I recently got my hands on a new rules set called De Bellis Fantasiae. 

They are essentially a reworking of the old Hordes of the Things rules, but with more complexity & options, and much clearer to read, as the rather dense text used in the old rules has been streamlined and plenty of examples with diagrams are included.

Eager to try them out, I opted for a quick solo game. The rules are designed to be played at 200 points in multiple commands, but I used 100 points for today, as I wanted to keep it simple for my first game.  At 100pts, the armies are marginally bigger than the old HoTT rules. My old Undead and Dwarf armies were used for this outting. Board size is dependant of how many points per side, so at 100pts a 2' square will do fine. 

I think my terrain pieces are a bit oversized for these rules but will serve well enough for now. The dwarves had a BUA  (Built Up Area) on their baseline, a swamp on their right, with a road crossing the board from the BUA and a rough hill on the Undeads rear left corner. The dwarves should have a camp , but I figured the village could serve for that. 

Initial deployment , with the Dwarves outnumbered 2:1

Dwarven Spears, Blades and crossbows, facing Undead archers, Knights ( including the General) a mage, a Behemoth, 9 Hordes and 4 Light Mounted that could ignore bad terrain., with a swarm of Bats ( Flyers) to the rear. 

The Boney lads up close.

Stunty Spear line, with alternating Blades and Bows and a Hero in reserve. 

The bats charge forward and are massacred, while the Undead centre advances.

The dwarf Crossbows exchange fire with the Undead archers and destroy one of them.

The heavy hitters of the Undead advances into striking range and the Dwarves (slowly) advance to meet them.

4 Undead Light Mounted gallanty charge a Dwarf Hero & Blades.

A block of 9 Hordes with a Behemoth in support close on the thin Dwarven ranks.

The Mage rolls a 1 while casting a spell, triggering Magic Fatigue , which is very dangerous for the Caster. 

The Hero dispatches his opponents easily. 

The 3 Undead Knights charge home. The General and his wingman destroy their opponents but the one facing the Dwarf Blade General ( in a stylish yellow cloak) gets sent back to the grave.

The Hordes finally make contact with the spearline.

The Generals go head to head, both can destroy the other. 

 

The Behemoth is destroyed along with the entire front rank of the Hordes.

The result between the Generals was a draw, which is fatal to Knights vs Blades, and none to good for Undead morale.

The game ended with the death of the Undead General , as they had suffered enough casualties to break the army. The Dwarven casualties were light, 1 element each of Blade and Crossbow, although it could easily have been much worse. 

Overall , I enjoyed the rules, although at this points value, it is effectively just Hordes of the Things. Now that I have a better handle on the rules, I will try a 200pt game on a bigger board. 

Hi

I had started reading through a set of zombie rules called Ragers Skirmish, and they looked promising. 

I hope to try them out with a solo game this friday, so wanted to throw a few  bits onto the new mat and see if I had enough ( or too much ) of anything. 

I put down as many buildings as I could without crowding the board, and plenty of scatter terrain           ( Ragers is big on spotting things, so scatter is a must) , then put down a small biker gang and a heap of Zeds. It looked about right, so hopefully the rules will play as well as they read, and we can get a few games in . Once if finish painting the terrain. 

 

 Hi 

Peter came over last week for a game of Basic Impetus. I painted up a Classical Indian army, (mostly from Museum Miniatures with a few Forged in Battle units ) ages ago and wanted to get them on the table, so we went with Classical Indian vs Alexanders Macedonians.

We had a great game , but unfortunately, I got so caught up in the game, I forgot to keep notes , or take many pictures. So no real context, just a scattering of random in game shots that may not be in sequence...

We finished the first game quite quickly, so had time for a second game, for which we swapped armies. 

I managed to loose both games, but with different armies. I really like the Indian army, it has an unusual composition and is very colourful on the table. 

The Macedonian Companions with the blonde gobshite just visible.

One unit of Indian Elephants , being screened by some of the most useless cavalry in the game.

The Phalanx advances with undeserved confidence.

Macedonian left wing, composed of Thessalian cavalry, light cavalry , peltasts and mercenary Hoplites.

Nelly is surrounded by long pointy things

Some pike about to become a speed bump.

It's all getting a bit messy.

Indian longbows proved their worth in both games.

Massed longbows, a great bunch of lads. 

Things are about to get stompy..

Peter lining up the Macedonians for the second game.

Line up for the second game , with fresh coffee....

Never hit a Hittite

 We had another bash with Basic Impetus this morning, with Peter fielding the Hittites against my New Kingdom Egyptians. I was hoping for a different result than last time, and  I got it. 

It was worse. 

Waaayy worse. 

I came acropper once one of my chariot units got pinned down on my left flank by some light infantry. 

My infantry in the centre should have been a match for their Hittite counterparts, but clearly no-one had told them that and they struggled to hold the centre.

The Hittite chariots proved decisive, using missile attacks to weaken my infantry before charging home, and continuing on after using my troops as speed bumps. 

My general tried to do the same and got stuck  and mobbed. 

Eventually, my casualties piled up and the army reached and quickly passed its break point, survivors fleeing the field after only breaking a single Hittite unit. 

A disappointing result, but a fun game, which is all that matters.