Crusades Campaign

Here is a set of campaign rules I have drawn up for our upcoming DBA campaign, based on GW Mighty Empires and to be played on a Mighty Empires map. They are intended to represent the "generic" crusade, perhaps the third one, since there will be several Crusader armies that will likely start as established kingdoms in the Levant. Comments welcome.

Crusades Campaign

Victory Conditions: The game ends at the end of a turn when at least one power has reached a total of 10 territories + cities. At this point the winner is the power with the highest total of territories + cities.

At Start: Players dice for order of starting placement. Low roller chooses their start territory first and places a control marker on the map accordingly. Players should choose their starting territory somewhere consistent with their historical origin (e.g. A Fatimid player should choose a location in Egypt, a Crusader player in Palestine, etc...). The starting territory may contain a city.

Turn sequence: At the start of each turn the powers are ranked according to their territory size, where territory size is measured by the number of territories + cities under control. Tied ranks are settled by a die roll.

The player with the lowest rank has the first choice of opponent to challenge in a battle. The next highest ranked power not yet challenged can then challenge any higher ranked power to battle, and so on until all of the powers are paired up. When there are an odd number of powers, the remaining power has to sit out the turn.

Each battle is fought as per the normal DBA rules including dicing for attacker and terrain placement. The attacker has the choice of playing on a 30” or 24” board size.

After the battles have been fought, the winner of each battle gains conquest points equal to the margin of victory that can be used to expand their territory holdings. All expansion must be contiguous with currently held territory (i.e. adjacent to a territory held or just taken control of). A player player not challenged and sitting out a turn automatically gets one conquest point, representing consolidation activity during a peaceful break. Conquest points can be converted to territorial gains as follows, starting with the lowest ranked power:

1pt- the player may take control of an adjacent uncontrolled territory that does not contain a city.

1pt- the player may fortify any controlled territory that does not control a city.

2pts- the player may take control of an adjacent uncontrolled territory that contains a city

2pts- the power may conquer an adjacent territory controlled by the power just defeated that is not fortified nor contains a city.

3 pts- the power may conquer of an adjacent territory controlled by the power just defeated that is fortified or contains a city.

All conquest points should be spent on the turn they are earned and cannot be saved or held over. Multiple territories can be taken control of or conquered. A player is knocked out of the campaign if their last territory is conquered.

Here is the map:

Cities: Constantinople, Nicaea, Konya, Edessa, Antioch,Tripoli, Acre, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta

Players/Powers

Chen-song- Byzantium
Me- Sultanate of Rum (Seljuks)
Bruce- Crusaders
Jonathan- Crusaders
Mark- Crusaders
Dennis- Syrians
Barry- Fatimids
Terry- Ayyubids

More High Elves

Some progress on the Island of Blood High Elves this week, I finished the Lothern Sea Guard and the Mage. Very nice models, quite time-consuming to paint




I also managed a game pitting my Brets against Daemons of Chaos at Scott's place on Saturday. I played an army featuring the Fay Enchantress who had a good day. By the end of turn 2 my pegasus knights buffed by flesh to stone had destroyed a unit of flamers, a tzeentch mage and a unit of bloodletters, plus the lady inflicted dwellers below on a unit of horrors.

Now working on a Mighty Empires campaign map and the next batch of IOB elves.

Sultanate of Rum (DBA III/73)

Over the last two weeks I finished my Seljuk army for our upcoming DBA campaign. I decided to do the Sultanate of Rum list, which is a bit heavier than the generic Seljuk list, but it is still dominated by light horse. It will be fun to play, challenging to win with against crusaders with bow and knight combinations. The figures are from Legio Heroica and I got them in exchange for painting Terry's Ayubbid army.

The army consists of Cavalry general:


An additional cavalry element:


One element of knights:


6 elements of light horse:


Spear, likely to be my camp garrison:



Choice of bow or psiloi:



Choice of bow, psiloi or auxilia:



Next up: I might get back to High Elves and break open the Island of Blood models, and I also have a plan to do a Crusade campaign board using GW's Mighty Empires.

Finished a unit of 16 High Elf spearmen for WHFB. I acquired these from Bob in a trade and they were in bad shape when I got them. I used Simple Green to strip them, and was really pleased with how well it worked. I have in the past used Pine-Sol but it is very strong and the missus hates the way it smells. Simple Green works just as well, perhaps better, is less toxic and with only a slight and not unpleasant odour. It just takes a bit longer- I let them steep for about 10 days before using an old toothbrush on them to take them down to bare plastic.




High Elf spearmen are not a game-winner, unless perhaps the unit is very large, but it provides a safe place for mages to hang out while they cast their magic. So you have really got to have some. I would like to pick up some more, but GW charges $42 for a box of 16....sheesh...

Next up: 15mm Legio Heroica Seljuks for DBA are assembled and primed.

Ayubbid DBA army

I just finished a Legio Heroica DBA army for my chum Terry at the club. In exchange, he bought me a Seljuk army that I will paint later for our Crusades campaign.

Terry indicated he preferred a dark theme for the army, so I went with black robes and dark chainmail with some gold trim, and turbans and sashes in a masculine hued colour palette (blue, red, green and white). I'm saving the pastels for my Seljuks.

First we have the General, this is a model of Saladin, champion and standard bearer. Terry will need to add a standard since I don't have anything good for it.


The core of the army is cavalry, 5 elements of it:


They are supported by 2 elements of light horse:


Then there is a choice of horde or auxilia/warband (nobody will choose horde, but they always look so cool!):


Then two elements of bow and/or psiloi:


And finally another light horse or psiloi:



Nice army, should be very competitive in good going with all the mobility, plus there are significant element choices to contest bad going patches too. It will reward a player that makes the most of manouever rather than force. Saladin was very canny, after all.

Hope they meet his approval. It occurred to me as I was lining it up that I owe him one more psiloi element. Doh! I'll get it done, mate!

High Elves

I have made a start on a WHFB High Elf army, starting with 24 old school archers I got from Bob. All the same pose, but I like that. These guys will fill out some of the core of my army which I am planning to go magic-heavy on. That will be a contrast to my Empire gunline and Bretonnian knights.





Also on the workbench is a Legio Heroica 15mm DBA Saracen army I am painting for Terry. Nice figs, should have those done by the end of the week.

2010 in Review

My painting totals for 2010:

15mm - 254 foot, 68 mounted
20mm - 808 foot, 162 mounted
28mm - 470 foot, 106 mounted, 6 cows, 1 anuran

Total - 1,532 foot, 336 mounted, 6 cows, 1 anuran which is a grand total of 1,875 figures painted. A large number were 1/72 ancients and Napoleonics and 28mm ECW. I thought I might reach 2,000 and was on track for that until I started painting Bretonnians in November and the rate declined precipitously. Next year, I will likely paint fewer figures since I am not planning on starting any really big new projects. New projects will include several DBA and HOTT armies, High Elves for WHFB, maybe some WW2 Pacific and Western Desert stuff, and Gallipoli.

I played a lot of DBA in 2010, and kept track of my win-losses:

Early medieval Poles 2-1
Scots Isles and Highlanders 6-1
Early Achaemenid Persians 3-3
Late Achaemenid Persians 8-1
Gallic 2-0
Dacians: 11-3
Hittite Empire: 2-1
Asiatic Hoplites: 5-3
Sassanid Persians: 13-11-1
War of the Roses English 3-0

Overall I played 80 games and won 55, losing 24 and one called a draw. Sassanids were the hardest army to win with (2 horde and an elephant make this army difficult to manoeuver) and the Dacians and Late Achaemenids were perhaps my most formidable, going 19-4 combined. Probably 3/4 of my games were played against Mark. Next year will feature a Crusades campaign in which I will field the Seljuks and I would like to complete my Egyptian and Roman armies. These are all formidable combined arms forces, so I would like to maintain my 70% winning rate...roll 6s baby!

I have now finished my Bretonnian army, just completed the last unit of Pegasus Knights



I even managed a game against Kevin's lizards last night, and the Pegasus knights administered the coup de gras against the Slann and temple guard along with the Grail knights. So the Brets are off to a good start in 2011 thanks to a favourable terrain set-up and some timely dispelling.