A weekends gaming

Last weekend was the annual Warlords convention "Call to Arms". My plan to get down early Saturday morning was torpedoed by having to replace the racing slick tires on my car. Several hundred dollars poorer I finally made it to Wellington after lunch.

Call to Arms is the biggest convention in the lower North island. the numbers run to 150 odd gamers in a variety of competition and demo games.

Sunday afternoon.The great unwashed

I had traveled down to get some gaming time with Peter and Paul. First up was an ECW game in 10mm using the King and Parliament rule set. It had some mechanisms that were new to me, but provided for an epic finish to the game (which is all we really want). The figures look nice and I would seriously consider changing scales if I was not a 6mm die hard.

Scottish defend against the attacking English Roundheads.

After a night spent looking through the Page reserve lead pile, it was time to play some WW2 naval using General Quarters 2. Now I have not played a navel game for 30 years, but thoroughly enjoyed this one. The scenario was a German convoy coming out of Norway at night bound for home in early 1945, with the British looking to intercept. The British started the game with a red hot die run which nailed 1/2 the German forces in a hail of 8" shells.

Star shell illuminates A Navik class destroyer. The night went downhill rapidly from here

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 The Convoy was scuppered by a group of British destroyers and despite some late heroics from the Prinz Eugen in crippling 2 British heavy cruisers the game was over when the last of the merchant ships went down.

Another star shell finds the British.

So, a couple of days with some good gaming with good friends. I also caught up with others that I had not seen for years.
And why is it that other peoples collections of unpainted lead are far more interesting that your own?

Confirming my bias'

Last weekend I discovered that Panzershrek was on at a school hall just round the corner from my place. For those of you that don't know, Panzershreck is a local wargaming convention that's in its 19th year. The minus is that its not big and tends to be of the Flames of war persuasion. A mitigating factor was that there was going to be an out of town wargaming supplies shop and I was short on some painting supplies. Thus my gaming buddie and I headed along to have a look and at the very least doing a bit of shopping.
On entering I found a Team Yankee tournament in progress. This is ww2 flames of war transported to the mid 1980's. At this point I had started writing a bit of a diatribe pointing out everything I think is wrong with it (and don't get me started on camouflaged M1's and that's the least of my problems with it). However at the end of the day it is only playing with toy soldiers and  when has anyone in this country seen 40 people playing moderns?
Fortunately the trip was not a complete waste of time as there were a couple of guys playing 6mm. It was some sort of company/battalion level game. I haven't played at this level for 25 odd years with the old WRG 1950-1985 set, and as I've always said "Its not worth getting out of bed in the morning unless theres at least a brigade to command".
However the club meets on Tuesday nights and its 2 minutes down the road. Maybe I can bend a few of them to my will.

Its been a while

Well, the silence indicates that I have not played much Spearhead recently. Gaming activities have been concentrating on In her Majesties name, a set of Victoran science fiction rules that fit nicely with the collection of 28mm figures I've collected over the years.Its a good fun game that doesn't take itself that seriously, and you don't need to have the "right" figures as theres a well thougth out points system.

A British landing party about to have its butt kicked by the Society of righteous and harmonious fists

With all this other work I've also finished the MSH Dutch as well as the 1960's/70's West Germans (pre Marders).  No photos as "Der room" has become somewhat piled up and I'm not sure exactly where they are. maybe the weekend will see me having time to hunt them out.

Game Day

Peter, Paul and Peter (that famous 60's pop group) came north for a large game yesterday. It was nice to see everyone again, abiet with a few more grey hairs. After the usual trash talk it was time for business. The table went up in 7 minutes and we were playing the first turn about 10:30, which surprised me greatly.
The general scenario was a Belgian brigade being attacked by 3 Russian regiments. A US brigade arrived during the game as support.
The initial positions were as follows. 

On table just out of shot on the extreme flank was a US armoured cavalry troop which only contributed M551 aluminum fire starters to the day.
Things got going fast on the Belgian left. Here Peter P consults the rules while Paul waves the magic stick and Luke looks on expectantly.

On the other flank Peter C's battalions slowly bashed their way through the rugged terrain (why you shouldn't let just anyone draw command arrows) laying waste to all before them. Fortunately there wasn't that much in front him and it was a quiet trek along the romantic road. The Belgians did quite well considering they are a bit rubbish. The Russian BTR regiment on the right was fought to a standstill.

The follow up US battalion took up a strong blocking position, securing that flank from further advances. On the other flank 2 regiments had dealt to the Bellgian units, and were about to roll over the US forces on this flank.

At this point after 10 turns we had to call it. Final score was 10 points to 6 for the Russian win.

Finally, how to hide things in plain sight.

This kanone stand survived a long time by hiding under the foliage behind a wood I must do more stands like this. The Russian players kept missing it, and it kept popping up to inflict another suppression. The gap between modules did not look that bad from normal distances, and shows that an 8' by 6' board is probably just a bit big for this system.

Pictures from the front.

Being ex DBM players we have had a few games of L'art de la Geurre (it seems the french aren't just good at wine and cheese). My first thoughts are that it seems to iron out a lot of finicky bits that plagued the DBM system at the end (buttocks of death, anyone?). DBMM was simply a bridge too far for me with all its add ons, and it seems to be only used by 25mm gamers in this country. Not having the finances/painting skills/ requisite strength to lift the army I'm ruled out. The armys and table size are also smaller and the games play out in less than 3 hrs. That doesn't include food breaks.

Feeding the inner man

It has produced several very close games, with a mutual break in the second game. Its got me interested in painting 15mm figures again (which is something I swore I would never do after painting Persian horse armour 20 years ago). However the price of 15mm seems to have gone through the roof while I've been away from the scale so I might investigate 6mm, or even 10mm figures.

Setting the scene

So, with a bit of work, we have 10km by 7km of West germany (well, the hilly foresty bits). Looking across.....

From a higher angle

So, we are all ready to go for the weekend. And for interest, set up and pack away time was 10 minutes each. They stack up quite nicely

Clock is ticking

With this years impending arrival of Dr U-S its time to get on with the terrain.
So over the last week I've been knocking out another 4 terrain squares, which will increase the total area I can do to 8' by  (or 12 boards)

Now I just have to do the woods and roads and I'm there.