Social Distancing Saturday

Or... e-Ogre and the paintbrushing

For a Saturday in which I had no real gaming activity planned, things worked out for me. I finished up 12 Wargames Atlantic 28mm scale skeletons. WA is a fairly new plastic model company. Thei make multi-piece kits and the quality is excellent. I wanted to sample their wares and figured some vanilla skeletons would always be welcome.

One of the skeletons may have been attached upside-down. Silly necromancer! The weapons and shields are very much "classical antiquity." I suppose the bucklers should have gone to the swordsmen, but I put the spears together first and just really like the small shields.

My wife and I watched 1917 in the afternoon. It's really good. Watch it if you haven't.

In the evening, David S texted me and Mike about playing a game on Vassal - an online boardgame tool that allows gamers separated by distance to play a game together. It is important to know that Vassal does not know the rules, it only provides the components. There's a bit of a functionality learning curve so if you give it a try, bear that in mind.

We chose Ogre since it's easy enough and we both had rules handy. We chose the most basic of all Ogre scenarios - Mark III Attack - and proceeded to blow things up! I took a few screenshots.

Early going. Spending a few minutes to get familiar with the controls and making the layout usable is time well-spent. I was the Combine Player controlling the Mk. III Ogre.

The wolfpack pounces but the dice are miserable. Although David manages to destroy my two missiles before I can fire them, his other shooting is ineffective. This pattern continues for most of the game. Pro tip - then a unit is destroyed, drag it off beside the map! There is no "destroy unit" function.

It's shaping up to be a successful raid. Killdozer has suffered very little damage (much of it self-inflicted tread-damage from ramming tanks) and is spitting distance from the CP.

Killdozer want love! Why you break Killdozer gun?

Turn 9 - my Ogre overruns the CP. Mission successful! More importantly, the Vassal test was successful and by turn 3 or 4 we were experts, the game flowing very smoothly.

David's dice were absolute trash. It wasn't unit it was waaaay too late that he starting scoring meaningful hits. Mine were generally better than average and the Ogre was able to smoothly rampage its way up the map and to what it does.

A very fun evening of gaming and looking forward to more! If you're cooped up these days like may are, Vassal is well worth the effort. Combined with a Zoom video-call running on a iPad / smart phone, you can have a nearly real tabletop gaming experience without having to risk the National Guard beating down your door!

Tanksgiving 2018 - A Pair of AARs

It's that time of year again (funny how that happens), time for Mike to host a TANKSgiving get together at his place. Zig and I made the trek to Waycross yesterday to eat, drink, throw dice and push models for a few hours. I had put together a Cold War Commander scenario a week or so ago at Mike's request, so I took my 6mm West Germans and WarPac along for the ride.

When we arrived, Mark J was setting up All Quite on the Martian Front and Mike was setting up an entirely too huge Ogre layout. When it became apparent that Mike would only have four for Ogre, we cut the board's dimensions in half and ended up with a much more manageable game. The scenario was this:

There were seven reactors scattered about the battlefield. Each team had to recover as many as possible and exit them off their table corner. Reactors could only be picked up by unarmed and poorly protected transport trucks.

Mike had four small slightly different forces set out so each of us simply took one and we were off!

My red horde struggles to cross the stream but the GEVs and trucks make haste towards the nearest reactor facility.

Ziggy and Mike start scrapping on their side of the table. Ziggy's blue GEVs next to the reactor turn in a great round of shooting, causing Mike's attack to seize up.

Ziggy points something out to Mike while my first reactor grab has gone swimmingly. The truck the the fireball marker on it (lower left) is the getaway vehicle.

Mark, my opponent to the right wasn't being ignored. I had sent my squadron of four GEVs over as a distraction and it worked out very nicely. The intention was for them to cut roads slowing down the transports' escape. Mark ended up diverting a good chunk of his forces to deal with them.

A good overview of the action. Zig's blue forces have snagged one reactor and are on the way to their second on the far left. Mike grabbed one (upper left) and are on their way to taking the second in the center. My reds are on their second reactor while some of Mark's APCs and infantry skulk nearby.

SCOREBOARD!

Mark's swine ambushed my contractors removing the toxic reactor, preventing me from grabbing a second objective. Meanwhile, Mike had manged to grab his second from the center facility.

Waaaay over to the left, Ziggy has nabbed a second reactor core but Mike has sent a lone GEV to hunt it down (the green one). I've formed an agreement with Mark that north of the river we will not fight each other and instead focus on preventing Mike from scoring two objectives. You can see my one remaining GEV hiding from Mike's view behind the building.

Ziggy's second reactor is destroyed by Mike's GEV which is in turn taken out by infantry and one of Z's GEVs.

Pew pew! My GEV zips out and takes a few quick shots at Mike's truck carrying the loot, wrecking it. A glorious four-way tie! We had each nabbed one objective and the other three were all destroyed in transit.

That was a fun scenario - small manageable forces, interesting and challenging victory conditions and enough elbow room to allow for proper maneuvering. We all really enjoyed the game.

After the first session games were cleaned up, Mike and I began setting up for round 2. He was setting up an Eastern Front Blitzkrieg Commander game while I got my CWC stuff ready. The scenario I'd selected was "Assault" with the West Germans defending a town. They had to hold on for eight turns against a much larger Soviet force. Max took command of the FRG forces and Ziggy (a newbie to CWC) helmed the Reds.

Max's setup. Nothing too crazy really. I'd have put the Marders in the middle with tanks on both flanks.

The armor arrives in force! That's 12 T-55s on the lower left and 6 T-64s + 6 BMP-2s just up from them. Max is nervous. Ziggy has held a group of T-72s for Flank deployment.

And they waste no time! Twelve T-72s roll in immediately on turn 1, deep on the German right flank. If Max was nervous before, now he had very good reason!

A Leopard and Jaguar are taken out in short order. The Leopards quickly redeploy to the other side of the wall.

The German left flank is in serious trouble as the T-64 and BMP group bursts out of the woods.

A bit of relief for the NATO forces as some air support streaks in and smashes the front of the T-72 formation. The Jaguars in the town would have felt the sting as well, had they not already been taken out. That was a little close there, Fritz!

After some terrific command / activation rolls another visit from Mr. Phantom...

Max had completely wiped out the T-72 threat on his right flank! In a blink, the whole complexion of the battle changed.

The other side of the town was still in deep trouble though. The BMPs pushed around to engage the Marders, with a large group of T-55s close behind.

I didn't take much convincing for the Marder teams to redeploy into the town. The Leopards also redeployed to help out on this side - the potato field had already been captured!

The T-55s arrive and take up positions in a gunline to winkle out the defenders. Just then, a jet streaks overhead!

The Su-17 pilot was a little edgy after having made it past the NATO air cover and dropped his bombs a bit early, giving his countrymen below reason to fear.

Not longer after, the casualties sustained by the FRG defenders became untenable and they retreated south, past the still burning hulks of the T-72s. The battle was over.

A tough win for Ziggy and the Polish/Russian horde. It was set up to be a cakewalk early as the flankers arrived and Max couldn't pass a command roll to save his life. Once Max's dice problems resolved themselves, it became a much different affair. Zig doesn't often push the commie hordes and I think he rather enjoyed having a massive manpower advantage for a change. I enjoyed GMing and just keeping the game on track.

We packed up for the two hour ride back home while the WWII battle was still raging in the other room - I have no idea how that one turned out. Another enjoyable Tanksgiving get together; Thanks Mike!

Tanksgiving Games (an AAR twofer!)

Last Saturday, November 26, a few of us made the two-hour drive to Mikey's house in Waycross for some Tanksgiving toy soldiers. First up was Dystopian Wars. We had four players so it was easy to give each 750 points worth of stuff and commence smashing. I brought my Blazing Suns armored forces and was paired with newbie Bill who borrowed Mike's Prussians. Mike used his British and was paired up with David's first-battle Russians.

The British and Prussian armies don't have your typical composition - no larges is the most obvious peculiarity. Mike but the lists together as "teaching" armies and simply used them for this outing - it resulted in a 1500-point game with only two big machines per side - a bit weird for sure!

The deployment of the Japanese and Prussian troops. I kept the squid and big walker essentially centered. All of the Prussian artillery was on our left, covering a large open area. We were sure to give it plenty of open LOS so finding targets wouldn't be a problem.

The British and Russian deployment. Mike's artillery were "hedged in" and in my opinion, the Russian landship was a deployed a bit conservatively. The drill was underground, abreast of the Belgorod.

This was the story early in the battle. The Coalition won initiative and would move a unit forward. The Bond would then move up, getting into range of the previously moved unit and smacking them. A beautiful "generator offline" on a filthy, nasty Steward. Huzzah!

Our players

A view off to the right of the battle. The big central hill did a marvelous job of splitting the opponents' force in two.

My Myobu snap a few shots at a British artillery gun. These little guys were wonderful for harassing the artillery.

An overhead shot towards the end of turn 2. By the end of turn 2, the Bond was way ahead on points, 315 to 65.

The drill appears! Its cargo of small tanks is disgorged. All Prussian and Japanese guns have a new priority target.

And within minutes, the drill is a smoking wreck as it is hammered mercilessly.

The driver of the Belgorod makes the assumption that two giant Russian vehicles cannot possibly die in the same spot and drives to where the drill got killed.

And turn four turns into a shooting gallery of KILL THE BELGOROD! The Prussians knock it down to just one hull point.

Then a squadron of Chi Ris quickly trundle over and finish it off. Woo Hoo!

Squiddy floats towards the village to unbalance the situation over there on the right which has been quite a melee of Terriers, Mk 2s, and Reckes, with some A6s in reserve.

After turn 4, we'd achieved our objective of destroying 50% of the enemy force including all large/massive units. The tally was a whopping 1040 to 430.

Yeah, it was a lop-sided affair but I think fun was had all-around. Aside from Bill, everyone's dice were crap. Sure, we'd have a good roll here and there, but Bill's were consistently amazing and that had a lot to do with our victory. The Bond team made a few mistakes, primarily in deployment, that put them on the back foot early but hot dice beat tactics as we all know.

Amazingly, the Blazing Suns lost NO units at all - all Bond casualties were Prussian. The fact that both Russian large units died on literally the same spot of ground was also quite amusing.

After we cleaned up, it was on to a big game of Ogre/GEV. Well, GEV since we decided to do away with the Ogres. David and I were on the NA Combine team, armed with a shitload of GEVs and infantry. The Pan Euro team of Mike and Bill was armed only with much slower tanks (and infantry). The Combine were able to select their mission secretly and only had to deploy half of their force initially. The PE then would deploy their whole (larger) force to defend an unknown objective.

David and I chose the objective of scouting 5 city hexes on the PE side of the map.

Our brill plan was deploy our initial forces centrally, in the hopes of getting the PE to follow suit. It sort of worked. The road on the left side of the map was to be our yellow brick road to glory!

Right out of the gates, I shut down the damned laser on the far left. Central forces moved up. A PE Super Heavy rolls up into the city hex on MY road. 

The dreaded chore of dealing with Supers using only GEVs combined with shit dice rolls.

The fight in the center does not go super great for the Nord-americains. We chose to blame dice since there's no way that well-dug-in troops could simply shrug off our light raiders the way the shore ignores the waves. At least with our GEV movement, we were able to escape very harsh retribution.

Finally some headway on the YBR.

Don't have any pics of the moment it happened but David and I made the "oh F it" decision and bailed on the center, making a massive jailbreak left. The PanEuros had to march with us, albeit much more slowly. Hehehe. David left a couple of stragglers in the middle and right that tied up a nice collection of PE Ponces for the duration. 

Like wet Gremlins, the combine swarm the bejezus out of the left side of the map. PE fire couldn't effectively slow that many spread-out units.

Bwahahaha! We settle in and hunker down. The rear guard blocks the PE from ruining our party.

VICTORY! Successfully scouted hexes are marked with yellow Xes. The PE only had a single Super left in that corner to harass our troops and we'd occupied more hexes than it could hit.

That was a terrific game. Around 10:00PM David and I were ready to give up and start driving home. We were getting wrecked and there was no hope at all. We only stayed out of respect to our host. By 10:15, the jailbreak was in full effect and Mike and Bill were in full "Oh Shit" mode. It was a race at that point and we managed to pry out a victory.

Thanks Mike for hosting us and feeding us and putting up with our complaints of rigged dice and horribly unbalanced scenarios. I had a great time and am looking forward to hosting the third Memorial Day Bash in six months!