Here Come the Yanks, The Final Showdown.

So the finale of our late war Chain of Command campaign had finally arrived.

 

This campaign has taken a fair old while to get to this point, thanks to various real life pressures, but we made it in the end.

 

We had decided to end the campaign with a "Big Chain of Command" game, with all 6 Platoons taking to the table, with the American making a final assault on the town of Arques, with the Germans trying to hold them off before making an orderly retreat.  The scenario was going to be a flank attack, played on an 8 foot by 6 foot table.

After 6 campaign turns the Platoons were looking like this:

German:

1st Platoon (Kev):  1 casualty, +1 to force Morale
2nd Platoon (John): 1 casualty
3rd Platoon (Ken): 1 casualty

Yanks:

1st Platoon (Ian): 5 Casualties, -2 on Force morale (obviously a killing officer)
2nd Platoon (Dave): 9 Casualties
3rd Platoon (Alex): 7 casualties.

The Yanks rolled for support and got a whopping 28 points!, with the Germans having half that, with 14.

I am not sure of the exact support that the Americans took but they definitely had:

2 Sherman's
1 Chafe
Pre Game Barrage
Flame Thrower.

I don't know what else they had as it never saw the table.

the Germans opted for:

Adjutant to aid with deployment
Pre Game Barrage
81mm Mortar with Forward Observer
Tripod Mounted MG42
Flame Thrower team.

As always with Chain of Command we started with the Patrol Phase. The Yanks had two sets of three patrol markers, one set on their long table edge and one of the German Right flank. The Germans started with five, all positioned on our quarter of the table.

 

The patrol phase went quite well for the Germans, and we managed to push the Yank deployment into one side of the table, while opening it up for the Germans to Push onto the Flanks of the Yank positions.

The Table

the German 1st Platoon opted to take the right flank, close the Yank flanking deployment, with 2nd Platoon in the middle with the mortar spotter to provide fire support and 3rd Platoon on the far left, ready to sweep across the Yanks as they deployed with enfilading fire.  The Yanks opted fro the 1st Platoon to attack from the flank, with the 2nd and 3rd platoons assaulting from the front.

 

Early game saw everyone struggling to get deployed as the pre-game barrages cut off communication and deployment routes.  The Germans and Yanks on the right flank managed to get some troops on the board, as  did the Yank 3rd Platoon. The Yank 2nd Platoon didn't manage to deploy anything early on, as with the Germans 2nd Platoon.

 

Things were slow to begin with as the Germans lacked decent firing positions, and with all the tanks on the board the Yanks could sit back at range and pick us of so the 1st Platoon opted to hide, while the German 3rd Platoon found itself exposed and taking casualties from the main USA assault.  This was brought to an abrupt end when the German 2nd Platoon called in their mortar support, pinning down the entire USA centre, giving the German 3rd Platoon some breathing space.

Yank Deployment

On the right flank things were still bogged down, with the USA advancing cautiously, and the Germans trying to find advantageous firing positions. The German 2nd Platoon had deployed towards the back of the Germans on a hill, and started to take pot shots at anyone that stuck their head out of cover.  A hidden Panzerschrek popped up and tried to take a flank shot at the USA Chafe tanks, but were obviously a bit rushed and missed the tank altogether, at a range of about 30 feet. Off to the Russian Front for you two! 

The Yanks Advance

Mid game and the Yanks on the Right flank started to advance, taking advantage to narrow Germans fields of fire and the cover of the Chafe.  in the Centre the German 2nd Platoon managed to take out a Sherman with a Panzerschrek shot, and kept up their sniping at the USA assault forces.  On the German left things were going badly, with one squad broken and the rest of 3rd Platoon bogged down under USA fire.  Eventually the German 1st platoon Panzerschrek redeemed itself and in a bold move jumped out of a building, braving the USA fire and managed to destroy the Chafe, much to the relief of the rest of the Platoon.    Unfortunately we pretty much ran out of time at this point and had to call it a day. Setting up such a large table, organising three platoons a side and the time it took to play  meant that we just couldn't complete the game, so we had to stop without any sort of real conclusion.

 

It was almost impossible to say who would have won if we had continued.  Two of the three American tanks were gone, taking away their main advantage, but the German 3rd Platoon was under a lot of pressure. I think that the German deployment in depth and the threat of more mortar barrages might have swung, but certainly the German right flank was about to get very messy.

 

In hindsight I think the game was a bit ambitious for a Monday night, as there was just too much to do on the night.  Still an excellent campaign (as always) and many thanks to John fro running it and taking steps to keep it interesting.

 

As to the game itself?  I am not sure that a Big Chain of Command game is possible in 28mm, unless you use a ridiculously sized table.  Even on an 8 x 6 things were cramped, leaving little space for the fire and manoeuver tactics that Chain of Command simulates so well.  In future for normal 1 platoon games we will probably play on a 6 x 6, to give lots of room to move about and give a more interesting patrol phase.  The game probably would have worked well in 15mm, and Chain of Command would work well on a 6 x 4 if played in 15mm, rather than 28.  Having said that I am not about to run out and get a 15mm WW2 force because of that.  the other things is that no one had played the game for a while and we were a bit rusty

Mordheim Season3, Game 3

Game three of our Mordheim campaign, and we were all trailing into the woods after the Dwarfs, who as the victors in the last game had decided to go deeper in search of treasure. 

We had all the six campaign members this week:

My Undead
Rory Protectorate of Sigmar (PoS)
Andy's Skaven
Ian's Dwarfs
Dave's Marienburg Mercenaries
Andy's Witchhunters

Undead

Marienburg Mercenaries

Skaven Warphunters

Dwarf Treasure Seekers

Witchhunters

Protectorate of Sigmar

The board was mostly woodland, with a few hills and a single hut in the centre.  There was a witch living in the hut, guarding some loot, along with a couple of Dire Wolves. The first person to approach within 8 inches of the hut would trigger the witches break for the nearest random table edge, fighting anyone who gets in her way.

The game started with everyone advancing cautiously.  I ended up deployed in a corner next to the Skaven, and after a quick chat we decided that we would ignore each other so that we could both actually get a chance to have a decent evenings gaming.  I decided to head towards the PoS as they were apparently my nemesis and I would get double experience for any kills.  The Skaven made straight for the hut.  The Witch hunters also went straight for the hut and due to where they deployed triggered the witches escape. Ian's dwarves began the long slog towards the centre of the board, but with a move of 3 inches they were going to take a while.  Dave surprised everyone by advancing into the centre of the board.

The witch made a dash for it and as it turned out they ran straight into the Witch hunters, who set about dealing with her.  Meanwhile the Skaven approached the hut, and my undead made for the PoS.

The Dwarfs kept slogging towards the centre, while Dave also kept advancing.

Mid game saw the Undead lay into the PoS, putting them out of the game, The Skaven found the treasure in the witches hut but ended up coming of worst as the dwarfs finally made it to the centre of the table. 

The Witchhunters had finally slogged it across the table towards Dave's Marienburgers but decided under pressure of missile fire and a charge from his opponent that they did not want to hang about so left, leaving only four warbands on the board.

Having recovered a fair chunk of treasure and starting to come under pressure from the Dwarfs Andy's Skaven also decided to leave. This left the Dwarfs, Marienburgers and Undead on the board.

The Undead had been approaching the Dwarfs, and were now getting into assault range.  The Dwarfs decided that they would form a defensive line and rely on their natural resilience to survive the attack.  The Marienburgers at this point were happy to sit and watch, while sending a few archers off to try and steal some treasure from some zombies skulking at the side of the board.

Zombies "running" away from some nasty people

The Undead had a couple of rounds of shooting at the Dwarfs but this proved ineffective so I decided to get stuck in, even though I expected to come of second best.  The advantage of making that charge was that I could pic my targets, so I ganged up on a few of the Dwarfs, making sure that I took them out of action.  Ian decided enough was enough and after a few casualties decided to leave.

Chasing down the Marienburgers

That left it down to my Undead and Dave's Marienburgers.  There was a chase across the table as Dave reverted o type and started running away again, but he eventually ran out of space and formed a line, ready to attack (why does everyone always  form a line and wait?).  My Undead charged in and in a couple of turns Dave was past his break point and left the field, leaving the Undead victorious.

A nice win for the Undead, with the Vampire finally killing something. A costly one though as I lost a Ghoul, Dire Wolf and Zombie in the post game pages, although I gained some very useful advances on my warband.  I could only afford to replace the ghoul and get some bit of armour for my warband so will be slightly understrength for the next game.  That shouldn't be too much of  a problem though as I got a triple 6 in the exploration phase and managed to pick up a free hired sword for the next game. Given the limitation on what he Undead can hire I opted for an Ogre Bodyguard, so all in all not a bad game really. Once again this was played in a light hearted manner, with plenty of chat going on, which makes for a very enjoyable evening.

The campaign is shaping up nicely, with players being a lot more careful this time. In the last campaign there were usually a couple of players out in the first couple of turns but people are being a lot more careful this time, which is making for much more interesting games.

Next week sees the conclusion of our Chain of Command campaign, "Here Com the Yanks" and we will see if the depleted American Platoon have enough men left to break through the German lines.

Also this Saturday is Claymore, at Telford College Edinburgh, and I am planning on popping along with the kids fro a while. Its usually a fun day out for us all.

Once more into the hive..

Mission three of the Aliens vs Predator boardgame, with 2 novice players and one veteran (he's played one game and read the rules so technically he is now an expert).

 

The objectives this time were:

 

Marines:  retrieve a part from one room on the map, and then carry that part all the way across the board to another room.

 

Predators:  Collect 5 trophies, plus make your way to the hibernation chamber to wake up the infected humans, thus creating more Aliens to hunt.

 

Aliens:  Put 2 acid damage tokens into three separate rooms, spread around the board.

 

John (the expert!) opted to play the Marines, Kev went the Predators and Kenny decided to play the Aliens.

 

 

Early game saw the Aliens come out running, with them engaging the Predators almost immediately. the Predators tried to advance but found themselves getting bogged down by piles of Aliens and pretty much failed to move very far for the entire game.  The marines advanced out of the room they were in cautiously,  ready to put down lots of fire on anything that came into view.

 

The Aliens managed to eventually put some acid tokens down in one of their target rooms, but their attacks against the Predators were proving ineffectual, although it was holding them up nicely.  The marines were having a  great time though, as they had a good line of site to a couple of Predators, and they seemed quite happy to just sit at the end of the corridor and be shot at them, which over the course of the game managed to kill 2 of the 3 monstrous hunters, and also bagging a fair few Aliens as well.   Meanwhile the Predators were pretty much focusing all their attention on the Aliens, and were making a pretty big mess of them as well.

 

Late game and there was only 1 Predator left on the board, but crucially it was the one armed with the Smart Disc, still 4 Marines and a handful of Aliens.  The Predator managed to make short work of the few Aliens that he was still fighting, before turning his attention to the Marines. Up until this point the Marines had been largely ignored, but now they had the full attention of one wounded Predator. In two rounds the Predator had managed to make short work of the Marines and the entire squad was gone. Ouch.

 

This left 2 Aliens and a single Predator on the board.  Kenny had started to be a bit sneaky and circled round the main combat and into another of his target rooms. Unfortunately this put his remaining two models in range of the Predator who promptly finished them off, leaving it the only model on the board and having plenty of time to complete it mission objectives.

 

Another interesting game, with the Predators managing another win (only just though!). This one was interesting in that everyone had an objective to complete that involved moving round the board, but all three players seemed more interested just killing each other, although to be fair to the Predators they were attacked pretty much from the off so never had the chance to move much at all.

This is the third game I've run for this and I'm starting to get a good idea about how all the factions work. I'm particularly interested in the Alien faction as they look quite challenging to play (i.e. a bit underpowered). The next time I bring it out to play I am going to have play as well, and see if I can manage to play the game as well as run it at the same time. 

 

There is also currently a new version of the rules in development and I am very excited to see what changes they have made.  I think the core rules of the game are sound, just some of the special rules need clarified and tweaked a bit, and the Aliens could do with a bit of a boost as I don't think the basic models in the boardgame box are up to the job, certainly not against a Predator. I could add in some of the beefier Aliens but I wanted to run through the basic game first to get a feel for it.

 

All three players seemed to enjoy themselves, although I think Kenny had given up by about half way through the game. This also happened in the second game when Douglas was the Alien but at only three games it is difficult to tell if it is a big problem or not.

 

That lead me to my final thought, which is about the difference between running and playing games.  My gaming can be broadly split into two types.  There are the pick up games, where my opponent and I agree to play a game to an agreed size and then each go away and select our forces and then play the game.  This is usually games like Warhammer, Chain of Command, Urban War etc. Then there are the games where I offer to run something for two or more people. This is usually for a rule set or range of miniatures that I like, but no one else has access to. This would normally be AVP, Lord of the Rings,  or War of the Rings.  

 

These are two very different ways of playing, and if I am honest I find the second  more stressful. The first type of gaming, of playing pick up games is fairly relaxed, with some enjoyment to be had in looking through army lists and trying to pick something that will provide an interesting game. 

 

The second type of game is slightly more stressful as I find that I am trying to entertain a group of friends for an evening who have given up their time to play in one of your games and I would not like for them to be bored or have a rotten time.  It is not generally a problem as most people are quite lad back and just happy to be playing a game of something that they wouldn't normally play. That does not mean that I don't enjoy running these games, as they can be quite entertaining but there is always the thought in the back of my head of "is everybody enjoying themselves?" and I don't want to look around the table and see someone clearly not having a good time, as I would feel slightly guilty about that.  Having said that some people are never going to be happy unless they are crushing their opponent into dust and will quickly lose interest if that doesn't happen, but luckily these people don't turn up very often.

 

Next week I am eturning to an old friend and having a game of WHFB 6th edition. I wonder if I will still enjoy it as much as I remember?

Mordhein Season 3, Game 2: Into the Woods

Game 2 of our Mordheim Campaign saw the warbands push deeper into the Drakwald forest, searching for the next piece of the puzzle to track down the necromancer Alex.

 

Everyone from the last game was present, although the Witch hunters had suffered such crippling damage at the hands of the Dwarfs that Andy had been forced to retire them and start again.

 

So we had:

 

My Vampire, with and extra Dire Wolf

Rory with his Protectorate of Sigmar (PoS from now on)

Andy with his shiny new Witch Hunters

Andy with his Skaven

Dave with his Marienburgers

Ian with his Dwarfs, which seemed to have gone on an aggressive recruitment campaign as there were loads of them).

 

The setup was similar to last game, with a wooded board with some treasure tokens on it, with the main treasure in the middle of the board being guarded by some skeletons.  To add extra spice there were some wandering Dryads on the board as well, and as it turned out they were the most lethal thing on the board probably accounting for more kills than anyone else.

The terrifyingly inept Undead.

 

Deployment was random and I ended up in one corner sandwiched between the Marienburgers and the Dwarfs. Early game saw the Skaven and PoS exchange blows, while the Dwarfs started their long march towards the centre of the table. The Marienburgers did their usual and started to skulk around the edges of the board looking for some likely targets they could pick off.  The Witch hunters gave the Dwarfs a wide berth and headed after the Skaven.  My Vampires headed towards the rapidly retreating Marienburgers, picking up a treasure token on the way.

 

Casualties on the other side of the board mounted quickly, especially for the Skaven and PoS. The Skaven had one of their number taken out before they had even had a go, thanks to a lucky shot from the Pos. Karma was quick to repay this though as a wandering Dryad made a big mess of Rory's warband, taking 4 of them out of action.  By mid game the Skaven and PoS had both left the table, and Dave and the Witch hunters were still being a circumspect about their intentions (avoiding the Dwarfs more like!).  My Undead had come a bit stuck by this point, as I had failed to notice a Dryad in a nearby wooded area and it had jumped a Dreg, taking him out of action. Eager for my vampire to do something and gain some much needed XP I charged him in, but he managed to spend the rest of the game trying to fight this lone dryad, with very little success. 

Lots of trees.

I pushed on towards the deafs and made a very lacklustre assault on them with a couple of Dire Wolves, failing to inflict an damage before the swarm of bearded stunties took them both out of actions.  Combined with my earlier casualty this was enough to push me above my break point and I managed to hold on for one round before failing it a leaving the field, just as my Vampire was about to finish of the stunned Dryad, thus denying him some much needed XPs.

Marienburgers hiding, as usual.

This left the Dwarfs free to wander in, take the treasure and then slowly wander out again pretty much unopposed, while the Witch Hunters also left after taking a few casualties, and Dave managed to almost commit suicide by trying to take out a Dryad, but it proving to be particularly resilient and doing a fair bit of damage to his warband.

The Undead Strike, badly....

We knocked one over!

So a comfortable victory for the Dwarfs, largely due to no one really opposing them and giving them a wide berth. My Undead had a miserable time, with not a single successful casualty inflicted in the whole game. My Vampire once again proving that despite being the most powerful model on the board, if you cant get the dice rolls then you aren't going to achieve anything.

 

After game I lost one Dire Wolf, which I managed to replace but apart from that came out of it fairly unscathed. I also managed to pick up a few good advances on my warband as well, so looking at the king game it wasn't a complete disaster.  The PoS has their captain Killed and the man who replaced him only has one arm so that is going to be interesting, while the Dwarfs had their recently hired Troll Slayer get his wish and shuffle of his Mortal Coil.

 

So Game three involves us all chasing deeper into the woods in search of treasure, and it should be interesting, with the Dwarfs established as the warband everyone is afraid off.  Luckily my Undead don't care about such things and will happily have a go at anyone (hopefully with some more success than this weeks performance).

 

Phoenix Industries Science Station Alpha Six

Its taken me three months of this and virtually nothing else but my Forward Base Kickstarter is finally approaching completion.  The buildings are mostly done,  with just a few final adjustments to be made and a few touch ups, but I now have 5 nicely detailed buildings in s ready enough state to hit the table.

All in all I am reasonably happy.  There was a lot of work in those seven buildings, as there are a load of additional resin pieces that need painted and then stuck on.  These pieces all help though as they looks more like buildings and less like MDF boxes.

One thing it has highlighted is my lack of skills as a model maker, as there a fair few mistakes made by me during the construction.  I had it pretty down by the 6th and 7th buildings but the early ones are a bit of a mess. Good enough for the table but not quite as good as I would have liked.  The thing I like the most about these buildings are the detailed interiors.  There are full sets of panels that fit nicely inside, hiding all the internal joins from the MDF. Furniture also helps to add an extra dimension, especially in the case of the Science Centre and Medical Centre as these have some very nice lab and medical equipment inside them.

I still have a bit of work to do to finish up a few of the buildings, and there are still the extras to paint and the vehicles but I am a bit burnt out on this at the moment and will revisit them at a later date.

How was the experience of painting and assembling these?  Pretty time consuming to be honest. Thank goodness I have an airbrush as I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken me to do this without it!  Anteniciti have been very helpful throughout this process with great assistance with missing parts, as inevitably with the hundreds of pieces involved there will be some mistakes, but they always sent replacements nice and promptly.  They will look good on the table, especially when all the vehicles and additional scatter have been added to make it look like a working environment.

I originally bought these to use with my Aliens vs Predator kickstarter, and they scale very well with them, but they are generic enough to get used in most sci-fi settings, they may even get used for Infinity at some point.  I also hope in the future when the kickstarter is delivered that the individual components will be made available for retail, as I would like to get my hands on a pile of the external fittings to use with other buildings, but for now I am more than happy with what  have and hope that Anteniciti is not put off by this kickstarter and goes on to do some more.

All I need now are some civilian scientists to man/be rescued/eaten by Aliens...

Mordheim, Season3 Game 1

Our third Mordheim campaign kicked off this week, and I was very happy to be returning to one of my favourite games.

This time we had seven players signed up, with 6 attending the opening game.  Following on from the last campaign, where the evil Necromancer Alex managed to evade our warbands as we all destroyed each a new set of "heroes" are now hell bent on bringing him down.

We had a good spread of warbands this time round, including:

Skaven Warphunters

Marienburg Mercenaries

Witchhunters

Dwarf Treasure Hunters

Protectorate of Sigmar

and I had brought my Undead.

Ghouls and Dregs watch as the Vampire races ahead.

Loads of Marienburgers!

The scenario was a straight token grab, but as usual with Rory's games there was a narrative twist. We were all searching a recently raided town for the body of a witch.  One of the treasures that we collected would turn out to be what we were looking for, determined randomly at the end of the game. In addition to this there were some flagellants wandering in the area, with a number being on the table at the start of the game and also each player having a chance for one to enter the table from their deployment zone every odd numbered turn.

Deployment was random, with the Skaven and Marienburgers both deployed on one edge of the table, the Protectorate of Sigmar (PoS from now on!) and Dwarfs on the opposite short edge with myself and the Witchhunters opposing each other along the long table edge.

Early game saw some moving about as I cautiously moved into the centre of the table trying to collect as many treasure tokens as possible. On my left the Skaven and Marienburgers pretty much got straight down to business and started fighting each other from turn 2, with the Dwarfs and Witchhunters doing the same on the other side of the table.  The PoS moved up the centre also, trying to pick off any opponents using their long bowmen. 

Mid game and both the Skaven and Marienburgers had reached their break point, but miraculously neither gave any ground as they both passed multiple break tests.  The Witchhunters discovered that while there were not to many dwarfs on the table they were all very tough and started to rack up the casualties. 

PoS on the advance

In the centre I cautiously advanced through the ruins, managing to kill a wandering flagellant and pick up a third treasure token before advancing towards the PoS.  The PoS were still moving towards my Undead, while trying to take out some of the Witchhunters as well.  

Late game and the Marienburgers finally failed a break test, leaving the field, and the Skaven decided to follow suit in their turn having managed to secure a treasure token.   The Witchhunters were down to their last man and finally gave up and fled, but not before reducing the dwarfs to their break point, who dully failed their break test and also left the field.

In the centre after an early charge from the Dire Wolf my Undead got stuck in to the PoS, and generally had the better of it, thanks mainly to failed fear tests from the enemy.  Rory saw that things were beginning to turn against him and decided to quit the field leaving the Vampire lord and his minions victorious.

Undead Wolf (played with great skill by a beasthound) leads the charge into the PoS

The Undead lurk in an alley, waiting for the moment to charge.

There are a lot of dogs in warbands this year, resulting in a big dogfight in the middle of the table.

So game 1 and a victory for my undead, including a hefty treasure haul and no casualties so a pretty good start to the campaign.  I dot think any warbands suffered too badly apart from the Skaven, who lost their sorcerer and Witchhunters who suffered some pretty grievous wounds.

The game was basically three smaller games played out on a large table, with everyone pairing off and fighting it out, and two of the pairings ending in a stalemate as both warbands went out of the game. Rory and I were the last two standing mainly because we were a bit further apart and were more cautious in our advance meaning that we came to blows much later in the game, so more down to lucky deployment and procrastination than any real skill.  One thing I would note is that once again my main character, the vampire Lord proved useless ad failed to do much of anything despite easily being the most powerful character on the board. I hope this does not set a precedent fro the campaign as a whole as without him preforming it is going to be an uphill struggle for my Undead, especially against those Dwarfs.

A good start to the campaign, with everyone staying on the table for a good five turns or so, with the 2nd instalment to follow in a month or so.

Its Another Bug Hunt

Aliens is a favourite movie of mine, as are the Predator movies. Unfortunately the Aliens vs Predator movies turned out to be rubbish, not a patch on the comics.

I went for the Prodos Games Aliens vs Predator kickstarter in a big way, certainly enough to make some interesting three way games.  I am lucky and have received most of my pledge, and am just waiting on some Predator's, Marines and the wargame rules.   

We have had one try out of the rules so far, which while hardly balanced or logical turned out to be a lot of fun if approached in the right frame of mind.  The one thing that spoiled it first time our was the lack of paint on the models.  We had a second game recently, with painted models but they were not based properly as I could not decide how to do it. 

I finally made a decision and went for clear Perspex discs for all my AVP models.  This would allow me to use on any surface without worrying about them looking odd or out of place.  If I had opted to base them to match the boardgame tiles, perhaps using the bases available from Fenris Games then they would have looked out of place when used on the wargames table. If I had opted to go for my usual sand and flock then they would looked really odd when used in the boardgame, so clear discs it had to be.   These are available cheaply enough from E-bay.  

So far I have only painted up one boxed games worth of models, so that is 5 marines, 3 Predators and 15 Aliens.  I have a bit more than that and this will probably be my big project for this year, as the Anteniciti's Workshop Forward Base is also going to be used mainly for this, although probably with Infinity and Urban War as well.

As to the boardgame itself?  We have played it twice now, with a good report on the second game here. Both times extreme luck has had an unexpected effect on the battle.  The first time it was the Predator's inability to make any saving throws, causing them to lose the game pretty quickly. The second time the Predator's did not fail a single armour save for the whole game, making it a complete cake walk for them so some more testing is required.

So far everyone playing the game has not taken it too seriously and rolled with the punches and still had a good time. If you want a tightly ruled and balanced game them this is definitely not for you, but if you want to have some fun with some lovely looking miniatures then it is a good laugh. 

I think I will play through all the basic missions in the main rulebook as they are written, and then start looking at the advanced rules and including some of the more juicier pieces, especially for the Aliens as it would be great fun to see the look on everyone's faces when a Queen or Predalien is put on the board.

I am also very interested to see what they do with the wargame rules.

As for the Kickstarter?  I think it has been badly handled, with a company that makes excellent miniatures but isn't project managed terribly well.  There is a lot of vitriol written about Prodos on various web forums, but I don't think they set out to make a mess of this (of course not, who would?) but I think they underestimated the amount of work involved by getting involved with a major IP licence with a company that will aggressively defend it. Having said that there are a lot of people still waiting on their games, so I can sort of understand their annoyance at them.

Regarldless of the background problems, the game is a lovely (if that is the right word to describe a game including Aliens and Predators!) package and I still think that I will eventually receive all my items.