Trumpeter Salute 2026 - Close Quarter Battle AAR (Narco Terrorist Port Raid

April 2026 Trumpeter Salute occuring in Burnaby BC at the Bonsor Community Centre. I had the fortune to get into another game hosted by Darren (of strategies hobby store & the author of Close Quarter Battle). Darren runs the games with his own published ruleset probably as a mix of funnsies, as well as advertising for the game and it's associated minis. 

 

 

insertion via clipping the wire

 

He runs a good game. He know the rules and has devised some challenging, convention friendly, scenarios. They usually is a time crunch, in terms of terms/action economy, and it's very easy to get bogged down and over extend. The agents are much (MUCH) better than their opposition, but the opposition is plentiful. It's really the threat of the timer which is the biggest constraint, unlimited turns would really only see very unlucky agents getting taken down. 

 

This particular mission had the agents infiltrating a local port that is under the influence of a drug cartel. There is a cartel boss on site, but the local army base is on call to assist. The agents have a certain number of turns to achieve objectives AND LEAVE THE TABLE before the army arrives. Should the Jefe manage to make a phone call the number of turns available decreases quite a bit. 

 

 

 

Objectives included: search the sea cans and find 1/. drug money (and blow it up) 2/. drugs (and blow it up) 3/. refugees getting trafficked (and get them off map) 4/. Russian weapons (take an example weapon and blow up the rest). Also, assassinate the Jefe OR abduct the Jefe for interogation back at base. It's basically impossible to acheive everything. 

 

 

 

Insertion is via a boat or the road. Chainlink fences must be cut through. Sea cans must be picked (or cut if you use your equipment slot to have bold cutters). The area is lit, though the generator can be blown meaning show sight ranges (and you can use an equipment slot for night vision goggle making you a lethal hunter in the dark). Vehicles can be hot wired. Lots of interaction is possible with the scenery.  Also, each agent is run by a different convention player, so it's easy to have imperfect communication and planning. I love friction in games, so this is wonderful to me. 

 

Prior to the alarm being raised the GM's and players would dice off for each cartel members, high roll would control where they talked.  

 

 The alarm would be raised if the cartel members saw the agents at the beginning of their turn. So the agents had a whole turn to react and try and cap anyone who saw them. Explosions would raise the alarm (and did). 

 

 

 

 

Bodies also needed to be dragged out of site of cartel members which was pretty dicey at the beginning. We went for the generator early, which was good and bad. Line of sight went down, alarm went up (explosion), engagement range went down (safer), the jefe started walking towards the phone with intent (more dangerous). 

The jefe and his bodygaurd (more competent and dangerous) were on the boat. They walked towards the construction office (sea can with stairs on the left). 

 

Meanwhile the agents were searching sea cans, struggling with picking locks, and queuing up more explosions. We almost got blown up more than once. The explosives have a timer which is slightly counter intuitive (I didn't use them but it's a set one turn and it counts down at a weird time, so it's easy for you to short yourself the time needed to get clear).  

The guards at the front gate I think were a touch more competent, and EVENTUALLY, there was a firefight across the open area. 

 

 Count down timer seen on another sea can. It was awesome as the agent just got far enough away, but the cartel members swarming like vermin towards another agent mostly were blown up. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Refugees were found. My agent managed to hot wire the truck and back it up close enough to load them up. As the jefe approached the office all the agent were running for the slowly departing truck. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We ended up doing a driveby shooting of the Jefe, one of the agents in the front cab was wounded during the firefight, but we were racing out under the wire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  There was a moment of collective breath holding as we hit the barriers. It was entirely possible to whiff the damage roll and mess up the truck enough it wouldn't move anymore (or worse). It would take catastrophic unluck to roll that bad......and thankfully it didn't happen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Victory picture! 5 of 6 objectives achieved (no kidnapped jefe). Wounded agents but no deaths. Lots of fun. 4 stars, would recommend. 

 

 

 

 

 

Close Quarter Battle AAR Intro Mission: Assassinate

While Brian was visiting in May, I broke out my copy of Close Quarter Battle, The war on drugs. The publisher is Strategies Games Labs (based out of Strategies Hobbies in Vancouver BC), and written by Darren, who tends to run the game at Trumpeter Salute. 2025 I played it (at a recommendation from my friends) and really enjoyed it, and bought a starter set. This year I've actually made some good progress painting stuff up, so was able to host a game. My friends argue that the game should be called something different, like '80s action hero' as that is more the vibe, and I kinda agree. Regardless of the name, it's a fun system, and is well received at the convention. 

 

The system runs around 3 levels of training (green, trained, operative) which guides targets for skill checks, but also the number of actions you get a turn (1, 2, 3). Also, the number of hits you take as suppression before you actually get injured (1,2,3). Operatives are REALLY good. Green troops (raw recruits, gang bangers, etc) are barely speed bumps. The essential tension in the missions is rarely about whether the operatives are going to win, but whether they can do it IN TIME. Tight mission time lines and ambitious optional objectives often is what makes the game really compelling (in my few play throughs). 

The intro mission has 2 operatives attempting to assassination a local drug dealer notable/lieutenant. There are a bunch of green troops, so it's actually a really challenging mission for the dealers side....unless they can drag out the game. The second time we played through one of the operatives moved a bit too aggressively to get the shot on a hunkered down target (hiding on the roof) and was killed by defensive fire. With only one operative on the table the target made a run for it [straight away from the remaining operative], with appropriate futile/suicidal cover from his mooks. Sure enough, the timer was run down and the dealer managed to eke out a win. 

 

 

I've got pictures of the two games I played at the convention (2025, 2026) and the tables look great. I'll try and dig them out and post them up. 

 Having gaming visitors was fun, as it force me to pull out what I had from the Dave cave in order to host a game and have terrain on the table. I was able to hand terrain off to the other nerds while I was digging in boxes, so the tables ended up set up in a way I wouldn't have chosen myself. Win win. 

 

Big Stompy Robots that Break Stuff

 In May I had my friend Bryan ferry across the Georgia Strait to visit me in Nanaimo. He was a foot passenger and brought over a few mecha, and a rule set he'd been tinkering with. It is very much focused on being a convention set (and/or run on the monthly Bonsor Game club nights)...so 2 hours, simple rules, multiple players, get results quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspiration wise he looked to Kaiju movies with giant stompy robots that kick the snot out of each other. Shooting was intentionally made very weak. Grabbing and throwing the enemy is good. Rule of cool is the highest principle. You want to climb a building and jump kick, lets figure out how that works. 

 

 

 

 

It was very early draft, so lots of material was tossed out, as we looked to establish a solid foundation before we added too many bells and whistles. Bryan wasn't convinced of my idea to have destructable terrain, but I thought it was amazing to level a town due to throwing your enemies through it. I thought it worked pretty well. While the combatants were probably a bit brittle, it was really easy to get taken out, and then grab another mech and charge in off the table edge to work on a grudge kill.  

 

 

A mutual friend came by later in the evening and we drank beer and played another round. It was good to get another set of views and opinions on the play and see how easy it was for a new comer to pick up the rules and play effectively. I'm not sure when I'll have another go at playing but it was definitely a fun game for an evening. 

 

 

 

Leipzig 1813 day one. Napoleon's Battles. Eye candy post

I have the sense that once you a a deep veteran of napoleonic wargaming, you begin to gaze at Leipzig 1813 as the magnum opus to your endeavors. After you've collected, painted, built and gamed progressively bigger and bigger battles and campaigns there exists the shining battle on the hill.

Leipzig was the largest battle in the Napoleonic wars and had roughly half a million troops converging and fighting for control of the city. To put this in perspective The battle of the bulge (WW2) (arguably a theatre) was roughly the same. Verdun (WW1) approximately the same size.  Gettsyburg  clocked in a 1/3-1/4.  Stalingrad (WW2) and Kursk (WW2), both clock in about 2 million and are the largest battles in history. Napoleon and his opponents managed to field this monstrosity with horse drawn supplies, foot power, and a fairly recent innovation of canning. Totally bonkers. 

 

 

Also, this game is pretty bonkers for wargamers to put on. It occurs over 3 days and the map is HUGE. The OOB is something larger than huge. Delerious perhaps? 

 

 

 

 

 

28mm FDM prints

 A comment in a previous post was talking about print quality of miniatures. I was very surprised about half a year ago when my friend came over to visit me and offered to print up some minis. The support removal was fairly agonizing, but the end result is impressive.  

He is using a cheap bambu printer with a 0.2mm nozzle (vs the more common 0.4) and settings appropriate for the job. Bambu has a reputation for really solid prints with not much (?any) tinkering...at a competitive price point. Unfortunately they also have a bit of a reputation for moving towards a closed ecosystem (think how apple gates all their stay in a walled garden). For lots/most of their customer base it doesn't really matter, but for people who have been in the 3d printing community (which has advanced a lot via open source improvements) for a while it's not a good look.  

For that reason I can't really recommend Bambu, and I went with a different manufacturer. The output is certainly pretty awesome though. 

 

Defend the castle!

 For YEARS (honestly, decades) I've had the aspiration to do a castle fight. I have a campaign I downloaded off the internet of a desperate defense of a fortified town/village near Sylvania but a group of mercenaries (why yes, it does use Mordheim). One day it may see the light of day. 

 

 

 

With my list of 'things wot I need' I stumbled across some cool stl's early in my printer ownership and progressively printed a bunch. It sat unpainted for much time. Then I swapped some painting with local gamer Garret. He usually zenithal highlights and inks with a home mix to get a satisfying stone look that I dig. 

 

 

 

The impetuous to finally finish the stuff  occurred with the plan for enfilade 2025. I knew I wasn't going to make it for a variety of reasons (childcare, car that can't survive freeway speeds, geopolitical tensions, etc). But I would be able to contribute to the success of the game for my gamer friends who go yearly (and come up to Canada each summer for a game). Seth, conveniently, was up in Vancouver for rugby the same weekend I went to Trumpeter Salute at the Bonsor club and I managed to pass off a castle to him to borrow. Trotting it over as a foot passenger on a ferry was the most challenging aspect of the process. 

 

 

York 867 was chosen to run a variant of '6's are bad'. That is.....roughly the name of the rule set. It's been re-skinned a number of times, but it's a great ruleset for people who feel like they roll an abnormal number of low dice. 

 

 

 

 

Frostgrave: The complex temple three way fight.

In October 2025, Bryan hopped the passenger ferry across the Georgia straight and visited for a weekend. With local gamer Garret we played out a 3 way frostgrave game. Considering the 8 months since I played it I don't have a lot of recollection of the event. I *do* remember having the worst luck (I think 50% of my force was taken out, and possible non at all for the others). 

The pillars (printed by me) were magical constructs and would turn into chests when touched. The game was to rush forward, grab what you could and escape (which is the general theme for frostgrave in general TBH). In principle there are 2 chests per team.......but that is so unlikely it's hardly worth noting. 

Small table and tight quarters meant some definite clustering to start. 

Hard to see with white on white, but I'm a big fan of using mist (cotton fluff) to control long ranged fire and wandering monsters. It usually works quite well.... 

But not in this game. One of my henchmen gets a wandering monster charging him as soon as an opposing team activates a pillar/chest. These GD toads are slow but have a really impressive bite. Out in a single roll. 

The pillars are all converted at this point and we are dragging them away. Plus flinging spells at chests and henchmen to complicate and/or steal them from the other sides. Lots of red 'dead' markers can be seen (blood ringed bodies) in my area of the table. There are lots of square ish red x's showing damage. 

The GD toad just keeps on hunting my team. 

 It's probably subjective but I feel like Garrets archers are usually both effective and annoying. 

 

It was a total rout for my side (I'm not sure I even got a single chest), but Bryan and Garret did all right. Fun times despite the rough handling by dice rolls.