Sunday 17 November 2013

Warfare at Reading and the other sides of Kallistra

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Warfare at Reading for the first time. It's a fairly typical wargames show. On the plus side the bring-and-buy area was unusually well organised and accessible. On the minus side the games tables were unusually crowded  together and inaccessible.

The trade area was as per normal and I had an interesting chat with Paul and Sally Kerrison of Kallistra. Kallistra's Hexon II is a well-known and, indeed, brilliant system for transferring the digital precision of boardgaming to the analogue world of miniatures. What seems to be surprisingly overlooked, however, is Kallistra's range of miniatures and its Hexon-orientated rules.

The miniatures are 12mm which is a rather 'bastard' size, but the sculpts are superb. I was looking in particular at its AWI range (though I'm also interested in the Early WW1 range). As you would expect, the figures are somewhere between, say, 10mm Pendraken and 15mm Peter Pig. The issue with a unique scale is that the range needs to be complete because you are not going to be able to supplement the figures from another manufacturer.

The same presumably holds for Eureka's 18mm SYW range, another Eighteenth Century option that has caught my attention along with Pendraken, Baccus and the possibility of 3mm. In any event, I would want to obtain figures all in march pose, so that might require some negotiation.

Hordes & Heroes Medieval is, I believe, the first historical set of Kallistra hex rules and looks well worth trying with my large but currently unused collection of 15mm mediaevals originally amassed for DBM.

7 comments:

  1. I have converted a large proportion of my gold mountain into a substantial Hexon II landscape as well as innumerable units of medieval origin. The Hordes and Heroes ranges sit well on the tabletop with Warmaster figures too. An outlay of £100 will give you a 20 unit army which makes collecting both sides a little less daunting. The Ancient and Medieval book by Neil Thomas give you an alternate ruleset to try against Hordes and Heroes Medieval and the Warmaster rules themselves as well as Warmaster Ancients give you lots of options. Dare I say Hail Caesar!

    Oh Yes, Paul and Sally are always good for a chat at shows.

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    1. Ah, yes, turning gold into lead is a skill I also have...

      The H&H army lists suggest armies of a collectable size, more credible than DBA but smaller than DBM or its derivatives.

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    2. You can always use double sized armies if you want more toys on the table.

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  2. FYI 12mm = a standard modelling gauge = N guage for model railways.
    Hinchcliffe even produced "System 12" in the 70's .

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    1. I used the word "size" rather than "scale" because I was afraid that some pedant would point out the difference! And then you fearlessly introduce the concept of "gauge"!

      Some time ago I created a spreadsheet crossreferencing scale, size and gauge. Perhaps I should reproduce it here?

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    2. Their figures are lovely

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    3. They are certainly more detailed than 10mm and as good or better than any 15mm ranges. Whether I want more detail to paint is another matter...

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