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!

Aliens and Cultists AAR

Zig and I got together for some toy soldiers last evening. We decided on my home-brew skirmish rules. I put together a scenario featuring my recently painted cultists being interrupted during one of their gatherings. The interruption of course was an alien landing. The aliens were there to collect bodies and subjects for experimentation. The cultists were simply trying to save themselves.

The space invaders arrived in the four corners of the tabletop. Two at around 24" away from the center, two others around 30" away. The distancing was done for play balance - it would have been tough for all the aliens to arrive at the center at one time.

The cultists surrounding the circle began their chanting early and often in an effort to summon some otherwordly assistance!

Tobor gets the action going my sending a blast of energy at the earthlings!

All the chanting pays off! Brother Frank's vessel is consumed as a mighty demon appears!

Big 'Un heads straight for Tobor.

The stars must be right - in no time, two Winged Hunters also burst forth from the summoning circle and set upon an alien. The aliens have the South Georgia chapter of Dagon's Faithful surrounded. Some of the brothers leave the circle and take the fight to their attackers.

The fight was intense now! Tobor managed to break off from the demon. Down in the lower lift of the picture you can see two aliens dragging bodies back to the craft.

Moments later, cultist Earl was subdued by a pair of aliens and one started to lead the poor bastard off to a flying saucer! 

Tobor managed to get the better of the Demon.

The cultists were too scattered and beaten up to make a difference at this point. Here we see two aliens dragging bodies back to one of the space craft.

Poor Earl. He showed back up in town a few weeks later but he was different. He didn't talk so much any more.

At the end of the day, that was a damn entertaining game. Good weird story, tense action. It looked like I was going to get slaughtered early on, but once the Winged Hunters got into the action and the summoning circle broke up the cultists got back into the fight quickly. Before the game, I set the aliens' victory condition as retrieving 5 "body points" work of humans - that's 1 point each for corpses and 3 for living subjects. Halfway through the game it looked unachievable. As it turned out, it was perfect! Ziggy's handling of the aliens was pretty solid. He was bothered by their lack of shooting prowess, but if it had been any better, I'd never have had a chance.

I liked the summoning mechanic though I may need to increase the amount of Summing Points required to summon the critters. To generate Summoning Points, cultists had to stand idle next to the circle. At the end of the turn, regular cultists generated one point each. Cult Leaders would generate d10 points each. I rolled terrifically well each times and the summoning circle was churning out monsters like Universal Studios.

I hope you're not in your quaratine for very long, those of you in affected areas.We've been lucky thusfar in Savannah and there are no enforces curfews and quaratines. Work has been a zoo, deploying staff to work at home and quickly turn up telemedicine systems for physicians. Stay safe, be well and good gaming!

More Boom!

I finished up the four Prussian guns last evening. I think I've got enough fully painted stuff to put on a game! It's a miracle.

As you can probably tell, the pics were taken with a flash and the shading is washed out.

Models are Man At War from their Napoleon at War line, which is of course discontinued.

Star Fleet Battles AAR: Return of the Lizard (King)

We finally got back together for the sequel to last August's SFB game down in Brunswick. What can I say, it was a busy Fall and Winter. Last scenario ended with the asteroid field pirate base in the possession of the ISC. They'd set up in the facilities and taken them over as their own. A Gorn convoy carrying troops to the Romulan front passed nearby and sensing an opportunity for revenge, the convoy Captain ordered his ships to attack the base.

Our Gorn Captains were Mike B, piloting two Gorn COM troops carriers, Ziggy with a DD and David D flying an FF. The ISC were run by Mark J driving an LCA previous-generation Heavy Cruiser and me flying a PF half-flotilla. The Gorn mission was to capture a small PF base before ISC reinforcements arrived (no later than turn 4). The ISC simply had to prevent this from happening.

My PFs engaged early. I sent one head-on into the Gorn group and the other two around an asteroid group. The solo ship did a fine job of getting the Gorn to use up some torpedoes and fire phasers. It did however get pounded by a couple of F-Torps for its trouble. It survived that thrashing and still had enough power, phasers and a single torpedo left to be useful.

The other pair of PFs correctly guessed that the torpedo launched at them from David's FF was a pseudo. I felt good about that. To me his timing seemed poor - to waste his only fully-charged torpedo on me so early seemed hasty - it just smelled like a bluff and indeed was.

So by the end of turn 1 we had a real mess set up. Mark's LCA was hovering near the base, the Gorn Commando ships were also very close to the target. A great number of shuttles loaded with Gorn troops were making their way to the base. Zig's DD turned away from the traffic jam. David's Frigate was being pursued by my two intact PFs (although it was a bluff of my own - I was really after one of the Commando ships).

Those two Gorn torpedoes sent towards the LCA were indeed pseudos. Mark unfortunately used up all his phasers firing at them...

... And had nothing to deal with the two real torpedoes sent shortly afterwards in turn 2. The gloves were now off and there would be no more subterfuge! My PFs ran the gauntlet of shuttle phaser-fire and unloaded four type-Fs into the back end of one of the troop carriers. I was also able to shoot down a couple of the assault shuttles. The troop carrier was severely damaged but still flyable. Ah well, it was a strong effort from my crew.

Not long afterwards, PF #1 (which had taken major damage in the previous turn) and PF #2 which had taken all the shuttle and ship phaser fire were both blown to smithereens leaving me with just one small ship that really needed to recharge weapons.

Mark's LCA was set to a ponderous speed and couldn't turn quickly enough to keep up with the Commando ships which managed to evade his plasma arcs. Mark and I agreed, out of frustration and the desire to kill something that the Frigate needed to be hulled out.

Two G's and an F did the job well. The Frigate died swiftly. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, many Gorn were being transported to the base via shuttles and transporters. The fighting at the end of turn 2 ended up going in our favor! We killed two squads while the attackers only killed one.

 Mark and Ziggy

David and Mike

Turn 3, Mark and I decided to run off for a breather. My PF isn't geared for a barrage of shuttle fire and needed to re-load. Mark's CA had lost two shields but was otherwise in OK condition. Heavy ships can take a beating...

We rolled out the ground combat at the end of 3. The ISC forces were wiped out. Mark and I had planned to destroy the base during turn 4 to prevent capture but it was now too late, the Gorn had taken it and there was little sense in carrying on.

A fine game of Star Fleet! It was set up to favor the Gorn to a degree, so the outcome made sense. That said, it was a lot of fun getting to that conclusion. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and liked the scenario - that's all it takes to make me happy after putting in the effort. Hopefully we can get in another game in April if the quarantine doesn't have us locked down. Stay safe, be well and good gaming.

Boom Boom Boom

I finished up French cannon crews over the weekend, then got them mounted and based yesterday evening. Now that's I'm at home, sick for at least the rest of today I figured it was as good a time as any to post some pictures.

Models are all 20mm from Newline Designs. Next up are Prussian gun crews! We'll see how far I can get with them being out of work for a day. 😁

A Few More Prussians

I put the wraps on another group of Prussian infantry last evening. They'd been "in progress" for a couple months, getting a bit of attention here and there. The lion's share of the work was done last weekend. Models are 20mm and are from Newline Designs.

Next in the queue are gun crews. I have French crews mounted to painting nails and primed.