Just a quick post for the first time in a few weeks. My wife had to have emergency surgery on her left eye a couple of weeks ago after her retina started to detach, and I’ve been looking after her since then. It hasn’t been a fun time chez Lemming.
This is more of a general post than anything else, my game a few weeks ago of Maurice for our campaign had to be shelved, then my opponent had to work, and next week is getting ready to go to Vegas to play some fantasy catmen game or other, so it looks like we’re going to tentatively play on the 15th May, so expect a report then.
There’s been a mini-resurgence in Impetus at the club over the last couple of weeks, mostly concentrated on the Ancients rather than Medieval period, with two strands to it – a Peloponnesian war arena and a Successor Wars arena. I’ve been considering doing an Impetus Ancients army for a while, and might do one next year after I get my Longstreet army done and hopefully complete my Muskets and Tomahawks army. I’m looking for a second major project for next year, so this might be what I go for. I’ve looked over Markus’ lists, and the Graeco-Bactrian one looks fun – lots of different elements, which I like in an army, including elephants. We’ll see, anyway.
Note that I said my second major project for next year. I already have one major project earmarked for next year (or the second half of this year, depending on when I get my ACW Union army finished). There’s a kickstarter for By Fire and Sword which looks interesting, and which I’ve pledged into. A few others at the club have got the bug, and plumped for various armies – Tatar, Cossacks, Muscovites, Polish-Lithuanian, and Mark already has a large collection of Ottomans, so I decided to go with a Swedish army, figuring that if we end up playing in the Thirty Years War at some point, I can use them there too.
By Fire and Sword is a solidly niche game, taking place in and around the borders of Poland-Lithuania in the mid 17th C, but what a niche! There are some really colourful armies, not least because of the Winged Hussars, and the first supplement (Deluge) is apparently going to include three new armies, Imperial, Brandenburg and my favourite, Transylvania. Woohoo! A friend of mine picked up the rules at Salute, and I’ve been badgering him with questions lately, which he’s been kind enough to answer despite the number and frequency of them. It sounds like a decent game, especially since armies don’t have to be (and seldom are, from the sound of it) of equal points values, while still remaining viable in play. An army created from fewer points ends up with advantages to bridge the gap, for example. The game plays in 4 levels – the first, skirmish, takes place between a handful of units on each side, mostly cavalry, and the scenarios make it plain that these are raiding or scouting parties that clash, which makes this a large departure from most games set in this period. Second and higher levels introduce the more usual larger armies battling each other, but it’s nice to be able to get a small force and be able to play with it while we build up larger armies for higher level games, or to bring our forces together to create larger armies from 2 or 3 players a side forming an alliance. I’m really looking forward to this game.
From what I’ve heard, the large (400+ pages) rulebook also contains a great deal of history about the period and area too, and one that unlike many wargames rulesbooks, isn’t simply an afterthought or poorly-researched sop to context. When I receive the book, I’ll do a fuller review, but I’m pretty enthused about this at the moment.
