28mm Crimean artillery

I finally made some progress on these 28mm Crimean troops by Foundry. These are a Royal Horse Artillery limber. I'm not sure why this took me so long: probably a mixture of the complexity (lots of pieces), uniform details (KILL ME!), and lack of painting guides.

Anyhow, here is the limber. I did not rig up the tack with thread. It was just too daunting of a task and I simply need to move on.

Lovely enough figures. The blue might be a touch too blue (looks darker in normal light).

I also have two cannon painted. Just cranking out the cannon crew and then thinking about whether to base with the crew or do the crew separately and leave the cannon unbased. Probably with, I think?

 Up next: Some STTNG cannon fodder.

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.

Congo at the club!

We had five guys out at the club on Tuesday and Bruce hosted his Congo game that he'll be running at Fallcon this weekend. Four groups arrive in different corners and must gain points to win. Points come from killing figures, finding the treasure, and getting it off the board. 

To find the treasure and your exit point, players needed to contact various features (figures and other thematic models such as below, generally located in treacherous terrain) to gain clues--moving into the terrain where the clues were triggered random (usually bad) events.

Some units (such as my scouts below) could evade the terrain effect, in this case, grabbing the bananas without encountering the panther.

The game ran 8 turns or until the store closed (which were both within about 30 minutes on one another as it turned out). The first few turns saw players move to acquire various clues to the treasure's location.

Then the Nazi's showed up (art imitating life?).

Then the Nazi rocket men showed up and everyone started hammer Richard's troops wth terror cards, which is a great way to have players interact without engaging in combat. The rocketmen spent a lot of time freaked out by various noises in the jungle and basically played no further meaningful role. But it cost the rest of us some initiative to keep these guys pinned down.

Chen and Terry mixed it up on the far side of the board and the cannibals appeared in the village. Chen inflicted a lot of damage which would help him in point total in the end.

By this point, I collected enough clues to figure out that the treasure was in the village. Chen helpfully whittled down the cannibals and I managed to grab the treasure. Then the long flight across the board began. Sigh.

Chen and Terry continued to fight while Terry's film crew recorded things. At this point, store closing time was approaching so all of these distractions helped me run down the clock.

I had to run off Richard's corner of the board so I raced towards his troops. There was lots of general mayhem. As things were looking bad, I intentionally entered bad terrain twice in order to try and trigger an event that I could use to my advantage. This worked out pretty well (some chaos allowed extra shots) but eventually I got run to the ground.

At this point, Terry ended up grabbing the treasure and we called the game. The point totals in the end favoured Chen (he killed an alarming number of guys!).

A great game by Bruce (Congo is fun and the scenario was a hoot. His table set-up was also amazing.

55 minutes in Peking

Bruce brought his Boxer rebellion game out to the club this week for its debut. We had a good turn out for the first day of school, with 7 guys around the table.

Chris played the English, Scott the Japanese, Richard the Russians, Terry the Germans, and Chen the Americans. Bruce GM'ed and I helped out running a few Boxer units when they appeared to harry the western powers.

The westerners had amazing luck with the supply cards, never running short of anything and having to dicker among themselves. The Boxer sappers also helped them by shrinking the perimeter a bit.

That said, it was not a cake walk as the Germans and the Americans both lost units. There was time for a serious redeployment by the Germans. The British ran into some fire problems but managed to take care of some red lantern units.

For their part, the Boxers never really showed up in enough strength anywhere to really push the western powers. Sure, they killed some Christian missionaries and blew some embassy walls, but that was about the extent of it.

We did see the appearance of the Parsons with their machine gun, which did a good job of cleaning up the last big push by the Boxers. Overall, a fun game with all 7 players engaged.

Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan

On my way back from a work trip, I took a detour to Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan in the Cypress Hills. This was more out of the way than I imagined (maybe an hour off the TransCanada highway) and involved some entertaining alpine driving (in the middle of the prairies!).



Fort Walsh has a nice interpretative centre (with canteen) up top that walks you through the Fort's history and purpose with a bit of background about the Cypress Hills massacre. You then hike down to the fort itself. You can go down the road (below) or the trail (end of post).

The fort is maybe 500 or 600 feet per side. None of the buildings are original as the fort was abandoned and its remains destroyed by forest fire. The site was later re-activated as a horse-breeding centre for the RCMP before being transferred to Parks Canada.

There are numerous buildings to explore plus costumed interpreters. It was cloudy and cold the day I was there but the parking lot was busy despite the remote location of the fort.

Above in the interior of the commander's house (I think). Below is a two-pounder inside the smithy (I think).

There are lots of barracks to walk through.

There is also a nice 1/87-scale replica of the fort at its peak. Sorry the shots are poor--the glass case and wicked reflections made shooting tricky.

Outside the fort were a few teepees and some Metis buildings. The original fort had quite a boom-town spring up for a few years. The only thing left is a cemetery and some stone foundations.

Below of the shot of the trail leading down to the fort. What is most striking (beyond the Cypress Hills themselves) is the isolation of this post when wagon train and horse were main transport mode.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go back here (it was a long drive) but it was a very interesting side trip.

Fort Battleford, Saskatchewan

Earlier this summer, work took me past Fort Battleford, Saskatchewan--one of the old NWMP forts from the Riel Rebellion era. Fort Battleford is located in Battleford, just off Highway 16. The signage is pretty slim so looking at a map ahead of a visit is a good idea.



The site itself is on a wind-swept prairie bluff overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. There is an interpretative centre, a wooden palisade, and five period buildings.

Outside the walls are barracks (that were originally intended as stables). I didn't get inside here because a school class was using the space. You can see some costumed staffers in the picture below. There are also foundations and cellars from various buildings that you can see from the frisbee-golf course but all of the signage is too sun-bleached to read.

The fort itself is pretty good sized for a prairie fort--maybe 700 feet per side? Below is a pano shot of the interior from the main gates.

There are four buildings inside plus foundation outlines of many more. Below you can see the guardhouse (foreground) and the sick horse stable (behind, with pagoda to improve air circulation).

The guard house was interesting, with cells, a small barracks room, and some period pieces (rifles) behind glass. The stable was, well, horsey-smelling.

There are also two residential buildings and some tents.

 The senior officer's building is half tricked out as a residence and half as an office space.

The commander's residence is basically a big farm house with summer kitchen out the back (on the right in the photo below).

The interior was nice and reminded me of my grandmother's house in Perdue.

Most of the inside of the fort is just grass. There is one small cannon on display.

Maybe a two-pounder?

This was a nice stop on a long drive. The cafeteria was not much so you'd want to get food in town or bring your own. I'm not sure I'd go back but it was a pleasant walk and the siting of the fort really illustrates how vast the prairies really are--you can see for 15km or more.

More Boxers

Bruce hosted another playlets of his Boxer game this week. Main change was extending length to 25 turns. The last five turns see no new Boxer units arrive, but existing units continue to operate. And, if the gong in ringing on turn 20 (which causes Chinese units to stack up rather than enter until it stops), the gong stops ringing and the stacked up units also arrive. Predictably, this went badly for us (but is a great mechanical tweak).

I had lot so units besiege the barricade between the Russian and American embassies.

Some bad rolls cause major losses on my side of the board and things were thin. Fortunately, the plucky Russians managed to hold of the hordes of Chinese troops.

We lost three of the five embassies this time but still managed to win the game. In a five player game, there would have been winners and losers. There were also two points where supplies got very tight and that would have caused some interesting interactions between the players.

Overall, I'd say this is pretty much ready to go and could accommodate 7 players (5 European and 2 Chinese). It could also be played within the 2.5 hours we have at the club.