Sometimes the local club (renamed, as of Wednesday, the War Office) has "pocket" conventions of its own, two or three days straight of gaming. I made Friday evening's round of Wings of War:
Fokker in period camo
James McCudden's SE5
I feel like Snoopy as I get the hell shot out of me
I wanted to steal this carrying case
I also tried to talk Steven into loaning me a handful of Red Tails P-51s for a library display in February; we'll see!
Today I came late owing to other commitments, missing John's Cruel Seas scenario (but see our new Facebook page for coverage of that). John next ran Zona Weirdos, a fairly simple build-your-own-team skirmish game with dice-step mechanics, postapocalyptic vibes and a Necromunda-esque campaign. With just four figures a side, with practice we might one day try an all-day campaign.
Steven's and my table, somewhere near...
Chernobyl
The table next to ours
My vaguely Nurglite team of explorers
The goal was to explore the board, collecting left-over scrap and blasting zombies and each other as we went. There was also a counter that went up for every shot fired; at the end of a turn it might produce anything from a storm to stygian darkness to an irradiated product of monstrous mutation. It can probably be played solo.
Very much in the vein of "Kick in the door and fight the zombie."
Two of my daring (read: stupid) chaps get in each other's way as they check out the Nissen hut
My leader kills the opposing team medic as he crosses the room to come to the aid of a fallen comrade
About four turns in, me beleaguered (Steven's team collected a sniper rifle and used it and better positioning to gain ascendancy
My bruiser has cleared this house with a grenade
Zombie dead pile (they can shoot in this game!)
A relaxing afternoon of blasting each other in an irradiated hellhole. The players next door had a more terrifying time from the sound of it, as they uncovered some large monsters in the course of their game. It's not in shape to publish yet, sadly, but that means we may get more chances to playtest. So the future is bright, for the War Office too!
Tomorrow, I run Charge! Dare I hope for as good a reception? I'm torn on the scenario, so we'll see. Wish me luck!
Sometimes I do get some gaming in, but I'm unmotivated to write it up. Work has been tiring and depressing lately, and often when I get home or have a day off, I waste it (well, unless excessive reading doesn't count). A couple weeks ago I spent a Sunday at Das Krieg Haus - possibly for the last time, as the club is moving to a smaller space which will at least be closer to home for me. I got in a game and a half and have let the photos age long enough; let's see if I can muster up enough memory to do them justice.
The first is a Crimean War scenario taken from Wargames Illustrated issue 18, in which a British brigade held off a Russian division for some time among broken terrain. I was asked if Charge! would work for it, but given the figures available (we would need 32 to a battalion) and the genericness of the units, I doubted it. So we went with The Sword and the Flame instead, which has the great advantage of familiarity.
On the right, the British position, as the Russians are set up on the far side of the river.
Regiments of twenty-four plus a gun each.
Stolid Russian columns
A handful of Russian cavalry
I got a Rifle regiment to command.
The Russian players started by sending their minimal cavalry up our left, keeping my partner busy whilst the infantry crossed the river. With 20" musketry (24" for my rifles) we could only respond with cannon for some time.
Laborious crossing.
Here's where things really went wrong for us:
The two British regiments, on separate hills, were too far apart to support each other. When the Russians went for my partner in overwhelming force, there wasn't much I could do to help. I moved a bit down the hill as they got closer, but one of the columns moved aside to hold me off and my vaunted rifle fire didn't do enough damage even with close range cannon fire to assist. If I'd vacated the hill, I'd have been caught between by a Russian column.
The Russian objective was to take only one hill; for a fairer game it might have been both. Our opponents concentrated entirely on my partner while I took potshots at the rearguard.
Here a column comes at me in "the old style", but my dice failed me and I didn't do enough damage to make them take a morale check.
The British take the charge, despite high Russian casualties.
Closeup CC.
Russians hold the hill...
... Thanks largely to my immobility on the next one.
"Oriskany Jim" has been demoing his own space game, Darkstar, at the club for awhile, and this is the first time I got to try it with me and another Jennifer, versus Jim and Mark. It appears to be effectively WWII in the 26th century, as the sides are generally the same:
A typical ship plan, in plastic for wet-erase marking.
Damage is straightforward; the blank squares are pure armor, but once two of them are destroyed, further hits on that row or column start taking out critical systems.
The game is played on a hex-grid, and marked up like a WWII battle-map to track movement.
Actual physics are adhered to, in movement at any rate - movement points are dedicated to slowing, speeding up, or making turns, so momentum is important and can, for example, carry you into an opponent's line of fire if you aren't careful.
Velocity is thus tracked; individual ships move according to an initiative roll.
I command the American destroyer, which has two banks of torpedoes (the right triangles at its bow).
This ship has taken a lot of damage from head-on, and deep enough to hit the bridge!
I left early owing to another event I wanted to make, but the game was enjoyable enough and fairly easy to play with its designers right at hand.
So that's one day's gaming ... two weeks ago. Besides that, I've read as usual - currently some Charles Darwin, and Christopher Duffy's classic study of Frederick's army. I would like to get back to Charge!, but still have Kill Team stuff on my table. See you next time.
Today I actually made it to Das Krieg Haus for a game. A member taught us Space Weirdos, a minis-agnostic skirmish game with shades of Necromunda - at least the way we played it.
Here, a Deathwatch team takes on Infinity figures.
John, who was running the games, had brought lots of minis - mostly Infinity with a smattering of old 40K - 2x2foot mats and some lovely sci-fi "Battle Systems" terrain. This was heavy card with plastic connectors, so pretty customizable, but also came with cool little "scatter" like chairs, tables and signs. I've seen a lot of this type of terrain recently and am leaning toward trying Tenfold Dungeons, which are simply stackable boxes with printing both inside and out. So it was nice to play on for a try-out.
Closeup on the furniture - good for a barfight.
Space Weirdos is a "ganger" sort of game, point-based such that about four figures make up the smaller group of 75 points. I got in one round - Infinity soldiers vs. ancient metal 40K Orks.
My squad: A leader with energy pistol, a sniper, and troopers with autorifle and energy rifle. Two figures also had stealthsuits, which make you impossible to target at longer than close range so long as you're touching terrain.
The rules are simple enough that even I got the hang of them quickly. Figures have defense, shooting and melee statistics measured in die types - typical is 2D8. You always roll two dice - defender rolls defense vs. opponent's attack - but the type can rise or fall, anywhere from D4 to D12, if there are relevant advantages and disadvantages like cover, long range, or the defender having moved (hence the "footprint" tokens you can see. When hit, the victim rolls on a chart - low scores mean he may get to make a snap shot or blow back at his opponent, while higher scores result in "down," "staggered" or "out of action" results. Armor or special equipment can modify results on this table.
Every figure can make three actions, after which an opposing figure can take three actions. An initiative roll determines who goes first. Movement and range are in five-inch increments, easier than rulers if you have measuring sticks of the right length, but ranged weapons have effectively infinite range. Psychic powers typically have "one-stick length" range, which in my game neutered the opponent a bit, though one of his powers was teleportation. And some weapons, like my sniper rifle, cannot be fired at short range.
Each side also gets a number of tokens per turn (two at the size we were playing) that can be used for "interrupt" actions like dodging or recovering injury. At the end of the turn, used tokens are removed from the board and morale tests are taken.
The one game I played went quickly; I rolled high a lot, though positioning made a difference too. Terrain is key in this game since it makes it harder to hit and easier to dodge a shot, but movement is relatively high and any figure can cross the board in two turns if he focuses on it. We didn't have objectives; this was a straight-up bash.
Here I tackle a staggered (ie stunned) Ork.
This psyker Ork has moved once; he has three actions, so has two more. Unfortunately his psychic attacks have quite short range.
This figure has moved twice, so could shoot once.
Ultimately, I managed to take out two of my opponent's four figures, including his leader, and the penalties were such that he "bottled out."
The QRS for the game was clear and easy to use, and there are many customization options. The simplicity reminded me of Minceheim. I'd happily try it again, and it has solo mechanisms so quite tempting (there are signs of this in the "reaction" tables with the chances to shoot back if hit). There is a fantasy version, and with a little modifications I could see historicals working as well.
On my own account, I finished Gardeners of Salonika, added a second basecoat to my Italian tank, and undercoated my civilian 75mm gun crew. Not sure what color to paint the gun, but at least I'm making progress. More tomorrow, I hope.
Today about eight members of the South Florida Miniatures Gamers played in another game DMed by "Oriskany Jim" Johnson of Sitrep Podcast. I'd gotten up early for a Sunday, was browsing Youtube, and spotted this "prep" video for the game:
("Whoops, forgot about this one...")
I hastily decamped to Das Krieg Haus and made it in time for deployment.
As usual, Jim provided a fantastic table of scratchbuilt terrain to play on:
If it's not obvious yet, this is Santa's workshop. Among the defenders:
I got the Toys For Tots squad led by a USMC bear, and Santa himself - the only flying model on the board. Other units included reindeer, elves, snowmen, polar bears, and a displaced yeti named Colonel Bumble.
Our opponents?
I've never played HALO, but that's a lotta guys.
Gun emplacements ...
... and Warthog vehicles were particularly intimidating.
Some of the good guys' deployment:
And those on the side of the Grinch:
Eep!
Justin the Mammoth leads (nonflying) reindeer.
Most important, AI holographic objectives. Take these out and the defenders get bonuses to their rolls.
Table as a whole. HALO's objective is the lit-up Christmas tree. If they have anyone touching it for an entire turn, they win.
The rules are very basic, and would work well for a snowball fight (that's presumably what the otherwise unarmed defenders were throwing anyway). I need to try this before I leave my branch (moving to a different one after Christmas); one of my coworkers has plenty of Christmas critters and decorations.
Left out is cover - +1 to the roll - and open and difficult terrain movements are reversed. There are no morale rules.
HALO won initiative, and dropped a hurricane of fire on us. The reindeer mostly became venison, but the polar bears won so many of the rolloffs that we started calling them the Iron Bear Brigade. Justin the Wooly Mammoth, one of our commanders, was gone too. I was nervous about losing Santa, our fastest and most powerful piece, and kept him out of view.
"How do deer throw snowballs?" "Chernobyl."
In Turn Two, we managed to knock out one of the powerful Warthogs, and I took the risk of flying high, where Santa could see everyone, but everyone could see Santa. Luckily, he took out one of the holograms, while a sweeping movement by the elves got the other. Next turn, Santa took a wound and hastily dropped back down.
Snowmen and bears hold the line.
The Yeti fearlessly leads on the right.
I selected thematic ice-blue dice for my units.
Brisk firefight ice fight on the right.
High move distance relative to the table meant double envelopment could be a thing. Unfortunately, ours left the primary objective unguarded, and ten HALO troopers descended upon it in triumph.
A bitter fight in bitter cold.
Santa's boys raced back and knocked out all the blue HALO unit, narrowly avoiding a knockout loss of the game. But a sniper took out Santa.
He's a magical elf. He'll recover in time for next year, right?
At this point, the tree was defended; HALO's center thrust was gone, but they had defeated everything on our left; and HALO's right was going down to defeat under the overall leadership of the Yeti. My Marine bear picked off the sniper ("Zero Dark Thirty," was my inappropriate quip) and the game ended with an unbroken, if decimated, line of snowmen and bears between what remained of HALO green team and the tree.
If HALO meant High Altitude Low Opening, these guys have just reenacted Arnhem.
A missile launcher team hides out of view...
... as very cute bears look on from a lovely scratchbuilt bridge.
So the North Pole is safe in the end, but HALO has a moral victory having taken out Santa. Who will deliver the toys now?
It belatedly occurs to me that there should have been severe range penalties on all sides for fighting in the dark. Since it's December above the Arctic Circle.
A fun and diverting game, in which I actually managed to learn the rules! Though, true to form, I kept asking the GM questions anyway. "Can we go faster sliding on the ice?" "Can we cause a snow avalanche?"
