The 2021 to do list - another objective met

The Dacian DBA baseline army is complete along with a few extra options.  I make it 17 elements which gives me some extras for the basic 12 elements as well as some of the alternative elements from the list like the Sarmation loose order Knights (3Kn).

Dacia's finest and not a moderately priced 4WD amongst the lot

All figures are from Irregular Miniatures which explains some of the cavalry being bunched up in the middle of the bases.  I was given the core of this army as a gift from a friend who was a member of the Sealed Knot.  That was quite a number of years ago and I'm a little ashamed that it has taken me so long to  get them into proper fighting trim by adding extra manpower to the original gift.  

The gifted figures are painted in the Baccus approved black undercoat with dots and dashes of colour system.  If you look closely can see the effect especially on the two light infantry elements in the left of the front rank.  It's not my preferred style but  if they had joined the back of the painting queue they might still have been there!  So I'm not complaining.

I will primarily field them as 4th Century Carpi rather than the earlier Dacians so that I have opponents for my Late Imperial Romans.  Although that 's not to say that I won't take them back in time once in a while. 

As an aside, the green cloth is a small square of felt I picked up at our local branch of Boyes just before the lockdown started last year.  I'm hoping that they will have it as rolls of fabric when I'm next allowed to go somewhere as exotic as the local shops as I rather like the slightly mottled effect and would quite like to use some as a base cloth.

At some point I will probably give some thought about upscaling them to a 200pt ADLG army or maybe a DBMM one but not this year.  Well not unless I really push on with my other projects!  

  

 

The Dark Ages Campaign

 Its been few weeks since I did any updates on the Dark Ages campaign.  My focus has been elsewhere mostly on painting figures and for the last week or so on pushing on with the ECW rules.  I'm hoping to be able to post a rules update in the next couple of days as I have made some substantial progress on that project.

Meanwhile back in Dark Ages.  I have decided not to fight the small unbalanced campaign actions in every case.  So the Devet v Seisyllwch battle will be solved by the simple expedient of Devet accepting it's new status as a client or sub princedom of it's larger neighbour.  I have rather a lot of time to cover within the campaign and if I want to get to the end I'm going to need to speed things up.  Plus it lets me get to the more interesting table top encounters.  So Devet falls without a fight and the game rolls onwards.

Looking back at the list of events for this turn, we now move on to the last event of 799AD.  Northumbria attacking Strathclyde by striking into Rheged.  

By 799AD Northumbria's power was concentrated to the east of the Pennines and that is how the game is set up.  The North West was contested ground under Strathclyde Welsh influence (if not outright control) in Cumbria and loosely Northumbrian in the areas south of that.  The nature of government in Northumbria at this point was such that central authority was often lacking and control ceded to local leaders who made their own way without much thought, or care, for who the king was.  It was only where a strong king arose that this changed and historically that didn't happen very often.  

In modern terms Northumbria was a failed state.  There had been a generation of in fighting between rival branches of the royal line over which line should sit on the throne and this continued right into the mid 9th century, when one claimant allied himself with the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok.  Lets just say that it didn't end well. If you have read the Last Kingdom books or watched the TV series based upon the same you will have come across them as leaders of the first wave of Viking invasions.

Looking at the available forces in the game The Strathclyde Welsh can assemble the men of Galloway, Strath Clut and Rheged itself.  While Northumbria can count on Lothene, Berneich and possibly Cumbre.  I say possibly for Cumbre, as I have designated that region as disputed but occupied by Northumbria so the Cumbrians will act as allies and may be unreliable.

The available forces will be maximised as both kings are present so the line ups look like this:

Strathclyde

Strat Clut: King (Cv), 3 x Sp (reduced by battle losses)

Rheghed: 1 x Gen (Cv), 3 x Sp (reduced by battle losses)

Galloway: 1 x Gen (Cv), 1 x Cv, 3 x Sp

Strathclyde is carrying losses from the clash with the Picts earlier in the turn so are only able to turn out 13 elements.  They cannot deploy in two bodies as they don't meet the minimum element count  I set in the rules to do so.

Northumbria

Lothene: 1 x Gen (4Bd), 3 x Sp, 1 x Ps

Berneich: King (4Bd), 3 x 4Bd, 7 x Sp, 3 x Hd, 1 x Ps

Cumbre: Gen (Sp), 1 x Ps

Northumbria has maximised the available troops so as to be able to have two commands and is fielding 22 elements.  They will field The men of Berneich as a single command and merge Cumbre and Lothene into a second.  As a disputed territory Cumbre will count as allied and may not be reliable on the battle field. 

A sheepish painting admission

 Yes I'm painting some sheep and not in 6mm either.  Lurking in the furthest reaches of my lead pile were some 25mm sheep from Irregular Miniatures.  These must have been gathering dust for the best part of thirty years as I got them when I visited the workshop when they were based in Norton.  In fact I was discussing Dark Ages figures and Ian gave me some sheep as a freebie with the comment that it would give the armies something to fight over!

I suppose I should flock these?

They are actually rather nice models similar to the Herdwick and Cheviot breeds seen on the Pennine uplands.  I have a solo gaming scenario in mind that they will feature in.  To that end I have rooted around and found a handful of Dark Age figures in  (gulp) 25-28mm.  There I said it, I'm straying from the smaller scales for once.  I'm thinking of a scenario where a couple of Norse farmers go hunting and have to cross the table top encountering various animals or humans.  The objective is to bag a few rabbits or Ptarmigan etc for the pot and get back unscathed.

The sheep are mounted on UK1p coins and just need basing materials adding to be fully completed.  I will be using flock, thank you for asking.

  

First past the post - Ironclads completed

I mentioned in my reply to Nundunket's comment on my 2021 targets that some objectives were nearer completion than others so were less challenging.  This was particularly true of the 19th Century Ironclads objective where there were eight ships still to finish. I bought these when I bought the ACW ironclads last summer for refighting the naval actions of the  The War of the Pacific between Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia on the other.  Also known as the Saltpetre War it was fought over control of the coastal area in what is now northern Chile which at the time was Bolivian and Peruvian territory an the nitrate deposits in the area.

The castings are all 1/2400th from Tumbling Dice.  I can't say that the painting is great but it is good enough and these are tiny castings so detail is hard to pick out.  I have to apologise for the quality of the photos as they were taken on my phone and have colour shifted so that there is more brown and less blue in the image compared to reality.

The first off the desk or should that be slipway is the Huascar an ironclad turret monitor.  Built at Birkenhead in 1865 for Peru, she fought on both sides during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) first for Peru and then after capture in 1879 at the Battle of Angemos for Chile.  There is a good article about her on Wikipedia.  This is the old version of TD's representation of the ship.  Since I bought this last year TD have re-sculpted the model, the new version is in fighting trim without sails set.  I don't have one (yet?) but from  the photos I have seen it looks very nice and is an improvement on this version.

Huascar.  The circular thing amidships is the turret battery

Next come two sister ships the Blanco Encalada and the Almirante Cochrane a pair of central battery armoured frigates in Chilean service.  They were built in Hull and launched in 1874 and 75.  The Blanco Encalado holds the dubious distinction of being the first warship sunk by a self-propelled torpedo.  Both ships fought at the Battle of Angemos against the Huascar.  These are reasonable castings although again I think newer sculpts may be available now.  Last to be completed were the Independencia for Peru and Esmeralda for Chile.

Blanca Encalada and Almirante Cochrane.  They are the same casting

The Esmeralda, actually a generic steam sloop casting

The Independencia, I think this is actually HMS Shah a steam frigate

I don't know much about naval warfare in this period but since buying these models I realised that sails were struck before going into combat.  The colour schemes are based on period paintings of the battle as found on Wikipedia so may not be fully accurate.  Still this is only a side project for me so close enough is good enough to pass muster.

The entire Ironclad fleet.  Colours are better in this shot

That's the first objective ticked off the list.