I nipped down to Bens as he wanted to have a first go at Pillage from Victrix, which he'd had for a while, a dark age skirmish game, I played Picts and Ben used my pagan Saxons as later Saxons. Its a points based warband, what you see is what you get, to encourage you to convert Victrix figures I guess? Anyway, I had enough dark age figures to put something together with 600 points for each side. Armour is super cheap for Anglo Saxons so they virtually all had armour, which seemed a little odd, I was persuaded I had to have archers which if you're Picts are hideously expensive. We rolled and Ben was the aggressor, which meant he was raiding and stealing sheep/pigs/loot etc which I hadnt brought along and also intending to burn the village down.
I was able to place up to three figures in the village, I put the archers there. Ben split his force sending half around the village to my right so I tried to move all my troops towards his other group, the one without a leader, the archers seem to be a bit like snipers and I found it a bit weird ducking into cover like Bolt action. The close combat system is pretty good, once we worked out all the abreviations in the charts were in French, we found a quick reference sheet online, which I think is essential. It would probably have helped if one of us had read the rules beforehand, but we had fun, instead of following the scenario, it just turned into a pitch battle as Bens leaders group hot foot it into combat, swirling fights all over the village and Ben set fire to a building, ultimately that killed more of his troops than mine, we didnt reach turn 10 as my warband was anhilated but Ben didn't have many figures left by the end. A fun beer and pretzels type game that I wouldnt mind having another go at, if I use Picts again I think I'll drop the archers and armour and just get lots of lads with spears and shields. I was happy to get my dark age village out, well a mix of my small, simple timber framed buildings and some Russian log buildings, and especially the church ,plus in the search for armoured Saxons,we got to use various Asgard and Ral Partha figures, who'd all been non player characters in the first games of basic D&D I played in the 1970s and haven't had a game since about 1983! It has got me working on an ox cart and a donkey cart and prepping lots of pigs and livestock!
As I usually play Napoleonics at the club, I forgot to secure my almost entirely metal dark age collection, that won't happen again!
Backlog of AARs, some painting nearing completion, went to Partizan,saw some lovely games and it was nice to meet Mat,Steve and Ray there!
All the best
Iain
