Return to the Caliphate

After a year long detour into the ancient world, I’m back working on my Arab army for Warhammer Ancient Battles.   Now armed with a copy of Beyond the Golden Gate, the army will be created using the Early Caliphates list.  After far too much work (who knew understanding an army list would take two weeks) I’ve settled on the Hamdadids sub-list.  The list allows for all types of Ghulams, backed by upgraded Hamdanid heavy cavalry, with infantry support.

Given the cavalry emphasis of the list, a shopping trip was required to fill out my available models.  I was glad to find that The War Store had reduced their prices on the Perry Brothers models, and proceeded to order a wide selection of figures from the Muslim Armies/Crusaders product line.  The sculpting on the Perry Bros models is splendid – very fine and very detailed.  But this level of quality does come with a cost – the figures require a lot of clean up with casting vents dotting the figures, the rather slight weapons all required straightening, and some of  the horse legs are twisted and/or broken from the figure mount.  The figures fit well with my Gripping Beast/Magister Millitum models, with the Perry Bros being thinner and noticeably more detailed.  Despite these negatives, I would enthusiastically recommend the line to anyone looking for Crusader era figures.

Army List:  1000 points

Unit	Number	Points	Equipment and notes
Amir	1	164	General, Horse, heavy armour, shield, bow, thrusting spear, superior cav
Turkish Senior Ghulam	8	239	CMS, heavy armor, Shield, Bow,Kontarion, Superior Turkish Cav
Hamdanids Heavy cav	6	165	Heavy armour, shield, Kontarion, Superior Arab Cav
Mutatawwi’a	21	162	Shield, throwing spear, Warband 1&2
City Militia- skirmishers	10	60	Buckler, bow
City Militia- skirmishers	12	56	Buckler, hand weapon, javelins, Naffatun
Turcoman Cav	7	154	Skirmishers, Nomad Cavalry

In the army’s first outing the list did well against a force of Normand invaders.  The Turcoman literally ran circles around the opposing cavalry and the skirmishers drove off a large block of spearmen with the Naffatun.  With the game well in hand by the 3rd turn, my opponent wanted to see what would happen if my Ghulam unit and his Norman knights unit were to tangle.  Always one to make a game more interesting, I accepted the challenge.  All I can say is lances are bad news….  and that Ghulams come with bows and BS4 for a reason.

Adepticon 2011: Dark Age Campaign

The 2011 Adepticon online Warhammer Ancient Battles campaign began 6-1-2010. This year the period is Dark Ages and the theme is Kingdom building. Try and carve out your piece of Europe – take what you need and keep those thieves away from you.

With each victory, you score campaign points for your kingdom. At the same time, each victory includes a successful raid against an other kingdom – costing that kingdom campaign points.

Accumulate the most campaign points an be crowned king of the Dark Ages at Adepticon 2011.

For full rules or to register visit: http://wab.adepticon.org/index.html

For more information about Adepticon visit: http://www.adepticon.org/

The Adepticon WAB campaign is my annual attempt to build a web site.  Last year was a mostly white site with a rather odd CSS build to maintain columns.  For 2011 I wanted something completely different & went with a red background and used a basic CSS float system to manage layout.  I also played with a variety of new CSS3 tricks – rounded corners and a background color fade.  To view the site as designed – FireFox works best, Chrome will get you by, and IE is down right terrible.