The basement is all done now and it's great to have all the construction cleaned up. Luckily it wrapped up just in time to host our Thanksgiving company. Also nice to have my hobby work space back, too. To celebrate I started work on some moss-covered "fallen" old growth trees to get some more "green" into my F&IW forests.
Can't wait to get 'em on the table.
See ya!
Made ya look! Construction is underway at Castle FusterCluck.
Since I can't get to any of my projects, I've been doing some rules research. I am currently fascinated by THW's Nuts Big Battle rules. I like the scale (company-sized battles) and the relatively marker-free environment. I think they would work great for micro-armor; I'd just have to adapt for early North Africa.
I'm also quite taken with THW's Future Tales; pulp action in a science fantasy universe. For Barsoom, of course. . . who knows if Modiphius will ever actually get to the miniatures rules.
See ya!
A couple of "100-year-rain-events" within a couple weeks put enough water in our basement to ruin the wood flooring we recently installed. . . and the insurance company ruled we are on our own. . .
So, this time we are going to tile. Above is a shot of the room with all the wood taken up and piled and the bookshelves moved to the middle of the room. No hobby time for me for a couple of weeks.
As a reminder, here's what it looked like before the water damage:
See ya!
Game Two fired up on Saturday morning. The scenario and previous game is here. Like The Baron said of his Wild West games, the games kind of run together in my mind now, but I think the British and Colonials drove off the French in this game, with great loss. We had more players than the previous game, so we added some Coureur to the French side and Highland Light Infantry to the British.
In Game Three we swapped the Coureur for French Marines. There was a lot of hand-to-hand combat in this game, and the French and Indians won out.
I didn't get any photos from Game Four, which turned into a real slugfest. The Indians and Marines won again, but the Indians paid dearly in the final assault on the farmhouse.
We had lots of Fistful of Lead fun, and the new Horse and Musket rules capture the period with a cinematic flourish.
See ya!
Last weekend I helped The Baron launch his new Horse and Musket variant for Fistful of Lead (FfoL) at Recruits in Lee's Summit, Mo. We played 4 games over the weekend using the Fight at the Farmstead scenario from the new rules. Each game had some variation on the theme to take advantage of number of players, and to stretch the rules. There are some special rules included to characterize individuals, but for our games all figures had common stats.
You can learn a lot more about FfoL on The Baron's site, but here's a quick summary. FfoL is an individual-level skirmish game, originally designed for "Hollywood-esque" Wild West games, using playing cards - some with special actions - for character activation and D10's for resolving actions. Characters can be Pinned, Wounded or Killed based on a D10 roll and a couple of modifiers, as they attempt to reach goals set out by the scenario chosen.
Horse and Musket makes three key changes to the original rules. First, since black powder weapons were slow to reload, there is now a separate "reload" action. This makes deciding when to shoot, at what range, an important new aspect of tactics. Second, because the volume of fire is different in the black powder era, Pinned has been replaced with Shaken, which like Pinned, limits the figures' actions, but does not cause them to go to ground. Third, Hand-to-Hand combat does not now include short-range shooting, but there is a provision for shooting at a charging opponent prior to the actual hand-to-hand fighting, IF the charged figure has a loaded musket. Mighty big IF.
We played on a 5-foot square table. View from the British side:
And from the French and Indian side:
The scenario features two farmers, Molly and Johann, who become the targets of an Indian raid. The Indians are bent on killing or capturing the farmers. The Indians are unaware that a group of Rangers are visiting the farmers while on a routine scout and will aid the defense of the farm.
Game One on Friday night: four Rangers are in the two buildings with the two farmers when 2 groups of five Indians attack.
The Indians weathered a hail of poorly-aimed shooting (lots of bad dice rolls) to eventually kill the Rangers and Johann in hand-to-hand assaults on the farm buildings and take Molly hostage.
Game One to the Indians!
More coming in Part Two.
