Review of 2024

It's been a funny old year. Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will have noticed that the number of posts have been very much reduced this past year, and that reflects a much lower level of gaming. There's been a number of reasons for that; changes at work, lots of stuff going on at home, and some personal issues as well. Most of May was spent on a trip back to the UK, although to be fair that wasn't entirely game-free. All in all I've simply found it harder to focus on gaming projects and in consequence, this blog has suffered.

But let's be positive. What have I managed this year? We changed how the weekly games were organised at our club, and for me that has meant that in many ways it's been easier to organise games of the things I enjoy there. It also means that we've played a lot of Gaslands as that is a very popular club game. It's got to the stage where I think that when it's scheduled we will have to allow for two games being put on rather than one. I also put on games of other old favourites; Galleys & Galleons, naturally, but also Palaeo Diet and, obviously, HOTT. Spandau & Lewis saw a resurgence and, thanks to that, I spent some time reworking the rules and trying out some new scenario ideas as well. The rules themselves are in a very good place and I feel should be uploaded. I am looking at the best way of writing up some of the scenario options. I did finish painting all of my 1/600th WW1 aircraft too. I expanded my Palaeo Diet setup to include dinosaurs and some 17th century adventurers, as well as some of the more esoteric encounters from the Pulp supplement.

A couple of new (or newish) games featured this year. I was introduced to the bizarre but strangely compelling world of Turnip 28. And I had a go at For King & Parliament which turned out to be less complicated that I'd originally thought.

Whilst gaming projects did suffer, I did find myself playing a fair few boardgames, most of which activity doesn't get blogged here. My boardgames highlight was when my wife and I played out the entire 2024 Tour de France using Flamme Rouge. After 21 races our scores were within a point of each other's; a truly epic finish to a great series of games.

I don't know what nest year will bring in terms of projects. Something new has been proposed and a couple of us will be doing a little bit of painting an modelling for that. But if I can simply plod on with the games I enjoy in 2025 I think I will be doing well.

Thanks to everyone who has read things here over the past year, especially those who take the time to comment. As ever my review of the year takes the form of highlighting the most popular post (in terms of views) from each month.

January

A Necromancer In Wonderland - I haven't played as much HOTT this year as I have in previous years, but I did manage another knockout campaign early on. This post wasn't part of it, but did feature one of my quirky armies against one of the more conventional ones.

February

Another HOTT Knockout - Part Five - My games of HOTT covered a couple of months and this post saw the end of the knockout campaign I played. In reality one one nation won; I just assumed that the survivors would withdraw exhausted after a few battles in which no-one was able to take any new territory.

March

The Eagle Of The Aegean - As I posted above, I got Spandau & Lewis out again this year, and managed a fair bit of work on the rules and, especially, scenario options. I played games featuring big bombers and balloon-busting, but this game saw a fairly conventional mission to shoot down a spotter on an obscure WW1 front.

April

Lion Rampant - Once again I played in the annual Lion Rampant tournament in Sydney (using my fantary dwarves, it has to be said). This post covers one of our pre-competition rehearsal games. Veteran archers, or cossbowmen with pavises seem to be a popular choice at the moment.

May

HOTT in Coventry - In May I went back to the UK; my first time there in 16 years. A lot of time was spent catching up with family and friends, but I did fit in a few games. The Scimitar Club put on an evening of HOTT for me, and I finally got to meet (and lose a game of HOTT to) regular blog-reader Martin Smith!

June

Jousting - Whilst in the UK I went to a jousting display, at Blenheim Palace of all places. It inspired me to get out my own jousting game and do some more work on it.

July

Thursday HOTT - Once again HOTT was the top post for a month. This time I was playing at the club and teaching one of our newer members.

August

International Naval Wargames Day 2024 - For International Naval wargames Day this year I reran an action between the Chilean vessel Lautaro and the Spanish frigate Esmeralda. I used Galleys & Galleons of course.

September

Turnip 28 - Back in July I taught new club member June how to play HOTT. In September she returned the favour by introducing me to the weird but fun post-apocalyptic nonsense that is Turnip 28. I've even started building a force for it but, like all of my projects, it has stalled due to my usual painting/modelling inertia.

October

In The Air In 1918 - I had Spandau & Lewis out again in October and we played a great little game set in 1918. As I've stated before, I'm a big fan of the earlier war stuff, so this was something of a departure for me. Well-armed planes with good speed and maneuverability were a real treat to use.

November

Midgard Heroic Battles - Midgard is the new shiny thing when it comes to fantasy rules, so a couple of people at the club put on a game to see how they played. They proved to be interesting and I think there are plans to look at them some more.

December

Flight Of The Clontarf - And so the year ends with another game of Galleys & Galleons. I'd played a few games this year set in or around the English Civil war, and this small action, which saw a privateer evading a government blockade, was one of them.

Thank you to everyone who has followed and encouraged this blog. This year probably hasn't been its finest but I hope there have at least been some posts you have found informative or inspiring.

Bot Players For 'Flamme Rouge: BMX'

Flamme Rouge has a number of rules for bot players/teams, hat allow you to play the game solo, or with higher team counts than the number of players. I thought that Flamme Rouge BMX could do with the same; it means that my wife and I can play with all four riders on the board even when there's just the two of us.

We did try with the bot riders drawing tokens. On the first two track sections they would always pick the second highest one they drew and then the highest on the final two sections. They add exhaustion tokens as normal. This worked, but it was a fiddle having the two extra bags in play and it slowed things down. I decided that something more in keeping with the fast nature of the game was in order.

You Will Need: A single D6

Any players select their speed tokens as normal, and then reveal them. Move the bikes in the usual order. When you come to move a bot bike, roll a D6. If the score is 1-5 then the bike moves that many spaces. If the score is 6 then the bike moves at the speed of the highest token played by any live player.

eg I play a 4 and my wife plays a 2. The bot rolls a 6, so gets to move 4 spaces.

Resolve exhaustion as normal. If a bot gets one or more exhaustion tokens then put them next to the bike on the board. When a bike with an exhaustion token moves it discards one of them and moves one space less than the roll dictates (to a minimum of 1)

eg A bot bike has two exhaustion tokens. It rolls a 4. It discards one token and moves 3 spaces.

eg A bot bike has an exhaustion token. It rolls a 6 and the highest player token is a 3. The bot moves 2 spaces as its normal speed from the roll counts as 3.

On the Downhill board a bot simply gets a +3 to its roll, and then subtracts one if they have exhaustion. If they roll a 6 then they copy the highest player token played and add 3.

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a 6. The highest player token is a 2. The bot moves 5 spaces.

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a 6. A player is also on the downhill board and has played a 3 and a 2. Their 3 is the highest player speed token placed that turn. So the bot moves 3 + 3 = 6 spaces.

I have played multiple solo games with this system against three bot bikes. I consistently come second; one of the bikes always pulls off an epic finish and just pips me at the post.

Christmas Games

I hope you all had a great Christmas! Ours was exhausting; my wife's birthday the day before always makes it hectic and, once again, we hosted my son and his family as well which, whilst nice, is a lot of work for us and makes for a very full and very noisy house.

Our guests had to leave late in the afternoon, though, which left the three of us time to play some games. And a few new games have entered our house this year, mostly through Catherine getting some. We played two of them yesterday.

The first is Nekojima, which is a tricky dexterity game with a peripheral cat theme (always an excuse to buy a game in this house). It can be played co-cooperatively or competitively. On a small island with four districts you are in charge of erecting the power-poles. On each turn you get given one or two districts via a dice roll, and must then place one of the 21 power pole pieces between those districts. Each piece consists of two wooden dowels linked by a piece of string. You can stack them, but the strings can't touch either each other, the poles or the ground. If it falls down, you lose.

The added wrinkle is that sometimes you must also hang cats from the strings.

There's a couple of cats in play here, and you can also see the variety of poles on offer. 

At the bottom of the picture you can see the scoring mechanisms; as you draw coloured cubes from the back (which tell you what coloured string you have to place) you put them on a grid. Four cubes complete a level and there are seven levels. The best we managed in four games was Level Four.

Two seconds after this picture was taken the whole structure collapsed.

Catherine also got an escape room game (we played one a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed it) and Hive, a two-player asbtract game with an insect vibe (it has bees in it, which is why I got it for her).

I got two games. One is 'No Thanks', a family card game I played and enjoyed at our work Christmas party (because who doesn't play games at their work Christmas party?). The other was Flamme Rouge: BMX.

This is a children's version of Flamme Rouge, but has the advantage of being smaller and quicker than the original. Instead of professional tour cyclists you are a bunch of kids racing around a backyard on your BMX bikes. The course is a simple circuit, although the track pieces are double-sided and have a basic track on one side and a variant on the other. There's an optional ramp you can add too to get a movement boost. Instead of cards you draw three numbered tokens from a bag and choose one for the turn (which is then discarded for the rest of the game). 

Slipstreaming in this game is random, with a dice being rolled at the end of the turn. You might get the basic one-space Flamme Rouge slipstream, but there's also the possibility of no slipstreaming that turn (bad) or being able to do it across two spaces (good). For a game aimed at children this is a nice mechanism that helps anyone who has fallen badly behind to catch up.

This game lacks the depth and versatility of the full version but it's a great quick game to take on holiday and play in a pub or whilst camping.

I did get some figures as well, for a club project a couple of us are looking at for next year. We'll see how those go, given my current lack of interest in painting anything.

I hope you Christmas saw lots of gaming goodies added to your pile.

Fight For The Fjords

Ralph put of a WWII naval game for us on Thursday, which was the last club meet of the year. He aimed for something different and mildly spectacular and it looked great. Three tables in an unusual kinked configuration represented a Norwegian fjord, whilst the ships were 1/700th kits covering destroyers and a single light cruiser. The rules were Nimitz.

A force of twelve allied destroyers in three columns are steaming at full speed into the fjord.

At the other end is a German heavy-water storage facility. The destroyers have to shell it. The Germans has three destroyers and a light cruiser to defend it with.

On the middle table was  fifth German ship, a guardship (also a destroyer). So the whole action would be fought with 4" guns and torpedoes, aside from the mighty 6" guns on the light cruiser.

One of the issues that the British had was that there were a lot of ships in a confined space. Movement became an issue of traffic management. Our plan was to send two columns in at high speed to engage the enemy ships, one at a slower speed to act as a mopping-up reserve and a third to head for the target and bombard it.

I was part of the British force. We onto  the central table virtually unmolested; a couple of minor its from the guardship and nothing more. The guardship took a pasting from concentrated fire though. No surprise there!

The rest of the Germans engaged the lead British vessels.

The light cruise Konigsberg ended up far to close to the cliffs of the fjord, cutting down its manuever options and leaving it shooting effectively but unable to turn into the main British force. Amazingly none of teh British destroyers could get a clear torpedo shot at it!

The German destroyers didn't last long. They sank one British ship, but were quickly wiped out.

With the light cruiser too far out of the fight to be useful the British now had a clear run at the target, and we called the game, claiming a British victory.

Thanks to Ralph for a fun, and surprisingly quick, game. Nimitz really rattles along when you know what you are doing.

With some time to spare I played a quick game of 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' with Daniel, who hadn't played before. He wanted 'one of those guys with a net' so ended up with the retiarius Cupido. I took a classic opponent, the secutor Astinax.

Daniel controlled the game early on as I couldn't find an opening against the speedy retiarius.. I also got lightly wounded, which slowed me down somewhat.

On the plus side, whilst I couldn't get in a decent attack, Daniel found that I had ways of blocking every effective attack he made against me. To be fair several times that involved throwing sand at my foe (much to the crowd's displeasure), but it got me out of a tight fix a couple of times.

At one stage I got knocked down, but Cupido still couldn't finish me off. I even managed some rolling evades and ended up on the other side of the arena before finally being able to stand up.

And from that point on I found my stride. Astinax started to get some decent attacks together and I whittled down Daniel's gladiator, eventually striking him down for a win. The crowd were in my favour by that stage but he rolled well for missio and Cupido was spared.

So two fun games  to finish my club wargaming year!

Eques

I got my gladiators out the other day (for what I think is the first time this year) so that I could try some ideas I had for running the Eques type in 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers'. I first tried them out last year but wasn't entirely satisfied with how they played.

I'm still looking at the exact nature of their setup but I have abandoned the idea of them throwing their spears (indeed one piece I read suggested that they didn't even have spears if, indeed, they even fought on horseback). I have tried to emphasis the speed and mobility of being on horseback for the mounted phase of the combat, and then run with my idea from the previous post of running the foot version as a more lightly armoured secutor.

So here they are ready to go; Habilis white the red shield and Maternus with the red tunic.

Habilis got in an early attack which missed.

Maternus wheeled and his attack unhorsed Habilis.

I stuck to the rules I'd used before for dealing with the mounted and foot phase of the fight; they would fight on horseback until one was defeated or until one was knocked down. In the event of a knock down the turn ends, the knocked down gladiator stands up in the space he was in and his opponent can be placed in any adjacent space. In addition the opponent gets one point of Crowd Favour. The fight then continues on foot.

Maternus pushed his advantage and wounded Habilis.

There followed a free-wheeling fight around the arena before Habilis managed to get in a powerful blow that took down Maternus in one go!

The secutor stats felt far better and made for a more mobile fight on foot. The mounted phase didn't really last long enough for me to get a feel for whether I liked the new setup, so I will have to try a few more games. One thing I have realised is that so long as I don't make any of the abilities too overpowered I don't have to worry a great deal about balance, since these gladiators will only fight each other.

Christmas Meet-Up

As is now traditional the Wollongong Wargamers skipped one of our December wargames meets in order to get together at the Woonona Bulli RSL for an evening of food, drink, trivia and chat.

Hawaiian shirts were required. Not everyone got the memo.

Ralph did the quiz this year. It was heavily based on the games that have been played at the club over the past twelve months and was written multiple-choice answers. It's all getting a bit sophisticated these days. Peter and I had the joint top scores, but Peter won the tie-break question an so got to take home a big bag of flock and the coveted Golden KV2 trophy. He also has to set next year's quiz. I got a bag of dice as a consolation prize. 

After the quiz, and after we had reviewed our game-planning policy for the year, we played ... Top Trumps! The last time I did that was some 45 years ago. Caesar had bought a new pack just for the evening. It was based on tanks, but we never got to grips with how the ratings worked. Back when I played it you would have stats like Speed, Weight, Armour and so forth. Actual measurable numbers. This deck had ratings (Protection Rating, Firepower Rating and so forth) which just seem to have been pulled out of the designer's bum. 

So, anyway, this is me complaining about how Top Trumps were better when I were a lad.

And here's a picture of me playing a master-stroke!

Thanks to all who came for a great evening. We have one regular club-meet left in the year.

Pictures by Caesar and Ralph.

Flight Of The Clontarf

I played a couple of quick games of Galleys & Galleons on Sunday, running the Blockade Runner scenario and setting it around the post-ECW Isles of Scilly. And Irish privateer, Clontarf, is attempting to escape an anchorage in the Isles, and three government vessels are poised to intercept.

The ship stats:

Clontarf - Q3 C1 - Lateen Rig, Yare, Razee, Shallow Draft, Swashbucklers

Verity, Providence - Q3 C3 - Galleon Rigged
Abigail - Q3 C1 - Lateen Rig, Yare, Razee, Shallow Draft

Here's the Clontarf, ready to make her run for safety.

An early shift of wind disadvantaged the Irish vessel. Here's the line of government ships - Verity, Providence and Abigail

Clontarf tried to dodge past Providence.

Providence opened fire with a steady long-range broadside. Clontarf was damaged and holed. The hole severely restricted the ship's ability to turn.

However Clontarf was past Providence, who would now have to make a slow turn to resume pursuit.

But Abigail was coming up fast and even Verity added in some long-range fire. Clontarf was taking a battering.

Unable to manuever easily Clontarf fell to a stern-rake from Abigail, and sank.

I set it up again. However tis time I increased Clontarf's Q to 2, and dropped the Swashbucklers trait as improved boarding isn't really much use in a scenario that involves trying to run away.

Here's the line of blockaders.

Clontarf made an initial run for some rocks, hoping to cut down the ability of the opposing vessels to manuever.

Abigail cut the Irish vessel off and Providence was coming up rather too fast as well.

Some swift sailing from Clontarf saw it inflict a damaging rake on Abigail, which shot away her tiller.

But a broadside from Providence inflicted the same damage on Clontarf.

Abigail moved to cut Clontarf off from escaping.

Clontarf tried to slip past but was grappled and boarded, losing the first round of combat.

Clontarf cut grapples, but the delay had allowed Providence to turn back into action, and another shot from the larger vessel saw Clontarf holed and seriously damaged.

A final shot from Abigail sank the Irish privateer.

To be honest the low C value of Clontarf meant that it was very vulnerable to being shot at, making it's task fairly difficult. You really do have to avoid the two larger ships and a rake from the nimble Abigail is always a possibility as well. Giving Clontarf a Q of 2 for the second run certainly helped though.

It was good to get toys on the table at home though. It's something I've not, for a variety of reasons, done for a while.