Mad Lemmey's Painting Blog

Round four. Hunter and one of his typical massive horde lists, eek! This will hurt. Last time I met him, he tore me to pieces with his Khwadji taking out my Samurai. Back to the Wadi-al-Shawady, and all to play for to avoid an ignorminious placing and shame for the Empire.. Scouting was a draw, so I was putting out first as defender. I went with my 'no, I don't corner sit' corner sitting for a turn as all the terrain dispeared off the right flank to see what Hunter would do. Hunter deployed a massive line of short spear, tribal close melee expert foot almost as long as his back edge, and two sets of unprotected cavalry on the left, one one set on the right, escorted by a brace of skilled light cavalry (think Numidians) on each flank, and a unit of pure dross at the rear to hide. My disgraced cavalry hid behind my legions on the left, waiting for the inevitable sweep round, and my legions pivotted outwards to push them back. What I was waiting for was the massive foot rush ...

Returning to Preston from the North (ooh that feels good saying that), to see the Round 3 draw, and I was up against Peter Reilly and his Palmyrians. Almost a historical match up for the second time in the weekend, who would have thought it! Palmyrians are a funny old force, which despite having great potential as a combined arms force, has never done brilliantly previously and languishes low down on the armies to pick list. It is traditionally made up of Roman desterters and dead hard catafracts, supported by useless bows. A tough nut to crack, and tougher when you have a skilled gentleman like Peter, who has already proven himself to be an expert in said combined arms forces with his Ancient Britions, in charge of the force. This was going to be a good game. Oh, and I might have been slllllllliiiiiightly hungover... Not bad scouting by the Romans, outscouting the rebels by 20%. We deployed across the Wadi-al-Shawady, where the Romans would set up camp for the next two games. Again,...

I had a long lunch as I had finsihed so early, and then onto game 2 as the round 2 draw came out and I was fighting Pete with his Turcilingi and it's three allies! Yes three. He's not had all three go unreliable...yet... Pete and Sam were sharing playing duties, and on Saturday it was Pete's turn as Sam took time off. Playing Pete you always know you will get a good game against a superbly painted army. At Rollcall he thrashed me, would it happen again? Neither of our armies really specialised in scouting with two cards each! I scored 10% more (yellow =20%, Green = 10%), so had a slight advantage. The table again skewed to the right, with two woods securing it, two lumps of rocky ground landed on on Pete's side, and then a hill in the backfield. Pretty open really, but since both armies are flexible, it does not really bother us what we fight in. After initial deployments, it was obvious that yet again I was seriously outnumbered. Pete had a line of warband devastating...

The Ribble chaps, Pete and Geoff, assisted by Sam, Roger and Ian, ran a dead good event up in Preston at the end of April. Dead good for many reasons: i) It's Preston, in Lancashire, (waits for inevitable bias from Yorkshire people making their usual rants). My family hail partly from Lancashire, and it's dead good to get back. ia) You could see the Lakes as you drove past Preston as the weather was perfect, traffic was light, Ipod was full of good tunes, and it was dead good. ii) I went to Lancaster Uni, it was lovely to see the old place again, so many great memories, it was dead good. iii) My brilliant and amazing friends Lynn and Martin still live in Lancaster, and allowed me to stay in their incredibly comfy spare bed, drink their beer with them and eat Chinese take away while watching great movies and laughing until my sides ached, which was dead good. iv) My army features the c.C4th garrison of Lancaster, Cohors Tertaie Nerorium (archaeologically attested to Lancaster in...

Oh look, a civil war! I have stated before, given the long, glorious and turbulent history of the Roman state, the most likely army for the Roman Army to face was the Roman Army! Geoff brought a lovely classical Roman army, a good mix of combined arms, auxilia, legions, heavy and light cavalry and skirmishers. You really could not ask for anything more as a Roman player, on either side! The terrain even looked like a classic Roman fight! Woods and rock ground secured the right, a town and a wood sat on the left, while the Campus Martinus was empty between. The scouting counters show a nice asymmetry too. Despite Geoff having four decent skirmisher units, I out scouted him by 20% which allowed me to get the slight drop on his deployment. By the end of turn 1 it was obvious to see our battle plans, line up and beat seven shades of hell out of each other! Perfect! I tasked my two cavalry units to take on one of Geroff's and one of his light horse. My 8 superiors and my exceptionals ...