WWII in various Colours

Hello people.

Yes, been a little while. Busy elsewhere and all that Jazz.

Last week was all WWII and EotE, which was all good with me. WWII kicked off last Saturday by breaking out Heroes of Normandie with Rich.

Cracking open the box we were somewhat overwhelmed with the number of tokens in there.......no dice though :/ Even as crusty old gits at this sort of thing it was all a bit bewildering for a while but once we were playing, which very nearly didn't happen, everything slotted into place ;)

In short it's a good (board)game with alternating initiative and a central "order" system. In short you get X number of orders plus one Bluff for roughly X x 2 units. With an order you can move, fire, or do something useful (but not move and fire). Any unordered units can make a move at the end of the turn.

Playing through two scenarios the cartoon / caricature feel of the background comes through in the gameplay and scenarios. With the points system it seems that you can play the game in a much more "traditional" manner but we haven't got that far yet. Definitely intend to find out though.....got far too much of it sitting around not too ;)

Moving on Tuesday night at Enfield Gamers was a 4 way game of Bolt Action at 500 points each, 1000 per side. We kept the Order Dice separate for each individual force, as you're supposed to, to see how it played out.

The table itself looked a bit Ardennes so that's what we went for with Paul's Yank Brandenburgers supporting Charlie's Heer against Damien's Brits and my Commandos.

The early game on my left flank was dominated by my RN FO as Paul ran away from the smoke spotting rounds at every opportunity. As such his elite Paras made a rush up the very open centre of the table and got shot to bits for their trouble.

On our right flank honours were fairly even thanks to a lucky mortar hit taking out a Bren Carrier balancing the Heer inability to pass an Order though the plethora of Steg 44s were doing a job.

Eventually the RN support fire turned up, though somewhat short, in fact plastering the Commandos with Pin markers. Almost prophetically I'd made a load over the weekend!

Thankfully the Commando's Elite status meant they were able to wear them well seeing off a Brandenburger squad in combat whilst outnumbered 2 to 1 and secure the flank. Meanwhile the plucky Tommies followed their forefathers with a number of well timed bayonet charges urged on by Lt Simpkins who bashed the Bosch brigand to secure the game.

A good game and a bit more learnt. Throughout the Deutsch-Dice stormed out of the bag ahead of the Brits which naturally put us on the defensive but also allowed us to mount a coordinated counter-attack. 

The more I play this game, the more I want to play this game :)

I shall say theese only wonce!

Hello people,

Not been a lot going on here as I've been rather busy with OTHER stuff.

Meanwhile this lot FINALLY turned up from Devil Dog. As seems to be the case with KS I can't quite remember what I pledged for but a Feck-off sized box has been emptied and stacked in a significant proportion of a spare bookcase.

I tend to remember pledging for two basic sets (amongst 4 of us) but I'll have to check. There's so much stuff there I'm not sure we'll do anything with it for a while for lack of knowing WHAT to do with it. I suppose that this is possibly a stealth issue with KS. It's taken so long to turn up that we've moved on to other things, most recently Bolt Action, which kind of dooms Heroes of Normandie to it's shelf for a while.

Pledge goals, i.e. free stuff, is all good but how complete does your pledge "packet" become. With a decently planned campaign you'd hope that it would all be sorted out for you but I get the feeling that it's all to easy to loose sight of that if the face of freebies.

I have recently found myself passing up on a number of tempting campaigns simply by asking myself "what would I actually do with it?". This seems to be far more pertinent than "do I need it?" because we all know the answer to that one? ;)

Anyway, hopefully Heroes won't gather too much dust before it sees some action. We'll see!

Pushing Card

In last nights thrilling episode at Enfield Gamers myself and Shaun had a first run out with a copy of Frontiers that Shaun picked up for a snap on E-Bay.

We've both been tempted by Heroes of Normandie by Devil Pig on Kickstarter (it's becoming a mild addiction) and its the pre-cursor game. Liking the look from the start the recent Cthulu stretch goal has turned interest into temptation.

Bit of a slow game given that we were learning as we went but very much as to be expected. Simple mechanics with all the relevant stats neatly printed on the high quality troop tokens. Initially felt a bit Mech Warrior / Klix but the real detail lies with activation.

In short there's a resource management element within the Orders Phase as you have a limited number of order tokens generated by your command elements. Numbered 1 2 3 etc they're placed hidden and also determine activation order. Revealed in order each units Speed rating determines who DECLARES (important word) their action first lower rating going first. Once declarations are made its movement, highest speed first, followed by shooting, lowest speed first.

Armoured infantry advance on the right......

......but are quickly engaged!

Took a little bit to wrap my head around it at first but it means that a faster scout unit can potentially decide to move away from the battle tank or heavy weapon crew rather than get shot at and potentially burn that order for them.

It means that infantry slog but fire nimbly whilst scout vehicles are the other end of the spectrum with armour in the middle. Once understood and appreciated it provides a real tactical depth to a simple set of mechanics which is always a bonus as well as avoiding IGO-UGO :)

Consolidation on the left.....

....while the aliens envelope!

Most units have a couple of special rules, none of them difficult to deal with and all make practical sense to the units that they flavour.  There's also a hand of four event cards for each player and often a smattering of kit crates around the battlefield to be grabbed. The Action Phase is nice and straight foward.

You do get a couple of decoy order markers to create a potentials of of war but they pretty much passed us by first time out. Infantry can take one order vehicles more but they're definitely a precious commodity. A final Reserve Phase sees non activating units getting a single move action to keep the game dynamic.

The PBI slog up the field.....

.....to take position amongst any cover they can find!

The battlefield itself has easily comprehended hills, woods, bunkers and buildings providing movement penalties and cover modifiers as you would expect. We had a couple of woods and a ruined bunker, prescribe versions can be demolished I'm very sure.

Taking an LT and what I considered a weapons supported platoon of grunts along with an IFV and scout  quad my battleplan involved and armoured drive up the relatively open middle with the grunts slogging up the left into cover. Early doors this didn't go so well as we worked through the whole speed / activation thing. Several times I experienced the ability to get shot up just before you get to activate. Shaun using a couple of bonus cards to enhance his shooting soon saw my quad junked and the IFV weaponless.

Retreating bravely across to my left I had slowly slogged into cover on the right with my grunts and finally started giving some back with a bit of enhanced shooting of my own. Consolidating my, rather tenuous, position I popped smoke grenades and dropped an orbital strike and redirected Shaun's missile back onto him. All of a sudden things weren't as bad though I was definitely going nowhere fast. I even popped one of Shaun's commanders which immediatley lost him an Order Token which seemed a big bonus.

The Infantry take a licking....

.....while the Fleet deliver a kicking!

Finally getting to grips with the Orders Phase it was gratifying to see PBI in cover being difficult to shoot up, just as you'd hope.

As time got the better of us we didn't manage to try an assault but I'm sure it wouldn't have been difficult to sort out. Overall we had a decent first run out and only felt slightly wary of the clunky feeling Orders Phase and activation generally. However with hindsight I've already grown to appreciate it, just tapping this post has got me more enthusiastic about it.

Got the rules to have a read through and watched the KS video which is very well and entertainingly done but doesn't tell me anything different not that its a problem. Keen to play another game or two and still 24 days to pledge. We'll see :)