Hammerhead 2018

Slow on the heels of Dave and James's posts this is my Hammerhead post. Friday me, Dave, James and Scotty went down to Newark for Hammerhead, evening in the hotel and then up bright and early (I can't sleep in hotels so 5.30am for me) and off to the show. Dave had bought Serenity City as a participation game and it was well received. We were supposed to be helping and I played a couple of times but there was shopping to do and I spent a fortune.

Some of the games

Serenity City - amazing stuff from Dave

Chariot wars - maybe

Can't remember but looked cool

Ian Widdowson' gang refighting WW2

How cool is this - top marks for committment

This was my favourite table - Meirce (Mierce?) Dark Lands table

Their Dungeon 

Played the game (my only game played). It's OK, table although beautiful wasn't great to play on. Rules nothing special but the figures are unbelievable. Seriously the sculptor needs some serious therapy just to sleep at night. You must check them out they were brilliant.

Massive submarine and harbout battle

Some zombie thing

The VBCW boys - always fun but prefer Bolt Action Rules

So I spent all my money - really all the money less £1.84 and I couldn't find anything to buy with the last bit.

Firstly my best ever bargain from the bring and buy. Towards the end of the day a guy rocked up with 140 very well painted 28mm ACW and only wanted £1 each. Bargain. I offered him £50 for 1/3 of them and he let me have them all for £70 - 50p each for the maths deficient amongst you. 6 infantry regiments and a couple of confederate gun crews. I've spent the evening starting to put them onto 40x40 bases. Annoyingly they don't fit so I've had to trim the bases a little. Matt I now have 24 regiments and 11 field guns - you may have to move to a bigger house.

How fab

Couple of packs of Pict nobles - lovely stuff

15mm desert house - what to do with that

Paint brushes (Cortani and some near eastern flesh from Foundry_

Loads of bases

15mm scale desert hills

An now what I went for. 6 packs of forged in battle 15mm figs, phalanx, Armenia light infantry, Galatians, Sarmatians and Black Sea Javelinmen.

Spare horses - Col Bill and some casualties for the above to decorate bases

The reason for the above 15mm is that I bought a Pontic army to conquer Turkey and stuff up the Romans from Forged in Battle. Brilliant figures, always wanted a Pontic army and dream of being Mithridates VI

Finally this came in the post from Amazon. Very useful for Flames with Dave and James

Overall a brilliant weekend and the lead mountain is full up again - ish

American Civil War - the biggest of all battles

Today I was over at Matt's Dungeon to play an ACW battle, our first but we both have lots of figures. In total we had a division each of 5 brigades, there were almost 800 figures on the table. It was an epic and we used a scratch version of Bolt Action Matt had worked up (I know a WW2 skirmish game for grand scale ACW) which worked really well and only needs some minor tweaks to make it awesome. Enough preamble on with the show

The battle, Matt's trademark massive table. My 5 brigades, 4 inf and supporting artillery and a cavalry brigade) come on at random locations on the left and Matt's at 4 fixed locations. We used dice drawing as in Bolt Action and Brigade commanders then allocated orders to each unit using up more dice in the process. The problem was that we used fewer dice than units so we had to be smart what we moved.

My left and my largest brigade has popped up right in front of Matt's advancing troops

Next to them is an infantry brigade and in the centre my cavalry

The other end of the battlefield and Matt has 2 large brigades

Facing them I have 2 brigades on a hill and in a ploughed field

Matt's brigades move forward

Everywhere

In the centre is a single unit of pickets and my cavalry move to shift them

I move to the slopes of the hill so that my cannon can fire over into the advancing Union troops

At the other end I organise my troops to slow down the Union advance

Whilst Matt keeps on advancing

Back at the hill we clash in a melee and I more than hold my own

I'm completing my line on the left and it's going to be strong one

The melee on the right is still going on and pretty soon I see him off

Matt advances through a wheat field, there's always a wheat field and it's like a magnet. I have a unit facing him and he gets no further

My cavalry see to the skirmishers

Matt's zouaves get ready to charge, all the zouaves on the field are veterans and tough to kill

Matt continues to advance on the other side aided by his ability to kill most of my regimental colonels and blow up my cannon - I had lost 5 out of 7 by the end whilst he still has all of his

"There are more little brother"

His super tough zouaves hit and I kick their arse. This is the high watermark for him on this side. I'm too strong and although we trade blows neither of us can gain an advantage

I'm guarding the road with a single cannon, it fired 7 times and caused 1 casualty, 6 misses. Sums up my cannon

I'm thinning him down but new new units keep coming

But I've inflicted too many casualties on him and the attack stalls. 

End of the day and it's a draw. Matt will probably will the right but he will be too weak to help out the other troops .

This is an awesome battle that too 8 hours to play. We will play again as we both love the period