My first game in this great block of dice rolling was a game of Bolt Action against my boss Ian. I have the great fortune of working in the games industry but this doesn't mean that I get to play games all day. Quite the opposite. However, Ian and I had an evening free a couple of weeks ago and decided that a game of Bolt action was in order.Using Ian's terrain and miniatures I had a chance to play Germans as opposed to my usual Yanks, and Ian played the US. It was a rollicking game, with artillery initially favouring me and air strikes redressing the balance for Ian. In the end it was a narrow victory for Ian but we had a lot of fun and we got to push around some well painted toys on a table with great terrain. An evening well spent.
The following week Ian ran me through Lion Rampant against his friend Ian 2 (there are three Ians in the gaming group. It does get confusing.) with us playing the Crusaders vs Ian2's Saracen army. this was a great game, it allowed me to get my head around the mechanics of LR and be confident enough to play moderator to a game with the lads at Odin's Night club the following week.I provided all the forces so they ended up being a mish mash of Empire, Brettonian, Norman and Saxon armies. This is one of the great things about Lion Rampant, you can build historical or non-historical forces and still have a great game.
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| The victims of the murderous rampage. |
Since then there have been so many games that I have lost track of them all but they have included;
- Bolt Action one Sunday morning, Yanks vs Vichy French and then a follow up game on the same table using essentially the same forces but this time using Chain of Command. Admittedly we are not as familiar with CoC but the gameplay and results were hugely different. It was interesting to contrast the two. Both great for different reasons.
- A brilliant game of Lion Rampant between Alan (Dux) and myself using The Messenger scenario. I set a new record for the number of failed Activations in a row. It was still heaps of fun.
- A four player game of Dragon Rampant. We were starting to get confident with the LR rules so thought that it was time to try the fantasy version. I have a couple (ahem) of painted Warhammer Fantasy armies so made up 6 different 24 point retinues based on the examples in the back of the book. Each player then chose whichever one appealed to him most. Once again, a brilliant day's gaming. So much fun that at least one historical stalwart was muttering "Must get some Dwarves, on goats or boars...." Dux had the "honour" of sporting the "Cassandra Mouskouri" wig of shame for predicting his own failing Activation roll.
Paul and new chum Aled show David, Stephen and I how to play X Wing. - Last week Paul ran us through X-Wing (it WAS May 4th). This was my first time playing this and really enjoyed the simple mechanics of gameplay. I won't be buying any ships, my long time gaming buddy David has taken care of that for us!
- I'm sure that there were more games, I certainly saw more played but I can't remember which was when!
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| Dux "Cassandra Mouskouri" |
| Type | Painted | Finished |
|---|---|---|
| 28mm Dark Ages Infantry | 16 | 1 |
| 28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Infantry | 8 | 32 |
| 28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Mounted | 1 | |
| 28mm Dark Ages Mounted | 2 | |
| 28mm Slaughterloo Infantry | 4 | |
| 28mm Fantasy Infantry | 4 | |
| 20mm WWII | 18 |
