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...