AHPC XI - Mike W [Hall or Traps] Irish Scallywags leading the good Father astray!

This is my third Challenge (excluding the interim Lockdown Challenge last summer) and it feels good to be back! I hope everyone has stayed (and will stay) well and thanks again Curt for organising this diversion from the real world...

My topic for today and the initial one for this challenge, is a small vignette depicting two Irish Kerns leading a travelling priest astray, this is for the first chamber of the Challenge XI Dungeon - The Hall of Traps . The Priest is a Gripping Beast plastic monk from their Anglo-Danish set, whilst the Kerns are both form the Wargame Atlantic plastic 28mm set.

You'll likely see many more figures form these sets in coming posts during this challenge as I build upon my Anglo-Danish forces for my Hastings 1066 project and the ongoing Elizabethan Wars project we have going at the SAS Wargames Club.

So the premise of the vignette is that we have one kern directing the travelling priest off the well worn road to a position where the two scallywags will rob the priest of his golden cross and other religious artefacts.

L to R: Wargames Atlantic Irish Kerns, 1st is pointing the way.

2nd is encouraging the priest with a spear. Gripping Beast Priest

The priest is in a brown habit, with little of worth about him except his crucifix and holy staff, the kerns are in traditional 'ochre' type coloured garb.

Spear Armed Kern, before washes applied

As usual I have undercoated all figures in white then painted on (in this case) quite a lot f flesh and then their clothes before  detailing weapons, shields and belts etc.

Priest, pre-washes

All finished off with various coloured washes - which I'm currently experimenting with, and then varnished with a matt finish.

The other Scallywag - pre washes

So I used Flesh wash on all skin areas, cut 50/50 with water to tone down the pigment. On the priest's robe I used uncut brown wash, to help give the cloth a richer, darker feel and I used a brown wash cut 1/2 with water on the Kern's cloths to give a light brown shade. After washing the figures I applied a little base colour as highlights.

Final Vignette: Priest being diverted off the main track

Final Vignette: From another angle

Final Vignette: Priest has his 'bling' on view, encouraging the Scallywags!

Final Vignette: Priest trying to ignore the Kerns

Final Vignette: A Kern with spears behind you is never good....

Points:

3 x 28mm Figures @ 5 Points Each   = 15 Points

Hall of Traps Bonus                            = 20 Points

TOTAL 35 Points

2020 Gaming Results

By John 'The Hermit'

I know, I know, you all thought I’d forgotten it this year didn’t you? But despite our setbacks from the zombie pandemic and Doris and his nanny state government’s responses we did manage to score a few games throughout the year and if you count Mike W’s sterling efforts at running the entire ACW as a remote (virtual) game then we still have a clear winner in the two categories of;

1. Most popular period 

2. Player who contributed to the most gaming weeks.

Therefore without further ado (fanfare please!)

The most popular period of 2020 was.......yes, you guessed it........ACW! Hurrah!

Followed (miles behind) by.......Medieval in second place and Colonial in third place. (Medieval speaks for itself and Colonial covers the Boer War and the Sikhs)

The Player who contributed the most was........yes, you guessed again!.......Mike W! Hurrah again!!

Followed (again miles behind) was Steve in second place and finally me coming a distant third due to a late spurt of a couple of clandestine games at Mikey’s in a brief moment of Dorris allowing households to mix for a nanosecond around mid Autumn.

Rupert, Dave and Mark also just made it onto the scoreboard in time. Rupert due to his games in January and Dave and Mark as late entries (Dave assisting me with Sikhs plus his Viking skirmish, Although that added even more points to Mike W for providing the figures and finally Mark with his WW2 effort at Steve’s house.)

So there you have it; the “efforts” of 2020. Without Mike W whose campaign ran for 27 weeks non stop we’d have a had a pretty dismal year, but trust one of our boys to come up trumps when our backs were against the wall to keep us amused in our hour of desolation and bewilderment when trips up to The Star were like a distant memory and we’d all but forgotten what Chinese on a Friday night tasted like. Along came ‘Tommy Atkins’ to save the day. Well done Mike W for such a resounding success with his ACW campaign.

Oh, and thanks to everyone else for taking part. It’s not much of a party if you don’t have any guests!

Stay safe and lets hope 2021 is more gamer friendly.

More on Ancient Chinese Armies

 By Dave Vallance

One of the Warring States Ancient Chinese armies for DBA in 6mm, is the almighty Chin.

In front are 3 elements of Crossbow

2nd line, on army photo above, on the left, 2 elements of Psiloi light infantry, and 4 elements of loony Warband on the right

Psiloi Light infantry

'Loony' Warband

Back line, 1 cavalry element t on the left, 2 Heavy chariot elements (General in the one with the parasol, as are all the other generals). These are treated as Knights in the rules.

And finally 1 element of Light Horse.

13 units, but there are options to have choices to make up the 12 elements, in this case, either 1 Psiloi or 1 Light Horse.

The other armies are similar, some spear heavy, some crossbow heavy

Another shows close ups of the chariots. The General could be one of the three Ting brothers, Bo, Lu or Shu (work it out!)

And finally, one of the walled towns, in this case the town of Pi Sha. Note the tower which is slightly leaning. The buildings in the middle are not stuck down. 

Fighting for Liberty

I don't think that I've previously mentioned a specific book on this blog before, however, I have just finished reading Stephen Carter' Fighting for Liberty, an in depth look at both the Monmouth & Argyll Rebellions in 1685.

A darned good read it is too and for those of us lucky enough to have been on the 2017 tour of Somerset, following Monmouth's footsteps, its a very enlightening read. Dave is reading the book as well and has said its a good 'un too.

What it does highlight is just how organised the Whig rebels were, why & how much Monmouth and Argyll, mistrusted each other so much and how the various armies were organised - in quite some detail!

Having taken inspiration form the book I painted up a troop of rebel horse that can be used in either Monmouth's or Argyll's armies.

Monmouth's Lifeguards, 1685

The figures are Front Rank and arguably a little late in style for the 1685 rebellions, the next batch will have more campaign style 'battered' hats, as these are Lifeguards I wanted then to have a touch of avante-guard fashion about them  - thus they are sporting a natty purple coat, faced red, supplied in bulk from the Dutch Republic, these coats were found in both Monmouth's and Argyll's stores along with supplies of black powder and weapons which also included large numbers of double barrelled carbines and quad barrelled pistols.

Three Troopers in Purple and Red coats funded by William of Orange

These six figures represent three troopers in their purple jackets plus a trumpeter in reversed colours, along side two officers - one wearing his English army red coat with blue facings and the ensign in a blue coat with red facings.

Another view, these guys were veterans who fought in Dutch Service

The officer has possibly deserted one of James' Guards units (or more likely a militia unit) to side with Monmouth, whilst the Ensign has potentially deserted the Oxford Blues to do the same as his new commanding officer.

Command figures, the standard is from an illustration in the book

So Monmouth was able to form a Troop of Lifeguards and this is what these fellows represent in the English rebel army.

Another view of the command group

If deployed north of the border these guys would form a troop in Argyll's cavalry force lead by Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, these guys were known to be 'Dutch' veterans and fought well at the Battle of Muirdyke.

As an aside one of my ancestors, John Whiteford, was an the Ensign in William Cleland's Troop of the the Scots Regiment of Dragoons, who fought at this battle defending James II's cause against the Whigs. 

The yellow ensign in the photo's is a flag presented to Monmouth's Lifeguards by the women folk of Taunton in Somerset.

Once the current Covid madness is over I plan to run a series of games following the Monmouth & Argyll Rebellions, for these I'll be using Barry Hilton's excellent 4Play system with a dash of campaign stuff splashed over the top - quite literally!

The Argyll Rebellion in miniature!