Tercios and their use in Renaissance warfare...

...or how, honestly, not to do it? 

 

 So I broke out my Early Spanish Colonial against blogger Scotty's Gustavan Swedish for a game of ADLG-R. This game has been a long time coming and finally getting those Tercios done over the Christmas break meant we could finally have it!  

This is where we started - Scotty looking to get into my refused centre and me looking to sneak around his right flank. The Tercios deployed in their traditional triangle formation pointed at the enemy but the much more rapid Swedes came on at pace. 

You can tell it was a good game when I utterly forgot to take enough pictures until we ended the game! Roughly, Scotty turned my left flank which left me dangerously exposed (enough to charge a Colour Regiment in the front with Gendarmes to stop them turning the flank of a Tercio!) but my light horse kept me in the game doing sterling work dinging up cavalry enough that I shot one off the board with heavy artillery. 

In the centre, the Tercios ground into some Colour Regiments because I was a little too hesitant and unsure of how well they could take artillery. Turns out, well enough. I was lucky to fight two Colour Regiments one-on-one and the power of the Tercio bore out as they made it through the devastating charge potential of the Swedish infantry. 

On my right, a stalemate between two Colour Regiments and my Landsknechts who, supported ably by some caracoling Reiters (who never got to shoot!) and some cavalry held on until a Tercio powered into the flank of a Colour Regiment and saved the day although with no way to stop the cheeky Dragoon who ran through a marsh and sacked my baggage!  

So here's where we finished up:

  

Scotty sacked my camp a turn before I got to his and  I broke. I had one round to finish off two of the Colour Regiments and ding one up a couple of other things to salvage a draw but in the end it was 22 - 19 (I broke on 19, Scotty on 20!) and a thoroughly good game! 

Do I like Tercios? Yes. Are they good? Maybe. In period, I can see they'd be devastating. I definitely wasn't aggressive enough with them and, faced with charging infantry like Scotty's, they didn't really shoot much of anything or take advantage of their weird, multi-sided nature.  

They're very slow and very tough and in this game, a musing Scotty and I had had during the week that if he could win big on a charge with his Salvo infantry he could beat me one-on-one but if he didn't, I'd grind him into paste, definitely proved to be true. And grind is the operative word - we had the same with the Landsknecht Kiel in a shoving match with a Colour Regiment that took me the whole game to win! 

And a couple of things off the modelling bench:  

Flames of War 

In the absence of some 2pdrs for my MW Pacific Australians, I present their air support:  

 

This is Alice, a PBY Consolidated Catalina flying boat and one of my favourite aircraft of the war. She's the right scale for Flames and is so much more fun than a couple of Kittyhawks.  I don't quite have a full set of markings but getting some RAAF roundels was what was needed to at least get her to a point where I'm happy to have her on table. 

Warhammer 40K 

I've also got on and finished another Rough Rider, and started three more, so they're moving along now I'm happy with the palette and the technique:

 The random pop of orange or green, depending on lancehead type and my predilection for painting melta bombs in orange (maybe a nod to the original Space Crusade? I can't remember...) kind of makes me smile against the relatively muted background. There's a lot more khaki than my regular Cadians but that's part of the charm.  

Next Time

Rough Riders and maybe some more Early War Germans...  

What I did on my holidays...

 It's been a while. The end of last year definitely became all about real life and not a lot about hobbying. I'm also enjoying that realisation that comes with middle-age that my eyes don't work so well anymore and as a result, painting became deeply unfun for a while. 

 Mercifully, the summer rolling around and there being cricket on made for hobby time without glasses on a much more pleasing proposition. 

 So I've been doing a bunch of stuff with my summer break and herein is a catalogue of those things! Some of this will also be a bit of a steer as to what's on the gaming calendar for 2026! 

Flames of War

A throwaway conversation with a clubmate at the end of last year about no one playing Flames of War Pacific reminded me that I had a whole army of Australians that could definitely come out to play. So I made up a list and realised that I was, annoyingly, missing a Bofors AA gun and more annoyingly, the platoon of 2pdr AT guns I thought I had painted actually doesn't exist and I have wholly imagined it. 

But I made up a couple of Owen SMG bases and a flamethrower base to turn one of my infantry platoons into a Commando section: 

 

I also re-marked up my vehicles for the army with new decals from BF: 

 

McBeth hooked me up with a 4th Bofors gun and I'll get some 2pdrs at some stage. I've got some RAAF decals inbound to decorate the air support that's slotted in in the absence of the 2pdrs. 

I've also test painted a single Early War tank, just to see how it comes out with the grey and brown and I'm really looking forward to cracking on with this army in anticipation of the release of EW in February:  

It still needs markings and I'm considering throwing some foliage on them just as a colour pop. Historically correct? Probably not. But I kind of want to do it anyway.  

ADLG Renaissance

 Finally done. Am I happy with them? No, not especially but I didn't enjoy painting that army at all. The paint job is tabletop at best but honestly, I just needed to get them done. Basing and flags have helped with the finished product. 

 

 

The completed Early Low Countries Spanish army for ADLG-R: 

And while I'm not thrilled with the paint job on any given bit of the whole army, the collective does look pretty cool. That many flags makes everything better. I'm getting it out for a run next weekend and so we'll see how it goes. 

Warhammer 40K 

Having played almost nothing but Knights last year, I've been focusing on getting some improvements into my Guard army to get this army on the park again this year. 

A new Leman Russ was one of the first adds and, given the armament, I decided he should be a Commissar tank:  

I've also added some new support solos - two new techpriests (one of whom is nice and big for reasons that will become apparent...):  

And from there (also for reasons that will become apparent...) a converted Lord Solar. I did the kitbash for two reasons. First, while I like the Lord Solar model, it's SO out of place in my Guard collection and second, I had an excellent head with a Windsor Davies style mustache and it's perfect for this.  

 

Workbench

I've added a second trio of Bullgryns to bulk them out to a full unit. I'd like to give them a blat in a Grizzled Veterans company with a Commissar to make them more hitty: 

 

I've done a bit of a kitbash on the new Attillan Rough Riders to provide an escort for Lord Solar. They're all built, this is the first painted one: 

 

Finally, the apparent reason: 

 After much back and forth in my own head about whether to magnetise the model, I decided that the point of the whole thing was the meme so I, realistically, am only ever going to use the Baneblade:  

 

She's not quite done - some 3D printed sponsons are inbound (so I can have the double sponson list build with only one pair of actual sponsons) and I am still pondering the specific crewing arrangements but there will be some classic 'DRIVE ME CLOSER I WANT TO HIT IT WITH MY SWORD' energy though.  It's been a great little project that I've really enjoyed. I genuinely can't wait to get it painted and running. 

Next Time

I'll take photos and report back on the performance of the most hateful painting project ever. I have high hopes for the performance of the Tercio but we shall see...