Thoughts on figure basing in Lion Rampant and Le Art

I was messing around with some figures in anticipation of an upcoming live, online battle and thought I may as well take some photos. I plan to do a Lion Rampant battle with my Wars of the Roses figures first, followed by a 100 point a side Le Art battle, so wanted to gauge the table size would would best suit the different systems.

First up is the 100 point, or just under in fact, army for one side. As you can see it is made up of nine units with a cart representing the camp and a single commander figure.

A little blurred, but the frontage in one long line is about 30 inches or 76cm. Two units of mounted knights each costing 12 points.

A unit each of spear men and bill men, the dice show the points cost of each unit, so spears cost 7 points whilst bills cost 11.

A unit of elite foot knights, I added an extra rank to show elite status, costing 14 points.

Two units of elite archers.

Two units of light cavalry.

The cart which represents the camp and the leader figure.

Switching to Lion Rampant, I have left the figures on the bases, but in actual fact, the bases would not be used with this game system. They would be in groups of six or twelve figures with no front or flanks. As you can see, a much smaller force is needed for this skirmish game. This retinue represents a standard 24 point force, though I have only used 23 points.

A much more compact force for a smaller table.

The leader of this retinue is one of the six mounted men at arms, so a leader figure is not needed, we will call the guy on the left with the impressive green and white plume the leader.

A unit of six foot knight at 6 points.

Archers at 4 points.

Bill men at 4 points also.

Finally, a unit of spear men for 3 points.

Of course you can mix and match the force to your own liking, or make it more suitable for the battle ahead, be it defensive or an attack force.

I am currently uploading a short video of this on my You Tube channel if you want to see and hear more.

Playing Miniatures Battles Online

This weekend I will be hosting yet another game of Blucher for the community. This will be an epic fight set within the 1812 invasion of Russia. My good friends Ian and Neil - whom you may recognize from many TtC PAINT & CHAT sessions - will be Russian and French commanders respectively. Also, we will have some special guests to lend some advice and support to our two glorious commanders.

Preceding the battle, we will also be having a session of Scharnhorst to set up the armies for the coming carnage. This should be taking place the day before the actual battle itself. Although I haven't played only but once using these "mini-campaign" rules, I do so love them. They really would work quite well with any period really. Anyway, this amounts to even more fun over the weekend.

If you are curious about playing miniatures-based games online look no further than this blog! It's one of the reasons we started this whole community! Needless to say, playing online is really pretty easy. Just have a watch at some of the LIVE Plays we have done already over on the TtC YouTube channel. It really is as simple as choosing a player to host the battle - the guy who supplies all the minis, terrain, and table space. As long as this person also has a webcam and a mic all is well. Everyone just joins the Hangout on G+ and the game can start.

Playing RPG's is also a blast on Hangouts! In fact I have a campaign of
Dragon Age starting in a couple weeks using G+ Hangouts with some
of my friends from the TtC community.

I really do highly recommend trying online gaming with G+ Hangouts. I know quite a few people who use Skype to do this, although this is seldom public - it would require videoing the session with an additional webcam and uploading it to YouTube. G+ Hangouts are a blast really, and they have all kinds of useful game-related apps too. One example is Dice Stream, which is a dice rolling program that works pretty darn good. Still, I prefer to pick up a hand-full of dice and throw them myself. I mean would anyone really cheat with their rolls? I wouldn't.

G+ Hangouts are a good way to try out different rules too!

Anyway, feel free to watch our battle on Friday at noon EST. The actual fight will be on Sat. at the same time. You can watch later too if you want, since the video will be uploaded to the TtC YouTube channel :)

And with that, we are off! See you all soon.

~K

The weight of command.

After an interesting discussion on last night's paint and chat regarding an upcoming battle we have planned, I penned the following.

Mikhail Kutuzov left the warming glow of the campfire and his Corps Commanders. He needed to be alone to think. He carefully walked to the edge of the bluff on which his headquarters were situated and looked down on a myriad of twinkling campfires that stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see. Smoke, cooking food and snatches of men's voices could be heard as they mingled together and drifted up to his position.

How many of those men would still be alive to eat an evening meal tomorrow?

His raised his eyes to the distant hills, they too were blanketed by twinkling campfires, that looked for all the world like the stars in the sky. The enemy too, would no doubt be cooking food, the men talking and laughing, living for the moment and not thinking about what the dawn will bring.

Was the enemy commander looking across to this very position at this moment? Was he also alone and struggling under the weight of his command.? Had he too tried to allow for every possibility that may occur in the battle that would be fought in the morning?

Mikhail Kutuzov had hammered home to his Corps commanders the importance of communication, they could carry out their orders as they saw fit, they were all competent men. But he needed to be kept informed at all times, being blind on the battlefield had always been his greatest fear.

He turned back to the campfire, he would sleep little tonight, the fate of this army and perhaps his nation, would depend on how he and his men performed in the heat of battle...

It will be interesting how much information he actually does receive.