Sunday 8 May 2016

So many games, so little time to write

The last couple of weeks have been fantastically busy gaming wise. I have had the chance to play Lion Rampant, Saga, Bolt Action, Chain of Command and Iron Cross. As well as wrapping up the Analogue Painting Challenge and of course buying more figures for my ever growing armies.
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. 
The victims of the murderous rampage.
As the Analogue Painting Challenge was still in full swing I even provided a unit of old Empire Halberdiers that Paul and Alan (the murdering b@st@rds) tooking great pleasure in hunting down and massacring. Poor little purple plumed fellas. All in all, a rollicking good evening. You know that you are having fun when your table's "Yay" of victory makes the eight tables of roleplayers stop talking and all turn in your direction. We even picked up a new member for the Odin's with this game, Aled. Welcome aboard the crazy express mate!


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.
  • Dux  "Cassandra Mouskouri"
  •  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!

Lastly, time to update my most important Painting and Finished tally

Type Painted Finished
28mm Dark Ages Infantry 161
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

3 comments:

Paul O'G said...

"So many games, so little time to write" - what a fantastic conundrum! Awesome to be a part of many of those - there was some Iron Cross in there too somewhere I think. And yes, I think Dave and I have enough X-Wing ships to sink and defend the Galactic Empire between us

You know how I always call Chris W the name Craig and you threaten to tell him? Back at you matey: Aden's name is Aled, but I wont tell hime either :-)

cheers
Paul, proud murdering B@stard of purple plumed halberdiers

Slowpainter said...

Bit of cheeky editing fixed that little name typo. :}
Yes, I forgot to mention Iron Cross. It has me quite inspired to build more 20mm. In fact I think that I need to get some of the new Raupenschleppers from Plastic Soldier Company.

Dux Homunculorum said...

I think I remember beating you at Command and Colours as well...
Those purple plumed tossers had it coming, and let's face it - I look great in the wig.

Always a great pleasure rolling dice with you, my friend.