What (Space) Armada?

A Steam-punk\Victorian Sci Fi mini campaign set out in the asteroid fields, which apparently are filled with independent Cornish miners and the fleets of the Great (and not so great) Powers which are trying to take over.

Matt - Italians (Red Pins)
Tel - Germans (Black)
Paul - British (Light Green)
Dave M - French (Blue)
X - Spanish (Yellow)

From Furness Wargamers in Space

Asteroids are spread out at roughly two to three hex intervals, making a merchant\supply ship with your fleet essential if you need to hop quickly from one to another.

Builds are done at the end of each turn and use a mechanism similar to that used in a Ancient Greek naval campaign done long ago at the club. The better ships are harder to build (12+ for a Battleship) but get easier after each turn of failure. (plus one per turn)

Poor Spain nearly got knocked out early, becoming the victim of the first battle, and ended up with all their asteroids captured by others leaving only 'a ragtag fugitive fleet' of destroyers and merchants floating in neutral space. Maybe an idea for a TV series there. Unfortunately this gave the Italians a number of captured ships, including a battleship.



Everybody else is slowly heading towards the victory condition of 6 out of the available 19 asteroids. Matt moves his fleet into the same hex that I've just captured in an attempt to hold him off, having to give up one of my hexes to move there. It's an even fight, both of us having a Battleship, Fortified Cruiser and a Merchant, but some bad rolls for damage control doomed my ships after the first exchange of fire.



So the Italians end as the dominant force in the asteroid belt, which might make up for getting kicked around in Africa.
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Armoured Carts

Set somewhere in Poland sometime in 1915 during a period of fluid warfare. Played with Warhammer Great War, the Russian list is unofficial as the supplement covering this area is a long time delayed.

Both Germans and Russians are given the same objective, take control of the ruins in the centre of the table. Shell-holes and barbwire was set up by the players without knowing entry points.

From Furness Wargamers

The Germans got a captured Russo-Balt Armoured Car to play with, scratch built by Dave M; again no official rules for this type so guesswork involved. Not as good as the ones the British get to play with. Reinforcements are available based on die rolls at the start of each turn.

The AC rushes, or more like tootles at 9" rough and 12" on-road, down the road towards the enemy in an attempt to slow their advance, and maybe give the German troops enough time to get into position.



The Russian Infantry ignore the Car, not even attempting to swarm it. Instead they set up their HMG and after a couple of bursts destroy its forward MG and then the Car itself.

Questions were asked over the mobility of the HMGs as according to the rules, once setup they should remain in place for the rest of the game. This would of left the Russian MG blind to the rest of the battlefield so implemented a couple of turns delay and then allow it to move again.

Assault on the main ruins. Both forces arrived in consecutive turns but it was the Germans who launched an assault, should Russians have got cover save as both forces were internal to the building. Germans soon become out numbered as extra Russian troops pour in.



Forces in woods not particularly well protected as both platoons resident there get chipped away.

Russian Mobile reinforcements turn up. Three Armoured Cars, Two Russo-Balts making their way past the wreck of the German vehicle, and a Putilov-Garford reversing to try and get it's rear-mounted gun into action.



Additional German troops finally turn up and advance towards the centre, managing to wipe out a platoon of Russians who were pursuing the survivors from the big melee.



Unfortunately this wasn't enough to take the victory away from the Russians, who dominated the centre.

Things might of played quicker if the forces were entering on the long edges rather than having to move across the table. It took a number of turns till any action happened as the forces tried and close on each other.

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Prior to the battle there was reports of a strange unidentified object floating overhead. Apparently its green skinned inhabitants had got confused over the date of the big space battle, turning up a week late or centuries early depending on your time-frame.


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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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