Gladiators

I recently picked up Spartacus, the 2021 boardgame about running a stable of gladiators. I've looked at Jugula before, and now I've heard Blood on the Sands is launching a Kickstarter imminently.

Here are my figures for Spartacus- they're non-heroically-proportioned 28mm plastic.

Here are 20mm Italeri soft plastics I painted up at the start of this year:

Most of these were painted with Speedpaints/ Contrast.

King David: Egyptian chariot wars

Last month, Lims & I caught up with Captain Darling and Dave from the Old Gits in Adelaide. We played King David, a fast play ancients ruleset from Dadi&Piombo (with some minor house rules). The Captain has a large collection of 28mm Egyptians (Black Tree?), and we fought a civil war in the shadows of the pyramids between rival princes Khungfu and Snafu.

I understand the rules are a predecessor of Impetus. There are nineteen army lists from 1500-500BCE. Each turn you can activate D6 units, and each unit gets D6 action points to spend. There are modifiers for unit ratings and command radius. Combat results in either a pushback or complete unit loss- very fast and bloody! 50% casualties triggers the end.

Chariots under the pyramids

Prince Snafu- lovely paintjob!

Each side has a small supply of 'Propitiatory Acts' and sacrificial lambs, that can be spent to either reroll one of your dice or force your opponent to reroll theirs. The judicious spending of these is great fun!

The main attraction of the Egyptians are, of course, the chariots. They're barely-guided missiles; potentially hard hitting but difficult- indeed dangerous- to attempt to steer!

Chariots on the flanks

Fling them forward and see what happens!

No victory with rolls like that...

Prince Khungfu takes a corner too fast and comes undone...

Thanks again to Captain Darling for hosting us!