FOW - Late War Yanks vs Germans

Some of Ash's very cool Yanks

I found some free time this week to return to a little Flames of War with Ashley, this time using his collection as I’ve just had a busy, messy and quite intense week at work so didn’t have the energy to think about what I’d play.

Because we’re both daft we agreed to play 4000pts with Ashley putting together both lists and randomly deciding who would play what – I got Germans which suited my mood as I got to play with Panthers!

Germans (me)

Panther CiC and 2iC, 4x Panthers, 5x PZIV J, 5x PZIV J, 3x Stug G, 3x Tiger 1E, 2x Panzergrenadiers in Half tracks, HS129 Limited Air.

Yanks (Ash)

CiC Jumbo and 2iC 76mm, 3x Sherman Platoons (jumbo, 2x 75mm, 2x 76mm), 5x M5 Stuarts, 3x Priests, 4x Self Propelled 155mm, 1x Rifle Platoon, 1x ARP, 4x M10 Tank Destroyers, Priority Air.

We took the approach for this game of “move big tanks, shoot guns, Ugghhhhhhh” as we just wanted to play with as many toys as possible. Therefore we played the Free For All mission lengthways with quite a terrain free board. Also in the interests of speed we did a simultaneous blind deployment, so basically we both just ignored each other and deployed how we wanted (which works great in friendly games). We both had two objectives in each other’s deployment zones.

Initial deployment

So on to the carnage. There was a road running diagonally through the centre of the board and a couple of buildings and wheat fields dead centre. I deployed left to right - Panthers, PZiv’s, Stug’s, PZiv’s, Tigers with the CiC & 2iC as a mobile reserve. Ash opposed me with 2 platoons of Shermans on my left supported by his artillery. His rifle platoon directly behind the buildings, then a platoon of Shermans, Stuarts and the TD security section facing off against my Tiger/PZiv tag team.

Armoured push up my right flank

Can I get my air close enough to destroy some Jumbos?

So what the heck happened? Well I started off proceedings advancing everything forward and splitting my force into two to swing round the centre of the board and threaten the objectives equally. I like to play aggressively with German armour, it just feels right. Anyway my tigers took pot-shots but didn’t hit anything, my Panthers tried the same and took out two 75mm Shermans. However it went down hill pretty quickly as I then failed to damage anything for the rest of the game whilst Ashley’s air took out 2 tigers in turn two (argh).

Yank Artillery...arghhhh

Ash pushed forward on my right flank once the Tigers were whittled down, he now felt confident that he could threaten my objective, my Panthers stuck in a long range duel on the left with the Shermans (those damn jumbo’s negating my fire quite effectively). In the centre I used my PZiv’s to threaten the right flank Shermans with side shots by rushing them through the small village. But it was not to be as I’d completely forgotten the TD’s who appeared as if by magic and pummelled the PZiv’s mercilessly from point blank range.

However he totally ignored the remaining Tiger which I pushed forward aggressively (this was now my only asset capable of pushing through to an objective). So Ash rushed his Arp towards the objective in my deployment zone and it was all down to who was faster, a Tiger 1e or an M3 halftrack……..

We called it there as it was getting late and we’d nattered a bit too long. It was fun to play with lots of toys however it was less of bloodbath than I expected with that much firepower.

We’ll have a rematch at some point!

Hedges and Trees

Like many hobbyists the world over I have a large backlog of unfinished projects sitting around gathering dust, so in the interests of clearing the decks ready for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I thought I’d finish a few things that have been lingering. So as a nice change from painting stuff for Africa I thought I’d finish some hedges and trees. The hedges have come out quite nicely if I do say myself and are super simple to make. Some years ago I bought a coir door matt to make wheat fields with and had a few random sized strips left. Wondering on what I could do with them I thought I’d slather a bit of PVA on a scrap and sprinkle some Woodland scenic scatter on to see whether it looked any good.

And hey presto we have a hedgerow. To make these I cut my strips to roughly 15mm wide and painted PVA liberally along the top and sides. I mixed my Scatter with some dried tea leaves from used tea bags (therefore more like dust than tea leaves) and rolled the PVA covered “hedge" in it.

Hedges are a bit of problem for vehicles etc if there are no gates so I used a little balsa to make some simple gates. I intend on using these for both 28mm and 15mm however I’ve only put together gates for 15mm at the moment.


The trees are a bit of a cheat as these are just armatures and flock that Ash gave me, they’re a pain to do as I’m using PVA to glue the foliage on and it takes ages. But I can sit watching TV doing it so I’ll keep chipping away whilst watching Rick and Co running away from Zombies again!

Saga - Vikings vs Anglo Saxons

Ash and I got together recently to carry on our Saga intro (revival) with a 6 pt game of clash of Warlords. I've decided to deny my hobby butterfly tendencies and stick with Anglo Saxons rather than flit from faction to faction and I have to say I'm quiet enjoying it.

Anyway on to the action, I took 4 units of warriors, hearthguard and levies with Ash opting for 2 nasty hearthguard units, a unit if warriors, berserkers and the Sons of Death (I can't spell the Gaelic name for these nasty mercenaries!)

I was hosting tonight so I decided to use my recently finished hills and river, luckily I remembered to put a ford in the river and also lay a rickety bridge across the gorge made by the two hills.

My tactics for this game were simple, try and draw Ash to me and wear him down with my greater numbers. The river was my friend here as I had no intention of crossing it into the wrath of Ash's marauding Vikings. So it was simply march up and wait

I think I'll let the pics do most of the talking however suffice it to say that my dice were good and Ash's were bad.

The opening shot, thats me on the left with the tons of
warriors.

Sneaking over the crest of the hill are the Sons of Death
(you can just see them peeking over the the top).
Can my only hearthguard unit and some warriors hold them off?

Capture the ford! I send my Warlord and his pet levies to
challenge Ashley's crossing

Another one of Ash's dastardly Hearthguard units sneaking
up my left flank

The Baddie, a Viking warlord in all his glory

Thats me at the bottom, as you can see I'm going for the classic
Saxon shieldwall approach.

Nice saxon shield wall!
"Defend the farm"

Its the Sons of Death sneaking over the hill. Hang on a
minute where's the rest of them. Oh yeah Ash is using there
multiple activations skill to redeploy them. Now my
Hearthguard are stuck on the hill with no-one to play with

But my Hearthguard guard the bridge anyway!

Damn Sons of Death facing off against my Warriors. Many
insults are slung across the river

Meanwhile Ash pushes his berserkers through the ford, 16 attacks
from 4  models. Thats right 16!

Time to feed them my levies, "Get em boys!"

The Sons get ready to go playing in the river

And the action begins o the left flank. Its almost like Ash
has a plan!

"Oi Brian, whats going on down there do you think"
"Nowt Fred, now then what do ya think of this bridge. It's a
right good bit o'woodwork don't ya think?"

2 levies left, but whats this, no berserkers. Ha!
I'd been saving a Saga ability that turns my levies into warriors,
then I loaded them up on extra attacks and butchered the naked
crazy loons!

The Son attacked but failed to destroy my warriors (and I have
loads of them!)

Mano E Mano. Warlord vs Warlord time and I have warriors to
back me up. At this point Ash had lost a couple of units and
therefore had less Saga dice than me.

Damn Viking Warlords are hard to kill, it was a damn
close thing but I hard some lackeys...err I mean brave
comrades who would die for the cause but unfortunately
Ash had none nearby.

And that was that. I held my nerve whereas Ash took the risks that almost paid off. Its hard playing Anglo Saxons as they have a lack of really offensive abilities but they certainly can wear your opponent down. I guarantee it won't go my way next time though.

We'll see.

The challenge returns

Yup, that's right I've signed up to take part in the annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. This will be the sixth time that Curt has graciously run said event, with this being my second outing. Last year I aimed to hit my own very modest personal target of 750 pts however this year my goal is a more manly 1000 pts.

I haven't as yet accepted or issued any side challenges however there's still time as the mayhem doesn't kick off until the 20th of December.

If you'd like to learn more about this very unique and quirky little hobby event then head on over to www.thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.ca to find out more and follow the action.

African Militia

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been slowly pulling together figures for a foray into a new genre of gaming – moderns, and here is the fruits of my kitbashing labours. These guys represent armed militia to be used in a Mogadishu setting, the figures are a mixture of three plastic kits – Perry Mahdist Ansar, Warlord Games Celts with Bolt Action weapons.

I’m not sure about the eyes on them, I’ve done the flesh really dark and the eyes look a little weird, I may have to tweak them to get the right. I’ll probably have to order some of the Wargames Factory Survivors as they come with oodles of modern weapons that would be perfect for arming a civilian militia in any area of civil unrest.

All of these are left overs from previous uncompleted projects and my rather extensive bits box. Some of them are a little generic and possibly not quite “modern” however they’ll do in a pinch whilst I slowly save up some pennies (or cents!) to order some nice Eureka or Spectre minis’.

Next up - a Delta Force team

Africa!!!!

So I’ve been beavering away with a new pet project (something I alluded to in a previous post), utilising my rather average modelling and terrain building skills to prepare some Africa terrain for a little moderns gaming. After seeing and reading Black Hawk Down I developed a fascination with modern small unit actions in urban terrain and managed to convince mate Ashley to also dive in. Our plans are to try out the rather interesting Skirmish Sangin rule-set and their Day of the Rangers supplement initially and see how it grabs us. I do have my eye on the recently released Black Ops from Osprey as it sounds like the perfect rule-set for gaming some of the more interesting stealth ops console games (Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter etc).

Anyway you need to start somewhere so here are a few of the buildings I’ve bashed together using foamboard, matchsticks and corrugated card. For the plans I’d love to say I came up with them myself however that would be a big fat lie – these were all based on the rather excellent instructions found on Matakishis’s Tea House. Please go along and get lost in his rather excellent blog/website thingy!

Now I just need to get a board done and some protagonists – watch this space.

Back to Flames!

The stars aligned and both Scott and I managed to find a free spot in our diaries for a little gaming fun, however this time just for variety we played FoW. So I pitted my US tank company with 101^st support against Scott's Panzer Bums in a Hold the Line mission.

Hmm, this should be interesting as I’d chosen to take 7^th Armoured who are confident trained. However I had propped this up with some confident veteran TD’s and a fearless veteran 101^st Airborne platoon. So what was Scott bringing to the table, well lets just say that he had gazillions of tanks!

Below are a few pics of the action and here’s a link to Scott’s write up!

Summary

What can I say, I got beaten pretty decisively, the game ending at the start of Turn 3. “How did this happen I hear you cry?”

Well basically I was out thought and manouvered, the game was not a question of who rolls the most dice but rather who had the best tactics. With Scott’s force being made up of pretty effective tanks (Panzer IV J’s and Stugs) but very average skill levels, and most of my force being held off the board in delayed reserves it all came down to getting an objective fast and then holding and screening it which is what Scott did brilliantly. I had to hold 3 of my 5 platoons in reserve and was able to ambush with the remaining two (which I did). This proved to be a bad idea as it meant that Scott had no threat on the board to mess with his plans, so he advanced as quickly as he could to both objectives in turn 1. I did not pop my ambush but elected to wait another turn, this was to be my undoing as without the threat of incoming fire Scott elected to double time half his Panzers past objective 1 in turn 2, advancing the remainder and rushing his Stugs up my left flank towards objective 2 as a back up. This made a pretty effective two pronged attack with his double timed Panzers a screen and also completely shut down my planned ambush, forcing me to deploy in pretty poor positions in turn 2 (he had effectively claimed both objectives at this point).

My only option was to shoot him off the objective, which was possible in theory, but only with damn good dice rolls and good target selection with my TD’s. My target choices were good but my rolls didn’t cut it and Scott was able to claim the objectives at the start of turn 3.

Here's the story in pictures:

Starting positions everyone! You can just make out Scott's horde on the
left and my paltry 2 (that's right) Shermans on the right - thats my 2iC
at the bottom right and CiC hiding behind the house at the top.

Looking up the board as Scott gets ready to launch the Blitzkreig

Panzer traffic jam!

Sneaky Stuggs

Argh, I delayed too long and now the Panzers have swarmed the objective
and shut down all the good ambushes

So I'll just have to sneak up on the Stugs with my vet para's

Talk about a target rich environment.
Time to see if my TD's can save me and blow away a ton of Panzers

The ned game. You can just about make out my TD's without turrets.
This is because after the end of the game Scott wanted to see how
many he could blow up. Turns out nealy all of them!

A pyrrhic victory against the Stugs though, my 2iC rips into them with
his 76mm. Double timing Stugs = boom!

So what did I learn? Well it was more a case of what did I forget, and that is that area of effect is a great way to force your opponent on the back foot, actually having a threat near the objectives would have slowed Scott’s advance and allowed more chance for the game to get to turns where my reserves could play some part. But I chose to ambush which actually freed Scott’s forces to advance as he was able to shut down almost all the potential ambush points really quickly with his numerically superior force.

So the day was taken by the better General. And rightly so, however I thoroughly enjoyed it as it was clear that it was the player that beat me and not the rules!

However next time will be different. Oh yes it will (Mwahahahahaha…..)

Something Funny Happened on the way to Frostgrave!

Much like the hobby butterfly that I am I have managed to convince regular gaming compatriot Ash to try out Joe McCullough's recently released Frostgrave rules. Both of us, whilst growing up in the wilds of Yorkshire, were sucked into the mysteries of the fantasy genre at an early age and my first forays into fantasy gaming were via the majesty of early D&D, Runequest and Warhammer Roleplay.

My Warband comes together - re-purposed GW WFB Figures

So fast forward a few years (*cough* twenty eight to be precise *cough*) and here we are wanting to return to those halcyon days of youth but without the patience to roleplay.

Enter Frostgrave!

If you trawl the internet you'll find plenty of reviews of this game, both positive and a few critiques. The game itself centres around the pursuit of magical artifacts and treasure in a ruined magical city. It's warband based with each warband being led by a wizard of some kind and backed up by a diverse group of warrior archetypes (think D&D). Now where it gets cool is the campaign element with your wizard progressing based on experience and treasure acquired during the game (much like Mordheim).

My Sigilist faces off against Ash's dastardly Necromancer

The game mechanic is d20 based with everything being resolved with a single opposing roll off (like LoTR but with less rolling). Turns are IGOUGO but with an initiative roll off so there is unpredictability. Each turn is also broken into who gets to act in what order, so all wizards act first (one player then another), then all apprentices, then the warriors. What is really cool is the game can therefore have multiple players rather than being limited to one on one (so similar in play to IHMN).

So the system is really easy to pick up with some really subtle tactical elements such as forced charges (you go too close to an enemy model and the owning player gets to force a combat) and movement penalties for picking things up (it’s a game of collecting treasure after all) so you can trudge about and stash treasure then hare off after more.

Meanwhile my Apprentice leads a mission to capture some
 treasure protected by Ash's Dark Amazonian Necro-apprentice

Its simple, quick and easy to pick up, the only minor gripe being that Wizards can gain experience simply by killing folk (which isn’t very wizardly) so if your opponent is a power obsessed loon then the game can quickly out of hand.

My Wizard is incapacitated by Ash's foul sorcery and falls!
Luckily in the after game clean up its revealed it was
only a flesh wound and he's back to fight another day.

However if you like narrative based games where your little toy soldiers come to life and develop then this is a good one, at least for fantasy gaming – think Mordheim but easier!

Getting My Kids in to Gaming!

Ah that most elusive of goals, the holy grail of any gaming parent, how to get your children into gaming. However I must clarify that the goal is to introduce them to the wonder, majesty and sheer outright fun of the hobby rather than cajoling in them in to playing because you want a gaming buddy on tap!

Anyway this has been one of my holy grail’s since my wife and I’s personal world was blessed both 4 & 6 years ago with the two bundles of joy that are our children (Eli & Noah!). As we’ve watched them grow we’ve also been constantly thinking about how we can educate them and make them decent human beings, helping them to understand the notion of right and wrong, being kind, assertive and generally fair to others.

Therefore I’ve decided to teach them all this through the medium of games that involve blowing up other spaceships – that’s right I’ve started playing X-Wing! I know this sounds a little like teaching them to respect life by squashing bugs however I’m working on the basis that they can begin to understand the tricky concepts of right wrong and being fair to others whilst competive in the safe confines of a board game!

And what a crazy, simple game it is too. I’m not going to do a write up of the game as that’s been done to death, however I am going to talk about how well my 6 year old (Noah) is picking it up.

Luckily Noah is a Lego fanatic and can easily while away whole hours building things from his imagination. Now, we have pretty much left him to his own devices in this and usually he builds things that move (cars, planes, trucks, trains) and has very little desire to build or play with “fighty” things. Then both he his brother were given a Lego Star Wars DVD by their grandparents and the rest (as they say) is history. This was the perfect opportunity for me to introduce some form of gaming that would not age (we’ve played Thomas Tracks and Rails, Trouble, Ludo etc.) and could be repeat played whilst they both age.

During his first game Noah was instantly hooked by the models, pre-painted is great as he instantly understood the scale and what they were supposed to represent. Weirdly one of the things that he enjoyed most was setting up the ships, that is putting them on the stands, getting the cards ready and laying out the black playing surface.

He picked up the mechanism of play very quickly, I chose not to use the option of actions after movement as I wanted him to get a feel for the game and see if he enjoyed it first. So far we’ve played 4 games with the largest being two Ties, and an Interceptor versus two X-Wings and a Y-Wing, the results being two wins each and he appears to be enjoying it and thoroughly enjoys handing out "Bang Cards!"

Now here’s the tricky part, how do I teach kids my that it’s fun to play as well as fun to win? And that’s the part that I’m working on, Noah has the desire to play because the game looks cool and he gets to play with Daddy, but I don’t want him to be too disappointed if he loses. But I’m also a realist and want him to have the desire to win, to aim for “success” without being a bad sport. It’s a fine line between making your child either apathetic about winning and thus doesn’t challenge themselves to aim high or they aim to succeed at all costs because that’s the only payback. I also recently picked up a copy of Mantic’s Dreadball with the same intention as this has a direct comparison with real world sports so I’ll let you all know how it goes!

As this whole parenting things is a work in progress, I’d be interested to hear from anyone else that’s having or had a similar experience.