Skirmish 2023 Pictures and Recap

 The inaugural Skirmish game con in Jacksonville, Florida has come and gone. I enjoyed it and look forward to returning in a year. I got in a handful of games and only had one unpleasant experience.

Some Wings of Glory to start the weekend. I resolved, years ago, to always take this game to cons; it is easy to set up and you can always find an opponent.

Some sweet classic Battletech.

"Above the Clouds" WWII aerial fighting. I was on the American side who handily sorted out their Japanese opponents. 

My flight

He got me! Just a nice shot. The gimbal mounts made for neat poses.

The French / Indian Canoe race. A lot of fun. The French trappers must ROW ROW ROW their boats laden with pelts to get away from the Indians.

The river. Any French canoe making it off the end would result in a French trapper victory.

I made the bold decision to spin it sideways with one of my two boats to give the Indians a bit of an obstacle. 

4-Siders represent tipped over boats and crews. The number indicates how many turns it would take before righting and re-boarding would occur.

Lots of cute scenery.

This big ol' crybaby named Steve blew a gasket when I was jinxing his dice rolls. You'd have thought I had just stolen his best gal. Apparently some guys really believe their opponents' voices can control dice results. He was also accused and found guilty of power gaming and rules-lawyering during an obviously silly casual game. 

But at the end of the night, Mark managed to get a canoe off the end securing a win for the French!

Saturday morning I woke up hungover as all get out and hosted a game of Dragon Rampant.

Only had three players but they all enjoyed it and the result was a victory for the good guys, even though Good Ash was run off in shame and Bad Ash was a complete killing machine.

Next up was Jim's Ronin game. Peasants and Bandits vs some priests.

Twas a very pretty table.

My rabble. I was on the side of "peasants and bandits."

Our enemy. The guys in yellow, not the pig!

Get 'em! BANZAI!

Nearly Naked Niko goes mano y mano with one of the better-trained priests.

In the end, it was a win for the rabble as the priests were overwhelmed. A great game with great players and game master.

Played some more WoG.

Saturday night Battletech Alpha Strike! Six player mayhem. This was a really good game to end the con with - low complexity, lots of loud boisterous characters and giant killy things. 

Lining up some shots

The goal was to dominate objectives (the orange spots) at the end of turn 6. Each objective had sleeping Planetary Defense Force units nearby.

My cross-table opponent had a very big stompy that could unleash an obscene amount of firepower. I was fortunate that my two mediums opposing it were a close match for it and my dice were interested in winning for a change.

But at the end of six, the Liao unit controlled the objective. Curses!

But it wasn't all bad news. I had some elementals capture the next objective over, that's one for the good guys!

The other two objectives were contested, so the result was a draw on VPs. Either way, a very enjoyable fight and hard-fought one.

Skirmish 2024 is on my to-do list!

Weekend Update

 Ziggy and I got in that Dragon Rampant scenario playtest yesterday evening. No thorough AAR, but a couple of pics.

The scenario is inspired directly by the great movie Army of Darkness. Undead "Deadites" led by Naughty Ash fighting it out with the living, led by Goody Two-Shoes. The scenario played well and I know exactly what terrain to pack with me in a few weeks. Goody Two-Shoes' car is obviously a scratch conversion of a toy car with a handmade windmill blade  for carving up Deadites. I spent a few hours thinking about how to do it and make it look interesting and plenty more time getting the blade support to stay put! I'm happy with the result which is certainly evocative of Ash's car in the final battle. 

I finished up the first batch of commission work for Wayne this morning. Some pics.

They're out of a board game called Star Saga. Primary color is lavender with Army Painter "Slaughter Red" speed paint over it. The almost raspberry color is nice but still gives off a strong "not to be taken lightly" vibe.

AAR: Holiday Season on the Tabletop

 It's not what you're thinking, this is a real battle of holidays! Christmas versus Halloween!

Wifey and I played a long-delayed game of Dragon Rampant on Saturday evening. The featured armies were of course her undead horde repping her favorite time of year, Halloween. I was commanding the forces of the North Pole, Santa's own, the Christmas Army. I actually painted up the Christmas crew a few months ago and just never posted their pictures on the blog so this was their big unveiling.

Most of the models are Alternative Armies (snowmen and trees) while the reindeer and workshop elves are Splintered Light Minis.

We played on a bifurcated 4 x 4 table, decorated to match our forces' themes.

The chose scenario was the Crystal Gale. Ten crystals were scattered across the battlefield. Each was worth a victory point in addition to whatever we might score slapping around each other's armies. We typically do no fiddle around with quests.

Both armies had very successful activations in the early going. The Halloween army's speed was on full display as the griffons, spirits and nightmares swept out capturing crystals swiftly. On my side of the table, well, things were moving as slow as Christmas!

This isn't good. The blasted spirits capture a crystal on my side of the table.

My wild-charging reindeer weren't too put off though as they charged up the hill smashing into the host.

Action in the middle really starts to get going.

The spirits' own wild charge leads them to a dark place - my elves (bellicose foot) are assaulted and moments later return the favor, wiping out the ethereal host.

More underhandedness as the nightmares snatch up another crystal on my side of the table! Fortunately for me, they halted just in front of a mob of snowmen who pelted them mightily with snowballs!

Seeing the fun that their brothers were having, the snowmen on the other side of the frozen pond also heaved rock-laden snowballs at the vile riders!

Back on the right side, the reindeer make a feast of the griffons!

In the center, those psycho elves crash into skeletal heavy infantry. The skeleton host was up to the challenge.

The reindeer make it into the Halloween backfield and crash into the archers.

But alas, the archers were up to the challenge and ran off the mighty elk, pin-cushioning them as they fled.

In the center, the skeletal infantry made mincemeat of the workshop elves and the remaining nightmare rushed over and finished them off. Skeletal beastmen cause major problems for my snowmen off to the left. This isn't going well for me all of a sudden.

The nightmares are wiped out, my snowmen, trees and the Wizard of Winter figure out how to deal with the skeletal infantry.

Well that sucks. They had roughly a snowball's chance in hell of success. Both snowman units are in retreat now!

The right-hand unit flees off the table, while the other unit rallies, then takes out the remaining beast skeletons with a fusillade of snowballs! The celebration didn't last as they were quickly run off by the other skeletons.

The Wizard of Winter steps in and needing 5's and 6's to hit, produces the abomination you see here. Wiz was run off.

The trees show up and finish the job.

It's down to the skeletal archers on Halloween's side. They have little trouble running off the Wizard of Winter. Gah!

The trees gradually make their way to the killing machine that is the skeletal archers, nickle-and-dimed the whole time, losing strength points as they lumbered they way over.

Those archers were fill of piss and vinegar and fought like sugar-buzzed seven-year-olds. The trees..

Were no more.

A solid win for the forces of Halloween. This was a quite enjoyable game with two evenly-matched armies. I had nothing for the undead's early speed and being a net -4 of crystals early in the game was brutal. I was pleased to get some great results out of the snowmen's "short-ranged projectiles." They were a thematic addition, representing snowballs but I ended up with many opportunities to use them. My wizard this game was the discount "Wizardling" with which you only get to select three spells instead of having the full slate available. I think I preferred that in all honesty; in my experience spell casters don't spend a ton of time successfully casting  spells in Dragon Rampant and saving the two points worked out nicely.FWIW, I selected "Almighty Prod," "Stronger Shields," and "Heal Thee."

Next Saturday is Stargrave. Looking forward to that for sure!