LOTR - Round 4

Another Breakthrough encounter as Colin's Ithilien troops attempt to get through Tel's forces of Mordor. Given the ratio of points was heavly in favour of the hordes of Mordor a breakthrough was always a big ask. The Ithiliens went for a high risk strategy of charging their knights along with all their leaders straight ahead and hope that the fragile morale of the Orc warbands caused a rout.

Unfortunately (for the Gondorians) a sliding door maneuver lead to the cavalry's intended targets being replaced by a row of four Olog-Hai (Trolls) and the fear inducing Mouth of Sauron and his command team. All or nothing for both sides!

The crash didn't go well for the Knights despite being armed with throwing spears and getting a re-roll of all initial fails. Armour played a vital role as the Trolls made a number of 5+ saves. At the end of the combat it was 3 knights lost verses 1 scratched Troll, and the horses bounce back as the Trolls pursue behind ready to charge in their next turn.

The Trolls charge into the cavalry's rear and pushes\routs them through their own shieldwall which then receives the charge proper. Due to the fear effect the infantry are forced to make a morale check to receive and fail. Since they have no re-rolls due to all the leaders\standards being with the routing troops they rout but not fast enough and are then pursued and destroyed. This forces morale checks on nearby troops which causes a domino effect along the Gondorian line. Only the archers on his flank remained unaffected.



This is in fact near the end position after round 2, when Colin announced that he'll be withdrawing his one unbroken unit next turn, and I agreed that I was in no real position to chase and catch any of his other units.



My attempt at trying to flank his forces with the Warg Riders and some quick marching Uruks never had the chance to come to fruition.

The other battle of the night came to an almost as abrupt end when the Elves luck\arrows finally ran out and they were caught and thrashed by the forces of Saruman. By turn 3 it was all over, and the absent fairy queen will probably be furious when news reaches her\him.



Given that the final battle was in the middle of nowhere we ended by doing the map moves for round 5. The elves are now up against the wall at Helms Deep, while the army of Gondor is now being pursued by the forces of Sauron to Osiligath from Minas Tirith. The Haradrim have a slight problem as their Oliphant appears to have got bogged down in rough terrain, but at least it will give them time to recover.

Swedes rule the World

Another game of Svea Rike. Started off as a five player but then got reduced to four halfway through, this didn't really affect the game much though. In contrast with the last game that we played a couple of weeks ago this was very high scoring. Matt won on 17 status, Me next on 15, Martin 3rd with 12 and Alan trailing behind with 5.

All wars Sweden fought were comprehensively won, leading to lots of booty being dished out (and three status point from war based event wars). All fiefs ended up in play leading to a scramble for sets of Culture Cards towards the end. Taxation was the most common event on the History cards but none of the killer 50% tax event cards came out.



Also playing on another table was a game of Great War, once again based in Mesopotamia, with some Turks defending some trenches and a village from a British\Colonial assault. Some turncoat Arabs apparently didn't do the Turks much good, and neither did some accurately placed allied artillery.



The club was a bit short of members with not many of the 40Kers turning up this time, Holiday season once again kicking in.

Finally, At the end of the night, we got round to doing the map moves for the LotR campaign, leaving us with three battles pending for the next round.
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More Great War

Another game of Great War, but this time a more open battle, set in Mesopotamia, and with a single objective: seize the ruins. No limit was placed on the number of turns so that it could take up the entire night (the table was also bigger than 6x4 so the extra turns would be needed). Reinforcements were also available based on die roll. The Turks have been strengthen with the presence of some German Jaegers and Cavalry, The British with an Armoured Car and a very large wooden crate with 'water tank' stenciled on the side.

Dave M. : Referee and troop provider.
Dave S. and Tel : Central Powers.
Colin and Co : Allied.

The Germans advance! Jaegers in the Centre and cavalry on both flanks. The infantry objective: To capture and hold the ruins in the centre of the table. The cavalry objective: Charge!

The initial British force. Note the Armoured Car in the Centre. The nearest units (platoon and MG) took the brunt of the Cavalry charge. Due to both the Infantry and MG moving the cavalry managed to charge in without receiving any serious fire. The Cavalry command section took out the MG before getting shot to pieces the next turn, the accompanying cavalry troop ending up in a similar situation, knocking the enemy platoon below five figures but dropping below five themselves. (These were the first close assaults we had done in either game, we reran the combat after getting things wrong the first time, and I think we also got it wrong the second as well, utilising the 'fix bayonets' as a modifier rather than an extra die each.)

Both sides attempt to take the strategically valuable hill on the Germans left flank. The Germans managed to get the MG onto the hill and pin down the British unit visible on the hill. The British assault against it fails despite damaging the crew badly, and leaves the hill open for the Turkish reinforcements that were making their way onto the field. If the cavalry had not taken out the British MG earlier then the situation would probably of been reversed. The Armoured Car in the distance was now effectively out of commission after having its MG destroyed. Prior to this it had caused real problems, almost single handedly taking out the other cavalry troop.

The Central Powers managed to claim the victory by re-taking the ruins. The British never managed to get any troops into them but had cleared out the German force that had originally seized them. The British never managed to get their tank into action and got minimal service from their light mortars due to some terrible reinforcement rolls, unlike the Central Powers who got access to the Turk reinforcements almost immediately (but did miss out on the available light artillery till too late in the day).

Breaking News: Rumour has it that the British may be getting some mounted reinforcements from the Bengal district of the sub-continent.

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!
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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.

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).



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.



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...
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