Warlord Games Successor Starter Army complete

I managed to finish off my Successor army over the past couple of weeks. Here we have the lovely elephant, another horde of phalangists, Companion cavlary and some leftover Persian horse archers who will do for Dahae/Scythian types. I think the Persians are A&A? Got them in a mixed lot a few years back. The starter kit was very good value with nice models. I am planning this for Kings of War.

And also a few more bits for my Late War FOW army - a couple of kitty-cats and a troop of Wespe mobile artillery.

Sassanid Persians

Inspired by the upcoming release of a new Sam Mustafa ruleset for the later part of the Roman Empire called Aurelian I painted a regiment of Sassanid Persian cavalry - 28mm figs by A&A with LBM shields and banner. I have a ton of Sassanids to do, but I find they take forever to paint. Even if I don't finish my Persian horde in time for the release of the rules, I still have sizable late Roman and Gothic/Sarmatian armies to play with.

Sassanids

I have a new long-term project - 28mm Sassanid Persians. I picked these up about a year ago in a lot on TMP - there are 60+ cavalry, 4 elephants, probably 50+ archers and levy, all by Foundry, A&A and Old Glory. Yeah - long term project. Maybe for MayDay 2015 if we have one.

Here are the first mounted - these are A & A models - they are almost complete as I am still waiting for LBM shield transfers for the bucklers and small round shields. But I think they are very nice figures. I decided to do them on 60mm frontages and probably in regiments with 4 bases per regiment in the same colour scheme. So here we have the start of 2 regiments.

I now have Persians in 4 scales....

Persian heavy foot and bow

Been working away at these guys for the last little while. They are Persian kardakes or Lydian hoplites and some armoured Persian archers. The figures are Hat 1/72, which are okay, but not quite up to Zvezda. The shields are topped with LBM transfers which are superb, although a little small for the shield size. They are based on 60mm frontages which can convert to just about any ruleset. I'm thinking Impetus but have been reading FoG too.

More Persians and the last Bondi

Here we have the last of the Vikings for some time, these are 8 bondi with hand weapons (Crusader 28mm with LBM transfers) to fill out my Saga warband for MayDay. I am not sure whether to field these as Vikings or as Jomsvikings as per the expansion list. I think the Jomsviking abilities are kind of beardy ubervikings, but beardiness/cheesiness goes with being a Viking in most games systems. Usually portrayed as being tough fighters even though their track record against nuns and peasants defines their reputation more so than their track record against more manly foes. 

Also completed were a few stands of Zvezda Persian foot and a couple of heavy chariots

This is a converted Assyrian chariot that will serve as a command stand.

Persians

 I've been working on some 1/72 Persians, another one of this backburner projects that I have been picking away at for a few years. This week I did a batch of heavy mounted Persian cavalry (some Zvezda and some Hat)

And a few Sparabara, I like these guys:

And before the big snow came this week, I managed a bike ride with oldest daughter, the ice is just breaking up on the Saskatchewan River. Later in the week we got a foot of snow....

I just finished most of an early Achaemenid army for DBA (I/60c). It is "most of" because the army pack was short a few elements (Ax, 2Ps and Hd) so I am waiting for Gord from Sentrybox to send me some blisters to fill in the missing guys.


The army consists of 2 sparabara (8Bw)


Up to 2 Immortals (4Bw):

Or up to 2 4Ax
Another bow (3Bw) and a light horse (2LH):
And 2 cavalry (general)
This is definitely a bad-going oriented army, the 3 mounted elements give it some mobility for flanking, but it will need lots of terrain to have any success, especially against Mark's Kushites or Greeks. Unfortunately it is Agg 3 so will often fight in the opponents terrain choice. At least it is designed to kill elephants though.

I like the way it looks, but I think it will lose more often than it wins.

Mark recently got me into playing HOTT, wow, what a blast I really enjoy creating an army from the ground up- you can add whatever you like as long as it fits under the 24AP allowance, and it has theme. This gave me a perfect excuse to paint up my 1/72 Zvezda Persians. This was great, what an awesome set of models. All those pinheads on TMP who knock 1/72 can boil their arses, these models are beautiful.

The army consists of one element of riders- Scythian or other types of cavalry, used to support my heavy hitting Hero on the army right flanks since they move 500 paces and can keep up.


I paired a Hero in chariot on the right flank. This is the quick strike force, in the first 3 games this pair of elements threatened a stronghold and rolled up the flank of a line of Elven blades. The chariot model is very nice:

In the center, I used one war elephant (behemoth) which gives the line punch:
The jumbo is flanked by 2 heavy cavalry (knights) who match the pace and also pursue, so are good elements to support a behemoth. Just don't get stuck behind the elephant.

My general is a Spear element with a second spear in rear support, this makes him +6 versus anything and the rear support element can strip off or turn to face a cheeky aerial in the rear. I like this combo for 4 AP, and the models are superb:
And finally, as a Persian you must be able to blacken the sky with arrows. I use 3 Shooters for my left (refused) flank, but these are very important elements in HOTT since they are very effective against aerials and lurkers, especially when they are in forest.


Today, we beat 2 undead armies and an elven force. We were VERY lucky not to lose to the elves, I rolled high on three critical shots that each could have won the game for Mark.

I suppose that confirms the result of the poll. Doesn't matter what you do if you can roll 6s.

Greeks throw off the Persian yoke of tyranny!

So tonight Mark came over to play a bit of DBA. My Greeks had a bad time of it last time out, losing both games, so tonight I was hoping for some revenge.


(Mark playing with his camera and not paying attention to how many elements he is putting on the table).

The first game saw my Greeks as defenders, and we threatened a littoral landing on the right flank so Mark deployed defensively:


(notice anything fishy about this picture?)

With Mark deploying in a strong defensive position near his baseline, I landed midboard with the plan to join up with the main forces as the right flank- I was going to fight diagonally across the board.


(and that little prick of a psiloi hiding in the bushes eventually killed a hoplite at +2:+2 by doubling me)

I was stuggling to implement my plan, my cavalry had overlaps on bow in the open for 3 successive turns missed every quick kill by rolling 1s, Mark was pipping 6s like crazy, and eventually I lost 4-3 when his warwagon drove along the shore and got in behind my lines shooting us in the arse before I could kill 4 Persians in the trenches.

The second game saw some more dreadful die rolling on my part even though I got the matchups I wanted. I was rolling 1s and 2s everywhere and lost 4-1. I was ready to quit DBA forever. I even threw my die in the garbage, fortunately there were no hammers handy.

Game 3 started, this time it was going better for me and I had him down 3-1. But as I am looking at the board there are still a bloody lot of Persians left to fight. So I count the elements, and there are 11 Persians still on the board and 3 in the dead pile. I ask Mark how many elements the Persians are supposed to have, and it dawns on him- he has been playing with 14 elements all night long (see the first pic above for yourself)!!! He almost soiled himself from laughing so hard. He forgot to bring his rulebook, he explained, so he didn't double check the army composition against his list before we started like he does usually. And I never counted his army either.

Aha....

So we play one last game, this time 12-12, and the Greeks finally pulled one out 4-1. Two differences. First, we had the same number of elements to start with, second, the die I was using obviously saw what happened to his predecessor, who was festering in a pile of coffee grinds in the bin. So he towed the line and produced reasonable results.

I liberated the offending die from the bin, and put him back in the box to tell his mates to behave better next time or it will be the hammer.