Southern Front 2023 Recap

 It was another fine September game convention in North Carolina at Southern Front 2023 over the weekend. I got to play in five fine games with lots of great folks. No sour-pusses or poor sports this go-around. I drove up with Mark early on Friday morning, in time for the first of the early afternoon games. Their game sign-up system is decidedly old-school and it's worth getting there early to get a spot at the tables you really want.

First up on the agenda was Battlegroup Northag. This was my first experience with the Battlegroup system which has gotten quite popular in the last couple of years. It was easy enough to fumble through with some guidance by a good GM (thanks Bruce!) and a knowledgeable BG player at the table. The other seven players were all complete novices with BG.

The scenario was set in 1984 and we Soviets were pushing hard and fast westward through Germany. We needed to capture a bridge and cross the river. The thin NATO line was tasked with slowing us down. Here our advance recon elements have entered the battlefield. BRDMs, T-62s, BMP. We had a gaming rookie on our side who was given command of the recon teams.

Soviet commander Mike (the red shirt made the selection easy), recon commander Craig, GM Bruce and British mechanized infantry commander Mark.

The tide of green tanks pushes forward while the NATO players plot their response.

The first of my units arrives... heh heh heh. An AT-6 reaches out and breaks an Abrams. Those blasted things are a real pain!

Jailbreak! The second company of tanks and my motorized infantry arrive, streaming up the road to the bridge.

The mess at the end. NATO forces fall back as my BTRs close in on the bridge. Demolition charges reduce the bridge to rubble, but trap a handful of American and British troops! A fun time for all. 

A quick dinner of wings and beer, then on to the Friday night game - the Battle of Palo Alto. The Mexican-American War, 1846. I was nominated as the Mexican commander since I was wearing the largest hat. As the GM was describing the situation, it was looking pretty bad for us. We had numbers, but poor quality and bad artillery. This would require a solid combination of good fortune and bluster. The setup was gorgeous... 28mm minis roughly 30 years old. The GM had put this scenario on many times over the years.

 

Yankees

Mexicans

The American mission was to advance down the road and cast the defender aside. The Mexicans simply needed to resist and stop them.

Our enemies :)  They were all great gamers and fun to play with.

The Americans weren't advancing as expected, so we forced the issue and pushed the wings forward. Cavalry on both flanks was very aggressive and quickly threatened both American edges.

There's out right flank cavalry all the way over on the American edge of the table!

Now that's doing it. The cavalry battle erupts five, six feet from our table edge. There's no defense like a good offense! Those two units ended up wiping each other out and the American infantry have spun around! What's that about "never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake?"

I encouraged the left flank cavalry commander to be as aggressive as he wanted. He advanced his lancers through the chaparral and was now a real threat to the static American right.

With the cavalry ready to pounce, we thought it was as good a time as any to push the infantry forward as well! We would use the pond as an anchor and form lines on each side.

A turn or two later and the battle is met! Our cavalry and infantry smash into the Americans in the center and left flank.

And a similar scene plays out on the right. Although cannister shot temporarily slows down one battalion, it was in vain.

At the end of the evening, both sides had suffered significant casualties but most importantly, the southward advance of the United States Army had been halted. The game had been tremendous fun and for all. Although the American players completely failed to even attempt their objective, their dice rolls were shockingly poor to boot. They were good sports about it though. Off to bed, more games in the morning!

Saturday morning... time for some late 1930's pulp gaming!

The game was a follow-up to last year's installment featuring Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless, The Cyclone Rangers, Nazis and my favorite, Ian Gamble, Entrepreneur. In this year's adventure, many groups had detected some strange Tachyon emissions from a forest in Bavaria. These groups all convened on the source of the strange signals to investigate, of course for their own purposes.

Here's Ian Gamble's airship, entering play. The Arctic Explorers have had a terrible time and wrecked their plane trying to land. Poor things! 

Ming had been experimenting with a trans-dimensional portal and appeared to my right with a troupe of flying monkeys! This of course wouldn't do at all. Ian's "privateering ways" were often at odds with Ming.

In no time there was some turbulence forced my airship down into the marshy area by the river. The law-dogs of the Cyclone Rangers were just to the right. Best to avoid those tin stars.

At this point, Ian and Co. caught sight of Ming and his minions. The portal they'd come through was like a big glowing bullseye. It wasn't long before the energy cannon on my ship was firing away at the portal. Meanwhile, my crew disembarked and moved through the muck to close on Ming. This could be a fine opportunity to do the galaxy a favor!

After a quick parley with the Ranger's captain, we agreed to leave each other be in the interest of dealing with Ming. The Rangers opened fire on the monkeys while Gamble's crew laid down a hail of energy blasts at the bearded one. Ming was knocked down, heavily wounded! 

The monkeys were enraged and stormed towards us, but the forces of righteousness (the Rangers) and self-interestness (Ian's crew) got the better of the monsters. The next order of business was to hustle over to Ming and capture him.

But before that could happen, the mountain we'd all descended upon was revealed to be cloaked in illusion. The top opened up and out sprang soldiers in the most unusual black and white garb. Yet it wasn't garb, these beings were actually from a dimension of colorlessness! They were the Black and Whites!

A massive airship ascended from the mountain hideaway. Some of the other groups that were exploring the area had found their way into the complex and began fighting the belligerent monochrome soldiers.

The airship was making its getaway! Ming managed to drag himself to the portal before my crew could get to him. The scoundrel!

As a parting gift, I finally managed to blast the portal with my ship's cannon and closed it. At least that would keep Ming away for a while. My plan of trapping him on Earth without his allies had failed, but we got the better of him that day! Now of course there's the matter of these new Black and Whites... what are they after and who are they working with?

Another fine, chaotic pulp game by Bruce. Looking forward to the next for sure.

After lunch it was back to dicing and toy soldiers... some All Quiet on the Martian Front. I threw in for the Earthling defenders because, well, that's more fun right? 

Each side had three generals. I led the left flank detachment. A scout 'pod advanced quickly on our position but all that speed detracted from its weapon accuracy and vey little damage was caused among my Texas National Guard.

Things turned to shit for the Martians early. Our weapons fire was accurate and deadly. I took out one of the assault tripods quickly. A similar scene played out along the Martian front line.

The wider view

The other two 'pods I was responsible for were on me in no time, causing havoc.

And when life gives you hell, give it back. That's two for me!

But boy, howdy. That last 'pod was something else. It was quickly dubbed "Godzilla" and damn. It wiped out my best unit, the Mk 3 Steamers. 

But for the Martians, it was too little, too late. We'd taken them below half-strength and even though they received three more 'pods as reinforcements, we knocked out two of those! We'd scratched nine out of twelve tripods. What an amazing win for the Texans. 

In all honesty, this was another game of crazy dice, much like the Palo Alto game. The Earthling players' dice were straight fire while the Martian dice were trash. It was very much a 1980's action movie replete with incompetent bad guys and infallible good guys.

More wings and beer, then PIRATES!

The last game of the night was in a similar vein to the pulp game earlier. Multiple factions each with different agenda but of course in a Caribbean 1600's stetting with some wackiness added in. 

The basic setup was this... a Spanish gold-laden ship had been heavily damaged and was unable to continue its voyage back to Spain. Spanish crews were charged with moving loot from it to another smaller vessel. Meanwhile, local pirates had arrived intent on scoring the gold. Also in the area were bands of headhunters and cannibals. Don't ask. I didn't put it together. There was also the truculent Spanish teenage daughter of the Governor, Lupe. The Governor was at his wit's end with her and she was to be sent back to Spain aboard that ship. A group of natives, unimpressed with the Governor wanted to kidnap Lupe to get revenge on the Governor. As you can tell, a lot going on.

The rule of inertia meant I was in charge of getting Lupe on that boat. I was sitting closest and didn't want to move.

It's a short trip... how hard can this be?

Two pirates were in attendance!

Huzzah! One of the pirate leaders was infatuated with Lupe and had more than Spanish gold on his mind. 

It wasn't long before the headhunters and cannibals descended on an unlucky band of pirates!

And the would-be-kidnappers were hot on my heels! You might be able to see that at this point I'm trying to convince Lupe to get aboard the ship. She was a fickle piece of work and didn't really want to go.

So now I was stuck trying to get this pain in the ass onto the ship with two outriggers loaded with angry Indians wiring arrows and trying to board my boat! Captain Montoya leapt across to the outrigger to duel the native Captain. It was the only way.

Montoya managed to clear the outrigger with some assistance from his Lieutenant and a soldier. One of the Indians was knocked into the bay, bleeding. Sharks incoming! On the deck of the ship, the blue-clad pirate Captain Fancypants made his presence known. He could hear Lupe's braying from the far railing.

"Get the wench on that ship!" barked Lieutenant Ordonez. Gordo obliged, and Lupe practically launched herself aboard into Fancypants' arms! Gordo's clumsy hands had gotten a bit too liberal while shoving the girl.

Lupe, fickle as she was, slapped Fancypants and told him to unhand her. She leaned over to Gordo and yelled "I love you!" Ordonez looked at Gordo and said "You better start climbing boy, she's not coming back down here."

Gordo and Ordonez both hurried up the ropes. Ordonez could slap some sense into the crew. Fancypants was getting out of hand and needed to be put in his place.

And with that, the pirate said "Well it's been fun, fellas. I must be going" and vaulted to a longboat below.

That was it! We'd gotten gold and the girl onto the ship. The Spanish players had all achieved their goals. It hadn't been easy and Lord knows, it was a bloody affair. 

We had been using this island as the graveyard. The dead outnumbered the living at the end of the day.
 

Prizes were given to the victors. Gah, it's got that nutbag Lupe on the bottle!

A tremendous weekend of gaming. Five terrific games, good players, great GMs. I'm ready to do it all over again. Be well and good gaming!

Ohio 1, Mars 0 : An AQMF Battle

I suppose the title of the post give it away a bit, but over the weekend Mark J brought his All Quiet on the Martian Front toys over for some early 20th-century shoot-em-up. I opted for the Earthlings, in a reprise of my last game a couple years ago, repping the Ohio National Guard. Mark's collection has improved considerably in the last two years and this time around, the humans had a much nastier selection of kit to field against the filthy invaders.

Mark gets his tripods ready to deploy. His mission was to rescue two downed 'pod pilots - one on the train station platform and the other in the middle of the woods over to the left by the open book. After picking them up, he had to transport them off a randomly determined board edge/corner that was secret from me. He marked the spot with a scrap of paper hidden under the battle mat. I had to prevent the rescue, and ideally capture the pilots myself,

The Martians appear! We went off-script and did an alternating activation, one unit at a time. All units marched in from the board edges.

The brave green hordes of the Ohio National Guard! I had waaay too much stuff and traffic management became a serious issue.

Second Lieutenant Morgo of the Mars Expeditionary Force.

And Major Oong!

Early into the proceedings, a light scout walker gets taken out by lucky long-ranged shots!

And before long, a second tripod is smoked!

But it wasn't long before the Martians got close enough to start boiling and vaporizing my things.

And like Donkey Kong, it was on. The 'pods which had advanced up the left flank burst out in front of my central platoon. My boys were saved from certain doom by the Martians' terrible aim!

But the terrible metal monsters glided ever closer and began crushing tanks and troops, all the while sweeping arcs of death over the brave defenders with their heat rays! My big "Patton" tank had also been severely damaged, though it remained in the fight. It's resilience would prove pivotal.

My remaining tanks redeploy and begin inflicting significant losses on the Martian horde.

Adding insult to injury, one of the Martian pilots ejects into a group of Ohioans. The unfortunate space traveler is immediately subjected to horrific experiments involving rifle butts and pointy sticks.

Guardsmen assault the pod which had just attacked the central position and bring it down! The pilot survives the destruction of his vehicle. ** insert doom-laden riff here **

And that's the last anyone ever heard from Martian Lieutenant Grob.

It wasn't all fun and games for the earthlings. A heavy assault 'pod has a good time with a tank squadron at close range.

And then the Patton is hulled out! Woe is me! It's all-around guns were terribly useful propping up that side of the battlefield.

A sneaky lone steamer gets some kind of lucky and takes out one of the three tripods making a break for it!

The heavy walkers dance on the graves and flaming wrecks of my soldiers and tanks.

One of the rescued pilots loses his ride, mere meters from safety! An artillery prime mover grinds over to assist. Its machine gun fires...

Dakka dakka, space squid!

With that, we called it. I had finished off the two initial downed pilots and won a minor victory. I wasn't able to capture them, but hey, better dead than red!

In the end, I'd suffered massive casualties - 24 infantry and guns and at least 8 tanks, but was able to keep up a steady stream of losses on the Martian side to even out the back and forth firepower. We both had a hell of a good time. We fudged a handful of rules, but the game was better for it and it became a terrific beer and pretzels game - simple mechanics, a fun scenario and a fine opponent. Thanks for bringing the toys out Mark!