Causing a Ruckus at Bosworth

 

I had been invited to the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre to witness a walk in participation game of Ruckus, but I arrived far too early on a bright sunny May morning and so enjoyed a blissful, sun kissed solitary walk around the battlefield.

 I found it difficult to envisage the battle as so much of the battlefield is now wooded, however there is a large board at the top of Ambion hill which has a wide landscape picture depicting how it may have appeared.

 I sat in the sun eating my chicken sandwiches and reflected on the death of kings wondering if it was as pleasant a day back in 1485 and what Richard had for breakfast that day.

Pic the Sundial atop Ambion Hill

Pic it was a well-advertised event, Bosworth are certainly on the ball with their publicity.

 I had been invited to Bosworth to take part in the Drop in Wargaming Day that had been organised by Andy Murby and the legend that is John Martin and Ian and Craig. These happy gamers have been putting on wargames at the centre for some time now and their aim is to provide a quick, interactive gaming experience for the public and an introduction to gaming for even the youngest potential dice warrior. 

Pic Ian, John, and Andy

  The wonderful setting for our game was the Heritage Room

 The doorman- looks like Bosworth is a tough gig!

Pic-Craig and Andy setting up the table
The magnificent Heritage Room was spacious and airy and easily accomodated the huge table that the guys had prepared.

  The idea was to have a huge table and allow groups of visitors to play games of Ruckus in different parts of it at the same time. This seemed to work very well and was an inspiring idea, I would like to run something similar at Attack at Devizes. 

Behind the blue screen lurks another smaller game…

…a jousting game. This was a capital idea, a short easy to learn game for short attention spans and one that fits perfecty into a visit to the Heritage centre. Everyone who played won a prize, usually a sprue of plastic warriors.

A simple fun set of rules “Jousts -Heroes of the Lists” by Ken Sidenblad and Ed Teixeira and available as a free pdf. There is a link at end of this article.

All of this terrain was also made by Andy

I witnessed children as young as 3 years old picking up terrain and figures and throwing (literally) dice and these happy gamers were quite content to let them! “We don’t use anything that isn’t cheap and replaceable” said Andy. “It’s important that it is a hands on experience”

John in particular showed exemplary people skills as he encouraged any and all comers to get involved. He has a set of simple starter rules that he has written. “Do you play wargames at home?” to a boy of perhaps six. “No” came the reply  “I do not have any figures.”

 “I bet you have Star Wars figures don’t you?” says John the reply was an affirmative “Well then just use those, use anything you have” and he gives the happy boy a set of his rules. John is THE gateway drug peddler of wargames.

  Every child and every player went out with a prize of some kind, many donated by Wargames Illustrated.

The majority of the terrain is scratch built by Andy and it is magnificent, inexpensive, and durable. 

There were some innovative features such as the thatched church roof being exchangable for a tiled one and a steeple that fits neatly into the top of the church tower, giving multiple possibilities.

And Drop in Wargaming was certainly popular! 125 people came to have a look at it, and many stayed to play. Here Ben from Edinburgh tries his luck against the unfortunate Craig who, in true Ruckus form, could not roll a six all day. 

I did join in for one game but spent most of the day answering questions, explaining rules and concepts and generally eating cake and having a thoroughly lovely time.

There are many things to see at Bosworth and many other activities. While we stayed cool in the Heritage Room and played games, the Knights in Battle reenacted scenes from medieval life and battered each other black and blue out in the hot sunshine. They were quite happy to line up for a photo if only to grab some quick respite in the shade. 

What a marvellous day it was, community centred, light-hearted, and full of fun! Bosworth had a picnic atmosphere, everywhere there were smiling faces and happy people, and I had three slices of Andy’s home made lemon cake which was as moist light and tasty as any cake I have eaten. I went home a happy man.  

https://www.bosworthbattlefield.org.uk/

Jousts Heroes of the Lists

Knights in Battle

Ruckus at Partizan 26

 

Well Partizan was excellent! Its a gathering of like minds and as such a lovely jovial atmosphere prevails. Everywhere there are games and gamers having fun.

And what games! Enormous great things with thousands of figures and dozens of elegant buildings beautifully displayed and tiny wee things with a few sometimes very large-scaled figures and finished to no less than the very highest of standards.

Overwhelming, outstanding...quite brilliant!

There was far too much to take in…

And we had a game to run…

The Queens Envoy at Partizan

A tale of Ambushment and Skullduggery.

The Story So Far. Sir Edwin Slackbladder, the Queens Envoy, is on his way to the Scottish Regent, John Erskine, with a message from her majesty the Queen of England. Good Queen Bess would like there to be stronger ties between the two nations and the message carries an expression of goodwill and plans for a more united future.

However there are followers of Mary Queen of Scots who would wish this not to be and would have Scotland seek a closer relationship with France. The notorious Reiver Red Rab McNab, who thrives on disorder in the borders, has been employed by Mary to take  Slackbladder prisoner so that the plotters may discover and thwart the Queen of England’s ambitions.

The Warden of the West March Sir Henry Scrope knows that Red Rab is riding and has set out in haste with a detachment of men to save the day.

And it went very well, in fact we won the prize for the best participation game. A big part of the reason for our success was simply down to how much my brave Ruckusteers, Christian Bailey and Jordan Linton enjoyed themselves playing it!

How could anyone not like a game when the players are so committed to every roll of the dice? So keen and enthusiastic were they that I had to caution them to slow down at one point.  I am sure that it was the sound of their laughter that drew the crowds of curious hobbyists to our table.

It made all the effort worthwhile.

Can the Queens Envoy get safely to the Pele Tower? 

We left the walls off and used various bits and pieces, tables, barrels, beds, chests etc to give it a lived in feel 

Bands of fierce Reivers wait their moment to ride to glory

And then they Attack...

The Warden rides to the rescue 

 Shootists on the hill! These guys were Outlaws, Broken Men, who randomly shot anyone! They were activated by the Happenings Card

These woodcutters were feisty ones and caused no end of trouble to both parties

These shepherds were unfazed

The view from Punishment Hill

The provisions got left behind...

Slackbladders party! 

As they near the Tower a crowd forms, is it a welcoming party?

...maybe not

Despite falling off his horse the Envoy arrives at the Tower...

...and lives to flee another day!

I had a very successful meeting with Roger Gerrish about the BIG Book of Ruckus and met dozens of Ruckus fans and so saw very little of the show and the only pics I got were of our game.

Big thanks, huge thanks to both my Ruckusteers, didn’t we have a great time?

And extra thanks to Chris for the pics.  

The Long Road to Partizan - The Plan

 

The Cunning Plan

So we are going to Partizan, but what game are we going to present? I knew I wanted to use the Reivers, but I didn’t know how.

I played several games with Rob Squires, Jordan Linton, Mark Taylor and Chris Bailey featuring an ambush using the Reivers figures that we had between us, and we began to gain a feel for how they worked on the table and slowly an ambush scenario started to evolve.

Then I painted the Queens Envoy set from FOW and that inspired the scenario. The Queens Envoy- a dark tale of Ambushment and Deep Skullduggery in the 16^th Century…

Pic the information board for Partizan

We played this through a few times but never had enough reivers figures to provide a balanced scenario and although I was pleased with my version of Slackbladder and his men, in practice they proved to be nearly invincible. Slackbladder was an excellent leader and a very capable fighter too which did not feel right for the appalling coward he is meant to be. It was back to the drawing board and eventually I arrived at a much less impressive, but more cunning Slackbladder and brought a dashing Lord Flashheart into the game to provide leadership and cahoonas.

It was only in the week leading up to Partizan that I realised that I had given my only Flash figure away as a prize at BIG Ruckus VI. I emailed Dan at Wi and he offered us a loan of the Wi GIM model…woof! 

 Now that we knew what we were doing, several of the Ruckusteers started creating Reivers Retinues. I wanted to have about eighty figures on the table which is what we had with Robin Hood last year and it looked about right. However, due to the vagaries of life only Chris was able to get some figures together which left me wondering if we had enough to stage the game. 

Pic the Irish always ready for a fight!

I thought of a plan B which involved a raid by Finn Mac Cool and his Irish as I have a lot of Irish and this would save a lot of figure painting which is time consuming. It was reassuring knowing that we had a ready-made force that we could take instead and we plodded on.

I carried on painting regardless. I had some very fine Garrison men printed from FoW by Chris and created a small Elizabethan escort for Slackbladder. With these and with Chris’ Reivers we have enough figures. Yay!

 

Last year I had no idea what to expect of Partizan, we took the same mat and terrain as we game on week after week, nothing special, we had a great day and to my everlasting surprise we won the Duncan McFarlane award for the best demo game.

This year I wanted to make more effort and create a demo game specifically for the show, a game that we could take to several shows this year. We will run it as demo at Partizan, but I also plan to use it as a participation game at other shows with up to 6-8 players and a choice of 4-6 different scenarios going on at the same time.  The scenarios will be drawn from a deck of cards for each player. As one player completes a quest or drops out we will have another step in and I aim to have continuous play throughout the day.

We will be taking the game to Attack at Devizes, Colours at Newbury and Crack Con in Derby.

 Having painted the figures and the buildings, created a new faux fur mat and some new hills  and renovated my tired old trees I turned my attention to the fluff and the playing aids.

The Profiles for each Character were printed and mounted on card. There are fourteen of them. They will be placed along the sides of the game and act as an aid memoire for the Players.

I also created some information boards. The Border Reivers is a little known conflict even among wargamers and I thought a little information might increase interest. The wonderful illustrations of Angus McBride always draw the eye!

One final detail will be 7 meters of brightly coloured cloth to cover the table which on the day before we depart I still don’t have! Lawks!!!          

If you are at Partizan please do come and look at the game and say hello, we are on table DG 34, next to the toilets.

If not , see you on the other side…                                                               

The Long Road to Partizan-The Hills!

 

The Hills! The Hills!

In January I began preparing for Partizan, poor, ignorant, happy fool that I was, I figured five months would be plenty of time to get everything ready. I knew I wanted to do a Reivers themed game but didn’t really know what we would use or what the story would be or what any of it would look like. I had a full set of Flags of wars Reivers figures bought for me by my lovely wife the previous Christamas, a few of which I had painted, and the one bit of terrain that I wanted to use- a big hill that I have had for years and was created by an old friend way back in the late 80’s from plaster and wallpaper.

pic : the Big Hill back in the day- before its first face lift

The Big Hill has evolved over the years gaining more and more foliage and character and has been used in many games of all scales memorably a Peninsular game in 15mm where the rock face presented big problems for my British opponent. It doesn’t get a lot of use because it is so big, it takes up half of a Ruckus table and dominates any game it is used in! Perfect, I thought for Partizan.

Great… we have a hill! But I wanted second hill, a slightly smaller brother of the Auld Hill and a rocky tump for the tower to sit upon like Smailholm does. 

The “small hill” Box cutters work well enough to cut out the XPS even the 25mm thick sheet but for chamfering and shaping you can’t beat the old carving knife. Keep a whetstone nearby, this stuff takes the edge off any blade very quickly

The Tump! How things have changed! No wallpaper and plaster here! XPS is a delight to use, light, strong, easy to cut and carve it’s a modellers dream!

A smaller kitchen knife is a useful tool for roughly hatching the craggy cliff faces

I filled the gaps and smoothed the edges with some polyfilla. 

and painted them with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Mod Podge

and let them dry in the sun…

…before covering some areas with sand glued with PVA

The road to the tower gate. I was not really happy with this, it seemed too small and had a wicked camber 

I tried them on the mat. And then I tried the Tower on the tump and I did not like it much. So…

…I started again. This time I left some space at the foot of the Tower walls, and I made the road longer with less of a slope which necessitated making it snake down the tump.

a compact ball of tin foil is an excellent tool for creating a rock face look on the XPS. This one, like the Auld Hill, has been built up over time. 

the rock face after being battered by the ball of foil

Rock painted in various greys dry brushed in lighter and lighter shades

Road sanded and all flattish areas and ledges earthed with Krautworks Copious Earth, all my Reivers figures are based with the same stuff

The Noo Hill getting its first static grass application 

The Noo Hill after it has been grassed and planted with vegetation including a few clumps of heather appropriate for the Border Country

My daughter did most of this while I carried on with some other bits and pieces. I think she did a great job, look out Two Shed Fred, we are getting ideas.  

The Tump vegged out. I thought I would tart up the tower while I was at it.

  A drybrush highlight of Citadel Ushbati Bone on the road finished it all off nicely 

I couldn’t resist greening up this little window.

I dirtied up the rooves of both buildings with Citadel Moratorium Grime

the View from the Tower! 

A little embellishment for the hill...

Now I am nearly ready. My trees are in a sorry state and need a makeover and there is all the fluff to write! Crack on!