Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 30 January 2010 (Postscript)

The tournament was a blast, and I had a good deal of fun facing off against some good opponents that I’d never faced before. I also got to see some old friends and renew some acquaintances, and placing second overall in the tournament wasn’t exactly a bad thing, either. In hindsight, I’m a little exasperated with my deployment in my third and final game, but honestly – both my opponent and I were pretty tired by that point, and not exactly playing mistake free. That said, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and many kudos to the two fine gentlemen running the event (John and Jim), and to my three great opponents as well.

As noted above, I’ve basically finished painting my Burgundians, and I’m probably going to keep playing them on-and-off as my primary WAB army, but already I’m looking to try and put together an alternative list, perhaps one that is capable of being fielded against a broader array of WAB lists at Historicon – meaning, not a medieval list. I’m currently investigating three possibilities, but time, money, and miniatures availability are going to make putting together a new WAB army rather a time-consuming process.

True, I do have a (mostly completed) Dacian Barbarian army, but the attraction of giant masses of warbands rumbling across the field has faded somewhat after a number of years using that particular set of models. Not that warbands and heavy throwing spears aren’t fun – it’s just that it’s a fairly simple and repetitive set of tactics that has limited appeal to me. (I prefer my simple and repetitive tactics to involve lots of shooting!)

That said, the three new ideas I’m investigating are interesting as well as challenging to model and field:

• The Empire of Mali (using the Al’Andalus list from El Cid): 1230 CE to 1600 CE
• The Meroitic Kingdom of Kush (using the list for Mauryan India from Alexander): 300 BCE to 350 CE
• The Mythical Amazons (using the list for Imperial Macedon from Alexander): 800 BCE to 400 BCE

Note that the third concept is attempting to model the entirely mythical Greek concept of Amazons, as opposed to the historical basis for those myths (Sarmatia and Scythia), which would be a nomadic hordes army of some kind.

The three ideas all are radically different from either WAB army I own, being a cavalry maneuver army (Mali), an elephant and archer army (Kush), and an infantry phalanx army (Amazons), so it will probably come down to whichever army is easiest to model and assemble. I’ll be sure to chime in with quarterly (or biannually) with updates, which may be slower or faster depending on how involved I get with WAB gaming in the coming months.