Late Roman Report

A bit belated but someone other than the Furness Wargamers enjoyed this years game at Phalanx.

While doing a google image search I came across an overhead shot of the game that links back to a show report from Gareth Wood. Did a search in the period after Phalanx but never picked this one up.

Phalanx is on Saturday 18th June 2011 next year. Hopefully it wont be snowing then. Had to cancel my planned trip down to Pudsey on Saturday for the Recon Show due to the bad weather.
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Suprise Attack

Bit of a shock at the Games Night as I was asked to GM a game of Battletech as Martin, the GM of the ongoing campaign, was bust elsewhere for the first part of the night.

My main worries was if there was any major differences between the more recent rulebooks and Martin's colection of classic material, and trying to study the mech sheets to work out optimum ranges and heat usages for the variety of Mechs. It's a lot harder than running a single one, and the old style mech sheets are not as helpful for weapon and heat info as the newer ones are.

Before going to his meeting Martin gave each player their own secret 'special' objective. Turns out at the end of the night most of these fall into the silly category, such as making sure the bases vile canteen gets destroyed.

Busy Busy

Been a bit busy over the last month or so, hence there's currently no posts in October. Hopefully I'll be able to do catch up for this period as I still have pictures and half written posts for most weeks.
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Rapid Retreat

A quick game of Rapid Fire. Tanks and Armoured Cars only in mid-war North Africa. Even number of vehicles on each side in what should of been a balanced encounter.

Couldn't hit anything at all the first couple of turns, and 2/3rds of my A/Cs were destroyed or forced to retreat. My misses were despite of forgetting to take movement to-hit factors into account.

Things didn't improve over the next few turns, despite the Germans having some difficulties against the British Heavy Tanks.

So the British retired off the field while the Germans regrouped.

Intended to be a multi-players demo game for some scouts, I wouldn't like to be the ones who get control of the Cars!
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At Sea

Another small demo of Napleonic naval power, as Matt considers using Paul's set of 19th Century naval rules, as last used for the Ironclad Battle of Lissa (and not the smaller Napoleonic era one), to do next years planned Trafalgar game.

Usual scenario, a larger French force vs a smaller but better crewed British one.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

We left Paul to single-handedly (like a pirate?) deal with Matt's squadron as we picked, two to one, upon the weaker British squadron in the hopes of a quick victory.



The British just managed to inflict the break point damage first, the French were only about one decent broadside from achieving the same so the scenario appeared to be well balanced.
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In the 'Loft

Played a couple of games of Castle Ravenloft, a collaborative tile exploration game based on Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition rules and the associated traits and powers of the system.

A fun, relatively quick to play dungeon raid game. A big box game with high quality components including plastic minatures and thick, glossy, cardboard tiles. The Monsters provided are mostly undead types, which fits in nicely with the classic Ravenloft theme.

From Furness Wargamers Fantasies

Beasts of the Air

A multi player game of Wings of War took place as I finally get to use the multi-engine Bombers from Flight of the Giants.

A simple warm up game with just fighters, to get a new player familiarised with the game, was followed by what the rulebook describes as a 'Stop Them' scenario.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Flyboys

Quite a variety of games going on tonight.

I managed to play a couple of Wings of War games with Tony, who despite never playing the game before soon picked up the tactic. Avoided using the altitude rules as for new players and single head-to-head games I find it redundant. Altitude is best used for 'furballs' with 6-8 planes involved. Didn't get the chance to use my newly purchased 'Flight of the Giants' expansion yet.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

Mech Scrap

A game of Battletech, run by Martin, as Keiron rolls back into town. And a chance to finally use Norbert McVitie in action (despite Martin initally trying to hand his sheet to someone else). A raiding party, amazingly of exactly the same tonnage as our 5 Mech Lance, is entering the territory near our base. Keron, Baldy, Simon, Tristan and myself vs Martin.

From Furness Wargamers in the Future

Rike Stuff

A couple of games of Svea Rike as the club, still low in numbers due to the holidays, found itself exiled down below as the main hall was laid out for 'Out of Africa' kids activities.

First game was fairly standard, with a new player learning the ropes, and a number of successful battles against the foreigners. I manged to pick up a few points on the way by using event cards to help out these battles, but couldn't buy up enough land or resources. Low scoring in terms of points with Martin winning.

Second game was played at speed due to the limited time left, but was actually finished with no problem for time. This was strongly merchant based game, as a number of disastrous wars saw the lands depleted. Colin took victory with his pile of mercantile cash. I came second with my lands and resources after a quick early bout of merchanting before a war with Russia took them out.
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San Domingo

Trial run of modified 'Wooden Ships' rules. Matt's trying to get them to play quicker so he can scale things up to Trafalgar size for next years St George's\May Day game. A modified version of the post Trafalgar Battle of San Domingo with some newly painted proxy ships.

Should of been a one sided affair, since the French were out numbered 7 to 5, and although not out-gunned, there was a marked difference in crew and leadership quality. In general the Royal Navy should have most of the initiative, giving it an advantage in moving.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Canal Crossing

Arab-Israeli grand tactical scale game of the Egyptian attempt to seize the Suez canal and the Sinai in 1973, the Yom Kippur War.

From Furness Wargamers in Tanks

Israel has strong defensive positions to start but the Arabs have weight of numbers.

Planes are a bit tough, with the idea of switching loads a bit flawed as they can change their emphasis from ground support to air superiority while in mid flight. Despite having to do overrun attacks the low offensive capabilities of their opponents make them virtually invulnerable and they can just bounce from hex to hex cleaning stuff out.



The game will eventually include a Golan Heights/Syria section so the Israelis will have to select how they divide their forces up. At the moment it's just a rush westwards for the Israeli forces.

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Spanish Smash

Round to Matt's for a game of 'In The Grand Manner' his favorite set of Napoleonic rules. Set in an undisclosed place in the Peninsular (Iberian not Furness), the French have launched a surprise attack against the allied flank. The Spanish forces had been given the job of holding a farm on that flank, or, given the disparity in the sizes of the forces engaging, at least delaying the oncoming French advance.

From Peninsular '10

Going Up

Well a surprisingly good season in Battrick has come to an end, with 2 first places and a second place, in a season where I feared at least one relegation.

Managed to clinch FC promotion with a game to spare. It was only at near the half-way point of the season that I figured that I had a chance at success, and from then on fielded a near full strength side. Almost blew it straight off as for one game I forgot to set orders and my default side, which was filled with useless players, took the field. This was my only FC loss for the season.

Nothing Much

A pretty poor turn out at the club this week, probably due to it being holiday season, so ended up watching the few games that were going on.

Largest of which was the ongoing Rogue Trader RPG campaign, that had quite a few watching on.

The other alternative was a table of 40k which saw some Kroot, from an unofficial army list, taking on all comers.
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Hard Vacuum

Some more Hard Vacuum as we got to play a number of scenarios and see some of Paul's new models.

Tanker Escort

Tried to keep my two craft flying symmetrical to make thinking about things just a bit easier. Tankers ended up flying backwards but were still accelerating enough to make attacks against them difficult. Think only one allied attack occurred on a Tanker all game.

Bombing Run

A German bombing run upon New York. Not a big success as the early war planes had very limited fuel and maneuverability. I had overshot the target trying to do a curved approach to the target re-entry point and didn't realise that the entry direction was also important when it came to getting the bomb on target. Add to that a critical hit had knocked out my re-entry gear and it was pretty much a one way trip.

Big Gun

A large American flying tank appears in space and a couple of German fighters are sent to try and deal with it. The tank was too tough for the fighters to cope with as it's forward guns could deal with almost anything in one shot.

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Street Formula

Craig wanted to do a big player game of Formula D, the new version of Formula Dé, so I decided to join in as it's been sometime since I've played a boardgame. Rolled for pole position and ended\started up in mid-field which I was happy with. Have never thought of pole as being much of an advantage in this game, it's often better to reach the corner at race speed, particularly if the next corner is within one turn\gear shift reach.

Was going to be a three lap race, but the decision was made to shorten the race to a single lap half way through the first lap, due to not wanting some late turn ups to sit out the game, so people started burning their tyres more. Some how I managed to take the lead by taking a risk out of the penultimate corner and burning all my tyres out of the final corner to be able to reach sixth gear and the finish line. Was surprised by the over cautious approach of the two lead cars in the penultimate corner as both had tyres and brakes left.

Next couple of races were one lappers on street circuits, a new feature with this version of the game. This was the first time for me in playing the street circuit rules. Chicago, the flip side of Sebring, was the first. Rather than hot rods the vehicles were more clown cars\keystone cops as ramming and excessive debris caused vehicles to fall apart quickly. The rain in the second street race, using the original race track with all the gimmicks, lead to even further devastation; with four cars being knocked out before the fourth corner and only three finished, including one who had to limp home in low gear to survive.

Turns out Craig's desire for a Championship season is taking a bit of a hammering given the lack of availability of different tracks, the new releases are few and far between and the old version maps are going for funny money on eBay. Shame as running a near full season can be great fun.
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Rushing Russians

More action from the Great War's Eastern front, as the Germans try and exploit a gap between two Russian divisions, as the Russians rush in to plug the gap. Matt and Mark play the perfidious Prussians, Paul and I the heroic Russian Imperials.

We were allowed a preliminary bombardment to try and weaken the Jägers who were holding the village. Unfortunately they managed to evade the shells by loitering around in the open and not taking covers in the ruins, which got ruined even more. But at least the shelling cleared away large sections of barbed wire.

From Furness Wargamers in Trenches

Vacuum Cleaned

A game of Hard Vacuum, the Sci Fi game of World War 2 fighters in space (now where have I seen that recently?), and one of the best vector movement systems around. Hadn't played this game for years, the last time being when Paul brought it in when the club was still upstairs at the Duke.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

Oar Blimey

A mini ancient naval campaign based in an undisclosed place in the Aegian. Using a version of Paul's D.T.S. rules and his paper and velcro boats. A bigger version of this was played a few years back, over a month or so, when we were still at the Duke and had about 6\7 players and a more geographically accurate map; this one nighter had 4 players

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Open Doors

The Club hosted a demo game at Phalanx down in St Helens. A replay of the May Day game, but with all the forces already on the table, which now looked much better with the green flocked GW mats rather than bedsheets.

Was a nice drive down with little traffic or roadworks and managed to get a decent parking space. Think I managed to avoid the speed trap on the road in. Martin was already down St Helens, and Matt and Alan brought their stuff down in the Morning. When I got there it was just about opening time.

From Phalanx

The Final Conflict

The Irish Campaign reaches its conclusion...

After many a grinding battle it came to pass that the Bishop Guisbourne called for a meeting of all the contenders and their associated nobles to try and put an end to the warfare. No consensus could be reached between the many parties and so everybody piled out of the church for one final and hopeful decisive encounter...

The First Alliances

The 2006 Irish Campaign continues...

EMail from Paul outlining the current positions...

From: Paul

Sent: 02 February 2006 14:00
To: ----

Subject: scores on the (irish) doors

All,

Having studied the hieroglyphs scrawled on players campaign sheets, I have arrived at the following conclusions in the great Irish uncivil war:1099. There are 60 towns and castles available to nab, 3 more belong to the nasty Normans.(or people calling themselves Norman, everyone's too scared to ask which). A High King has to control (directly or through vassals) two thirds to win . i.e. 40.

Beyond the Pale

Some more historic stuff from 2006, this was the ongoing Irish Clans Campaign organised by Paul. The battles being fought out using quick play rules so two or three being played per club night. An earlier version of the posts appears on the Furness Wargamers site.

Each player started with 3 Clan\Family Leaders each with a clan force and two locations (6 in total) The actual clans representing pseudo-historical families (with certain name changes!). Alliances could be made and were binding till broken!

Dublin and the Pale are strictly off limits to all troops, but beyond that...

---

Starting positions roughly as follows...

O'Neills - Ulster\North coast (Matt)
O'Shaughnessy - South - Clare\Kilkenny (Alan)
O'Mason - South East Coast (Jeff\Jim)
O'Malley - West Coast - Galway\Roscommon (Tel)
goligy - Central (Kieran)
O'Maximus - Ulster (Baldy)
O'Geordio - South Coast (Paul)
O'Connel - South West - Cork\Kerry (Martin)
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Finally Fielded

The first outing for my newly nearly finished Italo-Abyssinian War figures (For the First War in the 1890's not the pre-WW2 Second War).

15mm based for Principles of War, mixture of Irregular (bulk of the Abyssinians), Tin Soldier UK (Most of the Italians and leaders on both sides) with a few Essex thrown in. A simple straight up fight. Order of Battles were based on the lists in the PoW Colonial supplement.

From Furness Wargamers in the Colonies

San Splendido

A mini-campaign set on the island of San Splendido, located in an undisclosed location near the Caribbean. Rules are a version of G.E.V. adopted to modern warfare.
4 player led factions fighting over the 6 cities and 6 villages on the map. Blue pins are Paul, Yellow are Tony, Red are Dave M, and White is me.

From Furness Wargamers in Tanks

Ptotal War

Jim and Matt had brought in some of their 15mm ancients. Ptolemaic Egyptians verses Maccabee\Hasmonean Jews. The rules being a heavily modified version of DBMM, DBAs big brother, and a game which I've never played before.

From Furness Wargamers with Spears

G.E.V. at Sea

Ogre rules but no Ogres in sight as we played a three-a-side game using G.E.V.s, the only appropriate crafts for fighting in this 'Waterworld'. Sides were All the Dave's (with Jeff, who was paying us a visit, as an advisor) verses a collection of oddballs.

From Furness Wargamers in the Future

Rivets

Ended up playing Paul's conversion of the old boardgame Rivets into a table-top miniatures game. The original games was released in the 70's by MicroGames.

With the 30 points of Boppers to start with, I went and split it fairly evenly through the different types. Took all four of the possible Tiny Boppers, and two of the Big Boppers. In terms of programing I just had them matched off against their own type.

From Furness Wargamers in the Future

Bats Abroad

The new Battrick season is upon us, and it's all change in my One Day league with three new teams, two promoted and one demoted. The camper at the top of our league was neatly disposed of by the team that finished second, but not by beating him but by deliberately losing so badly as to force the offending team into the final automatic promotion spot available for the next level.

Stand By For Action!

A bit of aquatic action under the waves as Paul's Stringray models get a run out. Not Paul's rules but the ones used by the Warlords to run their demo games at the southern games shows such as Salute. A 'Save the Whale' scenario as two Stingray class craft defends the big creature from an attack by four Terrorfish.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Weapons of Self Destruction

The delayed St George's Day game, played on May Day instead. A warm up for what will probably be the game that the Furness Wargamers will put on at Phalanx.

All figures and terrain (excluding the horrid underlying bedsheets) by Matt who refereed the game. Rules are Warhammer Ancient Battles, original version and not the newly released WAB2, but with house rules such as tweaking skirmishers.

Colin, Tony and Martin as the Perfidious Celts, Dave S and Tel as the Heroic Romans.

From May Day 2010

Peski Russki Cavalry

Sat out the game on Tuesday, as we return to the Eastern Front during World War 1. Once again using the WH Great War rules, with Dave M presiding, Paul as the Russians and Mark as the Germans.

First units to enter the field of battle are the reconnaissance elements of both sides, two squadrons each of cavalry. The Russians managed to get first charge into the German Uhlans and quickly rout both units in turn.

From Furness Wargamers in Trenches

On The River

American Civil War naval, with a number of boats messing about on the water of the Mississippi. The first couple of games featured Paul's Ironclad rules before the third bigger game with Martin's naval rules from Cheer Boys! Cheer!.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Gone Batty

News from the Battrick site... And not an April Fools joke this time either.

Warrior comes out to play

After the derision of Harry Harrison's series of 'Stars and Stripes' books last week, a series in which the Yanks conquer the World\Britain and where the civil war era US Navy could take on the R.N. with ease, It was decided to try out an hypothetical scenario based upon them. And so we end up with the USS Monitor vs HMS Warrior in a 'fair fight'.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Adriatic Attack

The Battle of Lissa

The Newfangled Ironclads of Austro-Hungary and Italy (and a few remaining wooden ships) are duking it out for control of the Adriatic in a battle that historically saw little action but some strange manueverings as both sides get to grips with the new realities at sea.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Bazaar Camelot

The second Warrior Bazaar was held at the Park Hall Hotel, near Charnock Richards, next to the Camelot Theme Park. Was quite on the roads as Camelot does not open till Easter. Wasn't interested in the Theme Park anyway as 'it is a silly place'. This venue is much easier to get to than the previous location in Bolton.

Deep Fried Martian Barred

Another round of the Martian Invasion of Britain.

Instead of last weeks three Martian forces there was only the two. Since the Martians have fewer units to defend with, yet alone launch a serious attack straight off, it was decided to once again start off in Scotland.

A string of lost initiative rolls kept the invaders on the back foot\tentacle. They could clear a city but not move in. The implementation of an advance after combat midway through the game helped alleviate this problem.

With the inability of defenders without attack values to cause damage in a run over attack, the Martian Bases and Factories are now instantly killed. The same applies to the cities as well, but the British have, at least initially, more than enough units to defend. Despite using their aerial units to cut the incoming rail lines British reinforcements still managed to get through.

The RAF isn't as tough as they once were, being forced to do over-run attacks by default and so giving the Martians first crack at them. Unfortunately this weakness is more than made up by the ability for Air Armadas to gather out at Sea ready to launch a massed attack anywhere on the board. If they risk running out of supply then they are capable of striking anywhere on the board.

With one base destroyed and the second under immediate threat the Martians called it a day.
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Green and Unpleasant Alien

The Martians, not having the best of times in 1940's Russia; travelled back in time to 1920 and decided to invade a small group of islands to the west of the main land mass. Just how hard could it be?

Judging by the map the Aliens had been busy prior to the invasion of Great Britain, demolishing the Isles of Wight, Man, Anglesey and dumping the remains to fill in The Wash.

From Furness Wargamers from Mars

War of the Worldski

Sat out again this Tuesday and instead watched another of Paul's games with micro-armour. The rules this time fitting to three copies per A4 sheet!

In a move sort of reminiscent to Turtledove's 'Balance' series of alt history the Martians have landed right in the midst of World War 2. Just prior to Operation Barbarossa in fact.

From Furness Wargamers from Mars

Three Way Furball

Due to a number of no shows due to the terrible weather I finally got a chance to play some Wings of War with Baldy and Colin. Baldy claimed to be new to the game, despite playing it in the past, so we started off with a simple everything goes battle with no altitude rules. Both Colin and Baldy chose two seaters, RE.8 and Ufag respectively, I chose a Fokker D.VII.

From Furness Wargamers in the Air

All At Sea

A game of Martin's Shipwreck modern naval rules. A set of quick play rules and a lot simpler than Harpoon.

A clash between two small forces of 80's Soviets vs British. The ships started out closer together than standard due to some missing seaboards in Martin's modular terrain.

From Furness Wargamers at Sea

Battle of London

Still plodding along in eRepublik. Been playing this game in auto mode for quite a while now, spending a couple of minutes a day to click the relevant buttons. Have been dipping in and out a bit as my interest waxed and waned.

Due to my persistence I've now enough freebie gold stored up to do a bit of 'tanking' where you can burn gold to get extra health and so extra attacks, also enough money to get better weapons but not sure whether to stick with the 1* quality weapons or to upgrade and do more damage.

The reason to tank? The current on going invasion of the UK (aka eUK).

More Tanks

Joined in with another game based during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Another iteration of the Dave M home-brew rules, now using ten-sided dice rather than the D6 of the previous game.

Both sides are assaulting across the table.

From Furness Wargamers in Tanks

A Time of War

A Time of War, the Battletech RPG is finally out (in pdf form at least) and I managed to get it at a discount by taking advantage of the Beta release offer from BattleCorps, a month back, including a free upgrade to the newly available final release version.

Little Tanks

Looked on as two teams played out an Indo-Pakistan War (1965) encounter with micro armour and soldiers smaller than ants. Maybe they were ants, cruelly painted green and sent into action.

From Furness Wargamers in Tanks

Helm's Deep Trouble

Another game in Middle-Earth, using the same rules as last week. This time I sat out and watched on as the brave Orcs and Dunlending freedom fighters tried to storm the nasty strawhead's stronghold of Helm's Deep.

From Furness Wargamers Fantasies

Moria Maul

The Dwarfs of Moria are camped in their Great Hall. But they soon spring to attention as two groups of Orcs come charging through the labyrinth corridors of the mines.

From Furness Wargamers Fantasies

Nekkid Northerners

On Tuesday we played an Ancient battle in 28mm using a modified version of Warhammer Ancient Battles using Matt's miniatures and terrain. Matt's not too interested in 2nd Edition WAB which is due out soon (after a long delay) and has done his own tweaks to the rules and force composition.

Scenario is based on Mons Graupius. The last remaining organised Celtic force in Britannia are defending a ridge line in their homeland of Caledonia against the Roman forces who have nipped over the wall for a quick bash.

The opposing armies

From Furness Wargamers with Spears

Easy as One, Two, Six

The Battrick season has once more come to an end, with a better than expected final standings.

Managed to bounce back and earn promotion in the First Class after being demoted down to Div VIII last season. This was despite messing up my team selection on a couple of occasions. First using my outdated default team, who scraped an unlikely draw with my nearest rival, and then forgetting to set a lower declaration point against another team, the match petering out to a draw. Still managed to go the season undefeated, 8 wins, 2 draws.

Conventions 2010

Have just done the annual update of the convention list on the Furness Wargamers site, and am cross posting it here. Not sure which of them I'll actually visit, and details on later shows not really available yet.

Vapnartak : 7th Feburary 2010 (Sunday): Knavesmire Exhibition Suite, York Racecourse.

Warrior Bazaar : 28th March 2010 (Sunday): Park Hall, Charnock Richard, Chorley

Triples : 17th & 18th April 2010 (Sat & Sun): English Institute of Sport, Sheffield.
This has moved from the Octagon Centre.

Phalanx : 19th June 2010 (Saturday): Sutton Community Centre, St Helens.

A more detailed calendar at this wiki site, with some details to be taken with a pinch of salt (true for all wikis).
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