Holiday time, let's roll some dice

Who doesn't love a holiday? We are having a 'staycation' this year over Christmas/New Year so I get a chance to play a few week day games.
Yesterday Paul (The Man Cave blog) and I decided to start the Chain of Command 29 Let's Go campaign. We have both played Chain of Command before but with an umpire helping us along. It's fair to say that we had only retained a basic understanding of the rules. The whole idea of starting this campaign is for us to work through the rules in our own time and get a better working understanding.

 I laid out the first map of the campaign (including the "slope rope"- which is what you get when you finish laying out terrain and notice the elevation change on the map). Paul was the Germans defending and delaying and I was the Americans probing forward. My objective was to get at least one unit off the left hand side of the table. Sounds easy in theory.
I managed to get two jump off points quite far across the table - about two thirds of the way to my goal. That may have been my problem. As I brought units onto the table they immediately came under fire from the entrenched German defenders. This lead me to having units bunched up in the centre of the table, under fire from three groups of defenders. Not good. I had a Sherman tank (played by a Chaffee in this episode) as Support, mis-read the deployment rules and brought it on the table too far forward. That's OK, Paul's off-board 88mms sent a high velocity hello screaming straight through my side armour and brewed it up. Bye bye Ronson.

My jump off point to the left, under fire from 3 defender units.

Overall, we had a rollicking good game and learnt a lot more about ChOC but still would not consider us experts. The book's layout is challenging and wording somewhat unclear but we will stick at it. In fact, since I lost we get to play this scenario again although this time I get more tanks for support. I must remember to bring them on at the back of the table. And away from those bloody 88s!
Today I was lucky enough to be invited by the father of Aled, one of my fellow Odinian gamers, to his place for a game of General d'Armee. This is another TFL production, this time grand battles in the Napoleonic era.
Dean (Aled's Dad) is a long time Napoleonic player and has a great collection of painted Peninsular figures. We have played General d'Armee together once previously and both enjoyed it. Today Dean and I played the French while Aled and our mate Phil were the stinky Spanish. We had two brigades of infantry and one of cavalry per side.
 Despite a slow start for both sides (just couldn't get the rolls needed to get the troops moving) we soon got into the action. My infantry brigades pushed forward, soon capturing the town in the centre of the table and putting pressure on the Spanish infantry's left flank. Dean then swept in from our right flank, crossed the river and smashed into the Spanish. Mayhem ensued with units dissolving before Aled and Phils' eyes. It looked like it was all over other than the cleaning up. We were mistaken. My absolutely atrocious rolling for any important result (anyone want a 1? I'm your man) combined with Aled's tenacious defence saw the battle swing back in the Spaniards favour. Phil led the Spanish cavalry, previously held in reserve, across the river and started smacking my right flank around. My left flank kept steadily advancing but my awful rolling frittered away a couple of chances. A re-roll wasn't enough to get my Infantry assault going. Fortunately my right flank managed to repulse the Spanish cav, despite the loss of a unit and the pushing back of our cavalry too.

The Spanish Cav pour over the bridge

It was all up to our infantry on the left. The drums beat, cries of Vive l'Empereur filled the air and the infantry columns crashed home into the Spaniards. The centre tussled but the sangria sippers held on. And then it happened, my leftmost unit routed a Spanish unit in melee and the Spanish right flank melted away. Victory to the French!
It was a great game, no one was assured victory until the very end. General d'Armee is a straightforwrd, quick playing set of rules with simple resolution of combat and clear results.
Dean's new wargames room got a big battle christening, we all had a laugh and it was a good day. Thanks Dean for hosting.
Well, so far, so good for my wargaming holiday. Still 4 days to go. who knows what war dolly madness I can get up to before going back to work.

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	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

Challenge done but not completed - lessons learned

I have finally finished the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I loved it and it drove me crazy. When I initially considered the Challenge I thought that I could maybe get 250 points (based on 5 points per 28mm infantry, 4 per 20mm etc) because I am a very slow painter. However there was only the choice of 500 point intervals so I went for 500, lowest I could choose.
As it turns out I only made it to 216 points. There were many personal challenges along the way, not least of which was my eyesight. I ended up purchasing a flip down magnifying visor (as used by watchmakers) which helps a lot.

Me with my total output from the Challenge, wearing my new magnifying visor and traditional painting fez.

To be eligible for the Challenge a miniature could be cleaned up and undercoated before the start but no additional paint could be applied. It also must be completely finished, including basing, to be earn points. Herein lies the greatest lesson learned - I have way too many unfinished miniatures. Ranging from one or two colours applied, or nearly fully painted through to fully painted but no basing done. This is not acceptable.

So, from now on I am keeping a tally on the blog with two divisions;
Painted Miniatures - meaning painted this year from scratch through to finished as determined by the Challenge requirements.
Finished Miniatures - these are miniatures that I have started previously, or purchased part painted or similar that have done the extra work on to be totally finished. Including magnetizing the bases.
This will be a summary tally on the side of my blog and a more detailed running one at the end of each post. Maybe this will help my output. Or make my shame public.

Type	Painted	Finished
28mm Dark Ages Infantry	12
28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Infantry	8	11
28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Mounted	1
28mm Slaughterloo Infantry	4
20mm WWII	11

An entry finished at last for the Painting Challenge

It's taken nearly four weeks but I finally got an entry in to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

Building a US force in 20mm to be used mainly for Chain of Command and Iron Cross I have decided to do a squad and support team at a time. These are mostly AB Miniatures from that fine chap Nic at Eureka Miniatures with a couple of other brands from my lead pile thrown in for variety.

The first units completed are an Armoured Rifle Squad and a 60mm mortar team. As Chain of Command requires a 60mm mortar to have five crew I was was struggling with a way to make them look like a team. I decided to base them together but I wanted the versatility of casualty removal so I based them on a 40 x 45mm base

 however only one figure is permanently attached. I used putty to build up arond the small bases the figures come on to form "sabots". I then added the basing flock and static grass tufts to tie all the figures together visually. I then removed the figures leaving the sabot areas. Figures can be easily put on and taken off the base. 

I may add some small magnets to make them more secure if needed, depends on how they go in a game. Now, off to paint, there's plenty more in the queue.