Rapier 2018

David, Mark and I made the two hour drive down to Jacksonville early Saturday morning for our first game convention of the year at Rapier. Proper pronunciation is discussed here at the 1:10 mark.

First on our agenda was Blood And Plunder. I've got minis but haven't played so I was eager to swash some buckles. The awsome crew from Firelock Games had a very nice table set up and made room for a couple extra players. The scenario was "The Defense of St. Croix, 1650," in which a horde of Spaniards attempts to assault the British settlement on St. Croix and pillage their rum.

I was placed on the British team, in command of a group of Freebooters. David, sitting next to me, was given command of some Spanish-loving locals on a canoe and Mike was made commander of the entire Spanish force, since he'd played before.

Those are my boys near the building there. David's Indians are in the nearest canoe. We were determined to turn this into Omaha beach for those invaders!

Some more of our English defenders.

Early on, the Spanish knocked down one of the wall sections of our town center will well-placed cannon-fire.

They're ashore! Blast 'em!

The shore is now teeming with Spaniards! The English in the village get into buildings, though we on the other side of the table were not sure why.

The ship, laden with more Spanish heads toward "my" beach where I've been holding off the Indians quite handily.

Then the game goes right down the shitter for the Spanish. Mike and company failed repeated attempts to snag the canoe in order to offload reinforcements. All their troops were stuck on the ship with no way off! The wind was mercilessly pushing against the sails which the crew couldn't figure out how to take down. Fate was really sticking it to the Spanish.

The last of the Mohicans were now in deep kimchi - I'd only lost one Freebooter, to their three losses and the riders and militia reinforcements were quickly inbound!

 

Some player pics...

Some Spanish players as well as the Firelock host. Droves of Spanish casualties are circled in yellow.

Mark (in orange), our English Commander, and the funny guy who sat to my right.

Mike standing on the right, quite irritable by this point and David sitting on the left. The guy in the center was the GM who I thought did a good job of wrangling 8 players.

Eventually, the Spanish snagged the canoe and loaded up eight sailors (ahem, yes, sailors) to storm the beach!

Arrrrgh!

The sailors were savaged by the horsemen and wiped out in record time. That sealed the victory for the English!

It was a great game for the English and rather frustrating for the Spanish. That's wargaming! I'm looking forward to playing at home.

After lunch, Mike ran a game of Blitzkreig Commander, an Eastern Front encounter set in the late Summer of 1943 I think, judging by the tanks we were pushing.

The table layout. Tom (a fellow who had signed up to play) and I took command of the Germans while Mike and Dave ran the Soviet defenders. We Germans were supposed to capture the village.

Tom gets a Panzer III battalion moving quickly. Unfortunately, our other tank group with Tigers failed to arrive and since it was to shield our panzergrenadiers, they too were delayed.

But they did eventually arrive and assumed firing positions. The armored infantry hid behind the hill until it was safer to come out.

Our Pz IIIs are really getting worked by the Zis-2s. Their 50mm guns are not ideal for return fire either. Our Panzer IV reinforcements whoe were to arrive in the upper right corner where the book and phone are repeatedly failed to arrive.

'Con Selfie

David says "The German StuGs are going to kill us RIGHT HERE!" The StuGs watching our left flank performed admirably.

In the end, we wrapped it after 6 full turns. I failed FIVE attempts to get our reinforcements onto the table, the Panzer IIIs got held up for too long against two lousy AT guns and, well, it just wasn't our day. Tom was a great teammate and I enjoyed playing with him. David and Mike got a bit of revenge for their loss earlier in the day.

We milled around a bit then Mike FORCED us to play a board game with him. We played Terraforming Mars, apparently the "It Game" these days. It was quite enjoyable, if lengthy.

Here's my corporation at the end of the proceedings:

All hail MIGHTY APHRODITE! My corporation was absolutely printing cash by the end and I won, followed by Mark, Mike and Dave.

Mark and I were essentially tied for the lead the entire game, but I had a boatload of forests and VP cards that were the difference-maker.


We all had a great time and are looking forward to the next meet up at Gnomecon!