Battle Report - Saga - Skraelings vs Pagan Rus

Hello,

So we decided to have another game of Saga, I was a bit negligent about setting things up as I forgot we were supposed to play. Due to that we decided to just do a smaller 4 point game on a small table, and played the skirmish scenario, so the first person to loose 3 saga dice is the looser.

I had the starter force for the natives so 3 points of warriors, I did it as 2 units of 10 and 1 of 4, and a unit of 12 levy. The Pagan Rus had 2 Hearthguard units and 2 warrior units.

Very simple table with a few buildings and a hill.

First turn I just moved everyone up, keeping units together to avoid getting exhausted by one of the Rus abilities.

The Rus did likewise. On my turn I activated an ability that gives everyone in 1 unit an extra attack until my next turn but doesn't let them use javelins. My plan was to move twice and attack stealing the Rus ability to get more armor. But the Rus played frozen to stop my second activation.

But the Rus didn't have a great attack, they sent in their warlord and a hearthguard unit and only killed 3 guys with the loss of the unit.

On my turn I pulled that unit back and started to pick at the unit of warriors in the village with bow fire killing a couple. My goal was to keep units together until I could make a good attack, or the Rus exposed themselves.

Next turn the Rus used my fatigue to kill a few guys and set up some defenses, so I decided to try more ranged attacks killings a few more and adding in the javelins.

The Rus pulled back their warriors to try and get a good opportunity to use their ability which attacks all units near their warlord. But with the smaller table to many Rus units were in range. So they decided to charge him in alone against the warriors frist and then do that. The warlord choose to use my fatigue to lower my armor, which was a dangerous option as I was then able to do the same bringing the warlord to 4 armor! Because of that I was lucky enough to get the warlord kill and despite loosing a few more warriors kept the unit. But with 3 points lost for the Rus that was the game.

I suspect Serge made a slightly suicidal charge on purpose as time was getting a bit tight and were both playing slower factions, but I'll take it!

Hopefully we will try out some Trojan war Saga next week, I won't have tons painted but will have some at least.


Thanks;
Mike

Cangames 2016

Well time for a post about cangames. I was a bit negligent about taking pictures for some reason, so instead of posting a report for each game I decided to just do one big post with a brief overview of all the games I played, and maybe a few others I happened to take pictures of.

Frostgrave:

The first game was our Frostgrave campaign on Friday, which went very well. We put players through a co-operative table, based on the second scenario in Dark Alchemy, so they could get a handle on the rules quickly. This worked pretty well I would say but we had to do it in 3 sitting which maybe was not idea. I am not sure if I would change this or not, possibly expand the scenario a bit only use it for the new players.

After that we let people explore the city however they wanted, but we tried to match up new players with experienced players in the start. We had 3 tables set up for that.

Blight Town:

My swamp table as you have seen before.

City:

Duncan had a more classic Frostgrave city, with snow flock to make it wintery.

Library:

And stan had a Frozen Library, I didn't get a good picture of this but he will likely post some on his blog eventually which is linked on the right.

In addition to the 4 tables We had 2 painted warbands each for our players to use and we used 5 of them. We had 8 people that played at least one game.

On Sunday we were given the best terrain award so this was pretty well received.

Hail Caesar, Bagotrix Strikes Back:

On Saturday I played in Duncan and Eds Hail Caesar game. This year the Britons were trying to take a tower that the Romans had built on the end of their dyke. I was actually pretty on the ball for pictures for this one.

I had a few failed command rolls in the start, but eventually got my warbands to start killing the Romans around the tower. Meanwhile I cavalry got right into the action, and our right flank had to really march to get to the Romans.

Our cavalry was broken up by the Romans, but we beat up most of their stuff as well, leaving just one unit to releive the tower which we were not having much success in taking. But our Right flank eventually got to the Roman infantry and murdered them so it was declared a minor victory for the bad guys.

Fort Beausejour:

Saturday evening I played in Ed's Beausejour game, which was pretty interesting. This was a real siege game for most of the time vs an assault, although that happened at the end, which was interesting. A very different feel of a game. Turns were half day intervals and we had to decide were to put our works to best defend the fort, shore up defenses, ready more cannons, fight fires, ect.. The British had to dig trench works and manage cannons and supplies.

Various bad events happened to both sides throughout, our Indian allies left the fort along with the Acadians, but most of them came back. Problems with supplies happened, at one point a large part of the British force got angry and went back to America. Meanwhile the cannons shot each other.

The last event was that re-enforcements were coming from Louisberg the next day so the British did their assault. We mostly killed all the red coats, but the rest of the lower quality blue guys managed to get over the walls on our left. We lost most of our crew to a lucky mortar round and then a close in battery in the trenches. We made a good attempt but the fort was taken.

In the end I think it was called a minor French victory due to the cost of taking the fort, it was assumed the would take it from the start.

SS Grozny:

Sunday during the day I played in Duncan and Ed's ship game, which has a bunch of Somali pirates attacking a cargo ship. I didn't get to many pictures of this one sadly, but here is a good shot of the famous ship which was the other best terrain nominee.

This game basically had three phases. First was a pretty serious phase were our pirates approached in open boats from a mother ship based on a fishing vessel. The ship had a water cannon and sonic blaster to defend itself, along with a few armed mercenaries.

We took a good amount of casualties and lost some time, but eventually got the Bridge and missile battery to take the ship, which we discovered had a bunch of illegal cargo.

In the second phase a bunch of US military helicopters with special forces showed up and started killing a bunch of our guys. But we took one unit of them out in the bow section in a surprise assault with a large unit. A similar assault around the deck house lead to allot of arrested pirates.

Then the ships crew turned off the power and released the experiments of a group of scientists. This meant that zombies were now attacking everyone, and we had a zombie game on our hands.

Allot more pirates died and then everyone abandoned ship.

After that I played in the DBA tournament but didn't get any pictures of that as they don't use real terrain and I won't assault your eyes with felt cut outs, which do work I admit.

Finally here are a few pictures of other games:

Pathfinder tables, very cool.

Seven years war:

Ok I guess there was only 2 other games I took pictues of.

Anyway that was cangames.

Thanks;
Mike

More Painting for Cangames

Hello All,

Time for the last painting update before Cangames, have to switch gears now and start finalizing and printing of the gaming materials like cards scenario sheets ect.. But I managed to get enough done for us to have a successful event I think.

These pictures are a bit worse because I was to lazy to set up the picture taking booth.

City Gate:

First up here is the city gate for the introduction to Frostgrave table, well to be honest I am not really finished with this one, I really only did the front in any detail, but I think that is enough for now. I probably will at least do the eyes of the dragons in black maybe. There are more sculptures on the sides and inside!

Last Graveyard Building:

I also finished off the last mausoleum for the Garden of Morr, still have the fence to finish but I will have to get back to that someday, this set turned out to be allot more painting then I had expected.

Skeleton King:

I also got the skeleton king done, a Wight Lord from GW. He is a bit of a boss for people to fight in the introductory game, which is co-operative. Really nice model, they have lots of layers of plastic to create depth pretty smart. My plan is to expand into a bigger skeleton force eventually, I have some skeletal knights also but wasn't able to get them done just yet.

Leman Russ Tanks, 6mm Sci-Fi:

And finally my parents dropped off the rest of my old Epic stuff that I had left home. So I have been working through that a bit. First up I had 3 tanks from a unit of 10 that were left unpainted, so I did them!

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 185 
Painted: 175
Total: -10

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Frostgrave & 6mm Sci Fi

Time for the I guess weekly painting update. Didn't get as much done as I had hoped if I am honest, but making some progress anyway.

Skeletons:

First off I completed the other half of my GW skeletons, so that makes 10 of these guys. Seems like I might want even more! Working on a few skeleton knights now. Basically all I have to do for cangames is finish the Skeleton King, the graveyard, and an archway. Anything else is a bonus but iy would be good to get some more soldiers and scatter terrain bits done. Also have to print up all the hand outs and scenarios and such.

Warthog SAM:

Also worked on a bunch of 6mm vehicles, I have most of this stuff that I ordered done now actually. Anyway here are some units with big missile tubes.

Warthog AA:

And some with AA gatling guns.

Komodo Assault Tank:

A set of tanks, lots of wheels on these guys. I was reading a blog by the guy who made these and apparently they were intended to be IFVs, but they got called tanks and it was passed down.

Growler IFV:

And these were originally intended to be APCs.

Scarab APC:

So these little cars were just cars. The cars are quite small so I am not sure what to make of them. To me it makes sense to leave the tank as a tank and call the Growler an APC. But it is a bit redundant to have the small car and the bikes form the last update which are better armed. But they maybe are to small to be an APC? Will have to think about that.

All I have left for this now is another set of tanks, another set of the bikes and some infantry. My intention now is to organize things in units of 6. Which means that the AA and SAM can go together, and 2 sets of tanks. So I need to get another set of the air, and I want to get some artillery as well. Still thinking about the infantry, 6 is a bit small there.

Anyway hope you liked these few pictures. Cangames will be here soon then it is time to move on to something else, kind of forced but oh well.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 185 
Painted: 171
Total: -14

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Frost Grave - Dark Alchemy 2

Hello,

Here is another War gaming Wednesday battle report. This time we decided to go for another game of Frostgrave but changed the setting to something a bit more standard. I thought it would be good to try a scenario from the new Alchemy supplement that just came out as a prospective introductory scenario for cangames. This one is co-operative and allot faster so I think it will be a good way to learn the rules, so we can put people through this one and then let them explore any of our 3 setting tables as they wish.

We just used our ongoing wizards, so didn't really obey all the suggestions of the book, but I don't see that as a big deal. We made one of the Skeletons a boss so said he had 10 HP and +4 Fight, will make up a real stat card for him later. Otherwise we just used defferent kinds of skeletons as seemed cool, two handed, armored, a mage, ect..

So here is our table, between the two of us we need to escape off the far end by the blue crystal, picking up 6 treasures while fighting the skeletons. The treasures are worth less then normal, but you also get points for escaping and killing things.

I went with my Wizard, Slippery Pete, a templar and an archer, Serge had a wizard Knight Infantryman and treasure hunter. So we have probably better quality guys then most people would have starting off but never mind.

Turn one everyone moves up, I teleported my Wizard way up by that skeleton. About this time I realized having a slow guy like a Templar is pretty pointless in this mission and he just followed behind and did nothing!

Next turn I killed my Skeletons and moved up, taking the pictures. The elementalist and his guys started fighting skeletons around the next point, which is where all the skeletons would come from.

The fight continues with the skeletons being killed and pushed back. The boss came out to get some action, kind of heading towards my Wizard but I think the Knight will save me.

View from the other side, the knight is just slightly closer to the boss, so that is good for me.

So here we are towards the end, the boss is dead and everyone is closing in on the last skeleton. In the end we got off with all the treasures and no casualties, but a couple were wounded.

As I said this ended up being a pretty easy and quick scenario, but I think that makes it a very good introduction. A bit easier to understand everything with half as much stuff to look after, so I will probably go ahead with this plan.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Frostgrave & 6mm Sci-Fi

Hello All,

Time for another classic painting update. Been busy this week, the crunch for Cangames is in full swing for sure trying to get as much done as possible while still having fun. Basically 2 weekends left to work on terrain. But I went and painted some other stuff as well for fun, to break things up a bit.


Skulls!

Firstly a bit of terrain, 2 large (about the height of a person) piles of skulls and bones. These are from Armorcast, they don't look amazing close up but are nicely convincing from a distance so it works out. The main thing is I can now happily guarantee that our game will feature more Skulls then any other game!

Wizard:

And here is another Wizard, just because I thought it was pretty cool with the fire bird thing, can never have to many wizards. I don't have anything in mind apprentice wise, but can figure something out I am sure.

Treasure:

Another treasure chest, and a mimic chest. I really get a kick out of the angry face on that thing hah. We are going to need a bunch of treasures so good to keep numbers up, and they are usually quick. The other one is from Fireforge, the started sending me a few items from their Forgestarter.

War Dogs:

A couple of dogs, people are always looking for cheap troops in frost grave, so they can afford the expensive ones, so good to have a few options around. I decided to try experimenting with a bit of a frozen city type basing. So I tried some snow flock. It turned out pretty cool so I thought I would do a few things in that style.

Skeletons:

First half of a box of Games Workshop skeletons, really like these models. But aprarently I have a soft spot for Skeletons. I painted the weapons all rusty and beat up, and gave a couple of them tarnished bronze weapons, at least that is the idea. So hopefully they will seem like really old skeletons, with missing jaws and mashed in heads!

Infernus Super Heavy Tank:

Not sure if this stuff will be a separate army, or go in with the Imperial Guard, I like the new army idea thou. Anyway I got some nice 6mm stuff from Microworld so couldn't resist painting a few quick items. The stuff all has wheels so I imagine they are from a desert planet.

Landhawk Scouts:

Then some very small scouts with rocket packs. They are like big enclosed bikes. I am still not sure if it would be better to have them separate like this or based 2 to a strip. Or maybe they should be individually based. They are basically at a size where they could go either way in Epic, seperate or grouped. My plan is to leave it as is for now.

Dragonfly Gunship:

Lastly I have a trio of dragon fly gun shits, quite like these models. I see them as being the attack helicopters of the future, they have chin chain guns and rocket packs and missiles under the wings. You can basically give them Vendetta stats. You may have noticed that their packs come in 3s which is slightly awkward for Epic armies. Three is kind of a bit to small for a formation, I guess that just means go for 6 but it is annoying. I will have to try and figure out some kind of a cobbled together army list eventually and see how it works out, likely will need more stuff.

Fusilier Missile Launcher:

Oh almost forgot I also did another infinity model for the league so might as well toss that in to get counted as well.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 185 
Painted: 161
Total: -24  

Getting close to breaking even, will likely slow down allot and maybe take a painting break after Cangames but we will see. Anyway hope you liked this stuff.

Thanks;
Mike