And now for something completely different...

WARNING: Those with particularly delicate historical sensitivities should perhaps ignore the rest of this post and divert to the Southern Strategists blog to see some historical demo games! :) These demo games were lovely by the way, and included General de Brigade Seven Years War, Pike and Shot English Civil War,  Bolt Action Pacific WW2,  a modern skirmish game, and also a 15mm Napoleon at War game on the second day. 

This time of year is the annual Conquest Tournament here in New Zealand. I was planning on spectating  this year, but got a last minute request from my mate Damon umpiring the Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) competition, asking if I could join and even up the numbers...  He seemed happy with my mad proposal to use Napoleonic cavalry as a WFB Empire army, as it would eliminate players having byes in the competition. By coincidence the basing favoured by many 28mm Napoleonic players in New Zealand also matches WFB.

The Empire army in WFB is loosely based upon Renaissance Germany. However, my proxied Napoleonic troops were recognised easily enough by my opponents after a few words of clarification at the start of each game.  I used Cuirassiers for Knights, Carabiniers for Reiksguard (elite knights), Hussars as Pistoliers (light cavalry), and Artillery as Artillery. I quickly converted two spare Chasseur eagle bearers to an Army Standard Bearer and Wizard and I was ready! 

For those unfamiliar with WFB, the rules have a Donald Featherstonian feel, with saving throws, individual casualties and so on. I wouldn't want to use this sort of clunky system for large battle historical games anymore, but it still suits "heroic fantasy" style gaming I think. It also reminds me of playing Featherstone rules with Napoleonics many years ago - albeit considerably refined and thus without all the confusion!

Here's the Army Standard Bearer and Wizard I converted from spare Chasseurs. For the Wizard I vaguely had in mind real Napoleonic "wizards" like Murat, with outlandish ostrich feathers and divine powers of battle!

Game 1, fighting some Dark Elves who arrived with a couple of monstrous Hydra (top left). Hydras are scary but they don't like dodging 6-pounder cannon balls. Neither did their big cauldron on a wagon thing. Take that Elves. 17-3 to me. 

Game 2, against Chaos. I didn't think this was going very well, but then my opponent Al announced he had lost too many banners plus his general, so it turned out to be 11-9 to me.

Game 3, against Skaven (ratmen). My cavalry were riding down the ratmen like, well rats. Unfortunately the victory conditions in this game prioritised holding that building on the left. Cavalry can't take buildings easily and I had no infantry, so the game ended up 11-9 to my opponent (another Mark).

Game 4, against Daemons. The left artillery piece is about to obliterate those giant blue stingrays with grapeshot, very satisfying! Also many Daemons were blowing themselves up randomly and disappearing - I didn't understand why but I didn't complain! 11-9 to me or my opponent, can't remember which.

Game 5, against Skaven again.  The 5th Hussars have got a little too close to a very bad big pink Abomination and are about to rout again, demonstrating their consistency across rule sets. If I recall correctly this was a solid win to the Skaven 16-4. Incidentally this photo also shows my entire army, of three large heavy cavalry units, three small light cavalry units, 2 artillery, and four characters in the cavalry units.

Happy to report all the Fantasy players were very tolerant of my 'Fantasy' army. I ended up coming 11th out of 24 players. Thanks also to Darren who helped me sort out an army list for the tournament.

Right, back to regular Napoleonics in the next post, as a large bundle of reinforcements have arrived in the post!