Defend the castle!

 For YEARS (honestly, decades) I've had the aspiration to do a castle fight. I have a campaign I downloaded off the internet of a desperate defense of a fortified town/village near Sylvania but a group of mercenaries (why yes, it does use Mordheim). One day it may see the light of day. 

 

 

 

With my list of 'things wot I need' I stumbled across some cool stl's early in my printer ownership and progressively printed a bunch. It sat unpainted for much time. Then I swapped some painting with local gamer Garret. He usually zenithal highlights and inks with a home mix to get a satisfying stone look that I dig. 

 

 

 

The impetuous to finally finish the stuff  occurred with the plan for enfilade 2025. I knew I wasn't going to make it for a variety of reasons (childcare, car that can't survive freeway speeds, geopolitical tensions, etc). But I would be able to contribute to the success of the game for my gamer friends who go yearly (and come up to Canada each summer for a game). Seth, conveniently, was up in Vancouver for rugby the same weekend I went to Trumpeter Salute at the Bonsor club and I managed to pass off a castle to him to borrow. Trotting it over as a foot passenger on a ferry was the most challenging aspect of the process. 

 

 

York 867 was chosen to run a variant of '6's are bad'. That is.....roughly the name of the rule set. It's been re-skinned a number of times, but it's a great ruleset for people who feel like they roll an abnormal number of low dice. 

 

 

 

 

Frostgrave: The complex temple three way fight.

In October 2025, Bryan hopped the passenger ferry across the Georgia straight and visited for a weekend. With local gamer Garret we played out a 3 way frostgrave game. Considering the 8 months since I played it I don't have a lot of recollection of the event. I *do* remember having the worst luck (I think 50% of my force was taken out, and possible non at all for the others). 

The pillars (printed by me) were magical constructs and would turn into chests when touched. The game was to rush forward, grab what you could and escape (which is the general theme for frostgrave in general TBH). In principle there are 2 chests per team.......but that is so unlikely it's hardly worth noting. 

Small table and tight quarters meant some definite clustering to start. 

Hard to see with white on white, but I'm a big fan of using mist (cotton fluff) to control long ranged fire and wandering monsters. It usually works quite well.... 

But not in this game. One of my henchmen gets a wandering monster charging him as soon as an opposing team activates a pillar/chest. These GD toads are slow but have a really impressive bite. Out in a single roll. 

The pillars are all converted at this point and we are dragging them away. Plus flinging spells at chests and henchmen to complicate and/or steal them from the other sides. Lots of red 'dead' markers can be seen (blood ringed bodies) in my area of the table. There are lots of square ish red x's showing damage. 

The GD toad just keeps on hunting my team. 

 It's probably subjective but I feel like Garrets archers are usually both effective and annoying. 

 

It was a total rout for my side (I'm not sure I even got a single chest), but Bryan and Garret did all right. Fun times despite the rough handling by dice rolls.  

THE HOBBY DRAGON STIRS! (2026 blog update)

With some gentle, yet persistent, prodding about updating my blog I am finally stirring into action. Like a long torpid draconid resting upon it's massive treasure pile (of plastic and lead), SOMETHING has provided enough stimulation to cause the beast to move. 

One of the barriers to blogging has been the workflow for posting picture. I have had to pull them off my phone to my computer, resize them, then post them. Due to changes in my computer setup it's progressively more annoying to access the box and cabling to do so. So....I just don't pull my pictures that often. Then I need to sort them, etc, etc.  

Despite the APPARENT absence of activity, there has been some steady chipping away of the hobby projects. Reviewing my photos I can see I manage to do a bit of painting each week. With some actual gaming happening....a couple of times a year (boo). The biggest prompt to game seems to be visits out of time (to visit me, or to visit others). 

I do have quite a backlog of games to post on, so my series of posts moving forward will be dealing with that deficit. My painting progress pics aren't super compelling, but maybe I'll try and get some of those up as well. I haven't been good about taking decent photos of completed things (the few completed things), so maybe I'll go back to take pics of them. That's definitely a reach goal however. 

Perhaps most notably in this update is my purchase history for 2026. I have bought:

- 28mm: 15 figures (and painted 13 of them)  

- 15mm: 32 infantry, 8 cavalry, 4 ballistas/12crew (artillery painted, all the rest is in early progress). 

I think, ambitiously, I may paint everything that I bought this year. Assuming I don't fall off the wagon and buy a bunch of stuff in the next half year.  

 

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 4 - Right flank [main event])

 

 

My knowledge of what happened on the right flank (of the spano-russians) is spotty at best. It was ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE TABLE. Also, it wast narrow at times to pass people.

 

 The French cleverly overloaded this flank (already owning the flank by a wrap around deployment). The Spano-Russians dropped their redoubts here, anchored the hinge at the Onion domed orthodox church, and loaded up this side with a infantry heavy, cav poor force. 

 

 

UNFORTUNATELY the corp was built of brittle units (2 strength points vs 3), this meant that in most cases each stand/division was gone after one serious fight. 

Almost immediately the Spanish were ejected from the church (cue jokes about orthodox vs catholics). The church was now a traffic issue rather than a hardpoint.   

 

Steady pressure from the hordes of French dismantle the first redoubt at the hinge. French certainly had an impressive artillery concentration on the flank, were they had placed their guard corp. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Pushing through the opening they begin to 'pinch' the second redoubt. Cleverly they have chosen to hammer a line of troops along the table baseline (damn the flanks!). I'm not sure if it was a conscious choice or a morale check that had the spanish pulling back further. 

 

 

 

Already the Russian reserve under Miloradovich (guard equivalent) is reacting to the pressure on the right and repositioning guns and troops.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pressure from the centre has created a challenge to do this. The cavalry reserves (2 corp) are moving to the centre as well, to hopefully allow Miloradovich to pivot right.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The lone redoubt holds, but not for much longer. The Russians were surprised, (but probably shouldn't have been) that when they were lost all their corp suffered a morale step loss. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At last the mess is somewhat cleaned up. There's a fighting lull as both sides are tidying lines. Troops continue to die under the steady cannon bombardment however. 

It's subtle (not many units left), but the Spanish vaporize due to a failed morale check. Across the table the players are all starting to try and pick off weakened units and shakey corp to try and degrade army wide morale. It's getting dicey even for mostly intact corp. 

  The armies are largely pivoting to form an 'east-west' front vs the original 'north-south'. There isn't a single corp on the table that isn't at risk of routing on a bad roll (1 in 3 for most, 1 in 6 for the 'healthy' ones). 

The french on their right (closest) are looking at a push by artillery, cavalry, and 2 corp across the river against their Line of communication. The defenders are present...but worn. 

 

On the french left they have a lot of weak troops and reorganization to effect before pushing onto the relatively fresh ressian guard supported by a strong artillery park. Tough sledding there.  

An extended rule discussion (this is why the rules change every year) derails us for a while. We all agree that this is, truly, a bloody draw.  No commander is interested in advancing their worn forces and breaking/routing their whole corp. It's not particularly surprising as the forces were intentionally strength matched at the beginning (actual composition was what we varied on, but each unit had a duplicate on the enemy potential roster). You'd need to be an insane commander (or a wargamer) to go ahead with this meeting engagement. 

It appeared our three new players had a good time, and certainly the regulars did. We likely will have a game/table setup at enfilade 2026 (now in Tacoma). 

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 3 - Centre)

The centre to Right flank was were the main event was. Gortshakov (lower left) was originally meant to help cause grief for the French right flank, but they left such a tiny force there it was soon dragged into the main event. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The armies faced at a sabres length at the start of the game along a line that took a 90 degree turn at the onion domed orthodox church. 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the church on the Spano-Russian flank were 3 fleche redoubts. In a non optimal outcome, the fleches were defended by a horde of poorly motivated/trained Spanish (lots of elements but not much staying power).  

 

 

 

In the Centre we had one of our new players (Chris? Craig?) with Tolstoy and the elite/guard corp reserve immediately behind him. It actually ended up being a fairly challenging command as both sides destroyed their centres quickly and the heavy french assault on the flank required the reserve to commit early to a hinge point.  

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest, my understanding of the fight on the far side of the table was a bit superficial. It seems as though tons of casualties developed with early assaults and then the Centres fell quiet for a bit since artillery was tearing both sides apart. 

 

The Russian Reserves are fully committed in the centre/hinge right. Depleted french units are being murdered by the still robust (thanks to the artillery reserve) Russian cannons creating a no mans land in the middle. 
 

 

 

   

 

 

Gortshakov shuffled from the left towards the centre and helped set up a late day push towards the French LOC. 

Both sides were on the dagger edge of breaking by this point. 


 

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 2 Left Spano-Russian Flank)

 James and I had brought troops as suggested by Doug. Hilariously we both decided to bring our Spanish as we don't get to use them much. Thus the Spano-Russian intervention was created. 

 

The spanish anchored both flanks for some reason. On my flank I had Gazan and Bagration pushing on one side of the river to cave in the French right. It was held by a token force of poles and two small french cavalry corp. 

Across the river Gortchacov held the river line and fired cannon (where line of site permitted). He would soon realize he need to push toward the Centre Right to help avoid the collapse of our forces in the centre and right flank. 

Poor command die rolls (pips) made for a slow advance on this side. Cannon are particularly hard to get moving foward on the attack, and the Poles were well played by a new player, Garret, constantly giving just enough ground and launching local counter attacks to prevent overly aggressive advances. The Cavalry was able to hide behind the tree line from Gortsachov and made for difficult opponents to hunt. 

The flank was largely a side show for the game but very late in the game this flank was busted open and left a (long) march towards the french LOC, held by a small but credible force.

 More pics after the break...

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 1 setup)

 Saturday had us setting up for the semi annual General du Corp game. It's a convention fast play ruleset (not published). Bases are roughly a division, commands are corp. Turns represent 30min. Each player commanded 2 corp (roughly). Since we have done most of the historical battles Doug decided to make up a roster of 12-15 corp. The two teams then were able to select 10...both sides having an option to sacrifice a choice to get a benefit (Russians took some fleche/redoubt fortifications and a large artillery reserve). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The teams split up to make their choice, and then decide a rough battle plan and setup  blindly. The table was split down the middle plus the left flank(s) were also open for placement (i.e. both sides could immediately be subject to a flank attack on their right). A stream (crossable but disordering) was roughly diagonal across the whole table).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We positioned cards in alternating fashion to denote the start point of the leader of each corp. The cards were flipped and placement of the troops happened alternating in order of the cards. It was fun and different and we ended up with some interesting match ups. 

 

 

 

The Russian plan (my side) was to  go artillery heavy on the left in a crossfire to give the french a problem to solve. We dropped our fortifications on the right, assuming an attack there, created a battle line across the front, and left a strong reserve of cavalry and elite infantry. 

 

 

 

 

 

The french overloaded their left flank and refused the right. A token force was left there. The centre had a reasonable force to push. Roughly 60-90 minutes after 'starting' we were all setup and ready to start fighting.