Impetvs Fantasy: Meeting on the Ostmark

Some called them raiders from Lemuria, as the bloody handed reavers came over the Sea of Graves. Some others said these hailed from a fabulous and rich Empire to the East, the stuff of the tall tales of Veronan Bravos. 

Where-ever they were from, they were enough to have the Emperor send word (and gold, for no soldiers would fight without it) to Count Frundsberg: He was to desist from his harrying of the Ratmen at the sack of Holy Basilius; and to make all haste north east to confront the raids of the men of Nippon. 

There in soot blackened snows, skulking amongst the ruins of another devastated village, were the so called 'Nipponese'. The first meeting with a new culture is always a good occasion for war....  

We've been working on this for ages. We didn't have enough time for a proper game so just gave things a go with 300 points. Initial impressions are: awesome. I particularly like that I found one of Jason's spells to be BS and overpowered. We definitely have that authentic Fantasy experience down. Our forces are a good match. I have an army based on 15th/16th century Europe with Pikemen, shooty cavalry, and artillery. Jason has a Samurai based force where lots of them are still sporting bows.

 On thing that immediately threw me is how much the 12cm frontage hogs table space. This is a 300 pt army and I was already constrained in deployment. My force isn't chaff either. With all the large units, I have a relatively narrow frontage for all the bases I've taken.

Here is my finished Pike unit. In comments, Danisnotatree was not a fan of the colour scheme on the rear ranks - so I hope he likes them better now! I've got another box of Perry infantry on order from Caliver books and when they arrive I'll make up a second block and then likely stop with the infantry as we are running out of space and points. I definitely need some monsters and Paladins though.

 Jason has taken his Samurai based for our usual Impetvs and added spacers. this particular base of Ronin saw off the totally crazy charge of my two-handed axemen, then whittled them down with bowfire after falling back into the safety of the ruined village. Being light foot with bow is pretty sweet.

 My tough Varangyr took on Jason's general unit. In the background you can see Jason's artillery B (light) unit. I think he almost wants to give it a range upgrade or something as I found my heavy artillery unit much more useful and even my Artillry C (mortars) gets to use the 'extreme' range band.

 On the right you can see a large unit of the feared Cuirassiers. Just as I was struggling in the center vs Jason's better equipped light trips, these cavalry were having a comfortable time vs the enemy flank. Sure the Ashigaru with longspears weren't likely to be charged down but my Cavalry had a lot of pistols. I think I will take Jason's suggestion and use the 'various weapons' stat line for the shooting. Jason was impressed that I've combined units from at least three distinctive historical periods into one army and it actually 'works'.

Disappointingly, my Pike didn't immediately roll over all in their path. They did cope well with poor dice though and will make a good reliable center to my army. In Impetvs Shotte units get special 'hide in pike' abilities as well so the unit combination will be pretty handy.

Well that's phase one of the project complete. We are now working on tweaking the rules and expanding the armies.

next up though, I am keen to get some Sci-Fi figs modeled up to try out Infinity.