Bolt in the Desert

A game of Bolt Action 2, organised by Keiron and GM'ed by Matt who also provided the terrain and models. Scenario is a simple German assault against a British position on a ridge-line in North Africa.

The Germans had a mixture of Panzers and troops, while the British had Infantry and a single Anti-tank gun to start with.

Two Lions Rampant

Two games of Lion Rampant at the club as we enter training mode for the group. First game was Matt vs Jim, two novices to the rules with a number of (semi-)eager spectators.

Miniatures supplied by Dave M, who's rebased his Normans into single figures. Everybody else are still putting their plastics together.

Since it was Matt and Jim in command of the forces it was always going to be an interesting game. Victory conditions were whoever could hold the central hill for a total of 5 turns, or else defeat the opposition. Jim seized the central hill early, and Matt did not immediately respond. Preferring instead to form his footmen at arms into schiltron to protect his flanks from the enemy cavalry, while launching his own cavalry through the centre, skirting round the hill.

Jim managed to hold the hill for four turns but his force ended up breaking in the end, due to some bad morale roles.

For the second game , I got dragged into playing as nobody else would volunteer!

In this scenario I got the role of defender, trying to find an escapee in hiding from their former gaolers.

Things started badly as I failed to activate on the first term and only managed to activate a couple of units on the second. Meanwhile the attackers were advancing along the board at quite a pace being in the main light troops. Fortunately my troops finally decided to make haste and managed to check out the first and second area in quick succession. Unfortunately the escapee was in neither, and with the remaining sections in the middle of the board it was going to be a risky job to continue the search.

I decided to take a risk and advanced my cavalry units up the centre of the board this put them in direct confrontation with the enemy leader and cavalry. My leader's cavalry unit searched the central area and found our escapee, the trouble now laid in trying to get them off the board.

The big trouble with using the cavalry to pick up the escapee is the Wild Charge ability, which sort of gives the opposition a herding mechanism. Unless I could throw blockers in front of the unit, or make use of terrain to mask enemy units.

Then disaster struck my opponent, as their leader committed to a disastrous charge that greatly weakened them at little cost to myself, Although my unit with the escapee was in wild charge range of him, he was also on wild charge range of my other unit which I chose to activate first and wiped his unit out. With no one else in charge range my escapee could make their way towards safety.

The crib sheets we used, while not totally comprehensive, came in very useful, and I found them easier to use to look up activation and combat figures than the individual unit cards that Dave M provided.

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Phalanx 2016

Another year and another Saturday trip to St Helens to visit the Phalanx show, the main one in the North-West. No exhibition game from Furness Wargamers this year, but the usual suspects made their way down individually. Some of the goods purchased are displayed below.

The decision had been previously made by our group at the club to try and organise a Lion Rampant campaign, set around an unspecified area of the Mediterranean in the Crusader era. Given how disorganised we traditionally are this would be quite an achievement if successful. So there the three of us were, trying to sort out what boxes of plastics were needed.

Templar Knight Horses

From Phalanx 2016

St George's Day Game 2016

The annual St George's Day game, which this year actually occurred on St George's Day! An alternative version of Operation Goodwood, as the British try and force their way out of Normandy but this time with paratrooper support.

The ruleset used is Rapid Fire. Figures supplied by Matt and Keiron.

Hero Training

With a number of people missing from the club, I finally managed to get the Heroes of Normandie boardgame into action.

Since this was essentially a training session for the game we worked our way through the first couple of base game scenarios. We decided not to use the cards just to keep things simple.

First scenario was over quickly, the package appearing on an intersection favourable to the Germans. Things proceeded with very little effective shooting, and only one close combat, which was initiated after the game was effectively won.

The second scenario was  the 'Saving Private Rex' one, this one does seem biased towards the American side, due to the amount that they outnumber the opposing Germans, who start with a badly placed Machine Gun nest.

A couple of mistakes made during game play in terms of visibility of concealed Recon units, and the ability to shoot through certain terrain squares to units beyond.

Going to get a couple more containers for the counters, to add to my existing one, as the ziplock solution currently in use is too disorganised.
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Horrific Easter

Lousy weather over the Easter holidays, so broke out Eldritch Horror for a couple of solo games, running a couple of characters in each game.

First game, with Cthulhu as the big bad, went disastrously. I chose the Explorer and to face the evil deep ones doings, but couldn't get any traction in solving the first mystery.

Theoretically having two characters working together should help make things easier due to the way the gate allocations and clue tokens to solve mysteries tend to work ( normally half the number of players and round up )

Second game, against Yog-Soggoth, went down to the wire, but managed to lose a number of characters in the process of solving the final mystery.

Charles Kane is not very useful on his own, but with more characters in play I can see his abilities to manage resources being very powerful.
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Wasteman Workout

Wasteman, a game by ThunderChild Miniatures, set in a Post Apocalypse wasteland. Not exactly designed for five players, the result being that quite a few special cards were flying around all over the place.

The game resolved into two seperate one on ones, with the fifth group, who had inside knowledge of the game, hanging back\hiding. My group, consisting of a Cat Lady, Shooters, and Cannibal Maws, started off in the open. Cat Lady goes down from a long range shot from Jim's group.

In retaliation I play a card to use my activation to take control of one of his gang, and get them to detonate a bomb in their midst.
No fatalities but numerous wounds.

Matt and Dave M trade long range fire, but DM gets his grunt into close range and starts ripping Matt's force apart. After numerous rounds of fire and a load of dead body's, Matt finally puts the beast down.

 Meanwhile one of my Maw's survives an assault, and chomps down on Jim's Robot, suprisingly destroying it in one munch. The opposing shooters concentrate fire to crit the creature, but my use of the Moojuice card brings it back to be more dangerous than ever. With the second Maw joining in on the assault the enemy boss ends up chomped to pieces.

The game winds down at this point with four out of the five forces not having much left to deal with anything.

Overall an enjoyable amount of chaos.
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