It’s been a really busy gaming period for me. I think that I might have actually spent more time gaming than painting. First up was a trip down to Bristol to take part in the Bristol Independent Gaming Billhooks event. Organised by Mike Peters, this is one of the highlights of the gaming year for me. The event took place on Saturday 26th April but I stayed overnight on the Friday and Saturday. The Friday being the obligatory pre event meal and social.
It goes without saying, that Mike and BIG Jim were superb hosts and the event was a fantastic success, extremely well organised and played in a most sportsman like manner. I would recommend that anyone that is interested in the Billhooks rules set and can put together an army attends if possible – they will have a most enjoyable day, win or lose and even if a newcomer, they will find there is a warm and helpful welcome.
I played in three games on the day. my first was against Tom Farrell’s Lancastrian WOTR army. Tom was fortunate to find all the scenery allocated ( randomly) to his side of the board and no doubt feeling threatened by the quantity of cavalry that he faced, set up a strong defensive position.
I decided to focus on the flanks and succeeded in driving off his cavalry early in the game. My Stradiots also threatened his weaker ward on my left flank. After weakening this ward, for the loss of my Stradiots, I daunted the two units, destroying the archers. However, the Billmen were able to rally, something that would come back to haunt me!
I still needed to break the Lancastrian centre, a tough nut to crack, particularly as one block had MAA supporting the archers and both flanks were defended by the terrain.
The Landsknechts gained an early victory, daunting the Billmen in the first block but the failure to rout these units resulted in the Landsknechts eventually being pushed back. Once again, Tom was able to rally a daunted unit, recovering a morale token. It was down to the wire with morale tokens short on each side but Tom drew a second special event that enabled him to launch a flank attack with his recently rallied Billmen from the left flank. It was game over for me as another four morale tokens were required as the Landsknechts routed!
Next up was Nathan McGowans 100 year war English archer army. I was initially perplexed as to how I would deal with the firepower from the massed bowmen, protected behind their barricade of stakes.
Once again, Nathan had the advantage of terrain and advanced to plant his stakes, with his flanks protected by the board edge and a pond. There was no way that I would attempt a frontal assault, the stakes would cause disarray in any attacking unit. I would have to find another way in.
The left flank was being protected by a tough looking unit of MAA. They would need some softening up before I attacked them. Step forward the Landsknecht gunners! They were devastatingly accurate with their fire and soon forced a morale check on the hapless MAA. The door was open!
Nathan was forced to pull up his stakes and try to redeploy as my Stradiots and cavalry threatened the rear of his line.
With his defence now in tatters, my army was able to get into the archers and before long, they were routed. A victory for the French!
So with one win and one loss, it was onto the final game against Steve Coopers Lancastrians. Alas, I have no pictures of this game. I had begun to run out of steam, with the long drive down to Bristol, a late night, a reasonable intake of alcohol and the emotion of the two previous games, it was all I could do to try and focus on the game. It was another very tight game in which I lost, remembered that my Leader had a re-roll, nearly won, then remembered that Steve’s leader had a reroll before losing once again! This was a tough, close match with, I think just one morale token in it, Steve’s light Cavalry getting their revenge for being almost harried off the table with a final successful flank charge. I had the feeling that my luck was draining when 12 of Steve’s archers managed 6 long range hits from 12 dice, only for me to fail 5 saves…Ah well, that’s Bill Hooks for you! Never mind, there’s always next time!
I did have a very nice consolation prize at the end of the day though. My army was voted the ‘Best Painted Army’ so I was very pleased to have my work acknowledged by my peers, particularly as the competition was very strong, with some beautifully painted and detailed armies on display. Incidentally, if you would like some details of how I painted my gendarmes, check out my earlier blogs:
As for the rest of my gaming activity, I filled the following weekend gaming at Andy’s house. Friday night was a big Crusader game using the latest Bill Hooks adaption – still being play tested with Saturday being spent playing a big Samurai game. Phew! I’m nearly gamed out! You can read all about the Crusader game on the Bill Hooks Facebook group here:
Finally, although gaming has dominated my hobby time, I do have 11 Samurai cavalry on the go! Here’s a picture of the horses – I hope to write a blog showing them completed in the near future!
As always, I hope that you enjoy your hobby as much as I do!
Happy modelling!