Minefield Counters

A very clever idea to make simple minefield counters out of old GW large sized bases, by Matt at the Wargames Table blog.  Might have to try this when I back to my bitz box.

http://thewargamestable.blogspot.com/2014/09/chain-of-command-mine-counters.html

Into a new Theatre

Having been looking forward to it for quite some time now, and undaunted by the recent news that Battlegroup's Western Desert rules will be delayed, I've bought the first bits for my DAK and 8th Army forces from a sale.

For the Germans I grabbed an 8-rad and two SdKfz 221s.  I already have some DAK infantry which I grabbed earlier in the year at CANCON.  On the Allied side is a pair of Mk 1 AEC armoured cars, 2 6pdr AT guns and a 2pdr portee.

As I say, not much, but a start! I saw a very nice tutorial for DAK painting and I intend to use that as a basis:  http://www.wwpd.net/2014/04/projekt-dak-part-4-historicon-list.html

Deadzone-First Game Impressions

Comrade James Reporting: After a quick first spray paint of the terrain using the techniques from the excellent Esoteric Order of Gamers series of videos ,http://www.orderofgamers.com/preparing-deadzone-part-1/, I thought I should actually get a game in to try it all out.

For my first game I picked the Enforcers to play against an AI controlled Plague...I had to develop a simple AI system (one player rules are apparently coming in a new supplement soon) to control the Plague. In Deadzone, each player draws a mission card which they normally keep secret throughout the game until they accomplish their mission. Of course, I knew what mine was, but I decided to not reveal the Plague mission until there were 10 cards left to draw in their card deck. Each side starts with 20 cards, 4 forming their starting hand and more drawn throughout each round. Once one side has used up all their cards, the game ends. It forms a useful turn counter for the game, and therefore I could keep track of the half way point.

The earlier rounds, showing items scattered around the battlefield, an Objective,and a mutation on the Plague Sergeant hiding in the building...

Until the mission was revealed however, I had to establish a set of rules to control each of the Plague units actions. Essentially there are two main types of plague units, the shooters and the hand-to-hand types. For the shooters, I made them move towards the nearest objective or item counter, whilst taking pot shots at the closest target. The HMG shooter I set up high and used him to suppress Enforcer heavy weapon teams. The HTH Plague I made run at the nearest Enforcer and engage in close combat (Fighting) as soon as possible. At all times the HTH and moving shooters had to keep closing the enemy side of the board.

A Plague Stage 2A charges at the Enforcer Missile and Heavy Laser teams....

What this meant was that regardless of what type of mission I had drawn for the Plague, there were at least some units trying to achieve one of them or more. There are 4 basic types of Missions, being Kill the enemy, Survive, capture objectives, and escape off the opposite table edge. By the time the 10th card was drawn, I would have some units near the edge of the table (i thought), have one or two near objectives, and I would have killed a few Enforcers along the way.

The Enforcer Sergeant hides around the corner, ready to engage the Stage 2 about to close...

With this all setup, I checked my Enforcer mission which was to Control all three objectives...probably the hardest mission out there!

I didn't take enough pics for a turn by turn description, but the highlights included an Enforcer triggering a Booby Trap (thanks to a Plague card played as the Enforcer turned over an Item counter) which then blew him off the roof and into the middle of 2 Plague troopers, who engaged him in Hand to hand, which he survived, only to be torn apart by the Stage 2A monster in the centre....
The Enforcers had some success killing the other Stage 2A, a Hellhound and the leader of the Plague troops, but at the half way mark the Plague mission was revealed to be 'Survive', which meant they had already scored 6 of the required 10 points to win, and in the remaining two rounds needed for victory were able to keep more than half of their original 10 troops alive....

The situation at game end, with the Plague lurking behind buildings to survive till the end...

It's worth mentioning how victory points are determined at this point. Throughout the game players keep track of whether they are earning points or not, as this is dynamic and will change with the change of control of objectives, valuable items being dropped, etc. The key is to get to 10 VP before your opponent. So in my game, I scored 4 pts for every Objective (there are always 3) that I controlled outright, with no enemy within 1 'cube'. Of course, the instant an enemy entered that 1 cube radius, I no longer counted as having those 4 victory points. To win, I had to have undisputed control of at least 2 of the three objectives and pick up some 'intel' items which are worth 1 pt each as long as they are carried by your player.

For the Plague's 'Survive' mission, they secretly scored 2 pts for every round they had more than half their starting force alive. By the end of Round 5 therefore, they were able to claim victory, with 6 troops still alive.

So my impressions are this game has a lot of hidden depth to it, starting with random deployment zones, Objective placement and random scattering of usable items. Combined with randomly selected secret missions, the combinations of different games even with identical forces and terrain set up are innumerable. I love the hidden mission concept, as it opens up all sorts of faints and counter-feints, and counter-counter-feints , throughout the game.
The small play area (2 feet by 2 feet, or 8 3" squares per side) is actually a great size for this level of battle, and feels a lot bigger once inside the game...given that models only move up to 2, possibly 3 squares each round means it takes a few rounds to cross the battlefield, and even though the average force is 6-10 models strong, it still seems there are sufficient enemy to keep your head down...

My next game will be with my newly assembled and undercoated Marauders, which are Mantics version of Space Orcs...VERY much looking forward to that!!

SAGA Campaign- Round Two Summary

Comrade James Reporting: Round Two of our campaign concluded on the last weekend, with some surprising results....
The scenario was Battle of the Fords, where our exploring Warbands were forced to cross an impassable river, only crossable at two points. I faced off against Doug the Frantic and his Normans with my Anglo Danes, Bish took on the Normans of Jason de Fromage with his Anglo Saxons, and John the Viking clashed with the Scots of Andrew...

Anglo Danes on the left, Normans on the right....

At the end of Turn 1, the Norman Sergeants charge across the stone bridge, intent on doing harm to the Danish warriors standing fast....meanwhile the Anglo Dane slingers score hits on the Norman Crossbowmen across the river, killing 2...

Turn 2, and the Danish war cries continue to intimidate the Norman warriors trying to cross the wooden bridge , blocking the Mounted Hearthguard behind them...the Sergeants smack into the Danish warriors on the other flank, but lose the fight, bouncing back

Turn 3 sees the Danish warriors charge in, using Shieldwall and The Push to wipe out the Normans to a man, which they 

finish off the next turn..

The Danish warriors move up to support their Levy who are taking crossbow fire , staying just out of now range.

Turn 4, and the Normans counter the intimidation with the Warlords free move, finally getting their warriors across the bridge and into the levy, killing half of them.

Turn 5, and battle is joined in earnest over the wooden bridge , the Normans finding their courage against the insults of the Danes and storming over the bridge en masse.

Turn 6 saw the Danish warlord rejoin his lads on the stone bridge whilst the Norman Warlord and his entire army race arcoss the wooden bridge, the warriors taking on the remaining Danish Levy killing 2 more. The Dames respond with a mad charge from the 10 man warrior unit into the 6 man Mounted Hearthguard, with 4 brave Danes falling next to the bodies of 2 Norman Hearthguard as their comrades retreat.. The Normans sense blood, and charge the surviving Warriors, wiping them out but losing another 3 Hearthguard to the Danish Shieldwall 

As the battle concluded in Turn 7, the Danish warriors Hearthguard and Warlord cross the stone bridge to fly their banner , whilst their peasants prepared themselves for their doom at the hands of the Norman army on the the side...final score was a surprising 14-13 win to the Anglo Danes, the loss of the Hearthguard at the end proving the deciding blow to the Normans....

In Jason de Fromage's game of Normans vs Bish's Anglo Saxons, the brave Anglo's attempted to force a river crossing, only to fall to crossbows and cavalry.

The Anglo Saxon Warlord leads the charge across....

...and manages to find and kill the Norman Warlord...a small victory, given the rest of his Peasant army lies dead behind him....a win to Jason.

In the other game between Andrew C and John, the Scots came off second best against a spirited Viking defence, with half the Viking army making it across the river

Round 3 has already begun, with the Escort Scenario, and this is where the top 3 ranked players in each matchup get to choose whether they attack or defend. That means John, myself, and Jason will get to pick, given the match ups are Anglo Danes vs Anglo Saxons, Vikings vs Normans, and Scots vs Normans......