Raiders of the Lost Mask

The next game we played was a first play of the new Studio Tomahawk rules, Congo.  This was a great opportunity for Lenin to break out his extensive Darkest Africa collection and his brand new copy of the rules.

My "column" consisted of an Explorer with his reckless Adventurer chums along with a Retired Officer turned archaeologist supported by some soldiers and askaris.  We had discovered a relic, in this case a tribal mask and needed to get it to safety (it belongs in a museum!).  Whilst Lenin played the opposition - slavers and Baluchi with a few natives - who were sneaking up on our camp.

Here are a few photos from the game:

The Congo rules were very easy to pick up and gave a fun game - with plenty of opportunities for gratuitous film quotes!  They are beautifully produced and I suspect I'll be picking up a copy for myself.

Star Wars Armada

Lenin came for another visit over the bank holiday weekend - so we managed to fit a few games in.  On the Saturday we popped up to the club and gave my Star Wars Armada collection an outing.

This was the first time that my Wave 2 ships had hit the table, so I was interested to see how they would play.  Lenin and I took the part of the Empire, complete with Darth Vader commanding his own Tie fighter squadron and Grand Moff Tarkin aboard the Imperial Class Star Destroyer (and she is a big beastie!).  Facing us the Rebels had Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles commanding their own X Wing squadrons with Admiral Ackbar on their flagship.

It was really interesting to see how the new ships performed and try to recall how best to use the base and wave 1 ships too.

Here are a few photos from the session (apologies for the quality but I only had my phone with me):

Ultimately, Luke and Wedge bought the farm and order was restored to the galaxy!

First Play: Iron Cross

I picked up a copy of Great Escape Games' new WW2 rules Iron Cross a number of months ago.  I knew they were fast play and so I was hoping I might be able to use them for larger games than some of my current favourite rules allowed.  I did have a few reservations after a read through and also when I heard that they often play the game using 28mm but, as so often happens, a game is quite different on the tabletop than a simple read through would indicate.

So when Lenin came over for our annual pilgrimage to Salute (I did warn you I had a backlog of posts!), I put together a game using my 15mm WW2 figures.  As usual I took the role of the dastardly Hun and Lenin was the plucky Brits trying to stop me from advancing on Dunkirk.

This was a simple attack and defence scenario with the Germans having to push through a village.

I had a company of troops with tank support to assault the village and I started with a bold advance down the table:

It was quite clear early on that, whilst simple, the mechanics started to bog down a little with a large amount of troops on the table. I assume that this may well reduce with frequent play but it did all present as being a little fiddly.

Things soon got messy when the Brits decided to open up with one of my Panzers being brewed up on the road.

I managed to push the Brits' advanced positions back but those dug in in the village were a bit more difficult to winkle out. In the end I did enough damage to make them withdraw but they had done enough to me to delay our overall advance.

As to the rules, I may have mentioned this in a previous post but I think games fall on a spectrum running between pure game at one end and simulation at the other. Recognising that no game is a real simulation of warfare unless the other side can actually kill you! I have games which fall right across the spectrum and enjoy them but when it comes to historical tabletop gaming I want something that's in the simulation half. In this case the simple approach to the tokens as the only command and control mechanism really meant these rules aren't a good fit for me for this size of game and, for lower level games, I have rules which play almost as fast and are much richer experiences.

I'm not saying these are bad rules and I do think there is a place for this type of game but they're not the rules I'm looking for...

Tercios and Old Habits

I know it has been an age since my last post and I have quite a backlog of items to post but when they say "old habits die hard" I'm not sure what they mean...  I've found getting back into the old habit of actually blogging regularly has been pretty hard!  I suspect part of it is the desktop being a bit less easily accessible and my experimentation with blogging from an iPad less than successful.  But I now have a new option and so I'm going to see if that can get me back into posting regularly (no promises though!)

In any case, back to the original purpose of this post.  Last weekend I met up with some old friends and we sat down to a decent sized pike and shot game using the Tercios rules.  The game was Nieuport 1600 with the Anglo Dutch facing off against the Spanish with both sides having a liberal sprinkling of mercenaries.

I managed to bag the English and Frisian troops under Sir Richard Vere on our left flank.  I was a little cautious given I didn't know the rules but got the hang of them pretty quickly.  My left flank was anchored by the sea and my wing was pike & shot with a battery of artillery with my right flank supporting the Dutch centre.

Opposite me was a mixed group of cavalry and infantry. We were deployed with an estuary at our backs and so retreat was simply not an option - something the Spanish decided to use against us with an aggressive advance.

My artillery followed by my musketeers, as the range closed, managed to cause some serious damage to their advancing cavalry.  But their second rank of cavalry overran my guns but we repulsed by my second line.  Then followed their infantry but with some spectacularly poor luck with the dice I had soon put paid to them and their entire flank collapsed!

Unfortunately our centre was hard pressed and the main cavalry battle on the right wing was as usual a exercise of them chasing each other around the table.

I turned my troops and began to threaten the Spanish centre's now exposed flank.  Their Tercios were pretty hard but had taken some hits from our centre before it crumbled and so with a concerted assault and a heroic charge by Sir Richard combined with our cavalry coming back after seeing their's off, we managed to take the day.

All in all it was a fun game and great to catch up with the old crowd.  Just a shame that I don't really have any thirty years war figures - although I'm sure the rules could be used for other similar things.  Of course it has got me interested in planning our a game with my Tudor Irish...

4Ground Mid Terraced House

I decided my 4Ground terrace was too short so I decided to add another house to the middle:

4Ground Detached House 2

Yet another addition to my 28mm 4Ground building collection:

The details on this one made it a bit more fiddly to put together - all the doors are hinged and the windows have layers.  It didn't help that I was still at bit out of practice and made a couple of elementary errors during the assembly - one too late to pull apart and fix (doh!)

Belated Salute Loot etc.

I know I am rather late in posting this but I thought I would do it anyway.

Salute was a slightly different experience this year - largely because I didn't have as huge a shopping list as I have had in previous years (although that didn't stop me coming back with this little lot)

I suspect the MDF isn't a surprise, nor the expansion of my ever increasing library of rules.  The new Cigar Box Battle mat is Europe 2 which I hope to be able to lay alongside my existing one for larger games at home (my table is 6x6) or at the club - of course that does mean more terrain...

I managed to catch up with quite a few old friends and met up with the usual suspects at the bloggers' meet up.  There were some nice looking games on display (but others have plenty of excellent photos of those so I decided not to compete!).

The show itself was pretty much as before which is big but with a lot of compromises.  As always the size meant that there were things I missed and is pretty tiring to walk around but it also means I'm likely to meet up with folks who wouldn't travel to something smaller.

Something for the Weekend, Sir?

A little weekend reading - the new version of Sharp Practice has just been received at The Wargames Shed (in pdf - the hard copy is on its way) - great service, as always, from Too Fat Lardies...

Late War Fallschirmjäger Platoon

The next addition to my ever expanding 28mm WW2 collection is a platoon of late war Fallschirmjäger:

The figures are from Artisan Designs, painted by Roger and based by me.

More GIs

I added some more figures to my US Infantry to bring it up to full platoon strength so I can play some of the Pint Sized Campaigns for Chain of Command from TooFatLardies:

The figures are from Arizan Designs, painted by Roger and based by me.

Muskets & Tomahawks

Here are a few photos from a game of Muskets & Tomahawks which I played some while ago (I only just found the photos on the camera - doh!)

It was a relatively straightforward scenario except that one of the British officers was a French sympathiser and managed to keep his men out of the fighting some quite some time (I know this could have been a little frustrating but the side plots really do help add narrative to the game).