Battles & Brews

 

Last weekend Wiley Games hosted its annual summer Battles & Brews. Four games were played, and for a change I played in all four of them! No games outside this year; it was too damned hot.

 

The first game was "Tiny Triremes." We were play-testing a new fast-play ancient naval game, still in development with prototype models, for a friend of The Baron's. Six players, three per side (red and green), each commanding 4 galleys of 3 different sizes. Red and green dice tracked strength points, white dice tracked hull points and turns were controlled with the wooden "compass." I commanded 4 Red galleys on the right flank.

 

 

The small islands really constricted maneuver so the battle devolved into shooting and boarding actions which reduced crew strengths quickly.

 

On my flank I was finally able to ram and sink an enemy ship, but at the cost of two of my own captured and one sunk. The gods of the boarding action dice did not favor me. One of my captured ships was torched because my opponent didn't have the crew strength to hold on to it. A fun battle but Red lost.

 

Next up was the Battle for Endor using Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. Two teams of two players: two units each of five Rebel scum attempting to infiltrate and blow up an Imperial Bunker defended by two units each of the Emperor's Stormtroopers. I commanded the Imperial Scouts sent into the forest to attempt to "spot" the Rebels, represented by hidden movement markers, some of which were dummies. This mission was critical because the second unit of Stormtoopers, in the bunker, could not deploy until the Rebels were spotted. AND I didn't realize until the battle was fully joined that my Scouts were only wielding pistols, as opposed to the rifles everyone else had. On top of that, I have never rolled so many "out of ammos" in one game!

 

Look! There's Han and Chewie!

 

Sadly, their stories end on Endor. I was able to hold them up long enough - mostly via melee due to being out of ammo so often - for the bigger guns deploying from the bunker to end their rebellious careers. The Scouts lost all but their commander.

 

 

Though I didn't get any photos of the final Rebel rush of the bunker that resulted in the "blood alley" typical of Fistful games, it happened right in front of the bunker with the Rebels all dead and the bunker saved. Long Live the Emperor!

 

The third game featured Mechs. I believe a "MechWars Lite" set of rules was used but not being up on Mech Lore and not intending to play - I was setting up my Red Alert game (you can see it at the top of some of the following photos) while this was going on - I can't say for sure. Maybe someone who knows will see this post and comment.

 

 

But play I did; I took over for another player who got got called home for dinner. I commanded the Red and Black Mechs facing the Green and White. I can tell you the green dice tracked movement and the red dice tracked heat generated by the Mechs' actions.

 

My Big Guy took out a Mech lurking at the edge of the woods and then I lost a Mech to a two-on-one "hand-to-hand" brawl. Our side lost (I believe) three destroyed Mechs to two.

 

Our final game of the day was Red Alert, a space fleet action game using the Commands and Colors system. There are three classes of ships - Fighter, Strike and Capital - and several sub-classes within each class. Each unit has a numerical value towards victory points ranging from one point for a Fighter Unit (Fighter Class) to eight points for a Flagship (Capital Class). Most units consist of three or four ships and each "hit" rolled against it eliminates one ship. I am in the process of converting this to hit points (shields, anyone?) using 1/2500-scale Star Trek models and a D6 die to track hits. I only had enough models completed for one complete side, so in this game you can see the green and red ships as provided in the game on one side and my new models opposite.

 

 

Game play is controlled by hands of cards and the use of Star Tokens. We had two players on each side; so one player acted as the Fleet Admiral and controlled the card play and the units in the center section while the second player controlled those units in the two flank zones. The first side to eliminate twenty-one points worth of units, or eight units regardless of points, would immediately win.

 

 

The Star Trek side won initiative and did some early damage with their Fighters. The Red/Green side (my side) played aggressively but was frustratingly countered at almost every attack by a Combat Card that seemed tailor-made for the situation.

 

On the last turn of the game, the score was closer than it seemed. We were behind on points but had eliminated 7 enemy units, so only needed to destroy one more unit. But the Trekkies only needed one more point, so any kill would win the game. And they got it.

 

Thanks to Wiley Games and the Basement Generals for a fun day of gaming!

 

My next post will be more about the Star Trek models and the Red Alert physical game conversions.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Woods Terrain. . . er, Boulders really. . .

Two more pieces of Woods Terrain completed. One is another geomorphic square and the other is a largish piece of area terrain designed to be placed on top of forest floor squares. Again, the photo above provides some scale and context and the next few are closer looks.

I have a few more boulders to paint but I am going to take a break and work on spaceship models for a bit. I know, right?

New Woods Terrain

 

 

I completed a couple of the "rock" terrain squares I showed in an earlier post in their unfinished state from before The Move. The photo above provides some context for scale. The next photos feature the terrain squares individually. The "rocks" are model railroad scenery repurposed and adapted. Enjoy!

 Two more are in progress - more on those later.

Memoir '44?

 

  

Memoir '44? Where did this come from all of a sudden? Well, for the last year or so, as I pondered the game projects I want to tackle in retirement, my WW2 Desert MicroArmor is high on the list. I have all of the relevant forces involved, a great deal of them mostly painted (thanks, Baron!), so it basically comes down to basing and terrain. 

But whoa, that depends on the rules to be played, right? Hmmm. If I just play Armoured Storm, a fun little game of tank battles by Daniel Mersey, I don't have to base the minis at all and terrain is simple. Although I like this game a lot, I really want to play with ALL my toys: armor, infantry, artillery and airplanes along with entrenchments, emplacements, etc. Yes, Armoured Storm has some of the emplacement aspects (Strongpoints) but it is very stylized to keep the emphasis on tanks.

I really want to play more of a combined arms game at the grand tactical level - more like the company as the basic maneuver element. I have been looking seriously at Rommel by Sam Mustafa, which uses the company as the basic unit. Rommel uses a "Good, Better, Best" system (remembered from my old marketing days) to rate offensive strength and a 3-tier track for attrition: 3-2-1 is Good; 4-3-2 is Better and 5-4-3 is Best. It is a good game, but I can't make the toys look good on the table. The grid gets too big when the shooting ranges "look right" and the opportunities for modeling terrain are very limited (western desert, remember?). 

Then Prufrock commented on my most recent Red Alert post, and that reminded me that I'd recently viewed his latest post on Memoir '44. We both like the Commands and Colors sytem and he seemed to get good games from Memoir '44, so I downloaded the rules from the Days of Wonder site for a fresh look. First thing I noticed was that the Units were comprised of 3 or 4 figures; if you consider a figure to represent a platoon, and 3 or 4 platoons to be a company, a Unit in the game could represent a company. And the 3-dice combat and armor/infantry interactions "feel right" at the company level. After a little experimentation, I decided I REALLY like the look of the MicroArmor toys on the 4" hexes.

But I just can't get past the fact that all the armored units are the same. I began to wonder (of course I did) if there might be a subtle way to layer some differentiation onto the armored units without changing basic rules or changing the number of combat dice rolled. While wondering, I recalled that Rommel's combat values were only a point or two different at full strength in most cases. Using Rommel's mid-war unit stats I created a "Good, Better, Best" system using re-rolls.

In the case of Attacking armored units, all German units are Best (Proven), and get to re-roll one Miss (a "Miss" is any result that doesn't have an effect). All British and 1941 or later Italians are Better (Trained) and don't get a re-roll. Americans and 1940 Italians are Good (Unproven) and have to re-roll one Hit. Infantry don't have any re-rolls, but there is a simple way to denote Green or Veteran status if ever needed (see chart following).

When Defending, armored units are designated Light, Medium or Heavy based on mid-war western desert usage. The Attacker re-rolls one Miss against Light units, doesn't re-roll against Medium units and re-rolls one Hit against Heavy units. There are also a few extra traits like Fast, Slow or Close Support, also in the chart following.

This isn't intended to radically change any of the basic interactions; just to add a little easy-to-apply chrome if you're rivet-counting-inclined. Of course a real rivet counter stopped reading a while ago! If you've read this far, I would love to hear your thoughts, pro or con. No, other than rolling some dice around, none of this is game-tested yet.

And to close, today's my birthday! Happy Happy Joy Joy!

First Game at Castle FusterCluck

Okay, so it's more of a basement than a castle, but it is dedicated gaming space with a permanent 5' x 9' table!

A couple weeks ago when playing Galactic Heroes at The Baron's, he asked what game I planned to be the first on the table in the new digs. I replied that I thought it would have to be a French and Indian War game, of course. I have been working on some woodsy rough terrain I started back in Minnesota in anticipation of said game.

During that game of Galactic Heroes someone mentioned Commands and Colors: Red Alert (fleets of spaceships); turns out Jay is a fan, too, and showed some photos of the game's miniatures he'd painted. I like this game for space fleet warfare and plan to use 1/2500 Star Trek models with "shield markers" in place of the game's units of multiple ships per hex. More here.

Where is this going? Well, a couple days after the Galactic Heroes game, The Baron said he wanted to play some Red Alert, so I invited him over for a game. Turns out the first game at FusterCluck would be the introductory scenario of Commands and Colors: Red Alert. 

Simple line-up: first player to eliminate 13 points worth of enemy units wins. Unit values range from 1 point for a Fighter up to 8 points for a Flagship.

 

I played the green fleet, The Baron red. I drew first blood with my Fighters but The Baron was flush with Star Tokens and good Combat Cards and soon the score was 12 - 10 in The Baron's favor - he just needed one more kill. That's when our Flagships went head to head and Fortune (the dice) tipped in my favor. My Flagship survived and the 8 points I won for destroying his ended the game.

 

We will definitely play more Red Alert. The game has a lot of depth and replay value including the supplemental unit types and scenarios from the original Kickstarter.

See ya! 
 

Cluck Amok Retired!

I made it. I'm retired. I'm three weeks into official retirement. Not much fanfare. . . I just stopped going to work. Still have some work to do on our little project ranch house and yard but now the plan is to get the "gaming life" back on track, too.

The first game I got to play. . . in retirement. . . was a little "Grim Dark" Sc-Fi skirmish action a la Galactic Heroes (Fistful of Lead) from Wiley Games. 

The Baron invited me over; his friend Jay was putting on a game featuring Crimson Fist Marines against Planetary Defense Forces (PDF) in a "defend the refinery" scenario. The Marines were superhuman in every way and the PDFs were Grunts that were able to respawn after being killed until the Marines destroy the Spawn Points. 

 

I led a unit of 3 teams of 3 PDF Grunts. 

 Here we are bunched up behind cover awaiting the Marine onslaught.

 

"Bunching up" turned out to be bad tactics. The Marines had grenades (who knew) and numbers weren't much help in melee, either. After dying, we "re-spawned" in a more spread out formation.

 

Spreading out was a better tactic to be sure, but in the end we gave up the refinery. Those Marines are superhumans!