Small Margins

Hello people.

Not been saying too much recently but that's because there hasn't been too much to say except more of the same, which isn't really my style.

This week has featured a bit more To the Strongest on Tuesday down at Enfield Gamers. This time I cracked out my 10mm Ancient Britons and ran them at Shaun's Imperial Romans.

Correcting a few things we'd been getting wrong with attached Generals we also forgot Strategm Cards. The latter wasn't a big thing, the first more so.

As you would expect my unwashed mass was rather unwieldy and ill disciplined. They were however rather more durable than Julius' lads. Marching up the field the lines joined and started the rather inevitable grind. On taking a hit a unit becomes Disordered and hits in combat on an 8 rather than a 6, which is huge. As such Rally as a priority became an obvious first Activation. Along with the vaguries of opposed card draws seemed to mean that not a lot happened too quickly.

Though Shaun went about winning the Cav battle I had enveloped his line and he had very little prospect of inflicting the 3 hits to destroy my lads. It kind of became a case of waiting for me to get the 2 hits I needed so that I could start to roll his line. Catching onto the mechanism it seemed to become much more about stats than tactics to find the bonus modifiers to get the killing blows in. 

We may well have got bits wrong and there's still plenty of obvious potential there. We're hoping to get the author down fairly soon who can undoubtedly show us a thing or two.

Meanwhile last night at Dark Sphere Project Lambda finally took flight with two games against a pair of Agressors.

I went with;
Omicron - Fire Control System - HLC - Anti Pursuit Lasers
Omicron - Fire Control System - Mangler - Vader - Anti Pursuit Lasers
Soontir Fel - Royal Gaurd - Stealth - Auto-thrusters

First game the IGs flew straight at me and failed to roll any even half decent Evade dice and which point I gobbled them up. Second game was a bit of a reverse as I had to chase with poor red dice and some lucky long-range fire on Fel.

However, the list and tactics are valid, both just needing some modification. I have a number of options available and will persist.

Meanwhile Jon dropped off my Pulp City KS stuff, more than I remember pledging for, no argument there. Lovely cast figures they give me something else to work which is very welcome.

First up, Bolt Action pin and smoke markers. I hadn't forgotten ; )

Stay on Target!!

Hello people,

Well, against my best expectations, and possibly some of yours, I actually managed to apply all of the shoulder patch transfers to my Commandos. 39 geezers being 78 little discs of dark colour. Despite fastidiously ensuring that left and right shoulders were correctly applied I'm sure I wasn't able to tell the difference.

No painting points but that is a pair of Scum Y-Wings and a quad of Z95s released for my delectation :)

Next up are the pin markers and smoke templates that have been languishing about the place. That will earn me my pair of Star Vipers.

Saturday afternoon I dropped round to Rich's for a full game of To the Strongest featuring a Germanic horde (Orcs & Goblins) taking on heavy horse and archers (Bretonnians) utilising Rich's Warmaster armies.

Playing full rules featured Strategm Cards, Heroes and the warband large units along with proper army lists. Taking the unwashed horde they proved as unwieldy as i expected with less heroes and larger commands to bully along. Rich's knights were far more nimble, at least in theory but potentially vulnerable once engaged.

Both of us set up a touch wider than we might have wanted to, I definitely did failing to stack my warrior units which simply filled my left flank with my light cab on the right. Rich had has archers and camp on his right and his knights fairly central. One of my Strategm Cards saw his elite knights slightly lost in reserve.

As expected Rich got the charges in and somewhat unexpectedly the unwashed horde held, mainly as I spent a lot of effort rallying off thier Disorder. Despite a number of failed orders and forgetting a number of rules we got on at a decent rate of knots. Eventually the unwashed ones made thier weight felt while the light cav proved highly accurate with thier javelins. 

Despite Rich's elite knights appearing on my flank he ran out of arrows and was forced to commit his right just as his centre dissolved. Crucially his main knight command became spent which meant the uber knights couldn't attack. With the horde heading for the baggage we called it. 

Second game so far, definitely keen to play the third.

Watching the second half of the rugby we cracked out the X-Wing crack and got in a game. Rich ran his recently acquired Scum while I ran a full swarm of eight TIEs. I must admit picking up a pair of TIEs last week. Technically that's not an infringement of the arms embargo ;p

Infamy! Infamy!

....my dice have had it in for me!

Another week, another belated post and a lack of brush in hand. A rather busy week of real life though not unpleasantly so :)

Tuesday night down at Enfield Gamers myself and Shaun turned back the clock a touch with a run through of To the Strongest. Yes a 10mm historical wargame! Hopefully that's not too much of a shock to one and the other of you.

In short I rather liked it :) All driven from a standard deck of cards, minus the royalty, the basic mechanics are simple yet effective allowing for multiple activations and "fog of war" via the vagaries of how the cards fall.

Running out a Roman civil war there was an expected grind element before my horse out-horsed Shaun's left flank and started the roll up just as my left flank putting in some telling blows to take the game. I'm sure we got some bits wrong and there's still the advanced rules to bring in but all good so far.

After a long week myself and Mr C headed up to Milton Keynes Wargames Workshop for their X-Wing Store Championship. Having not played a game all week I went with the Pope-mobile / Mini-Swarm that did so well for me at Chelmsford a while ago.

Six rounds of Swiss was well run by Ian, as always as pretty much back to back games.

First round I was up against a pretty standard Chiraneau / Whisper net-list which I pretty much just ate. Chiraneau flew straight at the swarm while Whisper dithered and it was all casual flying. I did loose the Pope-mobile to a Vader force choke but I didn't want to take the risk.

After that it was five straight losses as my dice, especially the Green variants, simply refused to cooperate. Round four against triple Defenders was particularly bad as I could do very little while my opponent could roll no wrong. I'd even realised nor to get into a K - turn war but somehow it kind of happened.

I managed to clip Vessery but that was it. I didn't fly too well at times but still didn't deserve the dice I got. Only game of X-Wing I've had when I've needed to remind myself it's just a game.

Rounding out the day I finished one place above the spoon but still enjoyed myself. Again, to me it's a strength of the game that the balance is that fine.

Next time!