"Mayhem in the Med" - The Great Siege of Malta: Part 2

On to part two of our Malta game! 

The Turks were making their way slowly up the street towards the town walls, although the Christians were putting up a tough fight in the streets. The Turkish galley was still waiting outside the boom chain, but the Turks had finally begun their assaults on both towers. 

From the walls, the Christians in the town could only watch as the Turks and
their North African allies began their assaults on the boom towers.

Overkill? Not with how ineffective the Turks were proving in combat...

Having cleared the elite Janissaries from the streets, the Christians now had to tackle
 the fanatical zealots dedicated to the Ottoman cause.

The siege tower trundles along as the fanatics attempt to overrun the defences

The slow progress of the Turkish advance as the Christian ships rake the shoreline with grapeshot...

Slowly but surely, the fanatics make their way up the street as the Christians fall back before them

The towers finally fall and the assaulting units rush to rejoin the main attack

The defenders wait patiently behind the walls

The Turks cram into the narrow street behind the siege tower

The galley finally makes it into the harbour!

The boom chain falls and the galley brings its prow cannon
 to bear as the siege tower finally makes it to the walls!

The Ottoman elite assault the walls...

...as the fanatics swamp the defenders at the gates.

The defenders muster to sally forth...

...and the Knights of St. John lead the way, throwing back the Turkish fanatics.

Ultimately, the game ended with Jean de la Valette throwing back the initial tower party as well as the reinforcing unit who had previously been pushing the tower. Somehow he managed to defend the walls all on his own! Meanwhile, in the gateway, the Knights of St John defeated the fanatics and pushed them back. The town had held, although there were still plenty of Turks around. Victory to the Christians, but only just...

"Mayhem in the Med" - The Great Siege of Malta: Part 1

November 30th saw the 'Wyrley Retinue' take our usual trip to the local Wargamer show. This year was a little different, as the show has changed venue and moved to Leasowes High School rather than Great Barr High School - the other side of Birmingham and a bit of a longer journey, but ultimately a much better venue overall. More on that later though. First, we had a game to present - our "Mayhem in the Med!", based on the Great Siege of Malta 1565. 

The premise was simple - the Christians were outnumbered more than two-to-one defending the town, and simply had to survive the day and prevent the Turks crossing the walls. Controlling the Christians were Paul and Dad; controlling the Turks were Gary, Ben and myself. The Christians had the advantage of a ship-full of cannons waiting in the harbour, while the Turks could turn the tide if they could claim both boom towers and allow their own galley into the harbour. 

The horde of Turks flood the board!

Gary's galley waits in the bay for the boom chain to drop

The view of the board from the Turks' entry point

The harbour entrance, with the galley waiting outside

The town, with Christians atop the walls.

The Christians rush to defend the outlying buildings from the encroaching horde

The Turkish continue to advance slowly...

 

The view down the street, towards the advancing Turks

Jean de la Valette stands atop the walls!

Getting there slowly...

The Janissaries lead the advance, attempting to clear the Christians from the street

Where did those Janissaries go? The Christians put up quite a fight...

The Christian reinforcements arrive...

North Africans in their sights...

Stay tuned for part two!

The 2015 Game - Building Malta

Way back in January, I set out the projects I wanted to complete over the course of the year. Well, things didn't quite go as well as planned, but by far the biggest task was our plan for the Wyrley Retinue's 2015 game. As has become habit now, we went with a theme that would have some sort of anniversary in 2015. Rather than the obvious choices like Agincourt or Waterloo, we went with the slightly more obscure (i.e. the sort of thing only Gary would know the date of...) Great Siege of Malta as 2015 marks the 450th anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of the island. 

Of course, Malta looks nothing like our existing set of boards and so a whole new bunch of terrain boards were called for. While Gary took on the task of getting all the figures painted, I tackled the building of all the terrain (with intermittent help from Paul...). The deadline, as usual, was the local Wargamer show on November 30th. Nine months to build a completely new set of boards to make an 8'x6' gaming table, with all the accoutrements necessary to go with it. No problem, right?

The initial MDF boards laid out in the intended arrangement.

Each board was edged with wooden batons to ensure a flush fit next to each other. At least, that was the plan...

The three non-water boards lined up next to each other.

With the wooden batons added, the frames were filled up with dense polystyrene and raised to the height of the batons. All the gaps were plastered over and once everything was dry, the boards were textured with two layers of sharp sand.

The harbour boards took  a bit more trial and error to get right...

The initial placement of the boom towers.

The boom begins to take shape!

The simple yet elegant boom mechanism - wooden clothes pegs!

With the flat boards constructed, I set about building the add-ons. First up was the "castle board" - the raised hill area that would represent the town. The base was built with foamboard and more 50mm polystyrene, with plenty of carving to get the "right" slope (although you'd still need some muscle to push a siege tower up there...)

The town laid out next to the early dock board.

Foamboard buildings inside Citadel Fortress walls - the buildings would ultimately end up outside the walls...

The view from the bottom of the slope

The pictures stop at this point, but there's still plenty of construction to do. Copious amounts of cork bark slivers were used to add cliffs to both tower boards, and the dock board was built up to a slope before the frame of the docks themselves were added. At this stage, the painting began with each board receiving a thorough coat of a mid-brown (roughly GW Graveyard Earth) before getting a heavy overbrushing of the appropriately named "Sand" (pretty much GW Bleached Bone). With all the earth/rock painted, it was time for the trickiest task - the water. The majority was simple enough, but the water needed some careful blending where the deep water met the shallows around the shoreline. Despite having been painting figures for years, blending is something that still scares me and it would show up even more on such a large surface as terrain boards. In the end, I think I got away with it...

The boards with water painted - not as bad as I expected!

With everything painted, it was time to add the water. If I hadn't left it quite so late in the day, I'd have taken much more time to get the water effects just right. In the end, I resorted to simply pouring a layer of PVA onto each of the boards. You can see the results in the next couple of posts!

Testing, testing...

...is this thing still on?

*Ahem*

Sorry for that folks, not entirely sure what happened there. I was all set for a good year of blogging, but life intervened halfway through, as it has a tendency to do. Holidays, illness, promotions, marriage proposals, work etc. came along and somewhere along the way blogging fell by the wayside.

I do have some stuff to show from the last six months though, which I'll be posting up in a bit. Not as much stuff as I set out to complete this year unfortunately, but I'll talk about that a bit more in another post. For now though, roll the pictures!