Italian Wars Project wearing the steel that's bright and true

[Doom Beard 78]

I've been slowly pressing on with finishing off my Steel Fist Gendarmes- some time ago I backed this on kickstarter and well its taken a while to get round to doing them.

Great figures but an absolute pain to assemble, small fiddly pieces which are delicate. 

Photos as follows

1) 4 Steel Fist Gendarmes finished
2) Current footprint of the unit they will be in. this includes some Foundry Gendamres I painted a long time ago . In fact so far back that the doom of beard was just the stubble of doom.
3 & 4) From the shelves of doom, some of my complted Gendarmes

The plan, such as it may be, is to tidy some and fix the battle damage and to add some flowing banners .  I already have a Venetian unit flying the standard of  Marquis of Mantua who commanded venice to victory at Foronovo.   

[trev]

Nice additions.  Those Steel Fist figs are great and you’ve done a good job on the painting.

[valleyboy]

Excellent stuff, you can never have too many gendarmes

[Doom Beard 78]

I should have 7 units of 12 Renaissance
gendarmes, however, 2 of these have a rear rank of Archers of the ordinance companies. That gives 72 of them.

I also have 36 Burgundian gendarmes

I did once think that with that ammount of Gendarmes that Foronovo had to be on the cards. 

[Atheling]

Lovely stuff George 

I think I remember some of those Gendarmes from Lenton!

Has the historical bug rekindled I wonder?

[Doom Beard 78]

You have a good memory Aethling

I did use them at lenton when I did that 2 day IW event

[Atheling]

You have a good memory Aethling

I did use them at lenton when I did that 2 day IW event

I had some great pics of the Italian Wars campaign that were on my Just Add Water Blog V.1 which I deleted without saving the pictures!!  I really don't know what I was thinking 

The same with a ton of various WAB Campaign Weekend pictures from Lenton spanning a few years! I think I figured that I had posted them on the WAB Forum so there they would remain forever. Little did I know Andy was to delete the WAB Forum and replace it with the Swordpoint Forum.

[Doom Beard 78]

Those WAB Weekenends were brilliant. I recall several gamers being unable to resist Nottingham Rock City and arriving on Sunday morning looking like something a necromancer had raised.

I think those themed campaign days were the best. Sadly the competition gamers prevailed.

[Atheling]

Those WAB Weekenends were brilliant. I recall several gamers being unable to resist Nottingham Rock City and arriving on Sunday morning looking like something a necromancer had raised.

Yeah, getting home hammered at god knows what time was an absolute requisite! 

I think those themed campaign days were the best. Sadly the competition gamers prevailed.

Yeah, I think perhaps it is sometimes hard for those who did not attend to have an idea of the friendly spirit those campaign games were all played in. I certainly never came across an overly competitively players and I attended most years.

As for WAB tournaments, I played in a few, some (usually more local affairs) were fun, some not so much. I avoided the WAB GT as that really had a reputation as an all out WAAC event.

[Doom Beard 78]

More musings of a grumpy gamer.

I've got a game lined up of Italian wars for Friday, trying out Furioso. I have been getting the figures ready , re-attaching pikes, tidying up scrapes, brushing dust off etc .  My opponent has , for some odd reason based his pikes on 40x40 squares and so, we will be fielding the pike on 80x40 bases with 8 figures to a base. I had counselled him that this way leads to madness. 

Army comprises
2 units of 8 stands of pike , each 64 figures strong
4 units of Gendarmes, each 12 figures
2x3 skirmishing crossbow  each 9 figures
2x9 skirmishing arqubusiers each 9 figures strong
1 cannon

I discovered that I was short of Italian pike and so I have pressed into service some Burgundian pike who are hidden away in the rear ranks.  The "Spanish" pike block seems to be composed mostly of the same Essex figure over and over, lending the unit a rather monopose look. The front rank contains more exciting figures from Gamezone and GW Dogs of War. The proliferation of Morion helmets and blackened armour seems anachronistic for this period  but it will suffice.

I have just 3 Gendarmes left and then onto tidying up the light cavalry some of which have necessitated rebasing as for some idiotic reason they were multibased on 50x50 rather than singly based as is my preference for light cavalry .

[Atheling]

More musings of a grumpy gamer.

I've got a game lined up of Italian wars for Friday, trying out Furioso. I have been getting the figures ready , re-attaching pikes, tidying up scrapes, brushing dust off etc .  My opponent has , for some odd reason based his pikes on 40x40 squares and so, we will be fielding the pike on 80x40 bases with 8 figures to a base. I had counselled him that this way leads to madness. 

Army comprises
2 units of 8 stands of pike , each 64 figures strong
4 units of Gendarmes, each 12 figures
2x3 skirmishing crossbow  each 9 figures
2x9 skirmishing arqubusiers each 9 figures strong
1 cannon

I discovered that I was short of Italian pike and so I have pressed into service some Burgundian pike who are hidden away in the rear ranks.  The "Spanish" pike block seems to be composed mostly of the same Essex figure over and over, lending the unit a rather monopose look. The front rank contains more exciting figures from Gamezone and GW Dogs of War. The proliferation of Morion helmets and blackened armour seems anachronistic for this period  but it will suffice.

I have just 3 Gendarmes left and then onto tidying up the light cavalry some of which have necessitated rebasing as for some idiotic reason they were multibased on 50x50 rather than singly based as is my preference for light cavalry .

Excellent stuff mate.

I'm going to be waiting with baited breath to read what you think of the rules, what after a game you can recommend in terms of changes, indeed clarifications

[Doom Beard 78]

taken a while to get the figures in the foam trays-lol. we are using 200 point armies,  not sure that I can carry a 400 point army ( though I probably have the figures )

[Doom Beard 78]

Played last night.

Our battle was quality v quanity, 

French

1 unit of Gendarmes
1 unit of stradiotti
2 cannon
1 unit of old band pike (dross)
1 unit of landskencts

I had
1unit of Famiglia Ducale
3 units of condittieri cavalry
1 cannon
3 units of skirmishing handguns
3 units of skirmishing crossbow,
2 units of romanidole pike ( very average in these rules,


I found that I had no room to deploy and ended up splitting my cavalry between the flanks  with a unit in reserve.  My plan was to refuse the centre and rely on shooting to soften up the pike blocks . On the right I had deployed 2 units of arqubsuiers either side of the famiglia ducale with a unit of conditiieri in reserve .  My plan was to focus the arquebsuier on shooting up the gendarmes and to use the famiglia ducale to aborb the charge of the gendarmes while the reserve condottieri wheeled round to face the flank of the gendamres. on the right I had planned to send one unit of condottieri to take out the gonnes placed on the far left , while the second unit of condottier were set to wheel to face the flank of the oncoming old bands.

The plan partially worked, the famiglia were charged, they counter-charged and beat the Gendarmes . The shooting proved ineffective. I was able to effect the flank charge, which did less damage than I thought.
We then ran out of time.

Here's what we found
the rules seem to be missing a few things such as

1)if you charge a cavalry unit it can counter charge, can it still counter charge if it has already moved that turn. Does counter charging count as an activation as in, I get charged by an enemy unit,  I counter charge and destroy it I then get a pursuit move can I then activate the unit, Unclear in the rules

2) can you shoot into combat - the rules are silent on this point .

3) Troop quality seems not to amount to much , in our game Ordinance gendarmes charged famiglia duclae. Ordinance Gendarmes who are more expensive points wise and supposedly better roll 4 dice per base , famiglia Duclae roll 4 dice a base. both sides get +1 dice per stand for charging . Gendarmes have an ability where all non Gendarme units they fight ( and as the French are the only army with access to Gendarmes , that's all units) suffer minus 1 dice. So the difference here is 4 dice . As a 5 0r 6 is required to hit , this on average works out at an additional hit.  Hardly, significant. I have a fear that elite troops are perhaps less effective than I might have thought.  Early days and another game will be needed to asses if I am corrrect

4) Unless I missed something, ( which is certainly possible) at the end of combat, players test for morale. Based on the outcome the loosing unit may be pushed back 1 or 2 ( in 28mm these are inches)  however, its not clear if the victorious unit is able to follow up. Given that pushed back units suffer penalties if contacted, I would imagine that the attacker would wish to do so.

I also think charging pike should get a charge bonus

When we reconvene in two weeks time we will try again 

[Atheling]

I really wish I could chime in! But without being able to get a game under my belt it's very hard for me to offer any kind of constructive input.

Still, I'm very interested to hear what your thoughts are out there in LAF land

[Doom Beard 78]

Here's another shot.  This is where we ended up when we ran out time.

The bulk of my pike are individually based, which worked fine for wab when I was fielding 48 or 60 pike but was really slow to set up when using 64  figure pike blocks . I may  need to re base  some of the pike onto  60x20 bases