Congo: Forest Tribes (Foundry Figures) - part 2 (of 2)

 Continuing on my showcase of the forest tribes for CONGO (studio tomahawk). If you are interested in the 'official' pictures of minis there is a handy pdf with cards of all the units here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First up is the pygmy king (a leader required if you want a pygmy unit). He has a unit of spearmen, and archers.  I tried to use some consistent colours across the whole force as, to be honest, there is a lot of replication across the 4 armies (like everyone gets young warriors, archers, scouts, and porters). My forest tribes have blue, red, orange, turqoise.

 

 

 

 

 

The pgymies may be overpowered based on the game we played. The archers, conveniently, are 2 separate units but activate on a single card/token/thingum. Small units are SUPER brittle, but the extra mobility was pretty awesome. There is, functionally, some march blocking which allows you to slow down your opponent if you are close to them. 

 

 

 

 Speaking of small units, we have a group of 3 scouts. They have an ability to enter terrain and NOT trigger a dangerous terrain test (there's a d66 table which can include some wild animals showing up on the table). Once a piece of terrain is occupied, it won't generate a test when another unit enters (but if it gets unoccupied and then return, you need to test again)

 

 

 

 Bundukis are another fairly common unit (warriors with muskets). Muskets and rifles have similar ranges, and attack dice are more about the troop competence than weapon. The difference is that muskets inflict a 'stress' token on a unit taking fire....but then they need to reload on another fire action. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last unit to be shown is the archers. I should probably base everyone, but I'm undecided on what to use. I'll probably just wait to finish my 3rd army/force and then base everyone the same way. Though there are arguments for having slightly different basing for each force I suppose to create some additional visual elements that differentiate them (makes it harder to steal/share the units between forces though). 

 




 

Congo: Forest Tribes (Foundry Figures) - part 1 (of 2)

I decided to pull out some figures I'd previously painted (years ago) for some photos. Painted but not yet documented. The impetus to get them out was a weekend visit by Doug, and the fact I was going to force him to play some games that have been on my shelf for a while, but not yet hit the table top. 

Congo was one of these games. A local gamer said he was interested, and I saw a screaming deal on figs on TMP (many years ago) so I bought a lot of three forces. I believe most/all of these figures are foudry. The zanzibari's have previously been photographed.  

First up are the leader types. I think I'm missing one or two for the game and possibly over subscribed for one or two. I think it will be tricky to fill in the gaps, as they are pretty niche (drummers, a newspaper ma for the white mans expedition, zanzibari slaver,etc). 

 

Next up we have some young warriors, (blue shields) and warriors (with the head dressings. Missing from my stock are the cannibals....which is mostly differentiated by painting. So that may not be too hard to fill in if I want to expand. 

 

Broadside Empires of Steel: Blockade of Rabaul (first game)

Broadside Empires of Steel is a print and play game that kickstarted many years ago. I thought it'd be a good entry into naval (which I've been vaguely interested in, but put off by the crunchiness of many rules and the steep learning curve).  

In principle the ships could be printed in FDM, but my original printer (Ender 5) didn't really give me satisfying results. So I waited till I was dabbling in resin, which I don't really like to print with (too stinky for my space and too much post print clean up....with stinky cleansers). 

Doug visited a couple weekends ago and I dragooned him into playing a game with me. There are rules for creating point based fleets and missions, but I don't have that many ships and my space is small. I decided to go for a small scenario based on a kriegspiel the mad padre ran, Swan of the East. 

 In the game I had a command of 2 ships (The HMAS battlecruiser Australia and the HMAS light cruiser Chatham. I was blockading Rabaul to try and catch the german raiders (this was a ww1 game). The Australia was in close blockade with the Chatham over the horizon (or vice versa). Wireless from the base ended up summoning the sister ships (armoured cruisers) Scharnhost and Gneisenau, looking for some easy kills. In the campaign one of the German ships took a critical hit and started to spin, the other one retreated, but not before Australia was sufficiently damaged to sink over a few hours. I wanted to replay the encounter to see what might happen. Amazingly the points values were almost identical. 

Trumpeter Salute 2026: Battle of Luetzen (15mm Honours of War)

I played in this game during Trumpeter Salute, hosted in April in Burnaby BC (in Greater Vancouver). Dennis was the host and had painted up some lovely figures over the year. My opponent was Malcolm, who often takes command for Napoleon in the napoleons battles games featured elsewhere on this blog. 

The battle was Leutzen which, like most historical battles, I don't know a lot about. The crash course was that the Austrians held a town/bridge over the river and felt comfortable holding it vs the Prussians. They hadn't done a very good job with recon over the area, and the Prussians discovered a ford, promptly marched over to it, and deployed on a hill with command over the Austrians lines of communication. Now Austria needed to switch from defensive to offensive with all of the typical challenges of the time, and national army, that that entailed. 

 

 

Our game started off similarly. I was able to steal the march on the Austrians and hurtled most of my troops towards the ford, and hill with the objective. Ahistorically, Malcolm/Austria launched a strong counterattack across the river. The Prussian command was split, and faced a bit of a challenge of how many troops to leave on their side of the river to threaten the village, but not denude their drive on the objective too much. 

 

 

 

While the game looked nice, and I have (in the past) enjoyed Honors of War, there was a bit off. Some changes were made by the GM (I think in the interests of time and convention realities) and I think he wasn't too solid in the rules. There were some options for 'pass through' fire (overwatch/reaction fire) that could have made quite a difference but we were told it wasn't a thing in this game. After the weekend I checked my own rules and let Malcolm know, as he was (rightly so) a bit disappointed by the rules and the outcome. I do think it would have made a major difference. 

 

In general, the Prussians were able to sort themselves out on the hill in a strong defensive position. The two armies cavalry forces were slightly overlapping, so a cavalry vs cavalry charge quickly morphed into cavalry vs infantry attacks (which are very iffy in this time period). Some good rules by the Prussians vs some ugly roles by the Austrians quickly made the writing on the wall clear and the battle was resolved in a timely fashion within the block. 

 

 

 

I didn't feel like I'd done great generalship, but a combo of lucky roles, & some missed reaction fire opportunities ended the battle early. The pressure was definitely on my leave behind force, and I suspect the hill battle could have been fairly interesting/close had the cavalry action not been so decisive. 

 

 

 I feel like this is was one of my somewhat typical convention experiences, where you play with pretty figs and terrain that someone else has made, but the actual gaming experience isn't the most uplifting. It seems churlish to say it though and I don't think it's really a function of the GM (in most cases). I think that the convention setting and time constraints, vs the rules that are available (specifically the complexity and time requirements), make for a challenge that often is imperfectly solved. I think my expectations for conventions have gone up as it's hard for me to get to them. The time and monetary costs are balanced vs the other things I could be doing (gaming or visiting with friends) often means that what would otherwise be entirely satisfactory games are seen through a more critical lens. 

FOG: Carthage vs Rome, annual game 2025

More pictures from the past that haven't hit my blog yet. This is from a field of glory game in 2025. It seems FOG picks up in the summer when Nate is on break from teaching. Of course, the 'honey-do' list gets long and childcare and vacations complicates everything. I played a game of FOG in 2026, but managed to only take 2 pictures, so not worth a post. 

 

 

 

 This game I was playing against Chris who is definitely remembering how to play and can put up a decent plan. I feel like I'm constantly on the back foot using Carthage vs Rome. I'm not sure if it's historical, or a function of the point value we play at (lower than normal), or composition of the troops we have, or what (definitely unrelated to my skill level). 

 

 

 

 

 Notable in this game I learned to not have my elephants race off versus light skirmishers. Slinger in this case. It reminded me of being told about how in DBA/DBX slingers vs elephants see no results 5 of of 6 turns, and then 1 in 6 you lose your elephants. Don't do it. This is precisely what happened in this game. 

 

 

 

 I, typically, ended up with my cavalry charging in and bouncing off against walls of well ordered infantry, who crept forward. The end game was my infantry core being ground down and cracking vs the (seemingly) endless small units. After this game I think I went for larger blocks of spearmen to avoid the penalties of losses kicking in after a single base was lost. 

 

 

 

 

 I'm currently in the process of painting another army (Syracuse) so I can try something different. Although honestly, they are mostly hoplites (offensive spear), so not that different. 

It will give me an option for hosting a game myself when Nate isn't around (who has 3-4 different armies).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trumpeter Salute 2025 - Close Quarter Battle AAR (VIP extraction BARRIO)

 In the continuing theme of close quarter battle, I decided to post some long overdue photos. Trumpeter Salute happens in April in Burnaby (part of Greater Vancouver, BC, Canada). This was the first time I played CQB, and was encouraged by my friends to play it if I had a chance as Darren (the writer) puts on a good game. 

 

This will be fairly description light as it's been 16months since I played the game. Darrens tables are good for eye candy photographs though. The buildings are 3dprinted from corvus (I think) and were (possibly) a gift of some sort to Darren. The graffiti  does SO MUCH for the terrain and I loves it. I sent my brother some photos as we was really into graffiti art when he was younger. 

More after the jump.... 

 

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.