Southern Front 2025

I headed up to Raleigh, North Carolina for Southern Front game con last weekend. Overall, I had a really nice time. I haven't been to a con in almost 18 months so it was good to get back in the groove. 

I took my modernized What A Cowboy variant, Shakedown and hosted a game on Friday evening. I also took Rubber and Lead and three races were run for a few attendees.

My first game of the weekend was My Galley Sally, an older club-level ruleset for ancient Galley combat. I've never played that sort of game but it was a blast.

We, the Greeks!

If there's a choice, I always take yellow.

Some action.

I managed the first ram of the battle and got a terrific result, sinking the enemy vessel outright!

More boat-smashing, boarding and arrow-firing!

At the end, two ships had been captured, one Greek and one Persian and one sunk. There were many casualties as you can see! The Greeks were deemed the victors by the GM.

After dinner, I hosted my Shakedown game. We had the Latin Kings and Outlaws in a drugs for money transaction. The Cops and Bloods both showed up mid-transaction and chaos ensued.

I made some appropriate kill markers!

Officer Axel Foley and Dale Jr. get into it.

At the end of the engagement, the Bloods and Latin Kings were the big winners, with the Bloods making off with the cash and the LKs retaining possession of their product. The Cops and skinheads both took a beating. It was a mess but everyone enjoyed it!

The next morning, Mark and I both settled in for some Blood and Plunder. We were graced with a large, pretty table.

Mark and I split a detachment. He took the veteran gunners and leader and I took the less experienced melee pirates. That was intentional, to create a focused very powerful unit (not unlike a Kill Stack in Squad Leader).

Marks gunners work on capturing the pig sty.

A messy brawl on the beach!

My crew gets into it with the French buccaneers in the village. Blue markers are French casualties. 

Mark had taken a beating over to the far left there. I was ambushed by some uppity villagers who shot my boys int he backs!

My opponent and I were both decimated by the filthy villagers and our remaining fellows shook hands and decided to get out!

And there he goes, running past the mob!

Even though mark and I failed to capture the spy in the center (the gal in the red dress by the well), our teammates on the left and right flanks performed well, giving our side the win.

I hosted three rounds of Rubber and Lead after lunch. It was tough pulling in players, but those who played got hooked and kept playing.

The high degree-of-difficulty maneuver of crossing the finish line in reverse with the cement mixer!

My final game was a Western Desert 6mm game of Mein Panzer. It was set just after Rommel landed in North Africa and had started probing British positions. The game ended up being a 1 v 1 with a fellow I had hosted the Pirate game earlier. I took command of Ze Germans and Joe was the British commander.

The British started hidden so I deployed to send my tanks, a mix of Pz II, III and IVs, up the road on the left while my infantry company and aufklarung squadron handled my right flank. The three hills, circled in blue, are the objectives.

An 8-rad becomes the fist casualty. Turns out the British armored cars are on that flank!

I got a PaK38 deployed on the hilltop in short order. A PaK36 would follow a turn later.

My Panzers creep forward. 2-Pounders and A13s await them. 

I sent the motorcycles ahead to harass the positions in the center. That firebase needed to be disrupted.

The armored car battle on the right was brutal and both sides took considerable casualties. My ATGs were very effective. 

The motorcycles were also very effective once they got right up on the infantry position. 

But over on the left, my tanks had taken a slow beating which all of a sudden became a waterfall of pain. Many Panzers were brewed up and I was having real trouble silencing the Brits.

Then to cap things off, one of the command tanks was brewed up. The other command tank promptly failed a morale test as badly as one can fail (rolled a 20 on a d20). We called the game. Although I'd had some success on the right, the left and center were just too much and without a sandstorm or smoke screen in front of my tanks, I'd never get through six hull-down tanks and two dug-in ATGs. 

We really enjoyed the game and the scenario. It was a fantastic way to cap off the weekend. 

Another successful Southern Front and I look forward to the next!

New Cars (and cards)

 There's nothing like playing some Rubber and Lead to make one want to put a few new cars together. That's exactly what I did, so meet the new additions!

Left to right, they are Hell On Wheels, Boombox, Mighty Aphrodite and The Monster.

The other side.

I reviewed stats and equipment for all the cars in the collection to ensure these new additions were totally unique, so they aren't just new models, but are also statistically a little different from everything else.

During the last gaming session, we came up with the most obvious Shenanigans card idea ever! I made three copies and have added them to the deck. 

Not sure how that rated being a new idea, but was such any easy addition. 

Racing on Sunday Afternoon

 Happy Monday! On Sunday afternoon a group of us got together at Wayne's office for some gaming with a couple of my gaming creations. First up on the agenda was Rubber and Lead, testing out my new tracks. 

The first race featured Ziggy in Ol' Yeller, Wayne in Firebug, Mark in The Green Machine and David in Malibu Stacy. 

The end of the first lap was a bit of a Donnybrook.

Ziggy won the first race, despite being spun around halfway through.

Wayne volunteered to sit out the second game so I could drive. I drew the Blue Blazer, Ziggy got The Pony, Mark was in The Silver Bullet while David was in The H8 Team. 

I got the pole position and "Itchy Trigger Finger" so I was dropping oil slicks right out of the gates. I stayed in the lead for the entire race, wire to wire and for the first time ever, won a race of Rubber and Lead!

My moment of glory, eight years in the making.

After R&L, I pulled out CartWars Ox Cart Racing. I don't think it's ever been shown on the blog. I've really only ever played it with family on the kitchen table.

The five carts streaking across the field!

Ziggy celebrates a victory! We ran three races, Wayne won twice and Zig won once. I finished 3rd, 3rd and 2nd. 

It's a goofy, fun, beer & pretzels game that the guys rather enjoyed. All in all, a really enjoyable Sunday afternoon of themed gaming.

Upgrading My Game

 I plan to take my destructive car racing game Rubber and Lead to Southern Front next month. I haven't run it at a convention since 2018. The one and only problem with the game, which is otherwise gaming perfection, is that the track boards I made many years age are 24" x 48" 1/4 inch MDF and both heavy and clumsy. A few years ago I bought some lighter alternatives but never did anything with them. Well, toting the game five hours to Raleigh is just the inspiration this guy needed to finish the project. Ingredients:

2020 / 2021?

3" X 3" postit notes

I sketched out track designs on the sticky notes in such a way that they'd match up in many combinations of four allowing for a polymorphic track.

In June of 2021 I found the perfect items to use for the track boards.

I sketched the track shapes on the boards in pencil, basically copying what I'd done on the postit notes. Then I let the boards age for fours years as a "project of lower priority."

After agreeing to host R&L in Raleigh, I decided it was high time I get on that track 3.0 project. Step 1 - basic green & black.

Rather unappealing for sure but you get the gist. The board with white lines across the track are "start" and "fire line" track sections.

A bit more effort and now I have boards like these

The white goo is glossy Mod Podge, ultimately resulting in these

I made two boards with fire lines because, why not? The line can be ignored easily enough if the board isn't in the #2 position. This should allow for fifty board configurations, I think. Either way, it's a bunch. They'll get their first next Sunday when I take it over to a Labor Day gaming get-together with the gang.

Last Week's Gaming

 Wayne hosted some gaming last Sunday, at his office again. Nice guy, that Wayne. He was keen to put CY6:JA back on the table, particularly with the new planes I'd painted up for him recently. Oh yeah, those planes... I STUPIDLY took the commission work, did what I thought was a terrific job worthy of the commission and FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES for the blog. Three Tomcats, six F-5 Aggressors and some Libyan Gulf of Sidra planes. Wayne set up a Top Gun movie scenario featuring very skilled F-14s against a boatload of crap "MiG-28s."

David and I flew the MiGs; being more experienced players, we we slightly better suited to  handling more planes. Mike and Mark each drove one F-14 to start. After a few turns, additional MiGs would arrive followed shortly by Maverick.

Good Golly Miss Molly, those are some SHARP looking planes! They're 6mm. Can't remember the manufacturer.

And our Aggressors

A few turns in and Hollywood gets popped by one of our missiles. I think it was mine from the "white" MiG. The Tomcat only suffered engine damage. No kill for us!

But in no time, that hoodlum Iceman knocks out one of ours!

Another MiG down!

That cocky Yankee Mav shows up and takes out a third MiG. We did manage to knock out Hollywood though!

In no time another Sparrow takes out a fourth bogey and we're done. As it turned out, a result very similar to the movie! The scenario was a blast and although the bad guys are clearly overmatched, it was worthwhile and close to being well-balanced in terms of victory conditions. Better AAMs on the MiGs would probably even things right out.

After Check Your 6: Jet Age we moved on to Rubber and Lead. Wayne had never played my home-brewed game of combat automobile racing. Interestingly I finished my game right when Gaslands was released. My game was not influenced at all by GL. Having played Gaslands, all I can say is my game is better.

This was the first time I'd tried R&L with five cars. It played just fine with an extra car on the track.

Early into the proceedings. From left to right it's Mark in the purple truck, me in the dark green/gold car, Wayne in the green/purple convertible, David in the yellow./red truck and Mike in the Greased Lightning Mini.

Mike makes quick work of the first lap. I'm in HOT PURSUIT! Lap two is always a dicey affair though with loads of oil, mines and wrecks on the track.

The other three however have miscalculated the final 90-degree turn and have to slow things down a lot. Wayne was victimized and put out of the race just moments after this photo was taken.

I managed to catch up with Mike and nudged him going into the home stretch. David's gone waaay the fuck off course, cruising around through the infield.

Friends... whatcha gonna do? Both our cars had but a single Body point left. Any more damage would seal the deal. 

And of course Mike nudges me on the approach to the finish line. Of course it kills off both our cars! NOOOOOOOOO!

And the King of the Skulkers, Mark J wins the race! He putzed around in last place for 90% of the race and only showed out at the end. David survived and was first-place loser. 

A nice blurry of the players

A great afternoon of gaming. I'm going to try out some Megablitz with James this weekend. Haven't played in ages. Be well!