Air Battle:
Friday morning I played in an air battle game with Chris. I never remembered to take any pictures but I believe the game was called Mustang or something like that. They had a pair of ME 109s trying to shoot down an american bomber, being defended by a loan Mustang, the other having been shot down. We joined after the start so they tossed in another pair of Mustang for us to fly to the rescue. We shot down the ME 109s with out much trouble so a few more fly on, and eventually got gunned down. Was a pretty fun game, a much simpler take on things then Check Your 6 which John really likes. Had a good time shooting planes, but isn't something I would go out of my way to pick up. But appreciated them letting us join in.
Painting University:
Next up was a class at the painting university, I felt it was time to take a class and learn how to do better weathering then Stan. Greg ran the class and showed off a bunch of different techniques and had some good advice. The bulk of it was about how to use weather pigments and how they can be used to make a variety of cool effects, how to paint an effect to look like chipped paint, how to pain bleeding cuts. The final bit was about how to use oil paints to paint some realistic oils and rust stains, using oil because it is easy to control and you can keep moving and drawing it around to get the effect you need. Was a good class I probably will get a few pigments and give it a go.
Battle Between the Battle:
The big event was the Battle Between the Battle. This was a game putt on by the HAWKS (a wargaming group in the states) with a set of rules made by one of their members for WW2. The idea is to model a Napoleonic skirmish that happens as 2 battalions of line infantry are closing in for an assault. The skirmishers have to fend off their opposite numbers and try to get as many hits on the opposing battalions as possible. The battalions are represented by blocks of wood with pictures on them, and the skirmishers are single based models. The French on the left are attacking in an attack column against a British line so they are moved forward every turn until the attack goes in and the skirmishers fall back. At that point who ever did the most damage is the winner.
It was a very interesting idea at the least. Everything was card driven rather then dice, but the cards mostly had pictures of dice to control things, so really it was pesudo-dice.
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| French on the left, British on the right |
Turn 1 we all just advanced and started to get a feel for things so not to much action. Every unit commander has a dice with a number that is rolled every turn, and when your number comes up you get to do an action, like advance or shoot, ect...
But things soon started to heat up. The white lines are smoke from musket shots, and the red ones are wounded models, dead ones are just tipped over on their side.
Here you can see the French line getting closer and closer, and lots of dead and wounded skirmishers. I had tried doing some close assaults, but that turned out to be just random and got me a lot of morale chits (the blue disks) so I went back to shooting. Around now I decided to go for points and just spent every possible action firing into the British line to get as many as possible. You got a big bonus for shooting the line so it was fairly easy to get hits on regulars from a big distance.
After the above shot the French went into line and we had one more turn. In the end we had a slightly higher hit count on the British battalion so we were declared the winner. Based on the kills both side battalions had to make 4 morale checks as well. One of mine was a card that made everyone in the open run off the table, which was the whole Battalion! The British got nothing major, so that was considered a minor point in their favor some how.
In the end I wasn't very happy with this game at all as it bogged down and went on for 4 hours, and in the end the results seemed pretty random. But nothing is perfect I guess, I won't be looking to pick up their game however.
Shopping:
Of course I also went to the dealers area to get a bunch of new models I don't need. I was able to get the Holy Roman Infantry Regiment that just came out for By Fire and Sword to add another option for me to try some day, and I also picked up a bunch of Greek Hoplites for the Trojan Wars campaign that Nick is planning. Also a pair of Knuckleduster old west guys to try out and some terrain elements. Finally a bottle of super glue to fix my armis as my box of stuff got dropped on Thursday!
So that was how day 1 went, day 2 was mainly the Saga tournament, so stay tuned for that.
Random Pictures:
Last but not least here are some random pictures I took on day one of stuff I thought was cool or interesting.
A new range of 15mm Fantasy stuff someone is working on.
Random Ship.
Some game
I spent more time doing stuff this time so I didn't spend as much time walking around checking out the cool stuff that was going on.
Thanks;
Mike
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