Cold Wars! 2015 - Day 1

So back again from Cold Wars, had a great time. Thought it would be a good idea to put up a blog post of what I got up to down there. Basically there are 2 main days of the convention Friday and Saturday, so I figure I will do 1 post for each day and put up maybe some brief reports of the games I got into, and also just some random pictures of games, I took while walking around, that looked cool or interesting for whatever reason.


WW2 Naval - General Quarters 3

The first game I got into was a WW2 Naval game, I don't recall the exact name for it, but the general idea was that I was to take some Japanese destroyers and try to slip off the table before some American destroyers could destroy to many. To complicate things it was a night battle, and the American vessels all had radar. So it was to be me and a fellow named Kenny vs Chris and another chap.

We had a force of 5 destroyers in a group of 3 and a group of 2. So we decided to hedge our bets, and have the group of 2 commanded by Kenny run straight at them to create a distraction, while I made a B line for the table edge at maximum speed. Now the Japanese destroyers were pretty fast capable of 35 Knots, so I should have been moving 17.5 inches at the start. Unfortunately I misunderstood or was just stupid and ended up moving just 17.5 cm for 3 turns basically.

The main form of combat is taking shot with large caliber guns, or launching Torpedoes. I decided to try a long shot with some torpedoes early on to see how it worked in this game, and since the Japanese had very long ranged torpedoes. I managed to get a nice hit in which is what this picture was off. (Sadly I just remembered to take 2 photos).

 
Here is a wider shot. The discs hide what direction you launch torpedoes in. So our force of 2 advanced straight out and got pounded pretty good, they eventually both sank, but crippled one of the Americans and we got a few hits on some of the others here and there. Unfortunately my mistake had cost us the whole point of this endeavor and I didn't get far enough along for it to be super useful. The Americans chased back over to my ships and started hammering them, Chris got off a niec shot with some Torpedoes doing allot of damage. In the end I didn't loose any before I got off, but the last in the line was crippled and all had taken fair damage. So basically 3-1 for the Americans. Frustratingly I ended up not much more then 18" from the endge so if not for my mistake it may have been possible to slip off, but who knows.

Painting Class

After that we attended a class at the painting university on Skin Tones. Basically on how to make good use of the painting Triads (1 dark shade, 1 mid shade, 1 highlight), how to mix colors to get the needed tones, and where to apply highlights. Got some good tips and advice (use make up websites to find out where to apply highlights and shading). So was a good class.

Great Swamp Fight - Muskets and Tomahawks

Finally on Friday night I played in the game I had pre-registered for, which was a muskets and tomahawks battle. People have been talking about this game for about a year, seems to be popular in Kingston, and the terrain at the tournament last year was really cool. So I figured it was about time to give it a go.

This battle was a part of King Phillips War in the late 17th century. This was part of the on going struggles between the settlers and the Native Peoples. On December 16th, 1675 a force of colonials guided by Indian allies attacked an Indian fort deep in a frozen swamp, in what became know as the Great Swamp Fight. I took control of a colonial force with a few regulars in red coats, a bunch of irregulars and then some angry milita with club and pitch forks. The basic idea is that cards are drawn from a deck and when a troop type comes up they all get to do 1 action, reload, move, shoot, charge ect..

The Indians where all asleep except a few guards so we got the jump on them. Our task is to kill as many as we can and burn down the village. First turn had us trying to squeeze through a break in the palisade, while our allies the praying Indians charged right in.

The basic idea seems to be that colonials have lots of powerful muskets so can shoot up the Natives, but the Natives move faster and if they get into a melee bad things happen to the colonials. On the plus side the Natives have bad morale so don't like to take casualties.

For some reason the guys controlling the Natives insisted on charging our Indian allies with there defenseless villagers, so with the Game Master shaking his head these were killed. Starting to wonder if I am being tricked into a massacre.

Seems I was being deficient in taking pictures again. But we kept up the pressure closing in. When all the Indians in the huts finally woke up and charged out we had a bit of problems and lost a few units to some melees. But then the god of the cards decided that on turn 3 all of the colonial cards would be drawn before the Natives so we got to shoot them all up and prevented any effective counter attacks. So in the end we broke their force and burned out a hut. I lost all my Regulars and a few Irregulars, and we also lost almost all of our Indian allies, but still a solid win.

I really liked this game so am looking forward to trying it out again, I figure I can just use my Beothucks that I had done for Saga last year. I need to get a model to use as Demasduit (Mary March), and maybe a game in the Exlopits River with Captain Buchan could be arranged.

Finally here are some random pictures of interesting games:

Very nice set up for Song of Drums and Tomahawks

Search for King Solomon's Mines

Thanks;
Mike