Wyvern Wargamers - ACW Campaign for Sharp Practice.

On the back of one of the Wyvern's all day bashes a number of us have decided to embark on a short ACW campaign to keep us busy over the winter months and ensure the painting tally for the year continues to tick over.

I have been reading the Too Fat Lardies Campaign Suppliment over the summer and it has a number of areas of interest which might make some of the club games more interesting, as there will be consequences at the end of the game.

With 3 players per side the original map and suggested forces was a little to small, so I have increased the map to double that in the suppliment and supplied each side with roughly 180 points to select from. I have kept to the principle by putting a central road in but by splitting it should give commanders a challange on how to cover the terrain on the map.

It's late in the War and the Confederates are on the defensive, the Union forces enter from the Blue Arrow, can they defeat the Rebel command?

As we speak players are totting up points and force combinations before setting off on their respective mission.

Campaign updates will appear on the blog when intelligence is open to all, commanders will recieve their own updates via e-mail.

Stay tuned for more.

Dusting off some old favourites... AVBCW.

A little behind on postings, so much for winding down in my notice period at work :-)
Another 3 years have passed and time to dust off the AVBCW Collection, every now and again its good to revisit Worcester in 1938 and the exploits of Harry Doyle and Severn Riverside Wharf Labours Federation and the Astwood Defence Association.

Over the years I have used several rule sets, Operation Overlord, Flying Lead, Mud and Blood and in this encounter - Chain of Command.

Major Bert Shedwhistle a senior leader in the Astwood Defence Association feared for this parish. They had guarded their parish boundary from "wrong'uns" and had cooperated with the authorities when required to do so. But as the war pressed on where they backing the wrong side?

 

A small detachment of troops were sent on a mission to secure valuable supplies in the shape of a lorry full of Rifles and Rations, the driver and guard were soon over powered and the lorry driven to the bridge were they were to meet the canal boat which was to ship the weopon cache back to the parish.

The night passed without incident but at dawn on the Sunday morning government forces were spotted advancing through the early morining mist. Bert mustered his me they had to hold on until the boat arrived.

The scenario was a flank attach with the ADA having to hold out and break the morale of the attackers before their own morale fell, with both forces packed out with conscripts the force morale were both under ten.

The ADA form up and deploy amongst the trees and hedge rows to protect the lorry from the advancing government forces.

Meawhile the Police appear on the Kidderminster Road lining the stone wall armed with a rag tag collection of rifles and pistols they would be hard pressed against the machine gun armed ADA.

 

A BUF Heavy Machine gun deploys in the two story farm house, by accident and much to my frustration the bedroom window covered every firing aspect where the ADA could deploy it was to be the match winner and proved the value of picking support weapons when drawing up your forces.

An Astwood fire team deploy but becomes the first victim of that flaming gun team, appearing on table it got caught by the HMG team on overwatch and is soon pinned, losing two men and being forced to ground.

The ADA get a degree of revenge catching a group of BUF thugs in the open as they ran from the wool shop to try and get a better angle on the defenders.

With the HMG keeping the defenders heads down the Government and Polce units advance across the fields.

Things were not going well for the defenders a well timed ambush using a CoC dice inflicted minimal casualties as they attempted to withdraw the HMG cut them down....

The Canal Boat arrives but the BUF are rushing towards the tow path.

As the Boat makes it painfully slow progress down the canal the police pour fire into the defenders, they had now flanked the men body of defenders and were pushing across the wheat fields.

As a final insult as the perimeter guards full back from the strong point they are caught by the HMG in the open, who inflicts enough shock to pin them and pushing the Ashwood Defence Associations forceir morale below zero.

Today's lesson..... When a HMG is deployed keep your flaming head down unless you want it shot off......

Ghost Archipelago - Review and First Impressions

Just as I was preparing the latest batch of Haitians the latest distraction landed on the door mat. Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, I only played the original game once it was a little heavy on the terrian side for my liking but when I saw the setting for Ghost Archipelago it felt like a rule set that could bring all of my odd collections together on one table top allowing me to get to use some of the mini's that rarely see table time.

I backed the base level pledge in the current Nickstarter from Northstar, which provided me with the Rules, spell deck, a box of Crew, Crew Rooster, Treasure tokens and preproduction casts together with the novel to get you in the mood for island hopping.

Everything was well packed with the books bubble wrapped for extra protection. The presentation style is excellent, the rules are hard back and have a high production feel to them, no pages will be falling out of this set unlike Cutlass! 

The Snakeman's sword was damaged but being only one I can't see much use for him anyway.

I did not go to the trouble of selecting the Heritors and Wardens but am happy with the random figures, they have a Eastern feel to them which will allow me to use some of my Ottomans should I need to ground troops or extra crewmen.

 

I quite like the idea of my Atlantians guarding the various temples and jungle outposts, they will definately feature as some of the "bad guys" the rules cater for waterborne warfare with rules for boats, perfect as I picked a couple of these up from Iron gate scenary at Derby a few weeks ago.

The rulebook is 144 pages filled with full color photos of painted miniatures are some lovely art work to inspire the modeller in you. The rules within the book are relatively straight forward and with specific chapters for each area its easy to to find the specific rules. The contents include. Heritors, Wardens, and Crewmen, Chapter 3 Playing the Game, Chapter 4 The campaign followed by Heritor Abilities, Warden Spells, Scenarios (eight in the book), and the Bestiary.

Flicking through the rules and set up this morning, Ghost Archipelago, provides for a basic warband consisting of 10 members that must be purchased using 250 gold coins. Outside of the Heritor and Warden the warband can filled with a mix of  Standard Crewman and Specialist roles such as the Pearl Diver or Scout.

The Wardens must choose from five branches—Beast, Earth, Storm, Warden, Vine, and Wave, allowing your Warden/Wizard to influence the terrian and creatures on the board.

To spice up your encounter Ghost Archipelago also provides a Random Encounter Table with three levels of encounters each giving a different type of creature and with rules for your average wildlife through to Dinosaurs and the undead, plenty of choice to allow me to get those long forgot miniatures on the table - Fishmen anyone?

Ghost Archipelago feels perfect for those mid-week games where you only have a couple of hours to spare, the terrain demands are minimal espically if like me you have been collecting fish tank terrain for years. With 10 figures aside the investment for a warband is quite low and you can always swap out the monsters to fit what you have already - You never know the Bugs may make an appearance....

Star Eagles - Playtest 2.

A little behind on the posts but finally a few minutes to report back on the recent Star Eagles run through. A simple affair with the newly commissioned War Ricket Ajax sent off on a mission to attack the the capital of Frigia, the Ice kingdom ruled by Queen Fria.

Flash and his allies set off to intercept it.

For this encounter added in a couple new skills for pilots and I increased the quality scores, which in retrospect I should have kept at Q4 for your average pilot by moving to Q3 there were very few misses on the night.

Ajax and it's escort move towards the Frigian Capital.

The lightly armed Frigian fighters move to intercept the Imperial forces with Flash in support.

The Frigian craft are swept aside. Flash sends out a transmission for help.

The Hawkmen Squadron enters the table and make their prescence felt, destroying an Imperial fighter.

After some very unluckly dice for Ming where he manages to roll early double fails two turns in a row, Flash evades the imperial fighters and tails the Imperial bomber firing his blasters at short range. The turrets of Ajax inflict minimal damage in return.

In true Saturday morning TV style, Flash brings down Ajax with less than a minute or two to spare just as it was lining up for it's bombing run.

It's been quite a gap in between games but Star Eagles is quick to pick up and the game has some very subtle rules that keeps players interested along the way, unlike other Songs of Blades rules, once activated a ship can perform its move without the need to use an action, actions are only required to perform special moves such as firing or special moves.

When tailing and with aimed fire you find yourself pretty much out of the fight very quickly but long range and side fighters stick around for a while before they are back in the box. Watch out for flying through unactivated enemy ships who take pot shots at you as cross their arc that can be annoying.

There are a couple of areas which need some clarity or perhaps a deeper understanding of the rules.

In particular ships with multiple weapon systems and whether once action allows you to fire all guns?

The question of height given the over and under taking between Flash and the War Rocket at the end and does the enemy get a free shot when you leave his arc rather than simply passing through?

But all in all a good game, I plan on pulling together reference cards for each fighter and introducing a few more weapon variables together with introducing player strategy cards in the next game to see how they change the dog fights.

A fun nights gaming and plenty of action. 

You should be Flash and Star Eagles making an appearance at Hammerhead in March let's hope the Kickstarter is not to delayed.

War Rocket Ajax

With a club outing this evening I wanted to try and see how a larger Crusier type would fair.
From the first play test, fighters were mighty fast so how would a larger craft be handled under the rules?

Another casting from the chaps at Hydra and their War Rocket range and perfect to represent War Rocket Ajax from the Flash Gordon movie of the 80's.

It is a beast 4x the size of the other ships with 3 turrets and 2 front facing lasers. Full AAR to follow.

Star Eagles Latest News

This Kickstarter is a little on the late side but I was heartened to received the following update for Star Eagles.
 

Sorry for the slow rate of updates.  I know it has been frustrating for you all waiting for some news on the project.   Not wanting to make excuses, but my day job decided I was not working hard enough and has been sending me all over Asia for the past few months to deal with manufacturing problems. Things have final returned to normal and I can get back to focusing on finishing this project.  Normaly I am very responsive on my KS projects and I am sorry for the lack of more frequent updates. 

Production of the minis will begin this month, I have finalized the scaling of most of the ships and will be sending them off for production later this week. Based on where I am now, I expect the revised timeline is to have the KS shipping in later part of December.   

I am also working with Litko to have the move templates and counters made of Acrylic rather than cardboard. This will be a perk for the delay in the project.  Hopefully can show off some of these in a few weeks. 

In regards to the rules, I have received a lot of playtest comments and it seems the inititaive aspect of the game is causing a lot of confusion.   I have been rework the initiative mechanics to enhance the flow of the game and make it easier to understand.   I estimate I need about another two weeks to finish the rules and then I’ll be ready to release the most current version for all to see.  I will then wait for another round of feedback before passing it off to Andrea for formatting.   I think the revisions improve the game a lot and make it evn better than before. The feeling of a dogfight will be even more intense.

This does give me the opportunity to paint up a couple of items hanging around the paint table, I would much prefer to have a refined product than rushed out with holes in the rules and poor finishing to the production.

Carrying on the Alex Raymond - Flash Gordon theme, I thought I would paint up these War Rocket Mini's as Vultan's Fighters, Hawkmen on their own are not enough to protect Sky City from Ming's War Rocket's, although how they they got into the cockpit with their wings is one for me to think about...

I opted for a couple of shades of gold with white strips for effect, they blend with the mini's I painted several years ago which have been in storage for several years and looking at some of the older pic's could do wth a make a make over as my painting style then was rather flat.
Perhaps one day they will get a repaint but for now the new fighters will be gracing the table on Sunday.

The Pearl of the Antilles - Haitian Revolution AAR #2 Life's a Beach

Somewhat behind on posts due to work commitments but finally the Haitians make an appearance in their new formation, this time defending a full blown British landing.

The Brits had come looking for trouble with a naval landing party under the command of Captain Horatio Lawnmower, Lt Stanley and a detachment of Royal Marines. A Company of Regulars together with Lt Richard Blunt of the 95th Rifles oh and don't forget a flaming cannon.

Opposing them was...... Honestly loads.....

The mission was a simple one for the British seize the church and defeat any local forces.

The table from the British end, add a couple of palm trees to your Spanish terrain and suddenly you are in Haiti.

The Brits are first out of the bag and get a fair number of troops on the table securing the beach.

As the first turn ends a couple of Haitian skirmish units appear on table but out of range of the British now advancing across the sand.

The Regulars and 95th fire a volley at long range wounding Captain Gabbon, the Haitain force morale drops to 8 it was going to be a long day in the field.

A view from the British corner with all troops deployed.

Troubled by the red coats now seizing the tree line and how quickly the Haitian skirmishers and fallen back. Time to bring out the "big choppers" and two groups of freed slaves looking to defend their rights and freedoms.

The Slave units advance across the dunes as the British look to bring additional troops to bear.

The Sailors and Marines pour fire into the advancing slaves but are unable to stop them reaching the beach on the edge of the table. The voodoo sorcerer is called into play taking shock off the leading unit just as tiffin brings the turn to a close.

Clash of Clans - Jack Tars and Slaves fight it out on the beach. Waving a ruddy big green snake must have had an impact on the jolly sailors.

The sailors are beaten and run for the row boats, the British commander looks a little pale and is no longer mocking my rag tag stick waving troops... They have forced the Brits on to the defensive but have lost their leader in the fight and the force morale takes another knock.

The slaves fall back to the cover of the dunes looking to recover their shock and elect a new leader.

The action moves to the centre of the table as Sergeant Hope(less) moves towards the Church.

The big reveal as Hope draws closer, the main Haitian firing line apears on the walls of the church, they let fly a ragged volley which despite looking impressive inflicts minimal damage on Hope who falls back down the slope out of close range.

Sensing victory the Haitian regulars make an appearance on the right of the Church and march boldly forwards only to be greated by a shower of canister they quickly march backwards, Force morale clicks down again. I am so glad I spent late nights getting these chaps ready... :-(

The British are frustrated lacking sufficent man power to force the insurgents from the walls they resort to cannon and long range rifle fire to which the Haitains have no answer. The Marines attempt to push up through the dunes but skirmishers in the bush keep them pinned back. The clock ticks down.

Rather like a test match between England and the West Indies both sides have spent all day in the field only to agree on a draw, the charge of the unarmed masses really knocked the British on their heels but the loss of both Haitian units and their leaders pushed the Haitian force morale down to less than 4 which made activations more difficult. The cannon kept the native forces at bay and was begining to wear down the defenders which given more time would see them being forced to leave the field.

A fine days gaming with us both thinking about different tactics on the next outing as the British push in land.