Gaming at the club

We had 7 guys out at the club this week with three games on deck. Jonathan and Scott played some Commands and Colors Machine Guns.

I think this was the Verdun scenario, with the Germans advancing over the Meusse River? I left before it was done, but it looks like the Germans were just running out of troops.

Dan hosted Terry and Richard in a game of Strange Aeons. RCMP and heroes versus cultists.

The cultists were selling some naked townies for meat to some little guys with big teeth. Gravel Road Cowboys had to rescue them.

I left before this game reached conclusion. At that point, the body count looked like it was favouring Sergeant Preston and his kung-fu fighters.

A very pretty game that Dan did a nice job of putting on.

Chen and I played Battlestar Galactica with Newtonian movement. BSG is basically the same as Wings of War (movement on cards, simultaneous selection) and you can play it with cinematic movement or with Newtonian rules.

Newtonian movement allows you to pivot your ship away from your direction of travel to change your firing arc. I have tried to illustrate this using the arrows to show direction of travel. The picture above saw the viper rush towards the camera and the raider rush away. As the ships passed one another, they pivoted (the raider more successfully) and the raider got to fire.

Once your facing is not the same as your direction of travel, your movement becomes restricted (you can drift on momentum or pivot and move (which may also have some drift). With good planning, this can allow you extended firing opportunities but also leaves you vulnerable to your opponent making a sharp turn and sneaking out of your arc (see above).

The effect of the Newtonian rules were interesting (rewards planning and good spatial skills) but hard to get used to. I'm still not sure I fully understood the movement rules by the end--there were some interactions between acceleration and kinetic energy I couldn't keep straight. I tend to prefer simpler game mechanics (a la X-wing) but the designer(s) made a good effort to incorporate complex concepts into (relatively) simple add-on rules.

Strange Aeons, Look Sarge, No Charts, and The Great War

It was a busy night at the club with three games running. Dan hosted Terry and Chen in a play through of Strange Aeons 2nd Edition. I have no idea what happened in that game, other than the scenarios went quickly.

Scott hosted Craig and me in a game of The Great War. I was the British while Craig played the dastardly Hun. Victory was 6 banners and my plan was to push left to gain points through unit kills and trench occupations.

This started out okay for me. Then my hand turned into "right only" cards and Craig played like a mad-man! It was like the Harlem Globe Trotters were Mrs. Wright's Grade 2 class. There were crazy card combinations and terrifying "activate everything" turns and he was always in the bleeding trenches! It was a complete disaster for the British general staff.

This was the best I could manage in terms of an advance and I was within one turn of winning on points. Then Craig continued with his amazing card play and I was screwed. Good game, though!

Bruce hosted Wiley and Richard with some 15mm Napoleonics using Look Sarge, No Charts. The French set up on the left and had to run for the top of the picture. The British set up on the top of the photo and the right in an upside-down L.

By the time I joined the game, things were thoroughly confused. Bruce's British cavalry had been routed and Richard was attacking (from the right?) while running the majority of his troops off the board. It was quite a show!

1/600 planes

Bruce popped over Tuesday for another go at some 1/600 planes using a modified set of c21 airway rules. Our first game saw two flights of MiG 19s assigned to down some Skyraiders.

The Skyraiders were on a pre-programmed flight. Bruce flew a pair of Phantoms on CAP.

This started out well for the North Vietnamese as I actually managed to get in behind the ground-attack planes. But then I could not make a maneuver roll worth beans and Bruce managed to splash two MiGs. I got two skyraiders in the end but it was a pretty clear US victory.

We then switched the WW1 biplanes. Germans escorting a bomber formation against a bunch of nasty Brits.

I had more discipline this game (and less tendency to over fly the target). I think Bruce got a bomber but paid pretty heavily against my escorts.

Overall, the modifications are pretty good. Dropping the cards has eliminated a lot of the tedious guess work. We talked about making shooting in close range a touch harder but otherwise I would say these rules are ready for prime time.

More Fields of Despair

Bruce and I gave Fields of Despair a second play this week now that we have worked out the rules and mechanics some. We turned back the clock to the very start of the war and the Germans had to push through Belgium.

This went well, with Liege falling quickly. I then moved towards the west as fast as I could to take advantage of the Allies lack of preparation.

Bruce sought to distract me in the south with a counter offensive. Despite that, things were going well ... .

...until I decided to divert resources to capture the channel ports (thinking about my right flank). In retrospect, these resources should have been sent towards Paris.

As a result, this was basically as far as I got (not quite historical) before we ran out of time (and the resource points started to tip things towards the Allies.

Overall, some nice mechanics (especially around airplane, artillery and technological advances). We did more bluffing with dummy blocks this game and, overall, we played better. I still don't quite have a handle on the naval war mechanics in terms of an optimal strategy. And Verdun is still a beast of a fortification.

Fields of Despair

Bruce hosted me in a game of Fields of Despair on Tuesday. This is a WW1 operational game on the western front. The eastern front and broader political situation are abstracted using some of the tracks on the left side of the board

I played the dastardly Hun and we join the conflict after the initial invasion of Belgium. Momentum is with the Kaiser at this point so I pushed hard into northern France. I should have pushed harder towards Paris instead of towards the channel but, well, first game and all.

I managed to blow open a pretty good hole but the fortress at Verdun was a real pain in the ass. Bruce pushed back hard in southern France, which was rather distracting.

The arrival of British troops helped to shore up the northern front and Bruce managed to reform a roughly historical line while I was desperately researching poison gas and reducing Antwerp. Interesting mini-economic game is played at the beginning of each turn allowing choices.

At the end of three (or maybe four) turns, we called it for the night. It was pretty much a historical outcome with the Germans starting to stall in 1915 and the tide starting to turn towards a more even game as manpower gave out for the Germans.

Overall, pretty interesting. The first turn was slow as we worked through the mechanics. Then the game speeded up and I think you could play one turn every half hour or so. The political and economic game is nicely tied together with the battle mechanisms. We're going to give it another go this week. The full war would be probably a five-hour game and I was happy to not have to invade through Belgium on our first go (outcome is obvious).

November 1 Club Night

We had 12 guys out at the club last night. Bruce hosted Chen and I in a game of Aurelian. I played the Romans. I fiddled around a lot with the bases and neglected to recognize the importance of the hill on my left...

Bruce put his barbarian heavies in the woods, leaving me to face skirmishers and a bunch of horse. I went forward and he dropped some annoying terrain that really disrupted my movement.

The horse battle on the left was inconclusive for a long time. In the meantime Chen joined Brice and pushed forward the barbarian foot while my troops were disordered. Things were looking bad as my card deck was getting low.

I finally managed to attrit the barbarian cards in the horse battle, then stalled their movement with an event card and the slammed into the side of main force for two turns.

The resulting unit loss pushed them to the break point of their card deck just before my own deck expired. The lesson here is that good luck and the toughness of the Roman can overcome really bad generalship.

Bruce and Chen played a second game with the Romans winning again.

We also had a game of Silver Tower out plus whatever the heck Richard Borg's WW1 game is called.

And Dave hosted a WW2 Crete game (Bolt Action maybe?) with Jon.

Up next: Some more 54mm AWI.

July 21 club night

We had 11 guys out at the club last night including newcomer Ian. Dave brought out his recently competed 10mm ACW troops and hosted Phil and Guy in a game, the name of which I can't recall.

It certainly looked pretty. Scott and Jonathan played a game of the new Commands & Colours WW1 (which I did not get a picture of).

I offered a Memoir '40 game but there were no takers so I ended up playing in Terry's Zombicide campaign with Chen, Larry, Bruce and Slippery Ian.

Things started out rough for the survivors (frigging zombie birds...).

Then they got rougher. I think we played the game reasonably well. Obtaining the scenario objectives (basically searching until the right three item cards are drawn) is tough and frustrating. The item deck is huge. The upside is that you get to shoot a lot of damned zombies.

And more zombies (I'm the guy on the right, below).

And more zombies I didn't count search actions but there were a lot and we only found one of the items before sheer zombie numbers forced us to abandon the objectives and just try to exit the board.

Up next: I have a 172-scale Brit artillery piece I've finished up.

AirWar 21 Biplanes

I popped out to Bruce's last night for a bit of AirWar C21 that Bruce had adapted to WW1. he pulled out his new cigar box mat and some 1/700 Tumbling Dice planes and we were off. I drew the Germans with a pair of triplanes and two early Albatross. You can see the allies come in at the top of the photo. The initial contact saw me able to double team one of Bruce's planes (dumb luck, but I will take it). The fight then broke up into two furballs. 

Bruce's pilots had some trouble with their maneuvers and one of then bought the farm eventually, although one of my planes was badly damaged in return.The other dogfight saw a head-to-head flypast with one of Bruce's planes catching fire. One of my triplanes managed to get in behind and a second allied plane went down and we called it. I had two damaged planes, limited ammo and was in no condition to catch his remaining fighters.

A fun game. Simple enough that two of use could run eight planes between us. But enough grit you had think about what you were doing. The absence of explicit altitude (built into some of the manoeuvre cards) was a reasonable compromise.

Up next: Working on more superhero stuff (will post some this weekend), including a bunch of buildings to finish up the streets of Gotham. Hope to visit a train store on Friday to get some road signs and fences.

Square bashing

I fled my wife's book club and visited Bruce for some Square Bashing. This was a late WW1 Canadian attack against a German position. My plan was to try and move up the centre and right of the board to grab the three objectives (poker chips) while feinting over on the (unpictured) left where there was an objective on top of a hill.

Things went reasonably well in the centre, largely thanks to Bruce's awful dice rolling. Virtually no reinforcements or divisional assets appeared while I used bombardment to isolate his troops. I think if we played more often, we'd both be much better at this and I would have to come up with a more elaborate plan!

My attack on the left ran into trouble and pulled back, conceding the objective. But I managed to bag two of the three objectives in the middle and was poised for the fourth when Bruce conceded. It was a close game when we tallied victory points.

Bruce then hauled out some new paper-and-foam core terrain he had constructed, bringing a 28mm tavern for Swashbuckler into three dimensions. It is amazing (pardon the bad light and shaky picture)!

Up next: Back to 15mm WW2 for me!