Moonbase Alfalfa

Its big battle time as the heavyweights from various fleets move into the contested region, which is also currently being visited by a certain free-roaming moonbase.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

Once again it's 'Good guys' vs 'Bad Guys'. All ships and terrain from Geordie Paul (not LaForge). Best of three capture, two planets and the base in between being the objectives.

The 'good guys' reach the moonbase first and enlist their help against the oncoming hoard. Not that it did the base much good as waves of Cylon Raiders destroyed nearly all the Eagles and Hawks newly launched from the base.

Even worse, The Borg Cube decides to do a bit of grazing, assimilating part of the base and repairing itself in the process. This damage was caused by the wave gun from the blue ship sent to protect the base.



The Blue Battlestar and friends suddenly work out that the Klingon is almost impossible to hit due to it's speed boost from its elite crew. Even combining weapons only gives a slight chance of doing light damage.



Both available versions of the Enterprise head to engage the Cube after easily dealing with the two Shadow craft.

The Wave Gun gets lucky and recharges straight off (a nice 6 on the die) and lines up for another closer ranged shot at the giant Oxo cube.



At this point the game was called, with the general agreement that the bad guys were going to lose, as the combined power of the ships present should take out the already chipped Borg, leaving only the Klingons and Cylons contesting a single planet.
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Crete Assault

More fighting for the defense of Crete. Regular setup of defending British\Empire troops verses German Paras and some regulars. This time a bridge assault with the Germans coming from both directions to try and dislodge the Brits in the Gorge so that they could link up. 20mm figures and terrain supplied by Matt. Rules are 40K based but with limited weapon range and ammo.

And for a change there was armour involved as 2 Panzer mk.III's try and take on a Matilda, a Light Tank, and some AT weapons.

From Furness Wargamers

As can be seen the centre section of the battle field was terrain heavy.

As I was in charge of the paras, trying to link up with the main force, I decided to place all my troops on one side of my deployment zone away from the open terrain. They hugged the terrain like mad when advancing with only my snipers and MGs popping up to shoot, and my observers sending in some mortar fire. Only really had one effective mortar (the sole medium) and spent most of the time trying to move my remaining light mortars forward.

A long range duel broke out between an MG34 and a Bofors gun. The Bofors eventually won but with it's crew badly depleted and was then taken out by fire from a couple of Anti-Tank Rifles.



The tank battle was a bit of a stand off as they traded shells at close range but with little penetration. The allied anti-tank gun never got a chance to fire as the panzer's refused to come directly down the road. One Panzer got a bit shaken for a while but no vehicles were put out of operation on either side.

Eventually the paras and regulars were able to wave at each other across from the high ground to the rear of the farm house, in which my sniper and observers were hidding, with a good view of the bridge.

The game ended at this point as the allies agreed to withdraw due to their low ammo situation. The Matilda was almost out of ammo, two rounds left, and with the German Infantry closing into charge range holding the bridge looked pretty unlikely.
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Pumpkin Head

It's Halloween in the zombie infested city of Malton. And that normally means that the great creator Kevan the programmer has laid on something special.

This year it was Pumpkins. By going to the various parks in Malton, and dodging zombies along the way, a survivor can pick a pumpkin and carve it.

So my brave character took the risk and ducked out of the hospital in Dartside to wander to a park and pick pumpkins. Turns out that though extremely heavy they don't affect you encumbrance; I picked three and ended up at 150%+ encumbrance, which lead to a slight problem when I tried to carve the things.

Apparently a hand axe is no good for this, and with no knife there is not much I could do. There was no point in searching for one as I'm already over encumbered, so I decided to get creative and started attacking people with pumpkins! Turns out they're not one shot weapons and doesn't turn people or zombies into pumpkin heads.

Malton itself has gone a bit quite. It's increasingly difficult for zeds to go on city wide rampages and they are now restricted to certain districts and small travelling hordes. Nothing as fearsome as The Dead invasion.

I run both a survivor (part of Tikhon Medical) and undead (mainly acting feral and hovering around Grigg Heights) characters to keep some form of balance, but having both maxed out in levels things have descended into familiar routines.
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Battle for the Planets

An even larger battle then last week, as the combined collection of spacecraft from Paul's and Martin's fleet collide in combat.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

Although the ships on both sides were numerous they are not very good, in fact they pretty much expendable dregs. The better ships from their respective fleets are due to turn up in a couple of weeks for an even bigger battle.

Planets are there to be captured, whoever captures the most of the three wins.

The combined Good Guy\Bad Guy fleets include a varied mix of races, and lead to some match ups that would never happen on TV or at the Movies.

Inner System


Middle Planet


Outer System


In the end the bad guys won, two planets to one; the inner planet being the only good guy capture.
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Final Front Ear

A bit of a Sci-Fi theme on Tuesday as two separate space games were being played out. Graeme, Colin and Co were trying out the Star Trek game Federation Commander by Amarillo Design Bureau. Their family of ST derived games are based upon the original series and has branched into a different universe history, normally refered to as the 'Star Fleet Universe' than the follow-on series\films due to IP rights\limitations.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

A simple get to know the rules style encounter saw the Federation come off worse as Klingon drones made and exploited large holes in the shields.

Paul was organising a five player (later to be six) game of DTS, using his original rules which differ quite a bit from Martin's version. The main one being that the whole ruleset fits on 1/3 of an A4 sheet of paper!



As can be seen there's quite a bit of difference in fleet sizes between the games, despite Federation Commander being a fast-play variant of the legendary Star Fleet Battles. The more cinematic DTS has ships flying (and being destroyed) everywhere.

Some of the ships in DTS look remarkably familiar to those in FC! Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. (or at least one letter been changed anyway.)

A big multi-player bash is planned for the near future.
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Bound Again

Another go at playing Runebound and this time it was a success! (nearly)

From Furness Wargamers

Poor old Mad Carthos didn't get off to a very good start, having to spend his gold on healing when he eventually got to town. Decided it was best to get some distance between poor Carthos and the rest so headed north and over the mountains to a nice secluded zone, where he started to fare a little better. When he finally got some more gold he had a choice when he visited town; heal his three wounds or buy something explosive. The Bomb won.

The game did drag out a bit with there being the full complement of six players. There's only so much interest you can take in someone elses fights, and the distance between players can even make following the combat that much more difficult. It really is a better game when only four are playing.



Eventually we ran out of time and as a last gasp effort I moved onto a red counter and, despite being underpowered, took on a bad guy just for the hell of it. Didn't do too bad managing to get them down to two health remaining before getting put down.

So we never managed to finish it, think at least a couple of people were in with a shout of knocking out one of the Red level beasties, especially Colin with his before combat hits and cannon fodder followers.
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Runebounder

Attempted to play 2nd edition Runebound which Graeme had brought in. Played the 1st edition a couple of times a few years back with Ian and Co., but long enough ago to make the rules fuzzy, and the new edition changes were unknown to me.

Cock-Up with the dice as we were all rolling only the one; it was only after checking the combat example that it became apparent that both 10 sided dice should be used. In the original edition it was a single 20 sided die, other changes are on the FFG forum.

Have never played it with six players before and it did seem to slow down a bit as you wait for your turn.

Everyone sort of agreed to try it again next week, hopefully using the right rules this time.
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