Surviving Nam, Sherwood Forest style

Welcome back to another season of gaming blogs. Although I did paint and game over the summer, I spent a lot of time in the outdoors. One of the summer games we tried was Surviving Nam, which is a cooperative miniatures game wherein the players play the Yankees and a card deck drives the actions of the VC. We thought it was a good game for Vietnam and then Bruce adapted it for Robin Hood.

The basic scenario was the four players (running the side of evil King John) had to enter on the south edge (bottom right of photo), search the village for weapons caches, and then exit off the north edge, not leaving any fallen comrades behind.

The first few moves went quickly as the Merry Men were no where to be seen.

Eventually, they appeared and (purely by chance), all arrived on the north edge, blocking our exit path. In the meantime, there was a message from King John that we also needed to search the bodies of five merry men before we left the board.

One of Bruce's troopers enters a building and started searching for the weapon cache there.

In the meantime, Robin Hood appears in our rear and starts making life horribly difficult, pulling out troops back towards the starting edge to deal with him and to collected those he has felled.

More baddies appear in the building and have to be dealt with.

At this point, the Merry Men began advancing (thanks to failures on our activation dice) and they began to whittle down our forces, including knocking out the evil sheriff. We were able to successfully find the weapons caches. We also killed Robin and Little John and searched enough bodies but things were starting to get difficult, with King's men down and pinned and generally in disarray.

By the end, we felt like we had things in hand and called the game as a win for the King's forces.

While Surviving Nam doesn't have the swashbuckling vibes you can get with other rules, it does offer a fun solo or coop game pitting a higher tech opponent against insurgents. I've ordered form WW2 resistance fighters to see how this plays in that era.

15mm Billmen

Welcome back! This week, I've got the last of the 15mm billmen from the Joan of Arc game. I did two groups of 10: one with red and yellow tunics and one with yellow and white.

I also had some dudes with horns and swords to finish. There are still a few mounted guys in the paint pile before I turn to some goblins.

Up next: Some more refurbished HO-scale buildings.

15mm Eleven Archers

I've been thinking about expanding some 15mm fantasy/medieval armies that I have.  Most of my figures are from the old Battlelore game, which includes humans, dwarves, and goblins. I was thinking about adding elves. There are truly lovely metal elves about, but I notices that the LotR Risk game from a few years ago has some pretty good 15/18mm figures so I bought up a bag of pieces on fleabay.

There are more than 100 in the game so I painted up 30 in a foresty theme. These could be light archers, skirmishers, or rangers. For cheap, mass-produced plastics, these are pretty nice. I have another 30 underway in a more High Elf colour scheme.

Below, I've compared them to the Battlelore archer (left) and the Battlelore Westeros archer (right). Not a bad match. I see the drybrush on the elf base is a bit too sage and could use some yellow.

Below are the LotR compared to some (I think) Splintered Light heroes and magic users. Again, pretty close in stature and hardly noticeable in play. I had thought to source additional troop types from Splintered Light, once I get these fellows painted up. They have some lovely elven cavalry riding moose (or perhaps elk).

Up next: Some HO-scale Gotham buildings, some 15mm elves, some 28mm dungeon tiles, and some 15mm foes and creatures.

War at Sea!

We had five guys out at the club this week (bad roads) but Red Claw was packed with painters and gamers. Bruce hosted Chen and Mike in a game of Congo Gulch. At one point Chen was being berated for killing the objective (!) but the game continued.

I played War at Sea with newcomer Derek. Derek trucked a ridiculous number of ships out for us to choose among and gently walked me through a Pacific game.

My allied fleet was up against a nasty bunch of Japanese gunboats. Fortunately, I managed to get lucky with some early airstrikes.

Airstrikes continued to work for me.

And I was up fairly far in points by mid-game.

Unfortunately, I got cocky and ate some torpedoes. And then Derek threw a mitt full of sixes and the HMS Hood exploded and I was down to destroyers and torpedo bombers.

Fortunately, between kills and objective captures, I got enough points to win before the Japanese gunnery ravaged my tin cans.

Overall, this was a hoot to play and Derek was very gracious answering my questions. It is not a simulation but was good fun an d was easy to learn. Since the ships are no longer available, I wonder if the rules could be modified to Star Trek?

Hammer of the Scots

Bruce pulled out the game Hammer of the Scots this past week. I've never played and, wow, what an amazing game!

Things started out poorly for me as I managed to lose William Wallace right out of the gate (bad strategy on my part) and Bruce then pushed north aggressively.

Once I got the hang of the game, I then started to rebuild.

As we near the end of the short Edward the 1st game, Bruce nicely timed an over-wintering and beat me silly, so I conceded with one year to go.

Overall, a super good game that I would totally play again now that I understand what is going.

Lions Rampant and some cultists

Bruce was back in town so I swung by Tuesday night for a quick game. Bruce hauled out some 15mm Lions Rampant and ran a scenario I hadn't played. 

The Sheriff of Nottingham had lured Robin Hood into a trap. Robin set up on the far side of the table and had to escape off either of the near corners. The Sheriff had to split his forces, with some mid-table, some on the escape baseline (foreground), and some appearing behind Robin on turn 2 (assuming they activate).

Robin came up the right side of the table, shooting the Sherrif's men to pieces! But then the Sheriff's force showed up behind and rode down a bunch of peasants.

Things got confusing after that with the Sheriff's knights accounting for most of the kills, despite being badly wounded and charging into bad terrain (OVER AND OVER AGAIN!)

In the end, we figured Robin would have gotten two units off the board, meaning a 6-2 win for the Sheriff. Notably, both the Sheriff and Robin were casualties early on in the game!

Some bad weather also meant I got some painting down. I finished dup three 28mm cultists as well as four columns (Reaper) that I picked up at Red Claw last week.

Lions and Dragons Rampant at the club

We had seven guys out at the club this week. Bruce brought out a game of Lions Rampant in 15mm. The French had to light some buildings on fire to drive out the dastardly English. Bruce and I drew French while Scott and Taylor play the English.

The French moved in from the right side of the board towards where the buildings were. We had good activation rolls at the start but then our luck started to turn.

Both sides met in the town and the French had zero luck setting buildings on fire. Scott had amazing dice rolls for activations and that was bad news for the French.

Eventually, we got whittled down and shot to pieces. Our retreat was very undignified.

Dan hosted Terry in a game I didn't get the name of.

Chen joined Bruce and Scott for a second game of Lions Rampant, where Scott's dice rolling returned to form. Taylor and I hoped over to another table and he hosted me in a game of Dragons Rampant. It was the skellies versus GW figures from the 1990s.

There were a lot of casualties and, in the end, we were stuck with an interesting tactical situation. I had all three objectives but no way to trigger the end of the game (killing one of his units) without moving off of them. Taylor held no objectives but, if he killed any of my guys, the game would end and I would win because I held two of the three objectives. Very interesting!

Club night

We had 13 guys out last night, which was a good turn out given the nice evening and the start of holiday absences. There were four guys playing Warmahordes. There was also a bad "hitting the floor sound" which turned out to be dice, not figures (whew!).

I played a game of Zombicide with Andy, Craig, Scott and Terry. I was excited to get Wanda, whose roller skates gave her additional movement. She also eventually got tooled up with some pistols and became the willy jeep of the group.

This was one of the better Zombie games I've played--some interesting colour and options. Below, the board, just before things got bad.

Larry brought out a game of Samurai Battles using the Borg rules. This looked pretty good.

Finally the Zombie crew played a D&D game Craig brought out. Here you can see Terry's troll about to smack down Scott's dragon (which my guy is shooting in the ass).

Up next: I painted up a 1/72-scale German 88 that is just drying. After that, maybe more 1/72-scale stuff.

Some Battlelore with Warlord Jessica

This is the Family Day weekend, here in Alberta. Family Day means Monday is a statutory holiday. The origins of the weekend are that then-Premier Don Getty needed to distract people from his son getting busted for traffic blow so he created a new holiday. In February. 

Fast forward 25 years and Jessica wanted to celebrate with some Battlelore. It has been so long since I have played Battlelore than I had to quickly relearn the rules (mostly the rules that differ from CCA or CCN) and we played a mostly medieval game (plus a giant spider).

Jessica squeaked out a victory in game in (6-5) throughs one aggressive cavalry charges. Below you can see her cornering my medium foot. She explained (very patiently) that by moving her light cavalry behind my foot they couldn't retreat. I confirmed I was familiar with this tactic.

Game two was more exciting (for me). I was dealt both mounted charge cards so I spent about 7 moves setting things up. Jessica moved forward to fight and I creamed, rolling up unit after unit. She was a good sport given the game was 6-0 and over rather suddenly. Wish I could play that well at the club!

Up next: Hard to know. My back is all grabby so painting for long periods is difficult. I will try to knock off some more ancients. I really should paint these Battlelore figures one day. Hmmm.

MayDay 2013

The Edmonton Wargame Group hosted its 9th annual MayDay gaming convention yesterday. We have about 80 people through the doors participating. The main hall included two tourneys (40k and warmachine) plus open gaming. We also ran a large silent auction in the hallway to defray club costs over the year.

During the morning session, I put together the auction and then jumped between observing two games. Sean from Calgary ran a game of Gaslight. Below is the camel corp, which went on quite a tear.

Dave hosted a game of El Cid-themed War and Conquest. I thought the Christians were in for a rough time during the first few turns but then they managed to punch some knights through the Muslim line and execute a flanking attack on the blackguard. Marginal win for El Cid in the end. One more turn and it would have been a major win.

In the afternoon, Mike and Ward brought out a large game of X-wing. I have heard good things and was keen to try. Mike coached Wiley (below) and I through a Vader v Skywalker dogfight. Wow, what a slick system--a bit like Wings of War but with the clunkiness worked out.

After Wiley's efforts to Force-choke me failed, the dogfight commenced. Since neither of us had played we had a couple of minor traffic jams that (fortunately) tipped things my way. Some interesting tactical things to be aware of--using the Y-Wing's Ion cannon to tie up a ship for the X-wing can some in and waste it next turn, for example. All told, a great game.

The X-wing continued with a large battle featuring all manner of ships but I steppe dout to chat with some gaming buddies I hadn't seen in a awhile.

I bailed mid-way through the evening session but snapped a picture of Justin's Vietnam terrain, which was very nice.

Terry put on a game of Pirates which looked great.

Thanks to the organizers and tournament and game hosts--perhaps the most successful MayDay yet!

Up next: Working on 15mm winter terrain this evening after spending the afternoon working on some 2000mm summer terrain. And I have some more 1/72 stuff to get to eventually. And our regular club night runs on Tuesday.