Boardgames

I realise it's been a bit quiet here the past week or so. Part of this is that I didn't get a game organised last Thursday, so there was no club game to report. The other part is that I haven't had any regular toy soldiers out at home for a while. But I have been gaming.

Last week Mrs Kobold and I broke out Battle Cry. We played the First Bull Run scenario through a couple of times, swapping sides after the first like you're supposed to. 

The Confederates won both times, but I did better than the Union than Catherine did, so I won overall. 

At the end of the week I found an interesting-looking Memoir '44 scenario for Kasserine. The Germans have to attack US positions through some fairly difficult terrain, but the US defences are fragmented, so if the Germans pick their targets carefully they can pull of a win. I played it twice and the Germans won both times. The first time was a convincing win thanks to two Armour Assault cards coming up  just as all of their tanks were in good positions. The second win was more of a slog, and the Americans came within a medal of winning, so a much closer game. 

And this weekend Catherine and I started another Flamme Rouge tour. This time we're doing the nine stages of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes. 

In fact we started on the same day they did. 

I'm playing red, Catherine is Blue, and we have two bot teams playing Black and White. 

We played the first two stages. I won the first race and picked up second place as well. Catherine didn't place, although we all got a good time.

The second stage. Aloy moved in to help. 

There were some tough sequences of climbs in this one and it split things up a bit at some points. 

Best I could manage in this stage was second place, whilst Catherine came first and third. Again, our times were exceptionally good.

So after two stages I'm ahead on Tour Points, but our overall times are equal. Still everything to play for. 

Ten Years Ago - August 2016

I seemed to have spent most of August 2016 refighting battles of the South American Wars of Liberation. I covered Chacabuco and Laguna Salada, as well as Tucuman, the subject of this month's retrospective post. It's also the first time I tried Neil Thomas's 'Simplicity In Practice' rules, which I still like, even if I haven't played them for a while.

Oh, and August 2016 was when I finally decided that I'd had enough with the cesspit that's The Miniatures Page. I was out of there. 

Anyway, here's a refight of the 1812 Battle of Tucuman, using my Liberated Hordes rules. 

The Battle of Tucuman

And it's also been a year since I started doing my Ten Year retrospective posts. 

A Complicated Man

We went to see 'The Odyssey' this weekend, and enjoyed it. 

And who doesn't go and see a film and feel inspired to put together some kind of game afterwards?

Now I did think that it would be possible to run a solo Galleys & Galleons game where a hero in a ship (or with a squadron of ships) has to cross a table dotted with hazards, and the rules would certainly allow that. It might not be a very interesting game, since the hazards would be static, but it has possibilities. 

However I ended up just setting up a straight galley fight using Galleys & Galleons. 

And then I fiddled with it slightly. Why not add some heroic elements?

So here we are. 

It's the Trojan War, or at least a version of it. The Trojans have sent a squadron of ships to harass the Greek supply lines. Agamemnon send Odysseus with the ships from Ithaca to intercept them.

Both sides had a single command consisting of a trireme flagship, four triremes and four biremes. All pretty standard so far. However I gave the Ithacans Odysseus in command, so his flagship counted as Charismatic, and had Expert Rowers. On the Trojan flagship was a priest of Poseidon, who counted as a Hydromancer. 

I set the terrain randomly (after laying an obligatory coastline), and it ended up with one small offshore island. Random positioning for the squadrons saw them approaching each other diagonally, with the Trojans being inshore. 

The Ithacans (foreground, in red) sent their biremes to the left of the island and the triremes to the right. The Trojans (green) had their triremes in the centre, with a pair of biremes covering each flank. 

Here's the position a couple of turns in. In both cases the flagship is to the rear of the triremes. 

The Trojan centre split, with some triremes going after the Ithacan biremes (top of picture) and others heading for an exposed trireme and bireme on the right. The priest of Poseidon used his power to drive back an Ithacan bireme. 

At the bottom right you can see the first attack of the game - a Trojan trireme rammed an Ithacan bireme scoring light damage.  

The Ithacan response was fast and deadly. Three triremes rowed fast and hard, ramming three enemy triremes. This heavily damaged one and crippled a third. 

Out on the Ithacan left one of their biremes rammed a Trojan bireme and took it after a short boarding action. It was rammed in turn, but survived. 

The Trojans struggled with activations and seemed to be pretty much paralysed. On teh next turn their flagship, now isolated, was rammed by three enemy vessels and reduced to matchwood. 

The Ithacans now began a simple process of mopping up. As with most of my galley fights I set the breakpoint at 50%, with a flagship counting as two ships. The Trojans had already lost four vessels on that basis. 

At the bottom right two Ithacan triremes attack a couple of Trojan counterparts. And to the left an Ithacan bireme finished off a crippled Trojan trireme, ending the action. 

So the Trojans lost four vessels including their flagship, and another was crippled. The Ithacans had a couple of vessels badly damaged, but that was it. Odysseus took no direct part in the battle, although his leadership bonus allowed his ships to do that effective initial strike that effectively saw the beginning of the end for the Trojans. 

It was a quick game, but I played it in bits whilst doing other things, so it filled in some time in a pleasant manner. I need to try more games with magic. 

The HOTT Misfits Tournament - Game 2

For Game 2 in my knockout tournament I went to the bottom of the brackets to select the first army in the second semi-final. So in this game Flash Gordon will take on the Weird WWII Soviets.

I got out the cloth and the armies but then Miller decided that he wanted to inspect the figures and playing area. 

I left him to it until the sun moved far enough that he was no longer interested in sitting on the board, then set up the game. Flash Gordon defended and the Soviet attack was split by an area of ruins. 

The Soviet centre advanced quickly, leaving their hordes to cover the flanks. Flash ordered teh Hawkmen and a rocket-ship forward on his left, whilst Queen Fria led her Frigians on a wide sweep on the right. 

At this point General Winter turned up for the Soviets.

Mongo's aerial force looked like the target to go for, as they rapidly closed on the Soviet right. 

Queen Fria led her riders in an attack on the Soviet left, destroying a horde. 

General Winter blasted the enemy rocket-ship out of the sky. 

But who is this defying the Soviet god? Why it's PRINCE VULTAN!!

He's just a flyer. But he locked General Winter into a frontal zone, making it harder for hm to go after the other, more vulnerable Hawkmen. 

Back to Queen Fria, whose warriors were carving their way through hordes on the Soviet left. 

General Winter attacked Vultan, supported by the Heroes Of Old Russia and, despite the odds (factor of 6 against a factor of 1) only managed to make the wily old bird recoil. 

This seemed to be too much for the icy general, who abandoned the Soviets.  

That was also a single PIP for the Soviet army, and they followed it for another. Meanwhile Flash leapt into action, attacking the ghostly Heroes Of Old Russia, supported by Vultan coming in ON THE FLANK!

The element of Heroes were destroyed. They're actually knights. 

Meanwhile Queen Fria polished off the last of the hordes on her flank.

The HOTT players amongst you will have now done the mats. With four hordes lost, and none returned (through lack of PIPs), a god having deserted them and now a knight destroyed, the Soviets were down 10AP. Their next loss would be fatal. 

Stalin took a desperate gamble. The Hero Of The Soviet Union (also not a hero, but actually a paladin) was sent forward to attack Flash and Barin, whilst the remaining Heroes Of Old Russia went in on teh flank. 

So this was it; a 50/50 combat that would see the Soviets lose if they failed, but see the enemy general lost if they won, buying them some breathing space. 

The Soviets lost. A shame, as Mongo fighting on without Flash would have been interesting, if frustrating, given how many aerials they have and how fragmented the army was. 

Anyway, Flash Gordon won 14-3. So a fairly decisive victory. The Soviets got completely wrong-footed by the fast flank attacks of Flash's army and, when in a position to counter, didn't get the PIPs. 

So the second semi-finalist has been determined.

The next game will be to determine who faces UNIT in the first semi-final. And it's a battle between two thoroughly evil armies as the Daleks take on The Weird Reich. 

The HOTT Misfits Tournament - Draw And Game 1

Back in December I ran an eight army knockout HOT tournament based around matched pairs from literature. I finished it a few weeks ago and the army of Helium, from Burroughs' Martian series won it.

Anyway, we've just started rewatching Doctor Who from its 1963 beginnings - lots of episodes and stories I've not seen before - and I was reminded that I had Dalek and U.N.I.T. armies for HOTT. As HOTT armies go they are not 'traditional' fantasy in nature, and it got me thinking of teh other unconventional armies I have. Let's call them Misfits. 

When my list got to eight I thought "Why not get them out and have another tournament?".

So that's what I'm doing.

The eight armies are:

Daleks and U.N.I.T
My three Weird WW2 armies - The Weird Reich, the Soviets and the Americans
Flash Gordon And The Warriors Of Mongo
Walkers Filibusters (From the 1986 Alex Cox film 'Walker')
The Cyber Samurai

All bar the last army have appeared here before. I don't think the Cyber-Samurai have had an outing since I emigrated. They are a sci-fi Samurai army that I bought many, many years ago, painted for my wife to use in a tournament and which have been mostly forgotten since. I should showcase them at some stage.

Anyway, I did a random draw for the first round of matchups and got the following brackets:

So the Cyber Samurai ended up in the first game, facing the might of U.N.I.T. under the heroic Brigadier and featuring a mysterious time-traveller in a blue box. 

Here are the Cyber Samurai: three knights (including the general), four blades, two shooters, a behemoth and two lurkers. 

U.N.I.T. defended with a hero general (the Brigadier), a sneaker (the Doctor), artillery, a rider and six shooters. 

With a lake in their deployment area the Cyber Samurai had to move forward and shuffle their line a little. U.N.I.T. advanced to bring their strong missile ability into play. 

U.N.I.T. mortars drove off the enemy's Oni battlesuits (behemoth).

The samurai kept advancing, and were soon in range. 

U.N.I.T. opened fire and broke up the enemy line. 

As is inevitable in situations like this, that was the moment that PIPs dried up for the Cyber Samurai. For two bounds they were only able to make piecemeal advances and attacks. 

Even so, their blades managed to push back the opposition. 

Unfortunately the samurai attacking the mortars were destroyed. 

And their line was broken up even more. The Doctor and some U.N.I.T. troopers on the right swung around to threaten the enemy flank. 

A rush by the samurai in the centre saw some U.N.I.T. troopers cut down. 

Unit sent in their mobile reserve in a Land Rover. 

And the loss of the blade on their left had left their general exposed. The Brigadier rushed forward and, supported by some troopers, destroyed the enemy general

So that was it. U.N.I.T. picked up a 4g-2 win. Not getting PIPs when you're within shooting range of an enemy is never going to be good, and that's what did for the Cyber Samurai, who were unable to exploit the strength of their blades to cut a hole in the enemy line.

So the Cyber Samurai are out of the tournament. But we'll hear from them again. And U.N.I.T. go through to the semi-finals.