Henry, 1st Lord Scrope of Masham

Henry, 1st Lord Scrope of Masham, was born on 29 September, 1312, in Masham, England. Henry figured prominently in all the wars of Edward the Third, and in 1350, was summoned to parliament as Baron Scrope of Masham. He fought at Crecy, Poitiers and Najera. He died on the 31st July 1932. The Scropes of Masham were a cadet branch of the Scropes of Bolton family, hence the use of the white difference or cadence mark over the Scrope arms of azure, a bend or.

Anyway, scene set (real history, by the way, fact fans!), I actually chose Henry as he had a nice simple coat of arms, and I was able to download his flag (free, gratis, and for nothing) from the rather excellent krigspil.dk website. If you want a flag for pretty much any period, then check them out before spending any money.





I based these on a 30mm un-lipped base (i.e. a slightly larger version of the bases like those sold by GW), which handily is within a gnat's crotchet of the same thickness as my standard bases for the rest of the army. I think I'll base all my commanders like this. If I'd planned ahead a little better, I'd have put the banner-bearer on the other side of him so that I could stretch the flag out to the right and it wouldn't look (to the casual or uninformed viewer) like I'd painted his bend or going the wrong way!

The main reason I did him now, as opposed to later, is that I've been finding it rather more difficult than expected to get nice horse-flesh colours on the mounts of my hobilars. However, the English summer is doing its rainy best, so I'm off for another attempt.

Archers

Managed to find a few moments (i.e. it was raining) and got these fellows polished off this afternoon. As mentioned before, the green and white livery is that worn by troops raised by the Black Prince.




Next up, some hobilars:


I also came across an article in the paper today, mentioning a website www.medievalsoldier.org which carries a database of the soldiers who fought for England against the French between 1369 and 1453.

TTFN

Oh yeah, baby, it's the holidays!

Nothing new to report, geek-wise, apart from a few splashes more paint on those archers from the workbench a couple of posts back. It is, however, now the school holidays :) Hopefully I'll pick up the pace a bit, but if it's sunny then I'll be down the allotment. So, anyone who likes seeing the geeking I'm up to needs to pray for rain in East Anglia.

The weather at this moment? Glorious sunshine; I'm off to get weeding...

Carrot Crunch

No, not a new type of breakfast cereal but the name of the Bloodbowl tournament I went to this weekend. I had an absolute whale of a time; the Sudbury and District Wargamers did a superb job organising it. There were forty coaches - some very experienced, others at their first tourney - and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves throughout, no matter how their games were going. The continuous flow of free food, soft drinks and beer throughout the weekend may have helped towards that cheerful glow ;)

Game 1
Opponent - Amazons
Score - 0(1)-3(4)


First game was against Dave ("Lycos"), the current president of the NAF - the world Bloodbowl coaches organisation. This top bloke, aside from his other talents (gaming and organisation-wise), has the most remarkable memory for people's faces and names. He goes to pretty much every tournament running and has quite the results record, but we've never played each other before so I was pleased to see we were paired up for the first game. I really enjoyed the game, even if I was hopelessly outclassed, and I got a casualty with my chainsaw player...

Game 2
Opponent - Goblins
Score - 2(0)-0(1)


After the spanking I got in game 1, I headed right down to the bottom table where I met Emrys, another goblin coach. We were prepared for a game full of dirty tricks, secret weapons and fouling, and neither of us were disappointed - marvellous :) The picture shows the field in turn 7 of 8 of the first half when I had removed ALL of his players from the pitch. I scored in turn 8 to finish the first half 1-0. The second half was a highly entertaining repeat of the second, with poor Emrys reduced to one standing and one prone player before I scored at the end of the game to go 2-0 at the end. A win? Hurrah!

Game 3
Opponent - Humans
Score - 0(2)-3(5)


A picture of munson's human team (the lovely Greek-themed miniatures from Impact). Despite him still suffering from the night before, munson's aggressive style made absolute mincemeat of my little guys.

The roll at the beginning meant I got to receive the ball and therefore go first. Mwahaha - I fired up the chainsaw and killed his Ogre straight away before he even got to move :) This was about the best moment of the match, however, and I ended the half 1-0 down (not too bad), but with only two big (and stupid, needing to roll 4+ before they can do anything) trolls and one goblin left. As this left me no defence, another three TDs rapidly followed, with me down to one troll by the end who still managed to run, pick up the ball (!) and head for his end zone. To no avail. I have now been officially 'munsoned'. Funny though!

Game 4
Opponent - Humans
Score - 2(1)-2(2)

An awesome first half for me against Jason saw me score twice to end the half 2-0 up. The goblin on the pogo-stick (I told you they were a silly team) scored both of them, Leaping over the astonished humans and speeding towards a risky ball snatch and sprint for the line each time. The photo below shows Jason putting a brave face on things as I wound up to score the 2nd.


The problem was that for the 2nd half, all my Secret Weapon wielders got sent off leaving me somewhat reduced in numbers (down to 8 compared to his 11) and unable to defend (have you worked out the theme of my weekend yet?) as is standard for Goblin teams. He scored twice and then went for the winner. First up he cleared the pitch (including a very sneaky set of Crowd Pushes) so that I had no players for my turn 7. On to his turn 8. With the ball carrier being 7 squares for the end zone and having a movement of 6, Jason took the least risky option of the 2+ roll (with a reroll to hand) needed to Go For It one extra square. Breath held until the dice came to rest, I gasped as he rolled a 1, then I have to admit whooping when his reroll also came up as 1. The moment of his disaster is captured below, where you can also see all my players in the KO'd or Dead and Injured boxes.




Game 5
Opponent - Wood Elves
Score - 0(2)-5(3)

A game of endless misery. Sense of humour mismatch with my opponent, coupled with him managing an astonishing twenty-one succesful dice rolls in a row in a single turn, compared to me rolling eleven 1s in a row!!! Least said, soonest mended.


Game 6
Opponent - Chaos Dwarfs
Score - 0(0)-2(2)

My opponent (Val) really entered into the spirit of carnage and disaster that my dice-rolling wreaked upon my own team with great humour. By the end we were giggling like schoolchildren as we worked out more and more outrageous things that his team could attempt.


The pic above shows the ball coming to rest after I failed to roll a 3 on two attempts. The number of my players on the pitch reduced very rapidly from this point onwards. Only the truly unlikely (5+ dodge, 5+ dodge, 3+ dodge, 2-dice his choice block, pick up on a 5+) things worked for me, but it wasn't enough. My tournament ended with great hilarity, if little actual gaming success.

I will definitely be going to this one next year!

I will also definitely be taking a team that doesn't get smooshed so easily. Lesson learned.

Mustering musings

Being on a real Impetus kick painting up my HYW miniatures from Corvus Belli, I realised last night after posting that I haven't shared my intended army list. I've roughed out a 500 point list, and then sub-selected a 300 point list from that. There may be some tweaking (I may swap out the Hobilars and the Levies for some Cannon), but for now, here goes:

Command:
Average CS, Fair Commander
32 pts

Cavalry:
1 x King and Household
1 x English Men-at-Arms
1 x Hobilars
82 pts

Missile Troops:
5 x Longbowmen
115 pts

Melee Troops:
2 x Dismounted Men-at-Arms
1 x Welsh Spearmen
1 x French Levies
71 pts

Total = 300 points

On a side note, I probably won't get much further on those archers for a few days as I'm off to another Blood Bowl tournament this weekend. Given the lack of a podium finish with a super-competitive team, I'm going to go for the ultimate joke team - goblins. I had fun painting these guys up a couple of years ago, and will be aiming for the Stunty Cup instead of 'real' victory.

In fact if you look here, my team is in the gallery on the Stunty Cup site. Scroll down to the seventh picture, I think.

Green and White

Beautiful wife was sorting through photos of beautiful son (18 months tomorrow!), so I got started on a base-worth of archers. I've chosen a green and white colour scheme in honour of the archers raised by Edward of Woodstock, the 'Black Prince', from Cheshire in the mid 1300s.

Just a quick snap from the workbench:



"But Stephen, one of those archers has a hammer, not a bow!"
"That's right, Skippy, but someone has to drive the stakes in to keep those naughty French aristos at bay!"

I was sorting through the great pile of sprues of CB figs in my lead pile and found him in the 'Armed Peasants' pack and thought "Ah-ha!" I hope it works out...

In harness, and ready for action

I'm a happy geek! I got my first base of English dismounted Men at Arms / Knights / whatever you want to call them completed and based tonight (thanks, Jet, for the basing advice).

It's late and real world work is going to be heavy going tomorrow, so that's it for now, I just wanted to show off my handiwork. Not perfect by any means, but for a first go, and as a gaming piece, I'm pretty chuffed. Just another couple of hundred to paint!

These are Corvus Belli miniatures and are 15mm scale, based for Impetus.

From the front:



and behind:



and an crossbow bolt's eye view:


A little bizarre, perhaps, but my favourite is the trumpeter; I really like the linen colour I got on his coif.

GT photo

I couldn't find any pictures of any of my games from the GT, but I did find a photo of me taken by my last opponent, Frank. I grabbed it from his website, so here I am looking particularly snazzy (read: knackered after two days solid gaming and liquid refreshment) in my spectacularly geeky club BB gaming shirt:


Over my shoulder you can even see a girl!!!! She was geeking away with the rest of us. It may not surprise you that out of 170-odd coaches, there were probably fewer than half a dozen ladies. You can also see the cod-medieval way the hall is set up. I'm only gently mocking, because it does add to the atmosphere hugely.

Oh, and I fixed my last post with the proper results from my games.

Back in the saddle

After all that painting (every evening for a couple of hours) to get Mike's team finished in time for the GT (more on that in a few lines), I haven't felt like doing any active geeking until yesterday. I've sent off for a few supplies for basing miniatures etc, but no more than that. So yesterday evening I got the brushes out and painted up a squig (think toothy, psychotic space-hopper allied to orcs and goblins) as a turn counter for my Bloodbowl goblin team. It's not finished, was kinda rushed, and is pretty functional so I haven't bothered taking a picture, but it's got me back in the saddle.

So, the GT. Or, to give it its full title, the Blood Bowl Grand Tournament held in Lenton at Games Workshop's eagle-clad centre for world domination. I didn't take my camera (again - I'm rubbish, sorry), and all the ones I took on my phone came out as vaguely orange blobs. There were six games, three per day, and I took a team (Skaven) that I thought would be pretty good as a tournament team. Didn't quite work out like that, but I did finish 48th out of 170-odd, just outside the top quarter. For those not used to BloodBowl, the number in brackets is how many Casualties caused. I'll put my result first, then my opponent's.

Game 1
Opponent - Dwarfs
Score - 0(0)-2(3)

A nice bloke (Simon) as my opponent, so in that sense a pleasant start to the tournament. However, all my team got beaten up or killed, leaving me no way to defend. I was down to three players by turn 5 (of 8) of the first half. My notes for the game trail off at this point and just read 'oh dear oh dear oh dear'.

Game 2
Opponent - Norse
Score - 3(5)-1(3)

Incredibly random. BB is meant to be a game of barely controlled chaos, and this lived up to that billing. Every possible random event happened at least once and we laughed our way through those two hours. On top of that my team which had proved so fragile in game 1 came back with a vengeance - take that! Kerpow! My opponent Steve proved to be a top bloke, so the tourney continued well.

Game 3
Opponent - Lizards
Score - 1(2)-2(3)

Although highly amusing, every other dice-roll I made failed and led to a player of mine being sent off for fouling or breaking their neck while trying to dodge between enemy team members. Sigh. Dan (the other guy) played the advantages the dice gave him well, and we spent a chatty couple of hours across the table.

End of day one, and 1 win to 2 losses. I tried to be grown up about it, but couldn't help feeling a little frustrated over the way the (mis)fortunes of war(gaming) had conspired against me.

Game 4
Opponent - Halflings
Score - 1(2)-1(3)

I was delighted to see I had drawn 'flings as my first game of the day. They're basically a joke team, so I felt my luck had turned for the better. Not quite. For the first half I rolled a 1 or skull on over 2/3 of all dice rolls. I've blotted the horror from my mind, but I do know it ended with me 1-0 down after having received the ball at kick-off. The second half started in the same way but, turn by turn, it swang back to me and in the dying moments of the game, when it seemed I was fated to drown in a shallow muddy puddle of failure and self-pity, there came a spark of possibility. Knocking the ball free from grubby Halfling hands as they steam-rollered towards my end-zone, assisted by their treemen, I snatched at the ball, frantically pelted across the width of the pitch before launching a last gasp pass over half the length of the field. A fingertip catch, a scamper, lung bursting, and the draw (Draw?! Against 'flings?!) was mine.

Game 5
Opponent - Orcs
Score - 6(1)-2(1)

Now that is how skaven are meant to play. Every sniff of a ball, and I snatched it and speeded away to another touchdown. The balance of that speed is a certain fragility, but the greenskins obviously had forgotten their knuckle-dusters, and so I escaped almost unharmed. It seemed so unfair, in a way, and he took it in such good humour, that we took a longer break at half time and went to the bar so I could buy him a drink. Huge fun, great gaming companionship, and a much needed victory.

Game 6
Opponent - Skaven
Score - 3(3)-2(2)

I was paired up against Frank, a rather well-known BB figure, a German who designs and produces the most incredible scratch-built stadiums for the game (and scenery for every game he plays). I was intrigued to see how a skaven-skaven game played out. In the end it was a bit one-sided (he grabbed a last turn TD which makes it look less one-sided than it felt in the game) as my bad luck from earlier in the tournament now struck my opponent, and I was (if I say so myself) 'in the zone' and seemed able to see how the game was going to play out better than him. He took it really well, and I think still had fun. I thanked him for the game, commiserating when things didn't work out, but underneath I was taking a savage delight in my triumph. Does that make me a bad person? Or overly geeky? Both?

I had umm-ed and ahh-ed over the pretty high fee for the weekend, but in the end it was worth every penny. Even in the games I lost, and the moments when I had to overcome an internal pettiness over failed dice-rolls, I loved the whole thing - the good-natured, easy comradeship that sprung up even more than in any other tourney I've been to. Hurrah for geeking, and bring on the next tournament at the beginning of July.

Da London Eye

Yay for me - I finished a project! With a mere 15 minutes before I had to set off for the BBGT, the varnish on Mike's team was dry and I could pack them up to hand them over. He seemed pleased with them (and promptly played them against Malc, leading them to a crushing victory), and I was satisfied with the result.

Rush job photos, but they're gone now, so this is the best you're gonna get:

lineorcs

throwers

black orc blockers

blitzers

troll and goblins

Team photo

I promise you that the red has more subtlety than it appears in the pictures.