Death korps of Krieg, inventory

I needed to do an inventory of my Death Korps of Krieg, Assault brigade.
The inventory is needed for a coming mega battle and I find it easier to just put all the miniatures on the floor and take a picture of it and then later look at the picture and start counting when I have the time.

 The man himself, the man to led them all.

Avenger, ground attack airplain.
Super heavy troop transport
Death Rider platoon.

My artillery sisters, Helga, Heidi und Irma

Even through I have bought much of it second hand or on ebay I dont want to know what this have costed. But considering how much money Ive spent on this hobby over the years I think its worth to have an army you really appreciate and thinks look good or have a special style.


The plan now is to count them, glue some of my unassembled miniatures and paint it all in the waiting for more reinforcements...
  
So in short prepare them as good as I can to the coming mega battles planed for this spring and summer.

Turcomans

I painted up some more Turcomans, Im guessing Im going to need plenty of these for my Saracen army...

They are a mix, some Perry Miniatures and some Gripping Beast. And to make these blend even better with others I have switched the horses so they are riding each others horses.

The horn blower had his bow broken so I glued it back in place and reinforced the joint by giving him a spear. He isn´t actually holding the spear but I dont think that will be noticed unless you know what to look after. Maybe it was a bad idea to mention it here then....

I tried to make these not as colourful as say the Mamluks but still having some colours to make them more interesting then only brown.

Mamluks

This is what all the colour testing with the infantry was for. To get the colours right for my heavy cavalry, the Mamluks...

The plan is to later get lots and lots of these... The Ayyabid dynasty Egyptian armylist in Hail Caesar states that atleast half of the units should be cavalry and of these half of the cavalry should be Heavy cavalry, and that could mean Mamluks...
They are equipped with spears and bows and I think it will be interesting to see what heavy cavalry equipped with bows can do, its a type of unit Im not familiar with.

Looking at the pictures now I think the reins on the horses looks a little bland and that could be a thing to remember on the next batch I will paint.
But its always a very difficult balance of time spent versus quantity. Some times its better to skip a little on the details to be able to paint some more miniatures in stead.
Its a strange thing but even thou I paint a lot of miniatures all the time the numbers of unpainted miniatures always seems to grow. 


The miniatures are from Gripping Beast.

Crusader battle report

Yesterday I brought my miniatures to the club and press-ganged a friend to throw some dices in an Crusader game of Hail Caesar.

The armies is composed of what I got painted but are roughly based on the Crusader list and the Ayyabid list from the book "Hail Caesar Army Lists - Late Antiquity to early Medieval" but we played with small units instead of standard sized ones and skipped the whole procentage ratio of troops. We just gamed with what was available.

Im sure the gaming balance with close combat and ranged combat as well as the balance with unit types is somewhat altered with just using small units but it works.

I used my Saracens and my friend Johan took command of the Frankish Crusaders.

I nice set of ruins that would make for a defensive position.

My right flank, skirmishers and Turcoman horse archers.

The Crusader army, an rather straight battle line with cavalry in rear to fill in on any gap or if an opportunity reveal it self.

My right flank is sent forward in an atempt to outflank him. Sending the light horses in an big circling move.

Crusaders swing their line to counter the coming threat.

His archers fled taking casualties in the stamped. The order to counter one unit of my skirmishers on the left flank resulted in an blunder on both the archer units. 

The forces close in on each others.

 The crusaders tries to assault the skirmishers but they fail to catch them as they fall back.

Spears and arrows are exchanged but to no real effect.

Seeing one of the enemy units flanks exposed the Saracens take advantage of this and manages to wipe it out.

The Franks fall back and form a new line.

The Saracens try to swarm the Franks and winning by sheer numbers.

And a all out attack is sounded. My Egyptian mob is able to attack one of the Frankish unit in the flank. The centre unit didn't look as promising but I thought that I couldnt leave them free so I engaged them with a skirmish unit in an lose hope of the added bonus for the charge and some luck would be enough.
This did of-course not happen and the centre got smashed, my right flank was shattered but at least the added bonus of the mob was enough for the left flank.

My opponent finally manages to move his cavalry and my Egyptian mob was shattered. The cavalry pushes forward and attacks a small unit of skirmishers that tried to find shelter behind a fence. Attacked in the flank and in front these guys was in big trouble.

My skirmishers didn´t stand long but I did manage to take out one of the Frankish foot units with my spearmen.

The enemy cavalry uses it superior movement and attacks my flank while Im still stuck with an Frankish foot unit.

Somehow I managed to survive an flank charge of cavalry and this meant that my Turcomans that have been playing hide and seek with some enemy archers the whole game and a skirmish unit could make a jointly attack on one of the crusading units that resulted in that they could follow up their attack onto the next unit.

End moment. My spearmen unit was finally broken but in the same round of combat the crusader lost a unit of footmen.
The loss of both units meant that both armies where broken and resulting in a very tight draw.
Intense game that was lots of fun.


Im sure we did all kinds of things wrong, both tactically and  rule wise but it was a really fun game non the less.

Charging enemy units in the front with skirmishers is not recommended...