It was great to see familiar faces, and get some gaming in. I did a fair amount of running around taking pictures of various cool looking games. I thereby present them in a pictorial essay to follow. Minimal comments will follow as mostly I didn't know what the games were (or bother to spent time to figure out).
The theme was 'War in the Desert'.
Blogger was cursed me by loading the pictures in reverse chronological order and I'm not willing to reorganize them....enjoy!
To add insult to injury the French are sailing VERY close to the wind and can't make a left/port turn without having a very good chance (~70%) of stalling (caught in irons). Problematically the French were so close to the edge of the table that they couldn't really turn to the right/starboard much either, or they'd run off the board. Easy play indeed....the scope for decisions was VERY limited. It might have been better to have the french run on auto pilot in some way.
Racing through the burning and collapsing factory the two warbands notice movement down an adjacent wing.....and the glint of arcane treasures.
The 3rd game in our (mostly) cooperative campaign has the crews on a time limit to get in, grab what they can, and get out before the complex is finally consumed/explodes.
I loved the artwork from the book, and apparantly someone with real skills did as well because I was able to find an stl of a flame flinger and print out a couple for the game. A pretty basic copper paint job went on them. I'll probably return to it one day and add some additional colour and basing.
A pictorial essay of the game to follow...
Cleverly Garret matched the tower we escaped into last game as the starting location for this one.
I hunted a lot of racks and it largely came down to:
1/. fit the space I had
2/. Had a high number of paints per size (high density)
3/. I could see the actual paint colours (some racks have the lids tipped to you which doesn't help much with dropper style).
Typhoon racks seemed my best bet so I pulled the trigger. I even fit (almost) all my paints on them. I'm pondering getting another rack though it's probably like storage space in most houses....if you have it then it will be filled up.
The racks were pretty simple to assemble. A bit snug in a couple of the slot/hole openings. They are quite light. The wood has a fair bit of spring to it...which worries me at times. I suspect MDF would be more robust but would probably store less do to the multiplier of increases the size of each level by 1-2mm.
It's definitely made it easier for me to hunt down similar colours in a family to choose what I want.
Combat is roll 1d6 and add your melee/shooting modifier. No effect, Drive back (variable distance), and Wounds are all about equal. Two wounds remove a fig. Cannon throw extra dice with a good bonus (and long range). Troops at the bottom of walls can't be hit by the cannon.
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| The barricaded gate. Mexicans don't have enough troops here. |
There is some complicated process of melee at the top of the ladders....complicated in the sense that it happened a few times and fast and I didn't pick up on the nuances. Just roll a bunch of melee attacks. By the time this is happening it's bad news for the Texans.
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| Coming from 2 sides against the corner they have enough troops here... |
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| The elusive Doug in his element |
We started with Doug and I getting an orientation game with Garret counseling us. 3 vs 3 planes (Germans vs Americans I believe). The rules are simple enough to make sense within two or three turns. The end of the mission typically comes from loss of nerve/confidence/morale rather than shooting down all the fighters. This is a good thing as lots of games of swoopy planes can DRAGGGGGG. Morale is lost everytime the enemy gets a good line on you and manages to fire on you. The shooting resolution is via fists full of dice and looking for fairly high numbers (I think successes are on a 6). The early war planes have much lower offensive dice pools so it's actually pretty hard to splash your opponent.
The bases are pretty clever with a tilt built into the stem. Nose up is advantage, level is neutral, and down is disadvantage. Pilot skill tells you who moves first, followed by (dis)advantage, and then finally actual airplane max speed. It rarely gets to that point.
As actions you can choose to gain advantage, maneuver (which tries to force your enemy within a certain range 'down' in advantage), or shoot. You can only shoot someone with less advantage than you. You can only take out a plane that is disadvantaged (I think otherwise it's forced lower still). So you end up with team work to hit the enemy by 'maneurvering' to lower it's advantage rating, and then a wingman to clean him up. I think this is the only mildly jarring aspect of the game to me: it makes sense for your high skill pilots to maneuver the enemy down, and then the lower skill (moving later) pilots to shoot them down. Who knows, maybe this is actually how it happens but it seems a bit odd. In terms of game mechanics though it works very very smoothly.
Next up we fought a three way melee. Japanese vs British vs Russians. Another nice touch is upon the start of the game you make a skill roll for each pilot which dictates what advantage level they start at. You will notice my green plans in the bottom right are all disadvantaged.....the Red airforce believe in training by doing!
We all elected to hold some planes as 'high cover'. I think this is scenario dependent, but basically they can show up on the board edge within a certain distance of marker on whatever turn. If they don't show up you can move the marker along the edge a certain distance. It's like aerial flankers!
Happily I brought in my high cover, who happened to be the highest skill planes, very early. And very very right behind the British. Garret knows the game; it's best to thin our his planes early.
Clouds are very interesting as when you enter them your advantage goes neutral immediately. So they are a safe harbor for planes in trouble, but neutralize your advantage if you are doing well.
Coming out of the cloud you have a choice to gain advantage, maneuver or shoot (like normal). This means that planes in advantage are pretty safe from things emerging from the clouds.
Firing ranges are fairly short, so despite playing on a 3x3 table with a lot of planes the opportunity for fire wasn't overwhelming (lots of planes aren't legal targets as they are at the same or higher advantage). By far maneuvering and gaining advantage are the most common actions taken.
Planes have some character to them, with differences in offense/defense and, more notably, special abilities. These abilities give you some cards you can play to do a bit extra. Lose advantage to move extra far. Similarly, the aces (rare as they are) come with a special ability which is much more powerful. One of them could use maneuver AND shoot in a turn. Nasty bit of work that could solo enemies on his/her own (Russians had female pilots anyway).
"Sir! We have confirmation that our detachments heavy equipment has now arrived in system."
"Excellent, begin sweeping the outlying areas, it's important that these local scum understand that the fist of the Empire is hovering above their obstinate heads. "
More reveals of the 15mm star wars force I have been secretly building up. It's funny how many secret things happen in this fictional universe.
The heavy work of figering out what minis to use was mined from the internets by diligent searchs. Turns out the there were some micro machine star wards lines that are pretty close to 1:100.
The AT AT is obviously undersized.......but does it really need to be any bigger for a game? I don't seem myself using it as an actual unit as opposed to facing background and/or objective.
The AT ST are much more 'in line' scale wise. I have 3 of these bad boys. Considering I only have 30 troopers and a mere 3 support weapons it's a good thing too.
His warband is led by a Sigilist mage. My own (on the right) is more of a druidic tradition which seems to map to 'witch' in the game. 1st mission we can bring but 2 helpers with our mage or apprentice. Why wouldn't you bring you wizard? I'm not sure.....maybe story only. Or hard mode.
In the background we can see the other star of the game.......an alchemical monstrosity. The alchemical factory we were exploring collapses and catches on fire. We must move quickly and help each other to escape. In hindsight the monster should have been more like chaos spawn/john carpenters 'the thing'/protoplasm and tentacles. Oh well.
Credible intelligence has been received of Rebel activity in Coaltown. You will deploy your men to prevent an attack and locate additional rebel humint. Now move out!
My necromunda gang from the 90s hit the table again versus some squats and some meatcarving chaos worshippers. Kevin provided the painted terrain while I unveiled my mass of 3d printed terrain (all in gray and unpainted).
This was harvest scenario where we needed to seize the blue drug plants to make money. Having seen the power of flame weapons in the first game my red cloak cultists ended up fielding as much flame as possible. Cleanse the unbelievers!!
Prior to moving from Vancouver I had these partially painted. I got hung up on what to use to highlight, I tried some nearly fluorescent green and it didn't look right. So it sat.....and sat.
Naturally the difficulty with any tank, and especially green ones, is to try and make it not look like a blob of colour. I'm not sure that it's as non blobby as I'd like, but it's done. And that's a win.
To the Left the Prussians have depleted the Italians who are left covering in the villages and staging a flagging attempt to stop the lancers from seizing their supply line of communication (bottom left near the tents).
In the centre the French and Italians massive struggle to break the British has been delayed when the British, fortuitously in this case, suffer a withdrawal result and recoil. The extra space relieves the pressure while the British allies attempt to crack the Franco-Italian wings.
Top Right the Saxons pulled pressure off the British for much of the day as a force in being. Finally their counter attack has pushed the French to the edge....at the cost of the same for the Saxons. With all armies exhausted there's more space for the few effective formations to move about and try and create rational lines.
I've had a slow burn (VERY SLOW) project to get some 15mm figs on the table for star wars action. These folks are meant to be rebel naval troops.....the poor shmucks who get dismantled in the 1st movie ever produced.
They are a bit....under geared in the movie. I imagine that they are acting as a diplomatic honor guard more so than doing a hard assault. Naval troops I imagine are both for ship board security (and while at dock/port), but also form scratch forces of infantry when the full army (such that it is for the rebels) isn't nearby. Perfect setting for small scale gaming.
Yikes, how overdue is this? I'll tell you.....I started the draft in early September.
How is my recollection? Not good enough.
Update: Links to previous battles! part 1, part 2
Centre field (and right flank) we have the French under the command of Seth facing off against the Saxons (upper right corner) and the Brits (centre upper). The Franco-Italian brain trust decided to try and crush the British and force a withdrawal before we were driven from our victory sites (the various towns).
Seth chose to hold the town on his right flank heavily, which sufficiently deterred the Saxon command that they did very little for most of the game. It later came out that Peter (commander of the Saxons) felt the town fight was a pointless meatgrinder and merely screened it. This would cause challenges for the French to persecute an attack with a strong fresh flanking force hovering menacingly.
Happy New Year! To be honest it's a bit of a relief that 2022 has ended. Certainly a challenging year for many.
My productivity nose dived in the early fall (I'm astounded to discover I hadn't pulled pictures off my phone since mid August). I think there was a combo of working more than full time for a number of months, typical summer craziness with young children and then the start of kindergarten and the inevitable waves of plague that followed.
I do have painted minis to show, and some game reports even (!), but those will have to follow in the near future. This is the New Years post. So, how did my resolutions go? Fortunately I had two (2) and they weren't ambitious!
Jump start a stalled project
Frostgrave received a bump as my buddy Garret started egging me on with texts showing his progress to being ready to play a game. We did, in fact, play 2 games in 2022!
Revisit the Trays of Shame and get some crud out of there
Prior to writing this post I thought I did far less well than I actually did. Hunting through the pictures from last new year post I made a sizeable dent in shameful tray items. It's possible there's a whole tray worth of stuff!
I'll do a proper pictorial visit to this stuff later, but here's a quite glimpse at (the majority) of the painting progress this year.
With regards to the coming year I don't have solid plans. I'd like to introduce some more regularity into my life....so I'm pondering how to balance work, family, and hobbying. It'd be nice to have a solid target for frequency of blogging, gaming, and painting.....however "frequent" that ends up being. It's much easier to work towards targets than nebulous hand wavey things.
