Battle of Campaldino Play Test!

To get prepared for Enfilade I ran a test battle with my gaming group to see how the scenario for the Battle of Campaldino would work.  The first thing I found to be difficult was the size of the table.  The table was a little too narrow at the game shop.  This shouldn't be an issue at the convention.  I hope!  While looking at the battlefield as a whole, I left off the extraneous pieces to leave the playing area the main focus. 

The forces were setup as close to historically as possible.  This was based on my reading and a board game I have on the battle. 

The battle was fought using Piquet's Band of Brothers 2.  To recreate the initial charge of the Ghibelline Knights they moved first on any Move card that appeared and would continue to move until they connected with the Guelph first line.  Those units would also melee without the need of a melee resolution card.  This would be the only time they had these special rules.  Once contact was made and the first melee resolved, the main rules would then apply.

The initial charge was met and the Guelph front line routed.  Historically accurate so far. 

The second line of Ghibelline Knights wait for their chance to charge.

The Guelph archers sit in the tree line waiting to fire.

Novello's command that historically left the battlefield once the battle started, moved down the road to attempt to flank the Guelphs.

The Guelph Knights charge into the waiting Ghibelline Knights.  The fight was bloody.

The center of the battlefield locked in a deadly melee for most of the game.

The forces locked in melee, the Ghibellines routed soon after.  Their moral getting dangerously low.

The Guelph infantry wait for orders.

The Ghibelline infantry waiting to move forward.

The Guelph forces move forward.

The Guelph Knights hit the Ghibelline infantry line.  At this point the damage has been done with the routing Ghibelline Knights sucking up moral chips.

The Ghibelline Knights routing away.  The battle is over with the Guelphs winning the day.  A historical result overall.

The Guelph Infantry refused their flank to receive Novello's advancement.  The battle ended before they could be put into play.

Over all I was happy with the way the rules and the scenario worked.  I hope all goes as smoothly at Enfilade in two weeks.  I will post the results of that battle when I get back.

New hills to go with the new forests

So after building some new forests for my games. I decided that I needed some new hills as well.  So I went to Kallistra to pick some up.  I've purchased a couple of their smaller hills once before and really liked them.  They are well made, sturdy and come pre-flocked in a couple of different colors.  So this time I went big and bought two of their 15 hex, 1 each of the 8, 7, 4 and 3 hex sized hills. 

The really nice thing about these hills are that they fit together nicely.  You can create and endless amount of arrangements with the hex design.  These lovely hills will be making their gaming debut at Enfilade in two weeks.

Built some new Forests.

 So a few years ago I built some forest bases for my games.  If you scroll through some of my past posts you will see what I had made.  Those were all first time attempts and I wasn't happy with them but I stuck with them until I figured out what and how I would redo them.  Well after searching the internet and finding lots of different opinions on how to build them and I found some great ideas. I had two requirements for this project.  The first was that the trees had to come off of the base for storage.  The second the bases had to be large enough for firing distances and for the troops in them to have some sort of visual spotting range once inside of them.  After looking through the rule sets that my group uses the most, I decided that base of the forest had to be at least 6" in depth.

The first thing I had to acquire was new trees.  With this I decided to build my own using Woodland Scenics trees and foliage. The Woodland Scenic trees have removable trunks so I went with them.  So after much trial and error, I came across a system that worked for me at least.  I purchased some glue called 9001 clear.  This stuff dried in a couple of hours.  Once that dried I then took some aquanet and sprayed the foliage to harden it up.  Once that was dry I worked on the bases.

For the bases, I borrowed an idea from another blog (who's name escapes me at the moment) and went to Home Depot and bought some self-adhesive flexible tiles.  They were about $1.50 a tile.  I bought 6 of them.  I also bought a roll of draw liner to stick to the back of the tile and to prevent them from slipping.  I then took some good scissors and cut out patterns of what the forests would look like.  I then glued down the tree bases to the forest base.

These photos show the trees on the forest base before I glued down the tree bases.

Once the tree bases had dried I applied some Liquitex Matte Gel and mixed it with Burnt Umber Acrylic Paint.  Using a painting knife I smeared the gel onto the forest base.  Ensuring I covered the tree bases.  Using some Woodland Scenics Fine Turf and Static Grass Flock in Harvest Gold and Light Green, I sprinkled it all over the bases.  I let that sit for 24 hours to dry.  I then sprayed the top of the bases with Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement.  That sat for another 24 hours to dry.  The finished base looked like this:

I then put the trees back into their bases for the finished product.  I added some 15mm pikemen to give a sense of scale for the pictures.

I'm rather happy with how they turned out.  I will be using them this weekend for the first time.  Hopefully they will stand up to the rigors of gaming.

Some new books arrived this week.

Some new books arrived this past week for my reading pleasure.  I thought I would share my new finds with you all.  

The first is Mussolini's Navy.  An excellent book on the Italian Navy during WWII.  I've always had a fascination with this navy.  This book gives an excellent overview of the navy and the ships and men who were a part of it. 

There are wonderful pictures of each class of ship.

Along with color photos.

And a wonderful guide to camouflage used by the navy.

My next little gem is on the Roman Army as you can see from the picture below it's about the complete Roman Army. This books cover every facet of the army from it's very beginning to the end.  Lots of photos and great diagrams.

The last book I picked up is Don Troiani's Soldiers of the American Revolution.  A great book of Don Troiani's paintings.  It's also a great reference also for my AWI project that I'm working on at the moment. 

This is one of the great illustrations in the book along with wonderful photos of equipment used by the people of the period.

10mm Medieval Photos

Based on my last post a few people asked for some close up photos of my 10mm figures.   So here are a few photos of them.  Like I posted before all of these figures were painted by DJD Miniatures.  I really like how the Palvesari turned out. The shields are magnificent.

The Battle of Campaldino, 1289 Enfilade Setup

It's that time of year again.  Getting ready for Enfilade at the end of May.  This years theme is Obscure Theaters or Battles.  I have decided to run the Battle of Campaldino which featured the Guelfs vs. Ghibellines.  I figure this is obscure enough of a medieval battle to run and to enter into the contest for the theme. I love medieval Italy and all of the factions that fought all over that country.  It is a very interesting time period and I used it as my minor for my masters degree in history.

I have a board game called Guelfs vs. Ghibellines which I'm grabbing the terrain layout and order of battle.  Like most medieval battles this one was fought on a wide open plain with a slight rising hill on one side and three rivers making up the boarders of the plain.  An Abbey sits in one corner of the hill and a road runs along the base of the hill.  There are only a few clumps of small woods in the area as well.  At the moment I'm not sure if the plain was a farmed field or not.  Most of the information about the battle tends to focus on the combatants and not the terrain.  While the game board for the game itself is useful, having an actual description from someone there would be beneficial.

For this battle I will be using Piquet's Band of Brothers.  I will be using the domino method for the impetus pulls.  This way each side will have a chance of moving and it will lessen the big impetus swings that can happen with the dice.

Below is a picture of the Ghibelline army that will face off against the Guelfs.  All of the figures are 10mm and are from Pendraken.  They were painted by DJD Miniatures.

This is the Guelf army also 10mm and from Pendraken.  They were also painted by DJD Miniatures.

I am hoping to run a test battle in April with my group.  All I have to do now is make up the terrain and the battle rosters for both armies.