Fire Forge Samurai Minis

 

After watching the new vesions of Shogun I was once again hooked in the Feudal Japanese history and the later Sengoku period 1540 -1600.

Ofcourse the FireForge plastic range  The Samurai Wars was the answer to give me my Samurai fix. I always has had a soft spot for the FireForge minis, the last I built was their Almughavars back in 2022.

I got me a few boxes of Samurais and Ashigarus,  I also managed to get hold of a preview sample of the new Samurai/Ashigaru Command Sprue that I thought I should share some pictures of below.

It is a really nice addition to all the other boxes that lack command minis, you probably want to get hold of several of them if you want Ashigaru command minis in all your units, I will try to do the most out of the ones I have and convert the other command minis needed.

The box have 3 sprues, samurais, Ashigarus and Horses that will give you 14 minis, 3 mounted samurai and 11 samurai/ashigaru on foot, including Samurai on a chair and 2 kneel down, as well as a mox of shigaru officers, musicians, ammunition handlers, banners and ofcoures the umbrella holder, a very important man in every Samurai army;) 

The command box are still up for pre-order on the fireforge website untill the end of November.

Now Im of to build me a Samurai force for The Pikemans Lament, more to come.

37 years of waiting...

1987 - 37 years ago, i was 15 years old and read Sinkadus the only Swedish RPG magazine . The no.1 swedish RPG writer Anders Blixt anounced that "Partisan" would be the new RPG in 1987 from the publisher  Äventyrsspel. 

Partisan would be a RPG centered aroud a Occupied Sweden, severel different settings would be included for example Nazi ccupation 1942, Russian occupation during the Cold war (inspired by the film Red Dawn as well as the RPG Twiligt 2000) as well as a sci-fi setting inspired by the tv-serie V for Victory that run on teli here in Sweden by the time, I was indeed exited and was looking forward to the release...

BUT the game was postpone to april 1988 and then by the end of the year and then it got all quiet... 

1997 -Jumping some 10 years, I had moved to Stockholm, Anders and I had become friends, I was helping out with his fantasy RPG Gondica as well as the viking RPG Ansgar. I ofcourse brought up Partisan and was hoping he would take up that project to, but he didnt know where the already produced material had ended up so it wasnt to happen. 

2022 - Jumping a further 25ish years and as I believe Anders found some of his old Partisan material and he was now up for realisation of the old Partisan project. To my delight he asked if I wanted to help out with some feed-back on his writing, couldn´t be happier. 

This time Partisan would only focus on one of Anders all area of expertise (he is after all a Swedish Grand Master of Jeoprdy) the Cold War and a Russian invassion of Sweden in the 1980´s. 

2024 -Today I was to my locan game store and met up with Anders and got a copy of the finished Partisan rule book. It only took 37-years...waiting for somethins good...

You can read more about the Partisan rules and get your copy at Publisher Eloso´s site. (only in Swedish, sorry).

Age of Penda

Planning on puting my Romano-British and Saxon minis up for sale as I dont use them much. Painted them some 15-years ago and they been through some tought battles, last one back in 2018 if I recall right. 

So I thougt they would see one last outing trying my matey Dan Mersays "Age of Penda" rules publiched by Wingalf Miniatures. I have been involved in playtesting the system but in the 100-year war version "Arrowstorm" so the Dark Age one are new to me. I like Dan´s Dux Bellorum rules set  during the same era of history very much so I have good hopes for Age of Penda to.

I just got the .PDF of the rules so cant say much about the printed book  The Rulebook as well as the .PDF can be ordered at WargameVault. The rules are 32-pages in an easy to read layout with out any pictures. 

To play you will need 2 armies of 6-15 units (basing or scale dosent realy matter so need for re-basing etc.), some 6-sided dice, 6-10 tacktical tokens that are markers to use on the Tactics Chart (picture abowe) that is one of the main elements of these rules.

You will also need a offset gridded battle fileld that are 5 rows with 5 or 4 squares in each row, a total of 23 squares. I used some markers to show the gridd. Might say im a bit dubious about the gridds, it makes the moving easy but i dont think the game look as good as without.

Each army are made up of a quite narrow amount of troop types, just 4 of them, Mounte Warriors, Armoured Warriors, Unarmourd Warriors and Skirmishers (only unit type that can shoot). one of the units have the Leader includend.

Each unit type has a cost you pay to recruite them in your force.

Despite the low number of different troop types I feel that it is enought to represent a large amout of different dark age armies, Dan has included 4 sample armies in the rules, all with different compossition and tactical chalanges.

Each turn the players start to place their Tactical Tokens on the Tactics Chart when all tactic tokens has been places the player alternate to perform the actions choosen from the tactical chart. Most of the actions activate all unit in a square, you can have no more than 3 units in a square at any time.

there are a bunch of basic actions like Shoot, Rally, Move, Battle but also 8 special actions that gives you the opportunety to get the best out of your units, like get your Warriors to throw javelins etc. 

All in all I like the "Age of Penda" rules, they give me fun, fast and managable dark age games, all I need:)

Wont give you a blow by blow AAR but can say that the Saxons managed to win it all, mostly due to poor dice rolling in the combat between the Romano-British Mounted Warriors and the Saxon Unarmoured Warrios with Skirmish support. below a bunch of pictures from our game, the warband composition and lastly a picture of the victorius Saxon taking the spoils of war.

Romano-British warband was composed of 3 Mounted Warriors  (one with the Leader), 2 Armoured Warriors, 3 Unarmoured Warriors and 2 Skirmisers.

The Saxons fielded 1 Mounted Warriors, 3 Armoured Warriors (one with the Leader), 5 Unarmoured Warriors and 2 Skirmishers.