Battle of Long Island

I had Richard, Terry and Scott over this past weekend for some 54mm AWI action. I chose Grant's attack at Long Island (the pinning action) as the scenario.

The British can gain a victory point by occupying the town and two points for the exit road hex and for the hill at the bottom right. The Americans can earn a single victory point for the two or the bottom hill.

The American forces were mostly provincials leavened with two regulars and one group of militia. The militia (which are objectively garbage) fought irritatingly well in both games.

The British started with flank advances in game 1. This meant coming under the Rebel guns.

The British left foundered with no cards and a stout defence by the imperial guard militia on red ale hill.

By mid-game, the British had taken a few causalities but had made little progress.

Eventually the highlanders charged the American gun and were repelled. The gun, however, was eventually broken,

The British then worked their way around the right flank and started a push in the middle.

The Americans just couldn't hold off the weight of all of the regulars and, as the center collapsed, the British won 8-4.

We switched sides to refight. The British again advance on the flanks and the rebels sniped at the British centre.

The highlanders would eventually rush the hill in the middle of the board, clean it out, and drop down into the rebel reserves! A lucky advance to the rear saved the unit and gave the British time to bring up the centre.

A series of lucky British cards pushed the Americans back in the centre. A valiant attack on the American left took two units (!) but the British just pushed ahead in the middle.

All of the command flags obscure the action but the British pushed the Americans out of the town and then started to clean up units for am 8-3 win.

Overall, a good run through; I was happy we got to play both sides and to bring out Tricorne.

15mm Jadgpanzer 4s

I finished off the last of 15mm vehicles I have over the break. These are four jadgpanzer 4's tricked out for Russian (or Poland, or eastern Germany...) or Normandy.

Three have skirts and one is without. Two have crew poking their head up. All are decaled with Baltic crosses

I've added these to my 15mm for sale page.

Up next: some holiday gaming and some Zeds.

Some 15mm artillery

Happy Life-Day Eve, nerds!

I finished up some 15mm German WW2 artillery over the weekend. This was part of a job lot that I got last year and then sat around awaiting some love.

There were four bases of towed guns and they were a real mess. I have added them to my 15mm WW2 for sale page.

I see a slight base touch-up is needed--must have pulled the paint off with a sticky finger! I hope to spend some more time painting over the holidays. I have a bunch of 15mm German paratroops to finally finish up with the box of junk I bought.

Christmas Eve Terror

The guys at the club let me run a winter-themed game for our last session of the year.  I always wanted to use the huge lego ship my daughter got for a birthday present and I figured it looked enough like the HMS Terror that it would do.

The scenario was basically capture the treasure-chest lost for generations aboard the ice-bound HMS Terror. For Team Buffy, it contains the Book of Sorrow, for Team Vader it contained the location of the rebel base, Team Hogwarts was after a Horocrux and Team Santa wanted the deed for mineral rights under the pole (since toy manufacturing was booming untenable).

The boat was surrounded by frozen zombie crew (who thawed out as the game progressed) and was in the hands of four terrifying villains: President Cheeto, the Grinch, Henry Ford and Marie Osmond. The ice was thawing (we placed blue water cards each turn that interrupted movement). I made provision for a five player game but with only four, we ran the villains as NPCs.

The first two turns saw some movement (zzzz...) and some fighting between Santa and the little witches. Due to the darkness, figures could only see three card lengths ahead of them.

Suddenly, Buffy was up on the poop deck grabbing for the chest! This galvanize the rest of the players to dog pile on Terry. The card mechanic in Tribal means that even unsuccessful attacks can cost an inactivated figure its turn and Buffy spent a lot of time fending off attacks! The blue cards are growing areas of water as the ice cap melts.

Team Vader wisely stayed out of the fray and let the rest of us duke it out. The stormtroopers were shooter gangs (so largely useless) but Vader was a very powerful figure.

There was much combat on the ship: below Buffy fights off Mrs. Weasley.

The Yeti dusted Trump and everyone cheered. Terry was given a time out for puns.

Intermittent fighting between Hogwarts and Santa continued with Hermoine putting the boots to a jolly old elf (so much for elf liberation).

Eventually Vader got ready and jumped up on the ship...

 ...and proceeded to cut through every other character like a hot lightsaber through padawan. With no one left to fight him, Vader made off with the chest and was declare the winner. Some cagey play by Scott. terrain was good. I'm not sure the scenario was all that interesting But there was lots of fun with the placement of water cards.

Mike and Chen played some Crossfire, with a British attack being beaten back (I think) in the hedgerows of Normandy.

Up next: Some more 15mm WW2.

Job lot of painting

An oddball week on the painting table. I bought a working Bat Signal. A bit big for 28mm but who knows how big it is in real life?

I also painted up some 15mm WW3 German recce. I got these guys in a big lot that I am almost finished with.

They were a real mess when they arrived so I'm happy to have reclaimed them somewhat.

Very hard to get a good picture with the small size, camo, and terrain in the mix. I'll ad these to my 15mm WW2 for sale page shortly.

Up next: A Christmas themed game at the club and then maybe more tanks?

Adapting War at Sea for Star Trek

A few weeks back, I played War at Sea (CMG) at the club and thought that the rules could be easily adapted for Star trek. I've been looking for a set of rules to play with the tiny Trek ships I bought a few years ago. 

I basically ported the rules across with almost no changes (dropping torpedoes and CAP and increasing the stacking to three) and hauled it all to Bruce's for a couple of play tests.

Other than a couple of extra additions (fighter range of 12 and a cloaking mechanic), it seemed to work well as a fleet-level game. I think it could easily take four players and two or three dozen ships. You are clearly fighting two fleets, not a bunch of individual ships.

The game also plays fast enough that one could play a set of three linked scenarios in a single night. Maybe a small encounter game to learn the rules, a convoy scenario, and then a big battle.

I was happy to get these very small ships out (the hexes are two inches across) and I ordered from Cardassian and Dominion fleets to add some variety.

Jess and I also visited a local gaming cafe and plodded through some kind of dwarf mining game (Cave versus Cave?). I had a good time but the place was packed and so loud we could hardly hear ourselves.

Survivors, or not.

I finished up eight more figures from the Toxic Mall expansion box. There were four new survivors in this zombie game.

The interesting wrinkle in the expansion was that eaten survivors could return as special Zeds, so zombievore figures were also available. I decided to paint them up at the same time to match the clothes.

Up next: Some 15mm WW2 recce units, I think.

Crossfire at the club

We had six guys out at the club this week. Bruce out on a game of Lunar Wars for Richard, Terry and Chen. I'm not sure what point Bruce is making in this photo, but I suspect Chen is learning his lander will be late arriving because it stopped for an iced cappuccino.

Mike brought out a 10mm game of Crossfire. Crossfire was one of the first games we played at the club 15 years ago. But some of Mike's terrain was so new that the glue hadn't dried!

The British had to occupy the crossroads at centre table while the Germans had to maintain LOS on it at the end of the game. Neither side could afford to lose more than 50% of their units and there was a count down clock to game end.

The hidden deployment was fun and forced a cautious advance. Eventually the two sides came to grips. Mortar fire stalled the British armour but the infantry were able to reorient to pin down a German unit.

After deploying some PBI mine detectors, the Brits rolled up the right side of the board and outflanked the Germans for the win.

I had a really good time and would play again now that I have a better sense of the rules and could play a more aggressive defensive strategy.