Time Ladies

I don't normally do non-gaming posts, but this was too good not to share. Consider this inspiration for role-players or enterprising figure designers.

Gladys, aka Rocketsurgery re-imagines all eleven (at the time of writing) incarnations of The Doctor as women:

I love how the first two are in black and white.

Originals HERE

First Game Of Aeronef

Just Geoff and I turned out for a game this Thursday. Geoff had promised Aeronef, and Aeronef he delivered. Produced by Wessex Games it's a game of Victorian sci-fi aerial combat, with giant anti-gravity warships and dirigibles battling it out over the world's skies.

Geoff has a great little collection of vessels for the game, mostly made up of the models from GDW's 'Sky Galleons of Mars', as well as dirigibles made from plastic aircraft kit drop-tanks and bombs. It turns out that although he's had the models for years, and the game for nearly as long, he'd never actually played it before, so it was a bit of a learning experience for both of us. Fortunately Aeronef is an easy game to learn, and we picked it up quickly.

We used some optional damage allocation rules. In the original game damage to systems such as guns and speed is strictly proportional to hull damage. With the system we used a card is drawn for each point of hull damage, and reductions applied to systems according to what is drawn. This makes the process a little more unpredictable.

Anyway, we played two of the scenarios from the basic rules.

In the first Geoff took a British gunboat patrol attempting to stop a force of German dirigibles from travelling the length of the table.

Here are the dastardly Hun:

The British intercept, putting themselves well and truly in the way:

Lots of fighting, but the British firepower wasn't enough to take down all of the German vessels:

Actually part of the problem was that we played the optional damage rules we were using incorrectly, and the Germans probably lasted longer than they should have done.

The second scenario saw a British squadron scrambling to prevent French vessels from bombing a series of shore installations. The French were played by dirigibles (although most of their ships weren't).

Here's the peaceful shoreline of Old Blighty. The British are assembled in the bottom corner:

Here come the French! The British have scrambled to intercept them:

Two lines of gunboats fight it out. The smaller French vessels suffered badly:

A French bomber moves in on its target. This was happening all along the coast - the scenario seems unbalanced in that it doesn't seem possible for the British to take off and get into a position where they can inflict enough damage to stop the French before the French reach their targets and unload their bombs:

Despite the imbalance of the second scenario (for which we came up with a couple of solutions), we had a great couple of games. Thank you to Geoff for organising everything.

I have to say I really enjoyed Aeronef, and will probably buy it fairly soon, as assembling forces for it looks relatively straightforward.

Army Showcase - The Inca

As promised, a showcase of one of my Mesoamerican armies. I though I'd do the Inca first, as I have a bit of a soft spot for them. It was inspired by a list created by John Garvey, but I think he picked up some of my ideas and added them to his list, so I can't remember where my contributions start and his end any more. John's notes on the Inca HOTT army can be found HERE.

My army is as follows:

1 x Behemoth General (Sapa Inca in Litter) @ 4AP
1 x Cleric (Huaca on Litter) @ 3AP
1 x Hero (Aucakpussak Veterans) @ 4AP
4 x Blades (Cuzco Regiments) @ 2AP
4 x Hordes (Highland Levy/Subject Troops) @ 1AP
1 x Lurker (Amazonian Indians) @ 1AP

The figures are all, as far as I can remember, from Naismith Designs (sold via Navwar). They aren't very exciting figures, and were small 15mm even back in the 1980s, so are positively tiny in these days of scale-creep.

Here's the Sapa Inca in his litter, with a bodyguard. He could be run as a Hero, but a Behemoth is much more fun:

The Aucakpussak are veteran soldiers who lead the rest of the army by example. Hero might be a little extreme for them; a couple of Warband would probably produce much the same effect given the structure of the rest of the army. However it does give the army some much needed punch. This is a case where the Hero element represents a group of warriors, rather than a single powerful individual with a few followers:

A sacred mummy on a litter - the huaca - provides spiritual support to the army as a Cleric. Aesthetically it's a great figure. From a practical point of view it helps defend the Behemoth and the Hero from enemy Magicians:

The core of an Inca army were the Cuzco regiments; the Auquiconna, Mancopchincuzcos, Ayllucuzcos and Cacacuzco. These were regular troops, and are classed as Auxilia in DBA/DBM. Their classification in HOTT is tricky; they are really too mobile for Blades or Spears and too regular for Warband. Given that the majority of their 'historical' opponents are foot-based armies, though, Blades gives them the right 'elite' status. This also ties in with the fact that the Inca were more disciplined than their historical foes, who would mostly be represented as Warband or Shooters.

There are four elements in the army, one for each of the regiments. here are two of them:

And here are the other two. As you can see, I have given each a distinctive 'uniform':

The Hordes represent highland levy (dismissed as 'mosquitos' by some Spanish accounts), or troops from subject nations. I made them look regular by mostly using a single type of figure on each element, to give the impression of ally regiments. Here are some warriors with halberd:

And some with javelins:

This element has a mixture of slings and wooden swords:

And finally some ordinary spearmen:

Lurking in the bad going are some irregualr allies as Lurkers, represented by these Amazonian indians:

Here are the Cuzco Regiments, forming the centre of the army. A simple chequerboard pattern created the illusion of the rather geometric Inca style of clothing decoration:

The Hordes. Their clothing is less ornate than the Cuzco regiments:

In contrast the Heroes and the Sapa Inca himself have clothing with more complex patterns and a greater colour pallette:

The huaca and the Amazonian Indians:

The whole army arrayed. The stronghold is a resin model I picked up at a UK show some years ago. I use it for most of my Mesoamerican armies, and some others as well - the Ophidians, for example.

I have to say that I don't really have any tactics sorted for this army yet. It's not a mobile army, nor does it have a lot of 'killer' elements. However the Blades, Behemoth and Cleric can effectively blunt an enemy frontal assault, whilst the Hordes extend the line allowing the enemy flanks to be overlapped once the force of their attack is spent. The Hero can be used to plug gaps or deal with rogue Aerials.

HOTT In Mesoamerica

Who doesn't have Mesoamerican HOTT armies? All those feathers, and troops with exotic names. What's not to like?

Well, maybe it's just me then. I have three of them. Four if you count the Spanish interlopers. They were cobbled together from a mix of history and legend, and are similar (but not identical) to the ones in the rule-book.

It's been a while since any of them have been out, so I thought I'd give them an airing this afternoon. I played three games, with the winner of each game staying on the field to face a new army.

Since they are my least-used Mesoamerican army, I got the Maya out first, and they faced a force of Conquistadors.

The Conquistadors lined up in front of their camp. They have supernatural assistance from an angel and Saint James.

The Mayans are ready to charge. Their rank and file warriors are Warband:

The mighty Tekum Uman (an Aerial Hero general) flies ahead of his army and engages the Spanish right:

He defeats the angel (a mere Flyer):

Meanwhile the Spanish Artillery kills some warriors:

Tekum Uman defeats St. James (a Paladin):

Then he leads his army into the main Spanish line:

And it's all over for the invaders - victory to the Maya:

The Mayans stayed on, and found themselves attacking an Aztec army. The Aztecs had numbers on their side, including eight Horde elements:

Once again Tekum Uman led his troops in a charge:

Poor PIPs and Aztec magic disrupted their advance, though:

A fierce battle begins, with Tekum Uman leading the attack into the Aztec Jaguar Knights (Blades):

But the Aztec numbers begin to tell as they begin to surround the fierce Mayan warriors:

The Mayans are totally surrounded on the Aztec left:

Tekum Uman is ensorcelled by the Aztec warrior-priests (Magician), and his army flees in confusion:

There really are lots of warriors in the Aztec army. They stayed on, defending once again against an attack by ...

... the Inca!

Both armies had abysmal PIPs, and advanced very slowly:

The Aztec left ventured into some rocky ground, and was ambushed by some of the Inca's indian allies (Lurkers):

The powerful Inca centre, led by the Great Inca himself in a litter (Behemoth), contacts the Aztec centre. There is much fighting:

The Aztec general (Blade) falls to his Inca counterpart, giving the Inca the victory:

An aerial view of the end of the third battle:

I may take some pictures of, and showcase, these armies at some stage.

A Bit Of A Saga

I played Saga for the first time tonight and really enjoyed it. At heart it is, of course, a Dark Ages skirmish game featuring buckets of dice. But it's the battle-boards and the tactical options they offer that really make it.

Three of us had a go, with Caesar adjudicating (as he was the only one who had read the rules), new member Tim taking an Anglo-Danish force and myself playing some Vikings. We played with 4 point forces; a Warlord, two lots of Warriors and two lots of Hearthguard. The Anglo-Danes had a unit of men with great-axes, whilst the Vikings had the inevitable beserkers. Geoff provided the figures, some of which were not entirely accurate. Indeed some of the beserkers were fantasy werewolves, but they looked the part.

Here's the table - Vikings in the foreground, Anglo-Danes in the background:

The Vikings Warlord, and some warriors:

The Anglo-Danes seemed to have deployed in some disarray:

Beserkers, feeling a little tired. In fact they sat in this position for most of the game:

The first combat of the game. The Anglo-Danish warriors formed a column to move past a set of ruins, and the Vikings hit it hard:

They hit it this hard - six out of eight warriors killed, for only one casualty in return:

Hooray for Heimdal, and the extra Attack Dice it gave the Vikings:

The game continued like that for a few turns; we both picked off an opposing unit each turn. By the start of turn five this was all that remained of the Viking force - the Warlord, a full unit of beserkers and three warriors:

And this was the whole Anglo-Danish force - a single huscarl, two warriors and the Warlord:

As teh Anglo-Danes advanced, Loki caused their remaining warriors to flee. And then there were two ...

On the last turn the Anglo-Danish Warlord hurled himself, single-handed, against the beserkers:

We rolled a lot of dice and, with the aid of a reroll special ability, scored lots of hits. The Warlord was mince-meat, although he killed three beserkers in return:

The Viking Warlord ponders his fallen adversary:

As I said above, Saga is an interesting game, and we could see that once players were familiar with their nation's board it would play quite quickly. Combat is especially bloody, especially since the best Viking abilities seemed to revolve around stacking up loads of extra Attack Dice.

We'll try it again in a few weeks I think.