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!

Anatolian Plain?

No, not a bit of it though it does help if you like kebab!

I'm not going to bore you with infinite detail of our many visits to a number of Turkey's premier sites / sights but I do now know how to tell if an ancient wall was built by Greeks or Romans. An important life skill indeed.

What I have found interesting is how your allowed to clamber all over these sites. English Heritage would have a major eppy without a silk rope in sight and never mind the Health and Safety Executive!

Gallipoli was particuarly interesting as we visited with a couple of Aussies and Kiwis. Despite my knowledge of the actions involved I felt the need to respect thier more direct connection with events, as well as the Turks, finding the whole experience very evocative.

Additionally,I've learnt that Turkish soldiers refer to themselves as "Mehmets" and I'd likely to incorparate the term into the names for the Blood-Bowl team as a sign of respect.

Having done a lot of travel it's beach and pool for the next few days. Apparantly it's raining in London!

One man and his Shed

No need to worry lads but I went to the flower show at Hampton Court yeterday with the missus and her folks. It was rather warm.

Quite bizarrely the main flower tent was just as oppresively moist and warm as many a gymnasium wargames show that I've attended so it wasn't all alien to me.

I bought this bloke, Dave the Demon, to gaurd the shed. A quick visit to the nursery this afternoon acquired him so appropriate "hair" as he is, unsurprisingly, a plant-pot!


Rich informs me that lemon-balm is a natural mozzy repellant, so I may need to remodel his "do" at some point.

Otherwise, it's been quite a busy week for the shed.

Tuesday night was our first full night of D&D and Jon set us well on our way to fame or death. Some of us would seem to prefer infamy as according to Charlie "being chaotic evil means never having to say sorry. Well said that man :)

An important part of any campaign is the area map and here it is. It's a pretty good one for a fantasy map as its not an upside down country and there's a lack of incovenient seas around the edges. Huzzah!

We picked back up from where we left off in Winterhaven (North West), travelling East through Fallcrest and on to Thunderspire. Excellent names, Dave would be impressed :)
My main role as a Halfling Thief, other than trying to cut a variety of dodgy deals, is to scout ahead, locate the enemy and then stay well out of the resulting ruckus other than to dash in at the end with a bit of rather over-enthusiastic back-stabbing.

I feel that, from a personal perspective, it all went rather well. Two takedowns for just some minor magic missle singing.
Thursday night Rich and Shaun came round and we got a game of Black Powder in, my first, with Sahun's 10mm Seven Years War figures.

It was a bit of a reminder for Rich and Shaun so play was quite slow so everything got left set up for next time. The power of the shed :)
My first impression is that I really like BP's laid back style which suits and needs a friendly / flexible approach to play. I understand why criticism has come from the more tourney-centric players but I take that as a GOOD thing, in the nicest way possible.... of course :)

Shaun took the Austrians against myself and Rich with the Prussians. As part of the rules you have to announce your orders before rolling for number of actions. Cue dodgy accents!

After a bit of a cav on cav action on the western flank Shaun's dice stuffed him horribly and I got my cav into several of his infantry columns on the extreme eastern flank. Cue nightfall various retreats to bivoauc.

Black Powder shall return to this page very soon.

It's only a game.....

.... so put up a real good fight! I'm gonna be snookering you tonight. Dah da da, dah da dah!!

No-one else remember that one? Snooker game-show with Jim Davidson and John Virgo? No?

Thursday night saw the shed being properly christened as N21's premier wargames facility. Rich and Shaun popped round for an evening of Flying Lead.

Its been far too long since the three of us got together but the easy banter soon returned over a fish and chip supper.

Thankfully, so did my recollection of the rules.

Rich is the hallowed author of Flying Lead, available through Ganesha Games, using the Songs of Blades and Heroes core mechanics.

As we were drinking MY tea around MY gaming table I was fully expectant of receiving a good kicking across the table. Its the RULES don't you know :)

Rich has worked himself up a lovely set of figures and scenarios for Afghanistan 2010 and production values were as high as always.

As I'm sure Rich's attire suggests we're quite an irreverent set of gamers looking for a good game. We like to play the period rather than the rules, "feel" being all important.

I've always found it interesting how different gamers and groups feel differently about playing certain periods and forces for reasons of ethics and taste.

We were all once engaged in a very large WWII Normandy tank hunt during a weekend's gaming at a village hall. The caretaker popped by and, genuinely interested, told us about his time as a Sherman gunner fighting his way through the bocage.

We all felt like naughty schoolboys caught doing something bad. He went home to bring back sheaf's of photos loving the fact that we were interested.

Discussing a possible Pegasus Bridge game, the idea of using real squad lists was excitedly suggested. When we caught up with ourselves we rejected the idea as too close to the knuckle. How would you feel firing "your" MG-42 at a "real" soldier.

Yet playing an SS unit is absolutely fine to many, popular if anything. To me it seems to be a matter of abstraction. I've wandered past an Israeli vs Palestinian West Bank game at a show thinking "that looks great, but surely that's a bit keen?". I find the conflict of particular interest but don't know if I could actually game it. Each to their own!

So, on to the game.
1s are particularly important within Flying Lead. Every figure has a quality rating between 2 and 5, lower is better. When activated you can choose to attempt 1, 2 or 3 actions. Each roll equal or under gets you an action. Any roll of snake-eyes ends your turn.

So, playing percentages means doing the easier, less important stuff first but how much fun would that be?
So, our scenario saw a British "brick" patrol holed up with two casualties, one walker and one on a stretcher, whilst the local Afghans close in.

Shaun took the Afghans whilst I had the Brits and Rich supervised.

I had a Viking patrol rolling onto one table edge with Shaun taking the other three. It would be three turns until the guy on the stretcher became critical and dice would be rolled for him.
Remembering my way back into the rules during the first turns I relied on my elite status and "2" rated leaders, going for three activations from the off.

Three turns in and three sets of snake-eyes saw the Afghans closing fast whilst the Viking had stalled.
With the enemy at the gates I actually decided to starting thinking about what I was doing. Thankfully Lady Luck intervened.

Another feature of the game are a deck of Fog Of War cards. Roll off at the beginning of each turn and if you double your opponent, receive a card. Shaun had had three in three turns and the curse of the host was being fulfilled!

At this point the lad on the stretcher had been put out of his misery by a grenade blast and the brick leader, dubbed "Wales", had been dropped by AK fire. The Afghans were a revolting unwashed mass!When I FINALLY got hold of a FoW card it gave me two more draws resulting in a Hellfire strike from a UAV and an off table sniper strike.

Immediately used, four Afghan fighters were caught in the open by the Hellfire ,and sent scurrying, whilst the sniper force the Afghan commander co-ordinating the attack to seek some immediate cover.

This was the turning point with my dice finally balancing out their initial poor performance. Shaun's had been exemplary and became merely "average". As always, the cav arrived in the nick of time, aggressively clearing out the cowering Afghans with grenades and burst fire.

Three plucky Brits were medi-vaced out in the back of the Viking whilst the Afghans melted back into the local population. We ran through the victory points to discover that I'd somehow grasped an unlikely victory. Thanks be to off table support!!

An excellent game all round. The mechanisms all work slickly and the core rules can be applied across a number of periods.

I rather fancy doing so for AWI and cracking my Royal Welch Fusiliers out of their carry case.

Good stuff :)