Recon 2023, Day 3

Had a more leisurely morning.

A France 1940 game.

Nice spot terrain for pulp sci-fi.

A tempting house.

The British-Egyptian army for
a River War game.

One of the riverboats built by Jeff, one of my local group,
who I've bought a few of these from but not got to use them yet.

Sat at a Car Wars table for an hour talking and reading until we got a couple more players. Yet again, play reduces the perceived complexity in my brain.

The card "wheel" tracker is an excellent aid - 
covering speed, tires, power and control.

How a car turns; you then roll dice equal to your speed bracket
plus dice specific to how sharply you turned. They can also slide.
(Basically skidding or "drifting".)

Round and round we go. I had missiles to fire forward,
but my target had railguns to fire sideways back at me.
The wrench die-faces denote special damage like fire.

My red car is badly hurt and has lost one of its flamers,
but two rear-firing missiles take out the crew of the yellow.

Again, a simpler game than it looks. The presentation makes a difference too! A bit of fun to start the day.

Next was a WWI demo game, Blood and Valor, with eight players on a four-by-six board (!):

Each player got a platoon of infantry - our side were 1914 British, Russians, Americans and French. The opposition had varieties of German and I think Austrian. I got the Russians.

My command - two rifle squads, a a command element,
sniper and machine gun team.

Some of the French and Americans.

Some interesting mechanics here. Each side has a given amount of initiative points, which are bartered to see who goes first in a round. Each round, one unit may be activated; in a small game, each side has four or five units. As a demo, there was a modification in that each player got to activate one unit per round. Once enough rounds have gone by that all units have activated, the turn begins again with initiative modified to account for casualties.

Units may take two actions during an activation. A typical move is four inches; there were no difficult terrain rules and few line-of-sight restrictions. A command element may also give extra activations to two units.

When units are hit, they take fatigue, which were marked with dice - take any at all and there are penalties, take seven, or more than there are figures in the unit, and the unit routs. Snipers and barrages also give out fatigue. Firing is with D10s.

My MG takes a bead on
Germans down the road.

A closeup view - the game was 25mm but a few
"Russian Giants" in 28mm made up the numbers!

The objectives were three sets of barrels.

The Germans won by sudden death - holding two of the
three objectives at the end of one turn.

Tanks and a 77mm gun were also on the table. The odd positioning above is because I was desperately trying to make room for a Mark V tank to fire down the center and shoot the Germans off the objective; the one 6-pounder that could see missed, and the machine gun killed one man who was promptly replaced.

A quote to our team leader, who had some beautiful British figures and had played in tournaments but rarely won initiative:

• "You're the worst leader ever!"
• "Well, at least I'm memorable."

Finally, an incomplete round of the Perrys' Travel Battle, which I brought for use as a pickup game.

I shall have to glue some of the pieces together - there
are actually quite a lot, and most bases are made of three
(tiny) pieces.

My opponent was very tactical; here his cavalry brigade
are forcing my infantry into square (denoted by diagonal placing).

A couple columns of infantry coming at my own cavalry.

A fun bit of relaxation with an older gentleman who didn't have a game to play either. Interrupted first by discussions about abbreviated rules - lots of things left out, I suspect because the Perry brothers were with Games Workshop so long that they absorbed the rules-writing culture of "We know how it works, we don't have to write it down, let the players figure it out." And second by a general discussion of history, horse-breeding, and puzzling. We started around 8pm, gave up around 9:30 and talked up a storm until midnight when the hoteliers put everyone out of the hall.

This was the last of the gaming side of the con for me - the next morning was just picking up some more toys to take home, breakfast with an aunt, and the drive home, listening to the Games Workshop novel Lion of the Forest. All in all a good time. I met interesting people, played some interesting games, and bought some toys and books, which I'll talk about next post.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow...

Recon 2023, Day 2

A couple Flames of War tourney tables: 

Commands and Colours again, I think.

ACW Corps-level game (each base reps a brigade,
despite the regimental names).

Hoping to buy a couple of these buildings for Minceheim.

Some Starship Troopers bugs:

In the morning, played in a game of Rebels and Patriots (playing the Brits) in a fun big-toy-soldier version of North Point, a game I am thinking about running for Fourth of July at work.

The table.

Our left flank.

The American center, opposite me.

My small Highlander unit (shock troops).

US light infantry.

Better overview of left and center.

Brit cavalry.

Baltimore Rifles? Who appeared out of the woods
on our left and wreaked some havoc.

Final combat between me and some American horse.

Highlights:

• My shooting was excellent, managing to blast a gun and US infantry regiment even though they were in a revetment.
• I charged another regiment with Highlanders and virtually destroyed them, mostly because a "follow-up" rule meant they could fight twice in CC.
• We rolled a double-one for activation and got friendly fire, so one of our gun captains missed the order to limber up and instead pulled the lanyard on the regiment in front of him...
• But then we rolled a double-six for activation and got reinforcements - a cavalry unit we'd already lost.

Next game, drawn in on the spur of the moment a couple turns in, was an ACW skirmish for Fistful of Lead. I was given command of five Union figures, one of whom hated the Rebels and was quite bloodthirsty - he'd get bonuses to close-combat and victory points for killing Rebs. It turned out this was also a moonshine-hunting expedition, and whenever we found some, the GM actually broke out some moonshine: 

My starting position.

A forest between.

Rebels investigate a picnic table,
and of course Yogi Bear appears.

Whilst I investigate a wagon and find some moonshine.

I rather stupidly fire into the melee, killing the bear
but not any of the Rebs. That'll cost me.

Trying to get into the barn. The smoke puffs are from
the pyromaniac player, who got VPs for setting things afire.

A hidden still we missed.

The barn, packed with whiskey, ultimately exploded, killing the three Rebs inside and wounding five Yankees, including my leader who was trying to drunkenly force his way in.

One of my opponents was fellow SMG member Jeff of the Sgt. Guinness blog. We agreed that Fistful of Lead should work well for my Picacho Pass scenario. It's quick to play but still has some the traits, functions and RPG elements necessary for a gunfight game. The cover made a big difference too, and I'm not sure how I can represent it on a desert board - lots of patches of brush, I suppose. Jeff may be able to get painted metal figures for the game, too, so that I don't have to use the flat Wofuns.

The last game of the day was Cruel Seas, which I have a starter set for so was interested to try.

A German convoy at the back is escorted by 3 S100
torpedo boats under my partner; the minesweeper and
the three S100s at the front are mine.

From the British corner; the ships at top left are left out,
while the ones they actually had are two large Vospers,
corvette and two small craft to left, and four Fairmiless to right.

I also controlled two small barges.
The cargo was not glued on;
when I discovered they were loose
we decided one gun had been thrown
off the bucking deck!

The minimalist, but very effective, harbor.

Crossing a Fairmile's T.
The beads are activation tokens.

While I did my best to concentrate on single targets,
I've got around eight guns firing at me here.

Fish in the water.

Craft afire.

I lost one of my boats by ramming it into the rocks, and had another shot to splinters and zero hit points, but sank two others. By the end the German convoy was getting away, there were sunken craft on all sides, and we'd successfully torpedoed the corvette for lots of damage, but they'd hit one of our transports, so honours were about even.

I like the rules, and will be interested to try the starter set now, with much less complexity. (It has ten MTBs, and my "table" will be a 5x7 storytime rug.) As usual, it takes a playthru or two for me to "grok" them. If you look at the card above, each ship has a number of HP (about 65 for the MTBs), and any hit with a gun does a certain number of D6 damage. This is basically to the hull. Twin and Quad mountings add dice to the damage, but do not help you hit. Any sixes rolled also go to a critical chart which may add more damage or hurt crew, munitions, engines, etc. The crits, however, can be saved. Moving is simple with a marker; the wake denotes your speed bracket.

As an example, I did 51 total hull damage to a Fairmile MTB in my first firing phase, but had two sixes which a) hit the conn and b) blew up a torpedo tube for 8 more dice of damage which we didn't even bother rolling at that point!

To hit is with D10s, and a surprisingly short chart - the standard is five or less to hit with your usual speed, ability and size deductions or bonuses.

I'm still not enamored of the huge scale - in practice, what we played through would have been maybe 30 seconds in real life. But for a game rather than a simulation, I have to say it was pretty good!

It was midnight when we finished; someone from the hotel canteen passed through and gave out some leftover cake.

Also bought too much - that's gonna haveta go in another post. Overall, a good but exhausting day; I am taking it easier for the next.