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Author Topic: Fantasy Battles: Featuring Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames [Pic Heavy]  (Read 2893 times)

Offline Warren Abox

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 432
    • War In A Box - New Location!
I was a very good boy this year.  For Christmas I received a copy of Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames, and my 2015 New Year's Resolution was to put together a full box of matched Medieval armies complete with terrain before making any other miniature wargame related purchases.  If it weren't for the pre-order of Osprey's Black Ops I would have made it, too.  (Hey, the book won't come out until after I finished the project, so it doesn't really count!)

Being a Tolkein/D&D kind of guy, but one who wanted to play the historical RAW a few times before adding in a bunch of fantasy foo-fer-ah, the natural choice was to build historical armies using some fantasy figures.  My son and I went with the Medieval rules rather than the Dark Age rules more because big units of knights seemed like it would look great on the table.  He requested a Necromancer king army, and I went with a standard Human/Good army:

His army is built using Irregular Figures in 6mm:


My army is all Heroics and Ros crusader types:


The only terrain that wasn't scratch built was a farmstead by Heroics and Ros:


Here's a shot of the road and river system built up of simple basswood and sand:


And a quick brillo-pad forest behind the full Necromancer King's Army:


So the thing about One Hour Wargames is that you need a full 10 unit army, even though at most 6 units will show up in any given scenario.  Each scenario tells you how many units each army gets, and then at the start of the scenario you roll a d6 to find out exactly what units will participate in that battle.  So each army list is appropriate for the era, but the units available might require you to re-think your strategy. 

What I found attractive in this approach is that you can build two armies and not worry about basing - both of my forces are built up on basswood stands two inches by three inches.  You also know right upfront how many figures you need for any possible combination of troops.  That helps one stay focused on the "full box ready to play" finish line.

Here's a single shot of the opening moves in our first battle played out on the full terrain set:


In this case my forces (the human Targar Empire defending an important bottleneck against the Necromancer King's invasion) are limited to just four units: one heavy foot defending the hills on the right and three knights defending the farmstead on the left.  The invaders are given 6 units, but must control both the hills and the farmstead by the end of Turn 15.

For those looking for more details, there's a full battle report at my blog and plenty of details on force composition and figures and what-not.  Just thought I'd throw up a tidy little selection for those who don't have the time or inclination to dig around on this somewhat obscure ruleset.

Offline Hobgoblin

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 4911
    • Hobgoblinry
Re: Fantasy Battles: Featuring Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames [Pic Heavy]
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2015, 07:06:23 AM »
This looks terrific! Interesting blog, too.

 

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