Thursday, July 27, 2017

Needlepoint Armies

The blog is back.  Working on a set of basic rules that covers several periods of warfare. Wednesday night, we began with play testing a hoplite subset of the Ancient rules. Our combatants:
The Spartans


The Athenians
These 4 mm "miniatures" were made with Needlepoint mesh, punched card stock and craft wire. The battle was the Battle of Mantinea in 418 B.C. 
 The forces engage when the Spartans (top) exit the woods.


Initial play test resulted in a historically accurate re-creation of the battle. The Athenian general Laches was slain early in the fight and the battle turned into a major route of the Athenians. However, the rules while accurate were not fun to play. After a rules review, some changes in the rules were made. And the battle re-fought.  


This time it was an extremely close battle in which the Athenians won a narrow victory and we agreed the hour long rematch was fun and played much better. A few more tweaks and we may have a set of hoplite and ancient rules for the future.  

2 comments:

  1. Neat! Looks like fun. Is the red cloth on top of the figures the casualties?

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  2. This scale is tough for photographing well. But, working on doing it better. Those are indeed casualties using red pipe cleaners. I am in the process of creating a simple set of "homebrew rules" covering multiple periods of wargaming. Similar to "1 hour gaming", which I think you introduced me to. Hoping to play through games with all my different miniature collections. Time to take them out of storage. I also have some stuff I would like to send to you. Please send me your new address at rixxk @ yahoo.com. All the best to you and your Princess !

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