Wednesday, 22 March 2023
Lunchtime Hunts
Monday, 20 March 2023
More WW1 Naval
We played Broadside: Empires of Steel again on Thursday, with Ralph running what turned out to be an ambitiously large scenario for six players featuring escorted German battleships trying to break through converging British forces to bombard the English coast. We had twelve ships on each side.
I didn't get any pictures after these one. A lot more fire was exchanged but with six people, most of whom were unfamiliar with the game, things took longer to resolve than we hoped and we had to finish before things really got going.
You can read more about the game in my post from earlier this year.
Saturday, 18 March 2023
Nottomans 2
OK, so it's taken me over a week, but today I finished off the regular infantry for the Risk figure 'Turks' to oppose my GNW Russians and Swedes. I've just done four units for now; with the addition of some irregular infantry units, artillery and, of course, regular and irregular cavalry I'll have enough units for a decent Portable Wargame, One Hour Wargame or even small game of Black Powder.
So here they are.
Wednesday, 15 March 2023
The Gloomy Hill Of Uncle Vanya
I threw together a quick game of 'Rebels & Patriots' yesterday. Although I've got the rules and have played a few games at our club, it's not a game I've ever really set up at home, and playing games at home is really how I cement a set of rules into my head.
I used my GNW Swedes and Russian, and played the first scenario in the book, where the two sides are battling for control of a hill in the centre of the table.
The Russian musketry was devastating, whilst the Swedes never really got a chance to exploit their more aggressive close-range attacks. Making their cavalry units small probably didn't help either; I might have to rethink their force a little. And maybe more terrain and cover would have helped; there was little chance to organise an approach that wasn't going to get shot down.
However the game, although short, got me a feel for the mechanisms again, and I may set up another at some stage.
Monday, 13 March 2023
Nimitz
Over the past couple of years you may have picked up that I've been playing the occasional WWII naval game, but haven't really mentioned what the rules were. Well, I can now reveal that we were playing - or playtesting - Nimitz, the new set of rules from the prolific Sam Mustafa.
Here's teh setup. The Japanese have three cruisers in the centre and three destroyers to the right. The destroyers have to get to the top-left of the picture. On the left are the Americans - four cruisers and six destroyers
So no win for the Japanese, but to be honest I didn't expect one.
Nimitz is fast, fun and simple. Not a set of rules for rivet-counters, certainly, which is probably why I kind of like them. They only deal with gunnery actions. If you want planes and carrier actions then you play the campaign rules which (in fact) make up the vast majority of the book. And which I haven't read yet.