Saturday 30 August 2008

New Toys


Got some new toys from Infinity Games

Humans!!!

Humans!!! is the separate, stand alone, follow up to Zombies!!! It can be combined with the original to do a really big game. Strangely the Zombie PCs in Humans!!! are more detailed than the 'Shotgun Men' in Zombies!!! This paragraph is starting to get overloaded with !!!'s!

For some reason the figures in this set are slightly larger than those in Zombies!!! Partially due to the thicker bases, but they are at least the same size or greater than the hero 'shotgun guys'

I'll have to see about doing a tailored combined scenario for Halloween. But I think the Z v H rules that come with Humans!!! might need a bit of a tweak.

The Great War

Decided to get these rules just so I can check them out again. Will also be useful if Dave M starts a campaign up. Will not be combining it with the above (despite of movies such as Deathwatch). Not sure what the statline for WW1 Zombie Cheerleaders would be!

Wednesday 27 August 2008

Displacement

Due to the hall being booked for other things we were all forced to share the room upstairs. Pros: Comfy Chairs, Cons: Too crowded. Given the restricted space, boardgames was the order of the day. The roleplayers were happy to lounge and one group of 40Kers found some room on the landing.

Svea Rike, a game that Martin managed to buy while in Sweden years ago, has become a bit of a club favourite often being wheeled out when nothing else has been arranged.

A well balanced game of the often over looked Swedish Empire. It always seem to go down to the wire, and although a bit of luck is needed the malicious playing of event cards tend to even out. Once you get your head round the English translation of the rules it's a very simple game to pick up.

The game ended up as a low scoring three way tie between Martin, Colin and I, on 3 points each, probably a record low score. The other 2 lads finished with 2 and 1 points each. Martin failing to earn the bonus point off a resource card that could of snatched him the game.

Martin had concentrated on resources, gaining 2 points from his collection of 4. Colin was busy building a coin mountain via trade with Russia, safe in the knowledge that the taxation cards had been played earlier, but at risk from a war with Russia. I was trying to get back into the game via resources after seeing almost all my large collection of fiefs disappear due to war (and there was a lot of war in this game, more than normal, and we lost a number of them and so most of out fiefs. I did manage to get a point for helping defeat the Polish.)

One fun example of the use of event cards was when Someone acquired a 'Queen' resource card, which was promptly stolen using an event card and then immediately stolen back with another. I then intervened and played the Plague event, which killed poor Queeny despite of her heroic rescue.

To finish the night off we then played a couple of rounds of Car Wars, the Card Game. This plays quickly to start with but does bog down when you get down to two cars left. I was wiped out quickly in the first, but managed to hold out and win the second.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

Wooden Captains and Iron Balls

A heavily modified tabletop variant of Wooden Ships and Iron Men. And played on a square grid rather than hexes and what appears to be more detailed ships than the Avalon Hill original.

Honourable French Republicans: Colin and Tel.
(Flagship)
Timoleon
Guilliame Tell
Heureux

Perfidious Rosbifs: Matt and Martin.
HMS Dreadnought
HMS Swiftsure
HMS Caeser
HMS Amazon

The first thing I did as commander of my vessel was to order the last letter of the ships name be painted over; Guilliame Tel is much more appropriate! This 80 gun 3rd Rate (Crack crew) made up my section along with the Heureux, a 74 gun 3rd Rate (Average crew).

End Turn 1 - The Lines Approach

At the start the French managed to gain a small advantage by getting the Weathergauge. (Wind is blowing from bottom left to top right). The green crewed French flagship gets first blood as it hits the leading British ship, the Caeser, and kills its Captain. Ships from both sides then start trading blows.



An already badly damaged french 3rd Rate (Timoleon) is about to get fouled with its British equivalent with terminal consequences. The British are later forced to tack as they turn to face\chase the French. The Heureux (in foreground below) managing to get a bow rake against the already chipped Caeser as it turns.



The Amazon gets its self isolated and end up getting fouled, pounded and stern raked by the remaining three french ships. The Dreadnought finally gets into a position to shoot but get a bow rake for trying to do so. The other English ships go to Full Sail to catch up.

Start of Penultimate Turn

And then it ends; with the second of Colin's Ships heading into deep trouble (the Dreadnought lining up a bow rake), but with one British Ship (HMS Amazon) now totally crewless and dead in the water, and both my relatively undamaged ships ready to scarper.

The British might of got the better of the battle but ended up with a depleted command staff as no less than three British ships had their Captains removed by cannon balls (3 sets of double 3s).

Battletech meets Aeronef!


Source:
Yours in a White Wine Sauce!: Leviathan - a new VSF game

Catalyst Games, The current developers\keepers of Battletech are working on a floating battleships game! It all sounds very familiar. Given the 'history' of VSF games it'll be interesting to see if they can do things different from Space1889\EtherFlyers and Aeronef\Land Ironclads.



Other news from GenCon includes sightings of the prototype series 3 Wings of War minis. Apparently WotC had a low profile there, probably due to the embarrassment caused by the parent company, Hasbro, messing around with Cluedo. What next? Changing DnD so it's more like a computer game? Oh, hold on...

Wednesday 13 August 2008

LOTR - Round 3

Army of Ithilien vs Army of Harad

The forces of Harad bite off more than they can chew as the near full strength force of Ithilien descended upon them in a pitch battle.

The left flank was fairly static with a Harad Warband advancing and forcing a standoff, as the main force of Haradrim Archers tried some long distance shooting to weaken the opposition. A late charge from the warband saw off the rival unit which had moved closer after a failed charge declaration.

In the centre the Oliphant was enjoying itself as it first faced a charge from the Gondorian command crew. The loss of a Gondorian commander to the combined might of the beast and some charging archers, and the routing of both the leader (also wounded) and standard bearer caused minor problems to the Gondorians, where as the charge of the newly free Mumakil and the Harad Leaders into some spearmen was more serious.

The Orcs on the right flank faced a pounding from the Gondorian Cavalry, who had already successfully seen of the screening force of Haradrim Horse Archers, with one of the Orc units breaking in the final turn.

Despite punching above their weight relative to the two forces strengths, the Haradrim had to concede defeat.

Meanwhile... If you go down to the woods today...

Army of the White Hand vs Elves of Lorien

The sneaky elves were up to their dirty tricks again this time ambushing the forces of Saruman. The confusion was enough to cause the orcs to panic in what quickly became a one sided battle. The Elven casualties amounted to one dead and another who died but got better. (i.e. made the replacement roll.)

Sunday 10 August 2008

Agincourt 06 Game


A St. George's Day special, held upstairs at the Duke of Edinburgh.

King Henry the Tel's weak force was given the task of holding off the French.

A game played under Warmaster Ancients rules (despite it being medieval).

The 'plucky' english managed to hold the position despite the French penertrating the line (after tripping over themselves).


Thursday 7 August 2008

Wars (Great and Silly)

Was in observer mode at wargames on Tuesday to witness a game of Warhammer Great War. First full game for all the participants; as the Turks lead by Matt and Alan took on the entrenched Australians of Dave S. The Army Lists being made up based on the early war lists in the main rules (The proper rules for the theatre are suppose to be coming from Warhammer Historical some time in the future).

The rules, terrain and troops were supplied by Dave M. The minis were 20mm plastic. Airfix for Aussies, HaT for Turks, and looked good at a distance despite the desert uniforms not being the most colourful.

Australian Lines

The Aussies had a limited amount of trenching and wire and set up the MGs and sole Artillery piece on the flanks.
Turks Advance

The Turks advanced en mass but were slowed down by the rough terrain. Both Turkish MGs and Artillery set up against the same flank and managed to eventually clear both Aussie MGs.
Turks take the flank

Despite numerous rules checks the game played remarkably quickly and everyone involved agreed that the system played well

- - - - - -

Also playing was a game of Tankwreck, a 'trial' scenario by its author Martin. This involved the forces of Iraq, lead by the Minister of Truth 'Comical' Baldi, invading Sweden. Despite having a well drilled force of Volvo's Sweden fell to the Iraqis after a gallant, but ultimately futile, head on assault against the Iraqi armour.

Swedes in the Woods

Volvos Advance

Wednesday 6 August 2008

New Wings


The new Wings of War Booster packs, Dogfight and Immelmann, finally turned up at the Post Office on Monday after failure to deliver on Saturday.

It looks like the RAF SEa from the Dogfight booster is going to be one of the favourite allied planes to play as its as fast as a SPAD XIII but more maneuverable. I'm hopeful that it'll appear in Series 4 of the miniatures, and would like it to include one of the night fighter colour schemes just to give the allies a bit of colour for a change. That is still in the far future as we are still waiting for Series 3 to be released and also the box set for the bombers.

The early war planes from the Immelmann pack also make an interesting addition to the game as they seem closely matched against each other. They are still totally outclassed by the later planes but, given the nature of the random damage, still have a chance. It would be interesting to find out of a single SE5a could take out a couple of Fokker E.IIIs. If playing altitude rules then the SE5a would be almost impossible to pin down as its climb rate and altitude ceiling is far greater than the poor Eindecker. (But still not as good as the Siemens D.IV that also appear in Dogfight!)

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Phalanx 07 Game


Our trip down to Phalanx in St Helen's. Martin dipped into club funds to pay the entry fee. Was too late to hire a mini-bus so the group convoyed by car.

Despite invites in the past this was the first time the club set up an exhibition game with Alan and Matt's Romans and Celts.. Some how the table managed to win a couple of prizes!

Shame we never got organised to put something on this year (08). I did go down on my own and met up with others down there.

Once again a report by Alan appears on the Classical Hack site.

And a summary of the show and some ugly mug shots from the organisers themselves.


Saturday 2 August 2008

Xmas 07 Game

With the unfortunate loss of the Photo Gallery on the Furness Wargamers website I'm going to try and reconstitute what photos I can find onto this Blog via Picasa over the next few weeks.

Held at the Abbey Baptists over Christmas in part to make up for the loss of the regular game nights. Terrain and Minis by Alan and Matt. Rules were Classical Hack. Photos care of Martin.

The whisky swilling barbarians once again have a crack at Hadrian's Wall by setting a rather blatant trap.

For a more detailed report by Alan check out the following...

Friday 1 August 2008

Four Elves...

...walk into a bar. And the barkeeper says 'is this some type of joke?'

Dragonlance finally kicked off on Wednesday with the obligatory party meet up in the local drinking hole (somewhere in post Dragon War northern Ergoth). Usual banter with annoying landlord and even more annoying singing Gnome and his magical musical mandolin. Even worse Igrane joined in the resultant karaoke. He's got a good singing voice but despite enquires he's remaining very elusive about his own background.

Looks like we're one down in the party already as we've not heard a word from the newbie, Lawrence. Since he never joined the party proper we don't even get the chance to loot the body.

Could soon be two down as my cleric has already been dropped down to negative in the first combat with Goblins. The green creatures seem to be running some sort of sting operation with the suspected assistance of the Gnome. First he spreads rumours of attacks on neighbouring villages by a Dragon, then the Goblins use some mechanical contrivance to pretend to be the thing approaching, scaring the villagers off, and leaving the place empty to be looted at leisure.

The party is slowly turning the battle round despite being split up at the start of combat. Solaris the Mages' luck held up as he managed to avoid repeated attacks against him until Igrane could move in and assist him. Azacel, who had spent the night in a tree outside the Inn, ditched trying to shoot the Goblins at range thru the heavy morning fog to move in for some close-up work.