DBA: Hoplite on Hoplite

I played De Bellis Antiquitatis for the first time today! I'd say it's about time. My opponent hasn't played it either so I bet we fell into every rules pitfall in the book in addition to using my hoplite figures which are based for the wrong depth for DBA. I had plenty enough of figures to field two early hoplite greek lists. We had time for two games as the first one ended abruptly.

Apparently it's a bad idea to march your general on horseback into rough terrain. They.. die if they have to retreat at all and that's a sudden death victory right there.

In the second game we got some proper fighting going on. Movement feels a bit fiddly compared to modern games. Melee involves a lot of to-and-fro pushing of stands whilst there are a bare minimum of modifiers to consider. The game proceeds quickly and I bet you can easily play a game to its conclusion in 30-45 minutes.

Based on this experience I'd rate DBA a light "filler" wargame but I'm sure the DBx vets will disagree.

Winter War Soviet platoon

I painted this platoon of soviet infantry during my summer holiday but didn't have time to photograph them until now. These figures were part of the infamous Baker Company Winter War Kickstarter which didn't end up so well, but these are pretty much the only option to get early war Soviet infantry in greatcoats with their budenovka hat.

The simple nature of these models makes them easy to paint and I didn't want to spend too much time painting these anyway. I now have a basic Chain of Command platoon for both the Soviets and the Finns. Now I just need to do some support options and oh.. terrain. I don't have any winter terrain in my collection :)

Kings of War 2nd edition

I got to take my Night Goblin army for a walk at my FLGS. They haven't been out in force since the early days of Warhammer Fantasy seventh edition and Kings of War granted me the opportunity to dust off my spearblocks. I fielded a goblin army with big hordes of spearmen and my opponent had an orc army with smaller units but more of them.

The rules were really easy to grasp and I'd rate this a light-medium wargame. Compared to Warhammer Fantasy the rules are quite a bit simpler and more importantly, there are much fewer special rules and chrome to try and remember. Unit blocks without casualty removal or ingame formation changes work fine and the game really plays fast. It's definitely geared towards armies with a lot of models, even more so than Warhammer. I think for someone who really likes metagaming and tweaking army lists this isn't as satisfactory as the GW offerings but for someone who plays less frequently and doesn't keep up with the latest tournament meta it's a blessing. Based on one game it feels like a nice game and I picked up a copy of the rules.

Frostgrave treasure markers & Purple Worms

I got around to painting the treasure markers I got from the first Frostgrave Nickstarter:

Also, some Reaper Bones purple worms for the worm hunt scenario. They look less purple in the photo than irl:

As you were.