Loot in the Underhive

Game 2 of our ongoing Necromunda campaign came around and we had four players turn up:

Me, with me Cawdor
Rory's Redemptionists
Douglas genestealer Cult
Andy's Van Saar.

Andy had already played his round two game but decided that he needed the practice and joined us for round two.  The scenario was the Scavenger Hunt, which meant we were fighting over a number of loot counters spread around the table.  

We had all brought some terrain with us and we tried out best to use every ounce of it, which meant the 4x4 table had a good amount of cover on it.

Rory tries to shoehorn one last peice of terrain onto the field!

Ready for the off.

We asked another member of the club to place the loot markers so that it was all above board. Unfortunately he placed 5 of the 6 counters on the other side of the table, which meant I was going to struggle.  There was one loot counter in my corner of the table and I had hopes that I could at least manage to grab that one.  Alas this was not to be as Douglas made use of his Vents territory to drop a ganger right on top of the loot counter on our side of the table.  Andy, who has vents and tunnels managed to grab three counters right from the off, whereas Rory managed to get one.  Not a good start.  

Things got worse when I decided to start taking out the Genestealer Cult and had my gang spring from cover ready to launch a destructive Alpha strike. Alas I missed with everything, leaving me slightly exposed and staring down the sights of a flamer.   Luckily the worst I got was two men downed, and I managed to get the rest of my gang to cover.  An exchange of fire ensued between me and Douglas, with Douglas coming of slightly worse. I even managed to down one cultist with a lucky pistol shot from a juve.

Taking Cover

On the other side of the table Andy and Rory were exchanging shots with a few casualties. Eventually Rory's gang broke as he suffered losses in hand to hand. I was now starting to get the better of Douglas and he decided to leave the table with the single loot counter that he had (despite my best attempts to take it from him).

In the end there was some confusion as to the victory conditions.  In the scenario if you manage to collect every loot counter on the board and return to you deployment zone then you win the game.  Andy assumed this meant the remaining loot counters, whereas I assumed the it meant all of them, including the ones already taken off the field by the other gangs. There was some discussion and in the end it was decided that Andy could abscond with his loot if he wanted, leaving my gang in possession of the field.

So a rather Pyrrhic victory, but in the end I was just happy to earn some income!  In the last game I had no gangers left who could work any territories so am a bit behind on income.  I did quite well out of it for experience though, with a few advances gained to build on the advances from the last game against the Eldar.  My gang is starting to take shape, with clear specialisations appearing in some of my gang members.

Next game in the campaign is in a few weeks. and my victory allows me to select the scenario so that should be fun.

Sodding Mortars

So another Monday at the club , and another game of my current set of rules Chain of Command.  This time John wanted to give them a bash and so we pitted his British Platoon against my Germans using the lists in the book.

We generated the Hold and Objective scenario and rolled randomly to see who would be the attacker. Fittingly for late war my Germans would defend this time.  John rolled a six for support, which left me with a measly three points.  He selected an observation team for an off table mortar (groan!) and an adjutant, while I took an additional senior commander and an adjutant. I figured in a game where my opponent would be able to lay down lots of smoke having good command and control would be vital so that I could keep my force fairly mobile.

View down the table from the German Table edge.

The German Strongpoint

The patrol phase was fairly neutral, with John gaining control of the crossroads in the middle of the table and me having my jump off points. 

When we began John got right to it and deployed a squad on my right, along with the mortar spotter and then deployed another squad on my left. I responded and deployed a squad against each one.

British left flank deployment.

German left flank strongpoint.

This resulted in a fairly static exchange of fire while John attempted to get his mortar barrage off.  He managed to do this a couple of times but being a jammy git he kept rolling triple sixes, ending the turn.  On my right flank I was starting to come of worst in the exchange of fire and decided to get out of the line of fire. On my left flank John's mortar barrage was finally called in.  To try and avoid being pinned I moved my senior officer back towards my objective. Unfortunately the mortar barrage overshot, missing me deployed squad completely but landing on my senior officer, killing him outright!  That'll teach him to abandon his men! 

Luckily the turn ended before John managed to move the barrage on to my men.  In the meantime he had deployed his third squad into the house in the centre of the board and was slowly advancing it down the centre.  My right had collapsed and the British were advancing. My left was still fairly secure though, but the British in the centre were going to cause a problem.  In the end I lucked out and managed to roll three sixes for my command dice. This ended the turn, removing another of John's mortar barrages and allowed me to deploy my last squad, catching one of Johns squads in the open.  I opened fire, and then for my repeat action I did it again.  This killed most of the squad, effectively neutralising them.    We decided to call it a night then as time was running short and there was not much left  to do, leaving us with an unfinished game, but looking increasing unlikely that there was anything that John could do to capture his objective.

Another interesting game, with me defending for once, and having a lot less toys to play with. This game was fairly static for me, with very little to do but hold my position and react to John's attacks.  German firepower carried the day in the end.  I just wish that I could have one game of Chain of Command where I didn't have to face an off table mortar. To be fair the last two games they mortar barrage has achieved nothing, but if John had saved his large amount of Chain of Command dice to keep his mortar barrages on the table at the end of the turns rather than using them to carry out interrupt actions things might have been different.

 

Next week is game two of out Necromunda campaign, and I am hoping that my gang can improve on its terrible opening game.

 

Targe 2014

This weekend I managed to sneak away from the usual family activities and attend the Targe wargames show in Kirriemuir.  The last few years of show attendance has pretty much always been accompanied by one or both of my children which has led to my show visits being pretty short.

This time I didn't bother and headed up the road myself. As is I had the luxury of staying as long as I liked I also entered a few things in the painting competition.  I have never had much success with painting comps but figured what the hell.

The show itself was the usual collection of tables. Our club put on a very nice Dark Ages game, with some Vikings raiding a Saxon village and the Saxons trying to defend themselves until the Norman cavalry came to the rescue. The usual suspects were there, Iron Brigade, Leuchars, etc etc and in general it was  a nice show and a very relaxing and rare day away from dealing with the kids.

It was nice to see a few diferent traders there as well. Crooked Dice were there and their stuff is always lovely to look at, as are the wares from Studio Miniatures. Dave Thomas was there as usual with his huge selection of Perry and Warlord products.

In terms of shopping I did not really have anything in mind so settled for picking up some barbed wire for Chain of Command and a few small cases from Figures in Comfort.

One standout game for me was a 6mm Epic 40k table is one of the smaller rooms.  Packed with terrain and tanks it made a very big change from the usual fare that you see at wargames shows.  I was chatting to the very nice chap at the table and he pointed out some laser cut buildings that he had made and that they were available at teh show.  I am always on the look out for new 6mm terrain so went and had a look.

I am not a huge fan of MDF laser cut terrain.  It works for some things like wild west buldings and sci fi terrain but can fall short for other periods like the Dark Ages.  The MDF just does not have the texture that is required for certain building materials.  Having said that we make extensive use of it our club as it can be bought pre-painted and can stand the rough handling and carelessness that is the lot of club owned terrain.  In this instance though 6mm highrise buildings are ideal for producing in 6mm and I bought one of each, at a fiver a pop.  

I am quite impressed with these and I think they will paint up very nicely.  I will keep an eye out for more appearing in this range in the future.

The other unexpected bonus to my enjoyable day was a prize in the painting competition. I managed to pick up first prize in the Sci-fi/Fantasy group in the painting competition, which I was very chuffed with.  All in our club did very well, with two 1st prizes and a couple of 3rds. So all in all an excellent day out.  

I was too busy enjoying my day away to remember to take any photos of the actual show itself though, so this is a rather bare blog post.

Catching Up

I havent managed to update on my games for a few weeks now so will cover the last couple of weeks in one blog post. Work and home life have been rather hectic.

Ill start with Monday just passed game.  Ian and I decided to have a game of X-Wing just before he headed back offshore for a few weeks.  I dont own any X-Wing stuff at all so was quite happy to let Ian come up with something to do on the night.

Ian had found an interesting scenario on the web that consisted of a rebel squadron tryign to shhiot down the shields on an Imperial Star Destroyer, so that an Ion Cannon can cripple it, allowing a local rebel convoy to evade capture.  Ian supplied two randomly selected fleets and we tossed a coin for sides. I ended up with the rebels, which consisted of the Millenium Falcon with Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles in an X-Wing, and another excellent X-Wing pilot whose name I cant remember.

Ian's Imperials consisted of 4 Tie Fighters and one Tie Advanced (the ship Darth Vader flew in the first one). We deployed on opposite ends of board and put the Star Destroyer in the middle.  I had to do either 25 points of damage to the Destroyer, or 12 points to the shield generator on the back of the ship.  

It turns out out that thanks to the distance and the special abilities of the pilots on my side I had pretty much done that before the IMperials got within firing range.  We reset and tried again, this time altering the deployment. The second time was no different and I again managed to down all of the shields before the Imperial Tie Fighters were in range.  We decided to have a cup of tea and think about the problem.

For our third attempt we decided that I would deploy my squadron, and then Ian could deploy his ships in reaction to that, as long as they stayed within short range of the destroyer.  This was a much more balanced game, with my squadron having to fly through the imperial defences. I managed to pull of a win, but only just.  The MIllenium Falcon and Wedge did not survive the engagement though.  A good evenigns entertainment playing a good game.  Made all the better for playing a narrative scenario rather than just duking it out in the middle of the table.

Going back to the Monday before I managed to have a absh at Lion Rampant, the new medieval rules from the same author as Dux Bellorum.  Andy and Dave had already tried the rules the previous week and had decided to make it a but more skirmishy by using one miniature to represent each unit and record the number of hits that you can take before the figure is eliminated. The scenario had Rory and me guarding a caravan of treasure and a few monks, while Andy and Dave were the evil bandits trying to steal it.

The main problem with Lion Rampant os that you have to test to move anything, and if you fail the test you turn immediately stops.  Rry and I are not the luckiets of fellows so quite quickly the two of us sat there in frustration as we kept failing to move out troops, while the wagon we were supposed to be guarding disapeared into the distance. 

I found this game to be extremely frustratin as it wasnt until the later stages of the game that I managed to actually get my troops to move, by which time Andy had pretty much run off with the loot.  There were some very odd things in these rules but the most annoying thing was the inability to move your troops. I am all for the fog of war and a bit of randomness but not to the point where moving a single unit of troops can be ragrded as a success. That is one of the reasons I gave up on Warmaster.  Games like Dux B do this much better, using a random order of activation and random move distances to better simulate the dificulty of controlling your troops in combat, but at least they will move and do something!

Targe on Saturday, but hopefully it will not be too expensive a day out, and then game two of our Necromunda campaign next Monday. Looking forward to it.