DUST x2

Last couple of Thursdays have involved me dragging out my ridiculously large DUST Tactics troops and playing the same scenario, TWICE, with the sides switching each time.
A huge gun is guarding the way into a strategic town. The mission is to take it out.
The outcome was the same. Attackers slaughtered. Both times I thought, "I should give the attackers more troops". Then didn't.

 I also thought, "I should really get an airbrush again so I can paint these bad boys".
Great set of rules. We might even try them with a horde of regular WW2 minis.

Saturday game: Recruiting

Wargaming has been a big part of my life, and as a consequence, my family's too. Passing on the love for the hobby has made me not only part of our local convention, which is dedicated to bringing kids into the hobby, but has made me look closer to home.
With the Baroness and the Girl out of town, I had a rare chance at a Boy's weekend. My son has already created a rather large RPG group, so I thought it time to show them tabletop wargaming.
A great intro is DUST. The rules are simple, the miniatures appeal to the video gamer teens, and its a lot of fun.

I kept the objectives simple, gave a short intro to the rules, and then explained more as each circumstance came up.

I figured a bunch of low attention span video gamer teens would get bored soon and just throw their forces at each other in a giant firefight.
I couldn't be more wrong. What I got were very thoughtful plans, very deliberate actions, and possibly some new recruits to the hobby.
Normally I wouldn't have unpainted miniatures touch the table, but I have a large collection and not so much time. No one seemed to care, and it lent a old school toy soldier vibe to the whole thing. A short game went long into the night, as neither side would surrender. I got alot of "that was awesome" the next morning, a generally warm feeling inside.

Returning to DUST

Summer's a hard time to get everyone together. That's why I went back to simple set of rules with some great models: DUST. We only had 4 people playing, but a ton on minis and tanks on the table. I was even able to the Boy to drag himself away from the Xbox to play, which says something about the cool factor.

I don't have the official DUST dice, but you can easily use standard 6s or, if you are like me and have a bunch of 6s numbered 1-3, even better.

Each side had a "biggun" with guns capable of insta-killing anything on the table. These became the focus of both sides. The Axis had a bunch of undead troops. These boys are cheap, but don't take suppression hits. They are mostly close combat troops, however. This forces them to run across the open battlefield, but they get great saves.

The Allies had some heavily armored troops capable of rocketing into position. We used these try a pincer.
It sort of worked.
Much like any other game, we learned the hard way those troops better be suppressed or have already activated before you close in for hand to hand. The ability for troops to deliver Reaction fire creamed most of both sides assaulting troops before they got close.
The Axis ended up with a marginal victory. All of the Allied armor was knocked out, and what infantry was left, was hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Again, a great game in very little time. I'm still thinking of converting these for 15mm SciFi.

Squeezing in a weekend game

My oldest wargaming buddy, Lead Addict and I have similar limited schedules with teenagers and jobs and families. It's rare we both have time to play together. He's been itching to play two games I've really had a good time with, DUST and Lion Rampant.
Not many pics, but lots of rum.

The Axis secret weapon...

For DUST (the one off the grid, is that Tactics or Warfare?) we had 200 points a piece. 100 points of armor and 100 of infantry. No special Command Troops or extra rules, just the basics.
Lead Addict quickly grasped the fire and suppression rules and had some of my best troops pinned for a good part of the game. I retaliated by pounding his armor to, well, dust.
These rules are simple and elegant with a lot of grit that isn't always noticed at first. I wish the models were more available. I substituted their special dice with my own 3 sided I had.

Next was a rematch Lion Rampant style, between the Normans and the Vikings. The vikings took a defensive position from the start only my crossbows were able to crack. It was short and sweet, but again a rule set with a lot more depth than seen at first sight. Guy de Fountainbleu left the peasants to their fates.

Turning to DUST

I've always thought the DUST futuristic, alt-WW2 miniatures and vehicles were cool, but wasn't thrilled about playing on a grid. Then they released DUST Warfare that took the minis off the grid, but I read some non flattering reviews. So, fast forward to GEN-Con 2014. I picked up the latest and greatest version of the rules. It has both the grid based system and a revamped tabletop version.
I picked it up and found the rules fun and easy to play, especially for a large group like ours. Besides, armored, undead zombie Germans with fricking-lay-zers.
A month or so ago Fantasy Flight games was offering all the DUST merchandise for a whopping 75% off! I dropped $150 and got a load of them.
After the holiday break, I wanted something easy and finally got them out.

It took less than 10 minutes to explain the rules. Everything is on the cards. Instead of the dice designed for the rules, which have 3 different faces repeated twice, we used regular dice. Roll 5 or 6 to get a hit for the most part.
The scenario involved the Allies trying to break thru a Axis held village.
Buckets of dice, and buckets of fun. Favorite part involved a huge Allied tank (six legged walky thing) unloaded 23 hits on a not-quite-zombie unit hiding in the woods. They managed to save all but 2. We joked I need to make a piece of terrain that's just stumps to replace the woods.

All in all, a fun, simple, don't take it too serious game. Off to troll ebay for more....
Side note: I usually do not tolerate unpainted minis on the table except for play tests. But, I know I'll probably never paint these guys, and they have a plastic toy soldier quality (with way better detail) that was acceptable.