are cut up and hacked apart Battleball figures that I painted black and glued to a square of matboard.  I flocked the base with sand and then did a minimal amount of drybrushing and touch up.  I did add yarn flames for effect to some of the figures.

 A Northmen running back manuevers through a debris field!

Check out the runic base artwork.  The Northmen come from the North star region and are a mimic Viking type team.

A good look at our large tackles handy work.

 I wanted the carnage tokens to be neutral because of the variety of colors the teams have - I didn't want team specific carnage tokens.  These neutrals will be able to be used with any team color scheme.

The grip of death!

 

A BATTLE*BALL Dice Tower

This is a quick and easy dice tower that can be made from any boardgame box.  These step by step images can guide you through the process.

 

The first thing is to obtain an old gameboard box top and bottom.

 This is the most unnatural part of the process.  You must deliberately bust the corners of the box.

Acckk!!!  for an OCD collector this may stop you right here....

Once your box top is busted you trim off the sidewalls.

 

Save the sidewalls of the boxtop for your tray.

 Mark the boxtop into four panels.  This becomes your tower and sets the measurement for all further pieces.  This box was divided into 3.5" sections. 

Make a tray slide.  This piece goes into the bottom of the tower and I make it curved so the dice come slidding out of the tower.  The inside will have two other diverter panels glued in at 45 degree angles.  This can be very vague and any angle will do.

Tower, diverter panels and the bottom tray slide.

 

 

Construction images.  I use the glue gun like a spot welder.