Thursday 5 July 2018

Outremer: Kick Off in the Kasbah!

Tom kindly ran a game of Osprey's new Crusades skirmish game Outremer: Faith and Blood yesterday evening at BIG. Matt, George, Steve and myself all used identical forces of Arabs in a four way battle of a leader, two spear and sword armed warriors and three peasant bowmen.

My guys advance into town!
The game was a free for all but largely developed into two separate skirmishes as the bulk of my and Steve's bands of brigands clashed in the marketplace.

Steve's leader and warrior burst into the market square!
The rules are fairly straightforward with some nice touches, like making a Faith roll to charge into combat, combat using different dice types depending on the skills of the fighters, modifiers generally seeing dice move up or down a type as appropriate. Each figure is allocated a playing card and this drives when they can take their two actions in the turn as the cards are drawn from a shuffled deck.

Bloodbath in the marketplace!
Combat between unarmoured or lightly armoured figures is pretty brutal and bows soon make you regret not using cover (Steve's archers atop a building taking out both fighters in Matt's and my band!)

We need find some issues that may or may not be covered in the rules (this was our first play and the rulebook layout is not the best) such as disengaging from combat but things generally went smoothly and the game sped up as we became more familiar with the rules and the card deck grew smaller as characters became hors d'combat!

Stand and Face Me You Cur!
Overall all four of us had a great time (thanks Tom) and are looking forward to taking part in a campaign over the next couple of months. If you have been thinking of getting hold of a copy of the rules, I recommend you do.

Wednesday 4 July 2018

Outremer: Saracen Warband III

I painted the dip on the Saracens late Monday night so they would have 24 hours to dry whilst I was working on London on Tuesday. I should have guessed there was something wrong with the (rather old) tin of dip from the 5mm thick hardened crust on the surface that I had to hack through with a pair of scissors and whilst it seemed to go on ok, it seemed to dry very quickly. The next morning I had a quick look for heading off and was dismayed by the effect, it had dried matt and was akin to an ink wash not the dip highlight that normally saves time with shading.


I was rather despondent about it all day yesterday and decided as I sat on the train home at 1am this morning to treat it as an ink wash and highlight the figures. Looking at them in the cold light of day they aren't as bad as the quick glance on Tuesday morning so the tunics had a quick drybrush with thr original colour, as did the metal bits. I decided against touching the white areas so they are very grubby looking but wouldn't you be after months in the field chasing down the infidel?

I painted and drybrushed the bases and have had a crack at some hand painted shields (these still need a quick ink wash) which aren't too bad.

Not my best painting but they are almost done and a dozen will take to the field tonight!

Monday 2 July 2018

Outremer: Saracen Warband II

I've decided that the quickest and most effective way of getting these figures painted and on the tabletop is the trusty old dip, so today was all about block painting!



I'm not too keen on figures being too bright given the rigours of the battlefield and the lack of Persil so I am hoping the dip with subdue the sky blue which is a little brighter than I would like.

Just got to decide what to do with the shield designs now, the LBMS decals are lovely but do I really want to spend six quid on buying them for dipped figures?

Sunday 1 July 2018

Outremer: Saracen Warband I

Tom at BIG has suggested we run an Outremer: Faith and Blood campaign in July and August (Outremer being the new Crusade skirmish rules from Osprey).


The game looks like a lot of fun requiring very few figures and having a box of the Gripping Beast  plastic Arab spearmen and archers I volunteered to join in. Whilst Tom has figures for both sides I thought I'd get gluing this morning and sat out in the garden snipping bits of plastic off the spures and sticking them together.


As everyone at BIG is well into Saga as well I decided to stick together enough figures for 3 points of Saracens as well!

I have a trial game of Outremer on Wednesday so will report back how it goes...