Heroes on the Table

A couple of games of Heroes of Normandie, only the second time it has been played at the club.

I pre-selected two 200 point forces of Americans and Germans, and Dave M and Mark set about wandering the bocage.

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Despite both being new to the system they picked up the rules quickly and I was surprised how quickly the first game ended given that 200pts is a decent size for a game.

The Germans were given a more 'veteran' feel; more mobile, plenty of MG's, tanks busters and a sniper. The Americans had better armour (if you could describe an M8 Greyhound as armour), a mortar for indirect fire, and more troops, plus Clint as a Hero.

Mortar fire was decisive in the first game, with three consecutive rounds landing without scatter. Mark also learnt that light woods, while better than no cover, is no match for a hedge as he came out worse in a firefight. So a decisive victory for the Americans.

Dave M kept forgetting to activate Clint, with his autonomous hero action. Mark forgot to use his sniper as well and didn't use his 'veteran' rerolls effectively.

The second game, with adjusted board layout, was much closer. The Germans used their transports to capture the Victory Point locations early in the game. The Americans caused more damage to the Germans and used their armour to take out the transports, the Germans just failing to take out the armour with a panzerfaust that scraped the paintwork. The Mortar was nowhere near as accurate this time.

On the final turn, I tried to encourage Dave M to do or die with Clint to capture the middle Victory Point location. He had the opportunity to soften the target up with suppressive fire from either his 50cal or vehicle MG but chose to fire for effect with no luck. So Clint heroicly defended his shrubbery instead.

The Germans clung on for victory, the additional location counteracting the points for lost troops.
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Phalanx 2017

A little trip on Saturday, heading down to the place where Napoleon would have been exiled but for a typo, St Helens; and the Phalanx convention at the Sutton Leisure Centre. A number of the Furness Wargames, both past and present, made their way down as well.

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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Phalanx 2015

Made the annual pilgrimage down to St Helens for the Phalanx wargames show.

Furness Wargamers wasn't putting on a game this year so it was just a case of browsing around.

Met up with Matt, Jim and Graeme down there with a surprise appearance by Alan.

Not gone overboard with the purchases, for my FIW stuff I bought a 28mm blockhouse from 4Ground, and a pack of 6 settler minis from Warlord Games. I didn't see any one stocking Galloping Major stuff else I might have bought a bit more.

I managed to obtain a couple of punch boards for Heroes of Normandie, one of support vehicles for both sides, and the Wittman Tigers board.


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Heroes of Normandie

A boring day so decided to play around with my new boardgame, 'Heroes of Normandie' from Devil Pig Games. The spelling is correct as it's of French origin. The game is squad level WW2 based, with the inclusion of 'cinematic characters' (the titular heroes), which originally put me off the game when it was on Kickstarter.

Purchased while up in Keswick, it was the weight of the box that attracted me, as it nearly strained my arm when I tried to single handedly take it from the top shelf! This compared favourably to a number of more expensive big box games in the same section of the shop, which were a lot lighter and rattled quite a bit!