Tanks for Nothing

A modern day home-brew conversion of the original G.E.V. from Steve Jackson Games.

India vs Pakistan in the 60's. Got to command some Shermans for the Pakistanis, which surprisingly was not the worse armour in the battle.

From Furness Wargamers

Given the job of holding the left flank, the idea was to move the troops in to defend the village (where they get x2 defense) and screen the shermans behind the village and hope the enemy got close enough for us to do damage (we weren't told that the tanks also benefited from the built-up areas defensive bonus else our deployment would be quite different.)



With no overwatch available and with weaponry not affected by range the numerically superior and better equipped Indians could standoff and blast at a distance. All I could do was replenish the depleted forces in the buildings.

The other, right, flank collapsed early as the armour went head to head in fairly open ground. Losing our Forward Observers early didn't help much to stop the enemy advance.

We just managed to hold on till our reinforcement's arrived, but they soon disappeared into a cloud of smoke and wreckage. Not a very balanced scenario.
¶

Water Wings

A quick visit to Jabberwocky Games to check if they had the Thaniras War Dragon available for Uncharted Seas. Managed to purchase one; now I've got to work out how to paint it. Might co-ordinate it with the rest of my unconventional purple coloured elven fleet.

A beginners competition involving just starter sets and no cards is due to be held in the store in a couple of weeks. (from mid-day on Saturday 19th?)

Phil was involved in a big Flames of War eastern front game taking up the entire main table. Looks like the shelves are slowly filling up with stock as more new lines come in.
¶

Rule Britannia (and Hibernia)

Another old post.

March 2006

Got delivery of the new edition of Britannia and boy are the components sweet. Well worth the £25, full colour map and counters, and nicely layout rule book with pictorial examples. Overall a big improvement on the Gibsons Games presentation. Minor quibbles about it include the lack of tribe names on counters (each has its own unique picture\emblem on) and the fact that the inlay tray in the box seems to be from another game! there just isn't enough room for the components once they been punched out.

Also this week: The ongoing Irish campaign came to a conclusion at the Wargames, with Tel O'Malley becoming High King of All-Ireland (barring the bits the Normans have). After many skirmishes between the rival claimants it came down to a meeting of all nobles to decide democratically upon the king. This didn't work as planned as the ensuring stalemate descended into an all out fight. O'Malley becoming King due to the principle of last man standing.
¶

Minas Tirith

Another old post transfered over.

January 2006

From Tuesday:

So how do you defeat a charge by the Rohirrim like what happens in the movie? Simple, line up your Trolls and Mumakils and watch the horses bounce off. You can then kill any Hobbits and cross-dressers at your leisure.

This game played was based upon an old SPI game from the 70s. An almost direct conversion, but instead of counters we used minis on an hex based table top. The actual walls of the city actually looked quite neat being made from components of a block stacking game based upon the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

We lost in the end, apparently even in the original game it was almost impossible for the bad guys to win. maybe it was because I spent to much effort in trying to kill off the main characters. Didn't think much of the map layout either, with no outer ramparts to the Pellenor, and hills scattered around the place.

On thing I might of done is convinced then to do 'The Battle of Un-Numbered Tears' which appeared in a wargame mag over 10 (nearer 20!) years ago.
¶

The Return of Gareth

An old post from my first attempt at a blog on MSN Spaces - stopped using it as was a bit too public with notification of posts sent to work colleagues.

28 September 2005

A right blast from the past last night as not only did I end up playing Britannia for the first time in nearly a decade but the Britannia man himself, Gareth, made an appearance later on.

Might as well of not bothered with the game after turn 4 as the Romans decided to attack the Welsh (Me) straight off, with the result that Hadrian's Wall ended up being built in Cheshire and basically gifting the game to Red. Blue might of stood a chance but was being played by a first timer\child who liked attacking anything. The game ended at turn 13 due to time, but my last group (the Danes) were basically played out even before the Magnificent Sven turns up ('We came, we saw, we went home')

Told Gareth about the Sunday Board Games, but he's mostly busy that day.

Also of note :- There's a new Edition of Britannia coming out late 2005\early 2006 by the original designer. The original versions of the games (two separate set of rules by Gibsons and Avalon Hill) had their rules messed around with by in-house people (who obviously knew better than the PhD holding designer!) so the new edition should be a little bit simpler\slicker.

http://pulsiphergames.com/britannia/index.htm
¶

Desert Prats

Another go at Pauls quick play WW2 tank game based upon Warhammers armour combat resolution. Once again set in the early North Africa theatre.

A mini campaign but different from last time in that it used a non-symmetrical hex map rather than a symmetrical nodal one. Two forces venturing down a valley to try and capture their opponents villages\command posts. Movement was hidden but scouting neighbouring hexs with armoured cars and aircraft was allowed. Unless you were willing to play the encounter out the only things your scouts could see were clouds of dust.

From Furness Wargamers

The allies held line deciding to wait for the Axis to advance. A minor skirmish occurred between scouts but after that it was a wait for a few turns until the first major clash occurred.

As the units approached each other and the through the dust it soon becomes clear that the allies have the upper hand on the ground. The big fear of Mk III Panzers were unfounded. What we didn't take into account was the air support.

The Italian airforce prove to be decisive, the bomber taking out both main tanks. This completely swung the encounter to the Axis especially as the fighter returned for a second strafe damaging the remaining armoured car.



After this the campaign came to a close. It turned out that the Axis force was the only one assaulting and the main rump was defending their command post. So It would of been possible for the Allies to stop it penertrating any closer to our own CP. Despite the recent loss the campaign was called as a draw.
¶

First Fleet Fight

First Uncharted Seas battle for my almost completed Thaniras Elves. Verses Colin and some of Graeme's Orcs (Colin leaving his beloved Dwarfs at home.). Two other US games were also taking place.

Slightly smaller than the recommended 4ft by 4ft table size with an Island in the middle of the playing area to split things up. At least the Elves had the weather-gauge in their favour at the start with the wind directly behind them.

The massed squadron of six orc frigates was an awesome sight as the wall slowly advanced forward, devastating an elven frigate squadron with their linked forward fire. That was until they got frozen in place by the Elves magic and were encircled and picked off in place by the Cobra Cruisers. Did manage to get the cruisers and a couple of frigates behind the Orcs and out of their devastating forward fire zone, but the damage had already been done to the Elven Phoenix Battleship which ended up rammed and taken prize.

The Orcs started to get frustrated with the Elves magic which they were not able to counter effectively. The carefully lined up shot against a cruiser by the Orc battleship went to waste as the ship was magically transposed out of shot.

The Orcs did mange to have effective damage control as they repaired their Battleship from five damage down to one. This proved to be decisive as at the end of the game their was only the battleship and one elven frigate left on the table hiding behind the island. Even sailing into the wing the frigate is faster than the battleship so was able to escape eventually.
¶