Midgard : Britannia - Briton 300pt starter force

Apologies for the delay on this, the second of the two posts detailing the stats for each of the forces I will be using for the first Midgard Heroic Battles scenario. The delay was caused by having to construct the movement trays/bases and then check out my Celtic miniatures collection and prepare/glue up extra warrior figures to make up the warbands. This post lists the details representing the tribe of Britons that is hounding the Roman cohort that has become isolated.

The 300 point starting force consists of 2 warbands of elite (household) troops (armour 3), 4 warbands of young, impetuous warriors (armour 2), 2 warbands of skyclad warriors, 2 warbands of skirmishing archers, and 2 warbands of skirmishing slingers, along with a chieftain, a champion and another lesser champion to lead this local tribe.

The 300 point starter force for the Britons contains more units and therefore more bases than that of the Romans. These are representatives of a local tribe of Britons from somewhere deep in the midlands of Britannia...

300 point Briton army

Here are their stats and pictures of the miniatures and/or bases created to represent them...

Bellicus (3), Maviloduus (2), Luconianus (1)...

Leaders of the Briton warband

 

These are new miniatures that I bought from Foundry to make up the numbers. I do have other figures for use as Briton leaders, but as I am not sure how these will fare, I decided that I might need more than I already had in the lead pile. These will get based up and painted as soon as I am able, but as mentioned previously, I am happy to play with them unpainted for now.

2 warbands of elite warriors (heavy infantry)...

I have differentiated the elite infantry from regular warriors by having them clad in chain armour to denote their superior social standing. These fellas have lived through a few battles and learned that a few ales or cups of mead are no match for a sword or spear guided by a heavy hand. They have the scars from their youthful exuberance in battle, as well as the spoils to required in order to afford a decent bit of protection.

Elite Warriors

 

4 warbands of warriors (heavy infantry)...

These warbands represent the strong, fit young warriors of the tribe. Many have yet to earn their first blooding and are therefore not scared to get stuck in.

Warriors

2 warbands of skyclad warriors...

Some of the young ones never learn, or are unable, to control their battle rage and join their more wild brethren in small units of fleet-footed high-impact fearless warriors. Who needs armour, or clothing if they are honest, when they are goddess protected warriors.

Skyclad warriors

2 bands of archers...

For those less willing to join the front ranks, whether due to old age, being too young, or just having sharp eyes to shoot a bow effectively, the bow and sling armed warriors perform a useful battlefield support role.

Archers

2 bands of slingers...

Slingers

 

As you can see, many of the miniatures are unpainted. I had to make up quite a few plastic warrior miniatures to complete the warband numbers, and purchase a small number of mail clad warriors to make up the numbers of the elite warriors. I will try to paint these as I go, but I am not going to let unpainted figures stop me from actually getting them out on the table and playing a game with them.

Unfinished warriors

With regards reinforcements, I have yet to make up the random tables for them. Once done, I will no doubt have to make and paint even more Britons to keep the Roman meat grinder from going hungry. I am kind of hoping that as reinforcements get rolled up, I will be at the stage where I can collate the miniatures and paint and base them before the next game is played.

Next post will hopefully feature either the final campaign rules and peripherals or the first game of Midgard : Heroic Battles - an encounter deep in the midlands of Britannia.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh - Firewatch Island (Day 8 - part IV)

Before running with the after action report of the game on Thursday evening, here is the party list for reference (we are all currently at 3rd level)...

Dharion - half-elf ranger

Drakkon - half-orc fighter

Druss - dragonborn barbarian

Gladreth - human wizard

Korum - human cleric

Navda - human rogue

I think I have been getting a couple of the names slightly wrong in previous write-ups (apologies to the players concerned), so hopefully this will be a good reference to get them right this time...

Day 8 - continued

The new wave of zombies advanced and the melee continued. Just as we thought we were getting the upper hand again, more zombies burst from another of the upstairs doorways and attacked Navda and Drakkon on the balcony. At this point Drakkon was very close to succumbing to his wounds.

Dharion, in the meantime, was able to down a couple more zombies on the stairs but was slowly overcome by their numbers. Navda, who was upstairs at this point, became momentarily free from combat, so leapt over the balcony and finished off the last of the zombies in the main room downstairs, whilst Drakkon dealt with the last remaining zombie upstairs. After Healing Gladreth so she could return to the fray, albeit with ranged spells from now on, I made my way over to Dharion to revive him from a near-death situation.

Meanwhile, in the southern barracks room, Druss was having the time of his life doling out re-death to the last two sea-zombies left in the hermitage (that we could presently see or hear anyway).

The situation after the final zombies were destroyed

When the last zombie fell, we all breathed a sigh of relief and took stock of how we all were. We were all very badly beaten up, so we decided to retire back to the kitchen area to lick our wounds and work out what to do next. I hid my amulet that was still glowing in a pouch to reduce the light emanating from it and thus being a beacon that more interlopers from the sea could zone in on. As we began to barricade the kitchen door with the tables and chairs in the room, we heard noises from all around; upstairs there was more movement, and there seemed to be a noise like moaning on the wind blowing through the building, as well as the sounds of panic coming from the winery.

We all hushed and discovered that the panic in the winery was Jenna begging to be rescued from Morley who was turning. As this was creating too much noise, Dharion opened the door, pushed Jenna aside and tried to Heal Morley. His spell did not work and he cursed his luck, but Gladreth, misreading what had happened, and expecting the worst, mistakenly cast a Ray of Frost at Jenna who then berated her for aiming at the wrong person. I headed into the room and cast a Lesser Restoration to remove the disease from Morley - the power of my lord god entered into him and removed all traces of the corruption.

Unfortunately all this noise attracted attention and we heard banging, dragging and scraping noises from outside the kitchen door. Unable to contain his rage, Druss pulled back our make-shift barricade and re-entered the main hall. He noticed that a few of the zombies' bodies were missing and a couple more sea devils had entered the manse to investigate what had happened. It was then that we all got involved in the fight again, but for some unknown reason this melee was very short-lived.

Several of us ganged up on one of the more animated zombies and Navda, with the speed of a viper and the eye of a hawk, dispatched the final zombie coming down the stairs with one critical shot from his bow.

With this fight finally over, we took stock of our situation again. We could still hear the moaning on the wind but all other noises had stopped.

We returned to the kitchen, re-barricaded it and tried to get some rest before the sun rose. We all needed to heal up and regain our spells as every magical feat we had at our disposal had been used or had expired during this fight. Dharion, Jenna and I locked ourselves in the winery with the newly healed Morley in order to get a long rest, whilst the rest of the party took turns to watch for further zombie incursions.

Midgard : Britannia update

I have not updated my progress on the Midgard project for a short while, so here is a post bringing things up-to-date...

Things have been ticking along slowly in the background, but real life has taken over a little bit recently, hence the delays in getting the campaign underway. Since the last update, however, I have got quite a bit done on the Britons, but there is still quite a bit still to do to get them finished to the same level as the Romans. As mentioned in a previous post, I am not going to let unpainted miniatures stop me from playing but I have had to prep the force in other ways.

The 300 point Celtic army - still a WIP

Firstly, the bases had to be made up and brought up to the same standard as the Roman versions. Over the last couple of weeks I have been slowly getting them ready. As they were new out of the box, they had to be glued together (I only prepared the Roman bases when making the How to... guide in a previous post), have some sand added (which needed to be inked and painted), and finally some flock and tufts glued on. Unfortunately, I had run out of some of the basing materials so I had to look for alternative sources; I was able to find a bag of builders' sand in my garage to take the place of the Games Workshop sand I used on the Roman bases, and I have had to order in some more grass tufts and flowers for the Britons' bases. Hopefully these will arrive sometime next week.

With regards the miniatures, I was short by quite a number to make the bases needed for the first battle. Luckily I had a few sprues left in the plastic pile that I could utilise, so I made up a number of standard warriors and a small number of heavily armoured (read chain armour) elite warriors, but not enough to fill out all of the bases. I didn't want to order up any more figures for this project, but as I wanted the first battle to be a fairly standard affair with as few warrior types as possible, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a small number of Celtic nobles and elites from Foundry. I have never used Foundry figures before - all of the other miniatures in this project are from Warlord Games, but Warlord did not have what I needed.

Anyway, here is the progress on the Briton force so far...

Two units of Skyclad fanatics

Two units of Archers

Two units of slingers

Two units of elite warriors awaiting reinforcements

Four units of heavy infantry

To complete this force, and to get them ready for battle, I need to take delivery of the basing materials, complete the movement trays, take delivery of the last few figures and get them ready for the movement trays. Any painting required will be done over the next few weeks - I think even just an undercoat will make a big difference to the look of the bases rather than leaving them in the bare metal/plastic state they are currently in.

I still have a few campaign rules to iron out and a map to make, but these details shouldn't take too long. As soon as I am ready to go I will complete these and re-read the pertinent parts of the rules to get me started.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh - Firewatch Island (Day 8 - part III)

 Day 8 - continued

A few of us climbed down the ladder into the darkness. I cast Light onto one of my holy symbols to illuminate the room below. It was fairly large, with rough-hewn masonry walls with the occasional hole that let in a very little daylight; presumably this meant it was slightly above ground at those points at least. There was an inert skeleton at the foot of the ladder.

The bright light disturbed three people (two humans and a dwarf) huddled in the darkness and they began to wail against who or what we might be; they were very frightened and assumed we were there to kill them. We placated them as best we could and asked them their story whilst taking in the surroundings. We found out that their hermitage had been attacked suddenly yesterday at dusk, by what appeared to be undead beings from the sea, and very few of them had made it to safety. Whilst we tried to gather together their story, the skeleton in a breast plate was looked over by other members of the party. It turned out that the possibly year-old corpse was in armour that had not tarnished at all in that time. The armour was most likely magical and we vowed to return for it later. I took possession of a small gold amulet of an ancient sea god (rays of the sun over an ocean) that was also found on the corpse.

The least fearful of the trio asked after their brother, Aaron - two of them at least appeared to be religious folk. Jenna confirmed that she was a priestess of the hermitage and Barrett was one of her disciples, and that they had sent Aaron to the tower to light the beacon and ring the bell to raise the alarm. We told her that we had not seen Aaron, but then again we had only explored the ground floor. The third person, the dwarf, was trying hard to disguise who he was, but by subterfuge, Gladreth, our wizard, was able to work out that he was Morley Tobe - the dwarf we were looking for.

Whilst examining each person for signs of harm, in case we could heal them to show our good will, we noticed that Barrett was shivering, and his skin was covered in boils and had turned a blue colour. Both he and Morley seemed to be coughing a lot. Jenna appeared unharmed. I tried to persuade Jenna to join us upstairs to separate her from what I thought were two diseased beings, but she said that the dead from the sea would be returning soon (especially as we had been making so much noise upstairs - they were attracted by noise), as it was nearly dusk and she didn't want to leave safety. As we turned to leave and seal them back in their safe haven, Barrett coughed up a gout of blood and attacked Jenna and Morley. We managed to pull them to safety and lock Barrett in the cellar below.

At the point we had to stop play

Jenna started to become hysterical as she wanted to get to somewhere safe from the sea zombies. We decided to re-barricade the doors of the hermitage that we had earlier broken down in order to give the appearance that the doors had not been disturbed since the previous day, and we put down some of the oil of slipperiness that we had found earlier in front of the main entrance and south doors.

As the sun finally set, we locked Jenna and Morley in the kitchen winery swearing we would protect them and took up positions in the main hall ready for combat - most of us were downstairs but our rogue and barbarian made a move upstairs to ward the balcony after Jenna mentioned, just as the kitchen door was shutting, that the zombies also attacked through the roof.

The upstairs doors were all spiked but one of the doorways did not have a door within it, so that would need to be guarded. It was at this point, as it got dark, that we could hear groaning noises and bashing at both the northern main entrance and southern doors.

Upstairs at the point we had to stop

As Dharius and Navda returned to guard the open doorway on the balcony a crossbow bolt from within the room caught Dharius and forced him to retreat. At the same time, downstairs, the northern double-doors and southern barracks doors were smashed open to reveal a large number of the sea-undead beyond. We were surrounded and in for a tough fight.

I was covering the northern doors and as the undead poured into the main hall from two directions, I felt that my gods given powers would be needed more than ever. I channelled my divinity into the Radiance of the Dawn power and saw several of the zombies take radiant damage; one of them crumpled immediately and the others were severely harmed.

As more and more of the drowned dead entered the hallway we had to fight for our lives. It seemed that there were more than one type of zombie; some were much faster and capable than their slower brethren. The fight upstairs went badly for Dharius and Navda, so Dharius called for help. He managed to take down two zombies on the stairway whilst our trusty half-orc fighter passed him on the way up to help with the combat in the balcony rooms.

The fight progressed painfully for us (I had to Heal Gladreth twice and others in the party took damage that I couldn't get to to Heal), but we managed to slowly beat our attackers back; until more undead arrived at the southern and northern doors...

Midgard : Britannia - Roman 300pt starter force

This is the first of two posts detailing the stats for each of the forces I will be using for the first Midgard Heroic Battles scenario. It will be 300 points a side and will represent the first time this particular Roman contingent encounters the enemy and finds out that they have become isolated.

The 300 point starting force consists of 3 units (centuriae) of legionaries, 2 units (centuriae) of formed archers, 2 units (turmae) of cavalry, along with a mounted praefectus, a primus pilus and another senior centurion of the cohort to lead them.

Here is the 300 point army for the first scenario...

Here are their stats and pictures of the miniatures and/or bases created to represent them...

Lucius Valerius Corvus, praefectus castrorum...

Marcus Aurelius Bellator, primus pilus (centurio)...

Gaia Pomponia Thrax, pilus prior (centurio)...

III centuriae of legionaries...

Although I am using figures armed with pila, I am not classing these units as having missile weapons - they are to be used as heavy infantry only.

Centuria III

Centuria II

Centuria I

II centuriae of auxiliary archers... 

I centuria of archers from Gaul...

I centuria of Hamian archers from Syria...

II turmae of cavalry...

Turma I

Turma II

This is the initial force garnered from the Roman legionary and auxiliary cohorts. There are three more legionary centuries, two more turmae of cavalry and four more centuria of auxiliaries (these will be randomly rolled for each reinforcement phase with a preponderance going forward for milites rather than sagittaria). I have more than enough legionary miniatures to make up several more bases but I am limited with archers and cavalry, so I will have to be careful with what reinforcements I am able to give to the Romans.

Next post will hopefully feature their opponents - a fictitious tribe of Britons from somewhere in the midlands of Britannia.