Lock and Load

Evening all,

A couple of days behind schedule but the brushes have been unpacked, along with everything else, and the painting station had been restocked in that rather OCD way that we all know and love.

Priority 1 is to get the Commandos put together. I've drafted up a 500 point list for the club's escalation league, which just happens to be 25 "geezers" (plus a Royal Navy FO)  in strength, all available from the one box of green berets that I already have. 

As of this evening I still only have three chaps built though I have now started the production line and am the the proud owner of 3 "geezers" and 22 very literally unarmed, headless torsos. That's a 2nd Lt plus batmen leading two squads of nine troopers supported by a light mortar and a sniper team.

Should be getting a couple of 500 point games tomorrow night at Enfield Gamers borrowing Rich's Aussies which will be a move on from the multi-player games we've been running through recently. Last week was an interesting return to the jungle as myself and Paul ran 1000 points of armoured Yanks at a mini horde of Japs run by Rich and Damien.

Somewhat outnumbered and needing to take 1 of 3 objectives for the draw and 2 of 3 for the win we went for the cross country route up the left flank. Mobility proved to be our strength, while the Sherman 76 was something of a drab elephant. Late game aggression bagged us the draw but it was left too late to threaten the win. It was interesting to feel the threat of massed infantry despite our armoured status.

Anyway a few shots of the game;

We Come in Peace.....

.....Shoot to Kill! Shoot to Kill!

Not so much Klingons on the starboard bow (anyone else remember that one?) as the farce attending your locality as EotE returned Wednesday night to continue the vaguely planned assault on Ronsons Heavy Chemicals continued. Four out of five players were present, though this time we were sans Ryan which was interesting as Agenai was fully engaged. A simple phone call meant I could take his instructions, especially in respect of the stun vs kill debate, and all was good to go.

Kardosh the Duros Slicer brought several rather useful elements with him. Firstly a speeder aka a getaway car, secondly a different view on events and a less Route 1 attitude, thirdly an update as to the situation outside of Ronsons.

Probably the most important element was introducing a Route 2, mainly as Route 1 was getting a good kicking from the dice. Moving onto the next room, just one away from Kanto in his cell, the guards were decently prepared and aware that the intruders weren't really taking prisoners. Sindori opened proceedings with a grenade but it all went downhill from there with the guards (me) rolling a disturbing number of Triumphs. At one point I rolled two against Sindori only to put another on him a couple of rounds later, which seemed fitting given his bloodthirsty manner ;)

In short he took a Critical Hit, fell unconscious and had his armour blasted off of him which sent 7-UP-0 into a healing frenzy. His circuits got so overwrought that he even took a shot with his newly acquired blaster.......and took a Triumph Critical Hit to the forehead all of which sent his whinge chip into overload!

Eventually the lads, all FOUR of them, cracked the door on the Detention Block only to spend an inordinate time being held off by Lard-arse Larry and his jam doughnut. Meanwhile the Duty Sergeant had been at work in the control room the lads had preferred to bypass and had regained control of the door locks just as Lard-arse Larry and his jam doughnut was overcome.Battered and bruised they finally took control of the Detention Block.........deep inside Ronsons.

Kardosh meanwhile had to hack his way in through the back door, thanks to the "planned" lockdown, and quickly employed Route 2 which involved starting up the loader that the dozing tech had set to standby and re-modelling any door in sight.

Robby proved a highly effective recruit, at least until Kardosh tried taking him through the reinforced plas-crete wall at the back of the server room. Lots of rubble and dust but not so much big gaping hole.......at which point the klaxons started to sound and the red lights came one.

Time for Route 3?? ;)

When Saturday Comes

Hello people,

So the latest move has happened and it was back to work today with the paints and brushes still in a box, though I've found the box at least. With a bit of luck a return to TOY-time should happen on Saturday :)

As part of the move plan I'd picked up a few nerd publications to provide sporadic relief as and when required.

The first of such publications was the latest two issues of White Dwarf. Yes I know I'm hardly a fanboy these days but I've flicked previously and thought I should finally do the honorable thing in coughing up and taking a proper look.

First thing that strikes is the amount of content, it's pretty high for the page-count and though heavily themed to the week's releases, entirely fair, does cover a number of bases. Even as a casual observer there's actually stuff that I WANT to read. 

Production quality is high as you'd expect but especially so for the page-count. Real time and effort has gone into this reincarnation and it shows, unlike the previous version. Somehow it seems to be cool again and I rather like that. I'm not going for a subscription anytime soon but I may pick up the odd issue for that nostalgia hit!

Next up is the Bolt Action Great Britain book so that I can get an idea of what my options for my Commando force and get a start on the Salute shopping list, which in itself gets me all nostalgic :)

Going to keep the force fast and light and already fancy an armoured car for support as obligatory armour and the chance for a toffee nosed accent or two!

Finally to go with the DMZ graphic novel above are a couple of first issues that I couldn't resist. I draw a lot of inspiration from comics, especially for roleplay storylines as well as background fluff in general.

As a comitted 2000AD fanboy I like my graphics and story with plenty of grit rather than glamour. Something a little bit different that challenges preconceptions, so I'm not sure where my previous Punisher fetish sprang from!

Roll on Saturday :)

What would Jason Statham do?

Evening people.

Last night was the latest instalment of Enfield Gamers narrative Zombiecide campaign. With a few extra bodies in the mix there were seven of us playing, which  gave scope for a touch of in-cooperative play ;)

While Mr C and Shado represented the Committee Of Cooperative Statistics (COCS) myself and Shaun established the Peoples Republic of Do-What-You-Want (PROD) ;) Soon it was a classic battle of stats vs gut feeling with our three compatriots torn between each manifesto. Toe the statistical line or stick it to da' Man (dice gods). 

Snowy Leopards!! ahem.......

The rally crys were much stronger from PROD and soon focused on the cinematic theme of the game. Jon was playing Rick, who is basically Jason Statham so up went the cry "What would Jason Statham do?". Damien was playing Derek who was quickly given a midlands accent, while I had Woody Harrelson who legged it to the pimp mobile and started shooting.

Back to the game the scenario turned tough quickly with COCS sneaking through the buildings, both female characters, while PROD jumped into a patrol car performing doughnuts and drive-bys with wild abandon. In the end it was the PROD pro-mayhem agenda that somehow won through whilst COCS got jumped by a horde of walkers given bonus actions, while Jon / Jason watched on with a steely look of revenge in his eye!

Following a final flurry of road-rage and flying lead we just about edged the scenario though Rob died once, becoming a Zom-Vivor and Mr C died twice, becoming worm food.

All in all a good night and a highly enjoyable game. I still think drive-bys are a bit strong and not sure about Zom-Vivors, surely the other guys would just cap them?, but all good gory fun that adds spice. There was even talk of assigning by characters by looks and personality, now there's a can of worms!!

Snowy Leopards!!

Second Contact

So, back to it with EotE last Wednesday we almost manged a full turn out with four of the chaps in attendance.

After a brief recap and the decision to retain the Team Delta assistance the penny finally dropped from the previous sessions heavy hints the chaps dropped back in on Tinsons Town Tech to have a chat with Jared the slightly Austin, super-nerd, does strong theory calls in his head teenager! Sigh!!

First off they got Jared to hook 7-UP-0 to the droid maintenance rig, though 7s rolled such bad Perception that he pretty much walked straight into it! As such we took a brief detour in 7's MYSTERY DEVICE that seems to be some sort of advanced independent data drive that 7's probably doesn't even know about.......,probably;)

Moving on it soon became clear that Jared is a little bit Neo when it comes to computer code but knows right from wrong in a relatively child-like black from white manner. As such the chaps convinced him to check Kanto's files and then hack Ronson's firewall "to help Kanto" but wouldn't make bank transfers to numbered accounts "to help Kanto". The end result was a new door code which would open any door in Ronsons whilst locking all others. They also learnt that Kanto was alive in a detention cell, was being moved in the morning and got a partial site map before the firewall almost caught them......potentially :)

Heading back to the Cantina the chaps met up with their D girl, Oskara and set about planning a slick, mean extraction Op. Said briefing started with a slap up the head for 7s from Oskara as he holo projected their intel onto their table in the middle of the bar! A few more fails and it would have been through the PA but not quite this time! The schooling continued with the nature of corporate extractions and their interface with blaster stun settings! Hired Goons have a certain asset value don't you know. Blue sky thinking often involves planned extraction routes.....apparently ;)

So, as Team Zeta crept up to the back door for 24:00 Oskara elected to act as Tail End Charlie and play sentry.......probably ;)

Bang on Zero Hour the back door was popped and the boys went to work. Faced with a Security Sergeant, a Tech tinkering with his loader and a couple of workers the guy with the armour piercing tranq gun shot the unarmoured tech while the blaster boys peppered Sarge's body armour fairly ineffectually! As is his want Sindori left the Stun bolts at home and got a fair few live ones back for his trouble. Agneci went for a mix as the Stun option didn't seem to yielding immediate results. If only he could negate  that pesky body armour........

With the maintenance bay clear Team Zeta moved into the main vehicle bay and repeated the mix of blaster, stun and tranq fire. As programmed their code locked down the rear door, just as security klaxons started to sound! 7's didn't manage any shooting, fancy or otherwise, instead spending his actions patching Sin's rapidly spreading blaster-tan eventually picking up a dropped blaster pistol........oh my!

Like Hannibal I love it when a plan comes together! Maybe next time out a half baked one might turn up.........potentially ;)

The Simple Life

Afternoon all,

Once again I am soon to love abode and as such am soon to pack up the toys, paints and brushes for a week or so.

Before all of that I've been spending the day putting together my recently acquired Warlord Commandos for Bolt Action. Proper multi-part these chaps so taking a decent bit of work but it's a real pleasure, they're lovely figures and I want to get the most of them.

To accompany Bridge at Remgagen is on and I even managed to stumble across the original Starl Trek Khan episode earlier.

Good stuff :)

Undiscovered Country

Hello people,

Something a little different last night down at Enfield Gamers as myself Mr C and Rich C played out a hunch I had to do something a bit different with STAW. Don't get me wrong I'm enjoying the OP play but having played through a few of the scenarios that come with the ships I felt there was a lot more potential out there, especially multi-player.

So, I had a vaguely cunning plan and we spent the evening playtesting it until it actually worked!

Any such scenario needs a decent objective to fight over, preferably an interactive, in this case Deep Space 9. In our case we used the OP template and stats with the pylons firing but not the 360 central bank. As such there were blind spots to hide in, adding an element of manoeuvre. Later we also added four satellites equidistant form the station (we'll get to that one!).

All scenarios need victory conditions and in our case the idea was to have a number of them randomly distributed so as to keep everyone guessing to a certain extent, we had;
1. Teleport Cisco off of DS9 and escape off any board edge
2. Destroy one ship from each enemy fleet
3. Destroy the three pylons (Agility 3, Hull 2)
4. Fly over each satellite to collect Intel and escape with one ship off any board edge
NOTE: We decided that no-one would destroy DS9 as the idea was to be able to take control of it.

In our game two objectives were completed on the same turn as I whisked Cisco off the table just before Mr C claimed a Dominion Patrol Ship to go with my B'Rel

In short, this set-up worked but next time we'd look at doing thing a bit differently as it became fairly obvious pretty quickly who had which missions.
Basically you should have X number of objectives where X = number of player + 2. Each player has a deck of X objectives and randomly draws two of them.
As such, each player has two chances to win with the possibility of multiple players going after the same objective. It's also more difficult to second guess what your opponents are up to!

Something a bit different and multi-player. Please feel free to give it a go, more than happy for any feedback