Denmark And The Desert

I'm still on my Memoir '44 kick at the moment. Last night I organsied a game with Stuart, but June was also available and was interested in playing too. So I stepped aside and tutored the two of them since neither had played it before.

As a starting game I went for the Roadblock At Hokkerup scenario. This represents a fairly small-scale action during the German invasion of Denmark in 1940. Germans have to break through a defended Danish roadblock and get points for exiting nits off the Danish board edge as well as eliminating enemy units.  It's mostly infantry, but the Germans do get their special Blitzkrieg rules which make them strong in air support.

In the first game June took the Danes. It looked like a quick win for Stuart was on the cards when he overwhelmed the Danish left and had a clear run to the exit point with enough units to get a win.

But his good cards ran out after exiting a couple of units, and a Danish counterattack pushed back the outflanking moves.

When June's turn came to play the Germans in the second game she got a good draw of cards in the centre and was able to launch a massive assault on the Danish position. Air attacks forced the Danes out of their defences.

I'm sorry to say that in all the excitement I forgot which side won each game, but I seem to recall that when the scores were aggregated the margin was only one victory medal; both games were very close, I remember that.

We then switched theatres and set up the November 1941 battle at Sidi Rezegh Airfield, which sees an all armoured British force trying to take the eponymous airfield being ambushed by German panzers.

It has a lot of tanks.

Again June and Stuart played both sides. In the first June's British were pinned against their baseline  by an aggressive German assault and suffered a lot of casualties. In the second game Stuart was able to push teh British forward and attack the airfield.

Once again I forget who won what in terms of games. The margin of victory when the scores were aggregated was pretty close though. The game was good fun, with lots of swirling tank action, and the impassable escarpments causing some problems with retreats.

So a great evening, even if I didn't get to play. 

Waterloo

It's been almost two weeks since I posted here!

I have been managing a small amount of gaming. It's mostly been Memoir '44 because, at the moment, I find I am enjoy playing a lot of Memoir '44. But otherwise a combination of family, illness and a slight promotion at work have contrived to keep me too busy to manage much else in the way of gaming.

However last night being the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, Catherine and I had a couple of games of W1815. We each had a go at playing as Napoleon and Wellington, and I can report that I lost both games. 

In the first my Allies were bombarded by the Grand Battery and simply couldn't shift it. Attempts to relive Wellington with the Prussians were stymied by the energetic Lobau. Allied morale quickly collapsed and the French scored an easy win.

In the second game an energetic French attack scored plenty of successes, but at the cost of considerable casualties. With the Allied morale looking wobbly I took a gamble of ignoring the Prussians and went for one last push against the Allied line instead. It didn't work and the Prussians capturing Plancenoit put paid to the French army.

Daylight Robbery

We played a three-player game of What A Cowboy last night. Stuart surprised us with a pile of terrain and table clutter he'd printed and painted, so we filled the board with as much of it as possible.  With Caesar's flat-roofed buildings what we ended up with was something that looked like a town on the New Mexico/Virginia border. But we went with it.

The large building in the centre of the table was a railway station and in the railway station was a bag of money ripe for the stealing. Four desperados led by the infamous 'Scar' Johnson strolled into town to collect it. From left to right they were Tom English (Greenhorn), 'Scar' Johnson (Gunslinger), The Orinoco Kid (Shootist) and Mario Gonzales (Shootist, with a rifle).

The law was waiting for them in the person of Sheriff Collins, a gunslinger with a shotgun.

And running from the other side of town was hid daughter Betsy, the town deputy and a Legend.

I set up the game to try, once again, forces with disparate numbers but also to have a Legend on the table and a rifle. Spoiler: the rifle never got used.

Initial moves by the robbers; in the foreground you can see The Orinoco Kid, in the middle is 'Scar' Johnson and barely visible in teh enclosure at the top of the picture is Tom English.

The animals were just for show and had no effect on the game.

The station. The bag of money is inside the big building, on the first floor.

Sheriff Collins popped out of hiding and blasted Tom English with his shotgun, inflicting a nasty wound.

A second shot saw the robber out of action, with a face full of buckshot.

Mario Gonzalez moved up with The Orinoco Kid. They would operate as a close pair for the rest of the gunfight.

In blasting Tom English the Sheriff now found himself caught in the open. 'Scar' Johnson punished this mistake with two shots which down the lawman with a fatal gut-shot.

However Betsy Collins had come up from behind the station and drew a bead on The Orinoco Kid and Mario Gonzalez, forcing them to duck for cover.

But all it did was pin them; she couldn't inflict any real damage on them.

Meanwhile Scar had made it into the station and had grabbed the money.

Betsy was obliged to use up her legendary supply of Bonanza tokens to zip past The Kid and Mario to try and catch Scar before he escaped.

She chased him down, and pinned him. But now she was out of ammo and had to spend critical amounts of time reloading.

Mario Gonzalez caught up with her and shot her in the back, seriously wounding her.

The Orinoco Kid finished her off.

So a convincing win for the bad guys who were able to bring their numbers to bear against the two officers of the law. No matter how high a grade a gunfighter is, they are as easy to shoot down as a novice, with only the ability to get the jump on your opponents a couple of times each game able to save them. 

Here's some photos Caesar took. He ran Scar and Tom English, whilst Stuart ran The Orinoco Kid and Mario Gonzalez. I ran the law.

Tom English pinned by Sheriff Collins.

Gonzalez and The Orinoco Kid

The station, with some civilians idling outside it.

Scar shoots the Sheriff (but he didn't shoot the deputy).

Betsy Collins stalks Scar.

Thanks to Caesar and Stuart for a fun game, and especially to Stuart for the lovely additions to our Wild West terrain and figure collection.

Boardgames

For one reason or another I haven't had much chance to do much miniatures gaming at home recently, which has obviously impacted the number of posts here. That said, Mrs Kobold and I are still generally playing boardgames of some kind on a Wednesday evening. Bananagrams has been a popular choice, but not really worth blogging about (aside from my propensity for winning it). 

However last night I had a yearning to play Memoir '44 (I've read a couple of WWII-related books recently) so we got that on the table for teh first time in a while.

I dug out a starter scenario I'd got off the 'net and hadn't played before - the June 1940 capture of Fort Capuzzo on the Libya/Egypt border.

The scenario doesn't have too many special rules - the British have a heavy tank unit, whilst the Italians get a heroic leader. However we added in the British and Italian nationality rules and also the Western Desert overrun combat change as well.

Anyway we played it through twice, swapping sides after the first game. I played the British in the first game and managed a strong attack on my left which pushed the Italians off the hills, and chewed up Catherine's attempts to reinforce them. However she managed a counter-attack on her left that saw me lose a couple of units, so I only won 4-3.

We swapped sides ...

I consolidated my defence and managed to get plenty of retreat results in combats to throw Catherine's British back. I also got the heroic leader into action as quickly as possible. However despite managing to inflict more losses in terms of actual figures on the British than Catherine had, I spread them across too many units and wasn't destroying enough to get medals. Catherine attacked strongly in the centre and picked up a 4-2 win, to win 7-6 on aggregate. 

A fun scenario.

We have also been playing Fire & Stone, an interesting boardgame about the 1683 siege of Vienna. 

It's heavily card-driven, and very much a race against time for the Ottomans who have a number of objectives to capture before teh Polish relief-force turns up. I don't think we've quite got the tactics sorted yet; in the two games we've played the Ottomans have pretty much failed to break through the first line of defences thanks to an extremely aggressive Austrian defence.

As you can see, it's a lovely looking game.

Monsters!

I played Galleys & Galleons last night. June has specifically requested a game with sea-monsters, so I added them into the mix.

I set up a fantasy(ish) encounter; a flotilla of Dwarven ironclads against The infamous Ivory Towers of Balnibarbi. 

The Ivory Towers. Each has its own unique weapon system. The larger one is the flagship. June played these.

The Dwarves. The smaller ironclads had turreted guns whilst the larger one had a formidable broadside and one or two other tricks up its sleeve.

Both sides also had an 'allied' creature. The Dwarves had a massive, if somewhat slow-witted, sea-monster.

Balnibarbi had an octopus.

The sea-monsters were moved as a separate command (so each side was effectively two flotillas). In addition both sea-monsters were treacherous, which means that they could possibly change sides. So they were unreliable allies and best kept at a safe distance.

June saw the Dwarves moving slowly under steam power and set her whole force over to eliminate the sea-monster before it combined with its 'allies'.

Her lead ship was equipped hard-fighting automata that made it powerful in boarding. They attacked teh monster and quickly injured it.

The monster submerged.

The Dwarven vessels reached firing range and opened up, inflicting no damage at all.

The monster had been forced to surface  and rammed one of the Ivory Towers (which was equipped with a fire-thrower). It did quite a bit of damage.

But it was now hemmed in by all of the Ivory Towers and hit by gunnery from the flagship ...

... followed by a ram from the Ivory Tower equipped with .. a ram.

Meanwhile the octopus had been sneaking up on the Dwarves, who dispatched their flagship to deal with it. Initially the Dwarvan vessel attacked the octopus with depth charges, but soon the ship and the creature met in close combat. The octopus had the edge in the first round, but the flagship had doughty warriors on board (Drilled Soldiers) and got the better of the later rounds. 

The remainder of the Dwarven flotilla was now engaging the Ivory Towers. One passed close to the flagship and managed to damage its propulsion. However the return broadside did heavy damage despite the vessel's armour.

It struck - the first ship loss of the battle.

The Dwarven flagship finished off the octopus, which fled to the ocean depths, never to be seen again. But now the damaged flagship had to get back into the battle.

The Ivory Towers closed with the Dwarves, suffering raking hits as they did so.

But some judicious boarding saw another Dwarven vessel strike. And then the third.

This just left the flagship. The flame-thrower equipped Ivory Tower attacked it, but the flames couldn't get past the armour. 

However nothing could get past the All At Sea table which delivered in inevitable roll of '1' causing the Dwarven flagship to strike.

So despite taking a fair bit of damage the Ivory Towers of Balnibarbi won a comprehensive victory.

We got to try lots of special rules, although some aspects of the monsters' ability to submerge caused a little confusion. A fun game though, albeit disappointing since neither creature saw fit to change sides.

Edit: Forgot the stats!

Balnibarbi

1 x Flagship - Q3 C4 - Unorthodox, Flagship, Charismatic, Heavy Bow Chasers, High Castles, Razee, Reinforced Hull, Yare

3 x Ivory Towers - Q3 C3 - Unorthodox, Yare, High Castles and then one each of Ramming, Fiery Attack and Swashbucklers + Intimidating.

1 x Octopus - Q3 C3 - Creature, Submersible, Swashbucklers, Intimidating, Treacherous

Dwarves

1 x Flagship - Q3 C4 - Steam Engine, Ironclad, Bombs, Carronades, Drilled Soldiers, Flagship, Heavy Bow Chasers

3 x Ironclads - Q3 C3 - Steam Engine, Ironclad, Gun Turrets

1 x Sea-Monster - Q4 C5 - Creature, Submersible, Ramming, Treacherous