2018 Memorial Day Weekend Gaming

Sunday afternoon and evening was a hotbed of gaming at Case de Ski. I held my annual gaming get-together and a group of six of us enjoyed eight hours or so of gaming and general hilarity.

First on the menu was Batman - we had a good group for a three-sided affair. We had Riddler and friends making a deal with some Suicide Squad crooks. The good guys arrive during the deal and disrupt the proceedings.

Max and I took command of Riddler's band. Mike and Mark split the Suicide Squad while Landon and Caleb shared the good guys.

The vacant lot that was the site of the encounter.

The two gangs making the swap.

Rick Flag and Black Canary crash the party.

Killer Croc pops off a manhole cover and charges Robin! Robin's one squirreley girl and avoids Croc's bad touch.

One does not become Robin by being stupid as she evades Croc, slipping down an alley into the lot. Of course there's quite a greeting party waiting for her!

Back on the other side of the block, Black Canary has found herself in some kind of trouble. Flag made his way up to a roof top but couldn't make out any targets in the darkness. Canary let loose a sonic scream disabling two Riddler Bots. The hire gun, Goat Head Priest, who to be honest really isn't playing with a full deck, let loose a hail of lead at Canary wounding her severely and taking her out of action.

The apartment rooftop had become quite busy while that was going on. Slipknot had gone vertical with the goods and met up with Deadshot. Batwoman and Robin made their way up and turned it into a real scrum. Not to be left out, I sent one of my trashbots over to see what kind of trouble it could cause.

As it turns out, it was a good bit of trouble! Batwoman knocked out Slipknot in no time. My Riddler Bot hastened over and grabbed the objective from under law-girl's nose. Oh, BatNag and Robin were upset, let me tell you! Well, inevitably, a turn on, Batwoman pulverized the Bot and Robin grabbed the loot, leaving Suicide Squad short-sticked.

So Riddler and Co. and the good guys achieved success and the Suicide Squad really botched things. It was an entertaining encounter and something different from our norm.


Next up was Victory at Sea: Age of Dreadnoughts - a bit of WWI naval warfare. We played an ahistorical pairing of an Austro-Hungarian convoy being attacked by the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Our teams were Mike, Max and Mark on the Russian side while Caleb, Landon and I split the AH. We had to protect 10 transports across the table.

Geeking happening.

The setup - we're a turn or so in at this point. Landon commanded a pair of Tegetthoff Battleships. Caleb had a trio of Habsburg Battleships and I, a trio of Radetzky Battleships. 

The Russians were Mark with the Imperatrista Mariya and Pantelimon. Max had the Tri Svyatitelya and Rostislav. Mike's two beasties were the Sinop and Georgi Pobiedonsets.

Shots start flying and falling. The Pantelimon is the first to take damage. The Russians split fire across many targets damaging a transport and one each of mine and Landon's warships.

In no time, the Pantelimon is crippled and combat ineffective. One of the transports is also crippled. My lead ship, the Zrinyi is also steadily taking fire from both of Mark's ships.

Mike's ships entered tailing the A-H convoy. IMHO, not the most effective positioning, but he was able to continually snipe the transports.

The Pantelimon goes under!

Followed shortly by the Zrinyi.

The Austro Hungarians decide on a new plan - focus fire on the smaller Russian ships and ignore the Mariya until it's alone. In no time, Max's two ships have been dealt with, but not before Landon's Szent Istvan has taken significant damage.

This left Mike's two late 1890's battleships in pursuit mode and Mark's powerful I. Mariya all alone against seven A-H ships. I spun my squadron around to deal with Mike.

A short exchange of gunfire left one of his ships completely wrecked. Then, a torpedo finds it's mark in the side of the G. Pobiedonsets. The poor internal design of the ship meant it flooded quickly and the single torpedo was all it took to send her to the bottom.

Back at the other end, things weren't any better for the Russians. The mighty Mariya was a floating fireball by this point and although she continued to fire at the transports, it was rather useless.

Mismatch aside, it was a really fun game. We should have switched roles to be honest. The Russians shuld have escorted the convoy with more ships (albeit poor-quality) and had the A-H attack the convoy with fewer, better quality ships. It certainly would have been a more even battle. The attacker still has a tough job knocking out those transports. Mike and I spent some time discussing his deployment behind our fleet. I think the Russians would have been better server with a squadron on the far side to force us to split our force. As it was, we were able to just unload on individual ships and demolish them in detail.

Thanks everyone for coming over and making it another great Memorial Day event!

It's a World War 1 Saturday! (part 1)

Saturday at Morningstar Games in Savannah we broke out the First World War games again and engaged in further slaughter of toy soldiers! We had a very strong turn out again - more folks who don't normally game with us. I'm not going to work up full AARs but here are some pictures of the action.

First up was Games Workshop's "Great War" which is basically 40K with different models. I was the Allied C-in-C, with Ziggy taking the Brits and Jon taking the Americans. Mike and the two kids took the Germans who were tasked with holding the town in the face of the Allied attack. My brilliant plan was to attack up the edges of the board and pinch in once we'd made some headway. We had to capture eight buildings and the church at the far end.

The Germans were deployed in secret. I guessed that Mike wouldn't deploy their cannon in a table corner, limiting its lines of sight, which would make the side "gutters" relatively safe for advancing infantry. The gun was pure murder the last time we played and I wanted no part of it.

It's a long way to Tipperary! I controlled the tank, two HMGs and two mortars. My sub-commanders controlled the infantry.

The Americans got held up by a well-placed machine gun.

While the Brits get hemmed up on another gun on their side of the field. Ol' Smokey has had some engine trouble and is spewing clouds of soot but otherwise is in good shape.

Here's a shot of the players.

A shot from the American mortar goes awry and causes significant "friendly fire" casualties. Jon wasn't happy but the German players thought it was pretty amusing.

Amusing anyway until I cleared out half the Fritzes in the building on our left with a second mortar bombardment.

The Germans on our right fall back to the ruined building to outdistance the mortar and buy some time behind the deadly fire of the machine gun there.

Some liberties may have been taken by the Germans - you can actually see Mike bending the rules in this shot.

Here's shot of Zig's Brits on the left. One squad has taken the ruined building, the others have taken positions in the woods. The German squads in the middle buildings come out to greet them but this would ultimately prove disastrous.

You can see the squad nearest to us has been decimated. My tank has immobilized itself but it was still in a decent spot to support the left side. 

A nice blur-o-vision shot of the American's working their side of the field - firing rifle grenades into the ruins. It took a while but they eventually got the machine gun to run off.

At that point the Germans only had one intact squad, plus a mortar and cannon. We called it there after six full turns - it had been two and a half hours and we had other games to play! I solid Allied victory for sure, but a hard fought one that had its challenges. The flank machine gun positions were terribly effective and it was quite a chore to deal with both.

I'm not sure how much wargaming Alex and Andrew had prior to this game but they really seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully they'll be interested enough to keep with it.

Later in part 2... Victory at Sea. The Axis gets a bit of revenge.

Warhammer 1.914K

Mike ran some more Great War games at Morningstar Sunday afternoon and I was lucky enough to take part again. The first scenario we played was very small, the third scenario in the Skirmish Campaigns: Rommel's Route to Verdun series. I'd played the German side last weekend so wanted to finish it up as the Germans. Ian lent me a hand on the German side of the table. Mark and Jim took the French and Mike refereed.

The game went quickly... Ian and I moved our guys up to the stone wall in front of the two closest buildings, hunting for French.

We sent two soldiers over the wall to peek in the windows. A terrible difficult terrain roll left the guy on the left dangling in the wind.

The French pick off Fritz and take a hail of gunfire in return. One French soldier is wounded, precipitating a massive French rout from the building! They are living up to their reputation. Hahaha.

Otto crept forward towards the hedge-line to reconnoiter it and got gunned down for his efforts. Again, German morale was unaffected. We'd gotten to turn 8 and the French only had 10 unbroken troops on the table of the required 12. A cheap German victory! Hurrah!

Game two was a much bigger deal. Instead of a little skirmish screw-around, each side would have 40+ troops, machine guns, mortars, cannons, etc. We left the table as it was. The Germans had to capture two buildings in the village.

Ian and I again used the Germans, joined by Mike this time. Jim and Mark took over a British contingent this time, much better quality than their French in the first game and better than our Germans!

Our initial dispositions and planned attack routes. My troops are in pink (2 squads and a MG). Ian's are in blue (3 squads and a mortar). Mike's single squad is in off-white. The Brits are littered around the village.

The Germans move out. "hut hut hut hut"

The mortar gets a fabulous shot off against one of the British squads on the wall - two kills! Jim gets rattled easily and has his troops fall back straight away into the buildings. We were very surprised that they pulled back so quickly, expecting an absolute meat-grinder for the first third of the table.

We keep pushing forward as quickly as possible.

 Jim and Mark - the British leaders and Mike, playing for the Germans this game.

Ian, my other co-general

The author of this blog.

Our advance continues. The howitzer at the British rear is taking big chunks of troops out of our force advancing up the road.

A turn further in, and the situation just keeps sucking for the guys coming up the road.

But what our opponents did not expect was that I'd halt for a turn and open up on the squad in the house by the road. I fired a bucket o' dice and ran that squad off! The British players were terribly unhappy that they'd taken so many casualties.

Ian did his damnedest to get the remnants of his road squad into the vacated building. The squad was shot up rather badly in the process and only had two guys left, but their morale held. I wanted to storm the other building but couldn't get a weight of numbers that I was comfortable with, so my guys skulked off left.

My forward squad prepared to assault the guys in the hedge, supported by gunfire from the squad behind. The gunfire ran off the Brits whose morale just wasn't up to par! Ian's two remaining squaddies managed to make it into the empty building and hunkered down.

The British took their eighth turn, which resulted in nothing of consequence. With that, the game was over - a minor British victory since managed to only capture one of the two objectives. We did wipe out two squads, but only had two and a half squads left which I don't think would have accomplished much with the artillery from hell still working its dark magic.

The game was a whole lot of fun for everyone, even considering the shady GW rules. I'd really like to try those Rommel scenarios with Chain of Command or Close Quarter Skirmish instead - the 40K rules don't do it justice.

Great War - Skirmishing on a Sunday afternoon!

Mike brought out some WW1 Germans and French Sunday afternoon for a couple games of the now discontinued Games Workshop Great War. It's basically WH40K set in 1914. We played two very small skirmish scenarios involving Erwin Rommel's early career. The Scenarios were pulled from Skirmish Campaigns' Rommel's Route to Verdun.

The first scenario was "Recon at Cosnes" featuring two German sections trying to recon three objectives while opposed by a single large French squad. Alan and I took command of the Germans, and Chris commanded the French. Mike GMed.

Here's the battlefield:

Our setups. It was pretty well a blind setup. Chris gambled that we'd be entering from the short edge and was well-situated to deal with that. We expected him to be deployed a lot more centrally. Our plan was to simply try to zip up the side and snag the hill and (hopefully) the orchard objectives.

About 3 turns in. The French are no longer hidden and managed to kill one of Alan's group.

My boys bag the first objective while Alan lines his up to repel the French who are coming to visit.

My squad heads for the orchard. The French close in on Alan. The plan is working OK - Alan has tied up the French to the point where they can't prevent me from reconnoitering.

The French storm across the field to assault Alan's section!

And the Germans get carved up pretty badly.

Alan searches madly for some lucky dice. Chris explains to Mike that he's been given trash troops and that the scenario is rigged in the German's favor.

Rommel kicked a lot of ass before he was taken out by the Bleus. Final score - 19 to 6. The French force counted as being captured (10 points) and I got 9 points worth of objectives. The Germans lost six models to the Frenchies.

We won handily but given the tricky nature of the scenario for the defender, it was a tough task. I honestly think the French were too poorly rated as well. Next time we need to beef them up a tad. 

The second scenario was "Contact at Hill 325," the second in the Rommel series. This time, the Germans had to exit 10 troops off the far board edge under the cover of fog. The fog meant everyone had a 12" sight range.

Our cunnin' plan. Run everything at full pace through the wide-open gap on the right side of the table. No nasty terrain in our way - just a nice wide track for sprinting. Of course we had no idea where the French were. We sort of assumed they'd be covering the path of least resistance.

After a couple turns, the German plan was chugging along gloriously! The large French contingent was a looooong way away and was going to have a hell of a run to catch us.

A section of poilus reveal themselves (gross!) in the nearby woods and kill one of Alan's troops. 

Alan goes bonkers on the French in retaliation. His main squad fires at the big French squad while the command section assaults the group in the woods. I concentrate on getting my boys off the table, victory conditions being what they are.

The assault went terribly well for us - Alan wiped out the small squad. The gunfire was worthless - no casualties.

French return fire was equally effective. Alan's troops assaulted the French while I fired at them. My first combat of the day! Hurrah! 9 shots, 2 hits, 0 kills. Feh. I'll stick to running around and skulking, thank you. The assault went much better, with the French falling back off the board! Another German victory!

The second scenario, much like the first, was slightly gimped by a tragic French deployment. Since the French were "dug in," Mike and Chris should have said "fuck it" to the cover of the trees and formed a thin blue line or two across the center of the map. Oh well, live and learn.

For two very small games, with not a whole ton of action, they were both quite enjoyable and we all had fun which is all that matters anyway. I'd like to lash out at shitty GW game mechanics but I'll keep my opinion of their bad games to myself.