Battle Report - Flames of War - Objective Cards

Hello All,

Time for another Wednesday Wargaming Battle Report! Still working on getting painting finished off for Aeitus and Arthur Saga, and waiting for dice, so we decided to try another game of Flames of War. This time trying out the mission using the new objective cards. Also as a bit of a change up we are doing an Western Front this time so it will be my Americans vs the Germans, lists from the Battle of the Bulge compilations.

I went for a trained tank company so I had:

Jumbo Command Tanks
2x Tank Platoons with 2x M4A3 Shermans, and 2x M4A3 76mm Shermans (gain detroits finest)
4x Stuart Tanks
3x Mortar Half-Tracks
Creighton Abrhams in M4A3 76mm Sherman
Tank Destroyer Platoon with 2x M10s and the Security Recon Patrol

The Germans Had:

2x Panther Tank HQ
3x Panthers
Infantry with full Panzerfaust in Tracks
Mobile Wagon AA
Recon Half-Tracks

Believe that was it.

For the mission with the cards it suggest you to play either free for all or dust up and just don't deploy objectives, instead you draw 3 cards every turn and pick one to use, allot of them have you deploying objectives. We did Free for All so there would not be reserves, as this was complicated enough!

Here is the deployment set up, got to give some units spearhead due to having Abhrams, so choose the stuarts, and then one paltoon of tanks which didn't really use it, and the recon guys already had it. This makes your deployment zone bigger now so I got some guys a bit further up, and blocked the German recon from making much use of it. With Shermans you really need to get around the sides of the Panthers, so starting up is good!

First card for the Germans was Hold the Line or something, 3 objectives towards the middle worth 1 point each. They captured them with the recon behind the church and some mobile wagons by the hill, but I ended up getting the central one, so that was 2-1 for the Germans.

Here we are a bit later on. I got a percise attack card and used it on the Mobile Wagons, so got a point for killing those guys. Then a scout objective which if in the woods with the 3 Panthers, after 2 turns a unit with spearhead can take it. The Germans got a slower card that can be captured after 4 turns, but for 3 poitns! in the woods with the infantry. The HQ panthers creeping around the left side woods murdered my recon guys. I have advanced out on the right to fight the 3 Panthers and got a kill! This put a bit of pressure on the Germans as the could fail a morale a loose some guys. On the Other side I put down a line of smoke to protect my flank, all my other tanks tried to cross the hedge line but bogged! Being trained is not good sometimes.

Here we are a bit later again. The Panthers in the forest have killed of my light tanks, 2 kills and a bail and I failed both to unbail and to not run, so they left. Next turn they killed half of my tanks, 1 76 and 1 regular, but I unbailed due to the 76s having wet storage so stuck around to help Abhrams battle it out. The Germans got another scout card which is counting down on the lfet most red house, and one to put by an enemy platoon in good morale which is by the Panthers. I got another percise attack card and put it on the Panther HQ, and a big hold in the center which will eventually give 5 points I can hold it. Hitting back against the Germans my Shermans were able to flank the Panthers in the woods, Abhrams had to blitz to make it, but he is a veteran and can re-roll it so no problem. With those 3 tanks shooting with stabilizers I needed 6 to hit and got enough to kill the last 2 Panthers. On the other side the HQ Panthers advanced but came a bit to far, so I was able to get a kill and a bail with my M10s moving on to the hill. The Panther commander then failed to remount twice and failed to not run away twice, so the German company was broken.

Final score points wise was 4-3 for the Americans. Without the Germans breaking it would have probably come down the the 5 point objective in the middle. You need to get 8 points to with the game.

I thought the cards were a fun variant, puts a bit more of an unknown element into the game as you don't know where you will have to go or what to do. They are a bit similar to the Warhammer 40k cards where mobility and number for table control are important. So I would probably say that American tanks are great for that, and Panthers maybe not as much. They are powerful but vulnerable in the side, and you can be forced to advance and take chances to capture ground and get points.

But also it is true that I got all the kill cards so it was some what easier for me to accomplish some things. Version 4 seems to be pretty kind to the Americans who got to keep most of their special rules. Less so for some of the German companies, the big expensive tanks feel much more brittle from a morale perspective. But they can easily kill one of my platoons every turn if they get effective shooting so it could go either way I guess.

Sorry there is only a few pictures, I seem less likely to remember to take them when I am getting into the game more!

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Late Romans

Hello Folks,

Been furiously painting some Romans for the last couple weeks, under allot of pressure from certain quarters to get these done! A starter warband from Footsore, pretty nice stuff overall, a couple of the mounted guys are missing thumbs which is not amazing but can't be to picky I guess. Spears are all brass ones from Perry. The shields all ahve transfers from Little Big Men Studios, which are really great can't recommend them enough.

Red Pedites:

First unit is pretty uniform with chainmail and shields, ready to stab some Goths in the face.

Blue Pedites:

The second group has a bit more variety, half of them have cloaks and armor, and half are just wearing shirts. I think eventually the blue guys may become hearthguard on foot, so I gave them fancier shields, and the no armor guy might become levy, so they get less matching less fancy ones! But for now second unit of warriors ready for action.

Equites:

Finally for today I have the mounted Hearthguards, they are the most fancy, so I tried to go with the most fancy shields. But if I am honest I kind of like the red and yellow so the other unit will likely get those. I decided to go with black leather for the horse furniture so it stands out more with the brown horses. I believe that all horses and brown FYI....

So that is all I have completed for now, another mounted unit being worked on, and then just the warlord to finish. Should be able to get that done over the long weekend without much trouble!

Hope you like them I think they came out pretty sharp.

Pledge Status, 2017:

Bought: 134 
Painted: 200
Total: 66

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Carnage - 8th Ed. Warhammer 40k!

Hello Everybody,

Time for another Wednesday Wargaming Battle Report! The big news last week was the release of the latest version of Warhammer 40k, I used to play this game allot but haven't been doing much lately. But they made allot of changes for the new game so I was excited to give it a go. We decided to try the new multi-player rules with the new Carnage Scenario.

I set up 3 armies, Eldar and Tau both at 750 points, these are armies that I have had for a long time. I don't have any other that big so I took just 500 points of imperial guard for myself to try. Basically everyone gets a patrol detachment to play around with.

The Carnage scenario is just a battle for a point in the middle basically, whoever has the most models there at the end of a turn gets a point. At the end of the game if you are the last man standing you win a major victory, otherwise most points gets a minor win.

Not so many pictures this time around, we were having fun and also my phone died. Stan sent along a few to help out so I was able to get a report out of it.

Here we are getting going, Eldar on the top left, Tau on the top right, and humans on the bottom by the first, I got my bullgryns with their big shields up front, and some storm troopers in the sky to come down later. I ended up going last this turn which was helpful.

Here we are on the next turn. The basic troops of the Eldar and Tau have done a good job murdering each other. All of the dire avengers and the big unit of Tau Fire warriors have been killed. Some crisis battle suits have landed on a hill to blast people.

I brought in my storm troopers one unit on the objective to score an early point or 2, and some to fight the Eldar Warp Spider behind the big rock. This didn't really work out and I don't think anyone died. My big guys charged the smaller Tau suits, so stop them from really killing me with their guns, but they proved hard to kill.

The Warp Spiders were teleporting around and killing allot of my storm troopers, which is not good! So I sent in my Lord Commissar to stab them real good with his sword!

Half expected him to die, but he killed half of those guys! Around now the aliens decided to for an evil alliance and try to topple the empire. You can never trust aliens.

From here we eventually moved on to a big punch up in the middle. This is great if you have some large angry ogre guys! All told I had 3 ogres and my commander, there were 3 battle suits, and 1 eldar, so I got a third point. No one was really getting killed in the battle and we ran out of tie so it ended there with a minor victory for me. But the Tau still have all their best stuff alive, and the Eldar crack close combat squad could get in there as well also. But in order to win they would ahve to murder every guy as there are only 5 tuns so that seemed tough.


Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Double Feature

Hello Folks,

Lots of games to play this past weekend. We had our club day and there I played a late war game of the new Flames of War version. Then I Saturday I got to try out another game of The Walking Dead All Out War, this time in a grocery store which was pretty cool. I thought about doing 2 separate posts but in the end I don't have that many pictures really so I decided I could just combine them!

Flames of War: German Infantry vs Btitish Tanks in Hasty Attack

I took I guess my usual German infantry list, which is based on the Storm Company. Lots of machine guns, rockets, and mortars to fight infantry, and panzerfausts, anti-tank guns, and a HS129B3 incease I have to fight tanks. We used the more missions PDF as we have been doing to generate the missions. I had a feeling the Nick would select a prepared attack having a tank force. I didn't really want to defend and do a defensive battle as you have to dig in a sit there and wait to happen. Picking the same thing forces a meeting engagement like free for all or encounter which is also a bit lame, so I elected to do a hasty attack. We then rolled and got the Hasty Attack mission with my infantry attacking the tanks!

All the terrain was supplied and set up by Nick, thanks to him looks great! Actually I was hoping to play Nick that day as he usually has a nice table.

Here we are after the first turn or 2. My infantry are all advancing towards the objective on the hill, getting ready to take it. The British were using some heavy expensive tanks so didn't get to deploy to many at the start which helped me out a fair bit! I have one platoon in the vineyards, one pressing through the town into the tree line, and another coming on from reserve, my pioneers. On the other side I just have a pair of guns on my single objective facing a platoon of British infantry in the field. Could be a problem if they are attacking aggressively and my reserves go badly.

The British have deployed their HQ tanks from ambush and are doing their best to shoot up my guys. Additionally the infantry feeling the pressure have come over to support. At this point they are doing pretty good I have been taking losses and one platoon is almost destroyed. I used the remanants to conduct a small assault on the hill tanks, was able to limit the defensive fire to just one tank. This resulted in a second kill, panzerfausts are very dangerous in assaults! But lost some more teams.

Here we are a bit later on. I have brought in all of my reserves now, some Panzerwerfers to shoot rockets, and some mortars to start blowing up the British infantry. The Infantry advanced into the town but between the mortars and heavy machine gun platoon they did not last to long. Mortars are pretty brutal now when they are able to repeat bombardments. On the hill I am getting a bit worried, one platoon is totally gone, along with my HQ. Also some stuarts have showed up to support and now there are way to many shots to think about assaults. But I am still trying to pick away with Panzerfaust shots, you can blitz now to get some more range out of them.

Here we are as the lst of the British reserves arrive, some achilles and more Churchill tanks. I had advanced my half tracked rockets to threaten the other objective, I was hoping that this would eith keep the reserves away from bloody hill, and force the British to split their force, or alternativly I could take it! They have dashed back to safety behind the woods now. In the town the British infantry are mainly eliminated. On the hill my Pioneers were feeling the heat and are greatly reduced so pulled back to the vineyard for cover and waited for my plane to do some more good works, which it did!

The British have some air support as well, a pair of close support typhoons! You would think this would be scary but turns out not at all. They have to range in every time so are generally just worse then mortars which is a bummer, could still get lucky thou! But they do now.

The Stuarts had moved around to the other side of the hill to murder my second in command who was threatening the objective and kept passing his last stand test, which they totally did. This left them close to the last of my pioneers thou. My plane killed one of the last remaining 2 and then I assaulted the last killing him. This left me with just 2 pioneers but fair enough. Starting to look good for me.

On the left hand side the British are forcing back the troops around my objective. If I am honest they can be one lucky shot away from killing the guns and having ti open! But on the hill my last platoon of infantry has been able to assault the HQ tanks resulting in some more dead churchills. This leave them with only one platoon on the board that is not support so their company breaks and the game is a win for the Germans! Felt close to me I only have 4 or 5 infantry teams left, and my other objective is not well secured at all, so could go either way I would say. It is a big advantage for the infantry companies that they can get allot more platoons that are not support so they have less to worry about company morale unless things go really badly!


The Walking Dead All Out War: Grocery Store

Now for something totally different, zombies! For this one the terrain is all supplied by Duncan,with mostly his zombies, and my survivors. I made some walking dead cards for the modern guy I posted yesterday so we could try out some new stuff. We hard Carl, Rick, Sandra, and Liam coming in the back of the store. And I had Ex-Army guy, angry axe man, the mechanic, and Jogger Girl coming in the front.

Lots of zombies to fight and supplies to find! My guys taking cover behind a flat pickup truck ready to fight in, the other team at the back door ready to fight in the storage room.

Not to much trouble for me to deal with the inital zombies while the threat is low. Angry axe man is good at killing them as you would expect. On the other side the Rick and Carl team is seeing similar success, also Liam is there?

I am able to slip in Jogger Girl through a broken window to try and get some supplies, but Sandra has slipped passed the zombies using her nimble ability and is already grabbing them! The Hospital zombie is also turning out annoying to eliminate.

At first we were getting good events and the zombies were manageable, but then pandemonium rained and they started to build up outside! At this point we both have 2 supplies and there are 2 left. But Sandra is very close to them! I think I made a mistake grabbing the first one with the Jogger as she had a limit of one, should have gone in more and left that to a slow guy.

Rick and Sandra grab the last of the loot, I was hoping to get a bullet or axe into Sandra and take some back but it didn't quite work out. The event cards gave us a big spike in threat also which ended the game, so it was 4-2 for Rick and his group! Really enjoyed the grocery store, there was a gas station as well on the other side of the road, but it wasn't really in the game as the store is pretty big and never made it's way into a picture.

Plan was to try some Fist Full of Kung-Fu as well, but neither of us had read the rules so it didn't work out. Liking the zombies thou, the ability to add your own characters is great! May want to slow down the threat a bit thou that is something to think of. One idea is to have bigger tables with a counter for each section. So you can move to the next area as each gets to high.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Frostgrave - Ulterior Motives

Hell Folks,

Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report! This week we are playing Frostgrave and had 3 players, trying out the new Ulterior motives cards. Each person has a secret objective, or semi-secret as it turned out objective that they are trying to accomplish in addition to getting treasure. They are allot of fun and a good change up.

So as for wizards we had:

Me: Witch
Serge: Elementalist
Wizard Stan: Necromancer

Lots of scary spells and warriors and what not. The Necromancer was a new wizard just starting out, but the rest of us had a few games with some treasures and bases and what not. I guess 4 or 5 games something like that.

My secret goal was to get people to investigate my pit and then survive to loot it myself. I put it in the big fancy gate which was maybe not smart. Both of the other guys had to do stuff with zombies, towards the middle of the table. Treasures are all over the place really, we had 7 of them!

Here we are early on, my treasure hunter on the left sneaking up to some loot I put on top of the fancy gate, some bad people climbing the rock way in the back to stop him. I have some thugs about to climb the vilage for a treasure stored up there. My dog is way up front behind a bolder. The Necromancer and his goons are advancing into the cemetery, and the Elementalist is just everywhere!

Next turn everyone starts grabbing all the loot. I have my guy climb up to get the roof treasure, the treasure hunter goes in for the gate treasure which had been moved away from him with telekinesis. My dog took a pretty big bite out of the Necromancer, but then a bunch of soldiers ended him. The Necromancer consolidated some treasures and put up a fog bank to cover their retreat. The Elementalist completed his card which was to capture a zombie that had a necromancy scroll on it so he could copy it. This turned out to be a scroll to summon a zombie. I think this turn also the other zombie objective was completed which was for that zombie to just be killed. But we also got a bit of experience for being around it.

The time for smash and grab is now starting to dwindle. There is still a bit of a battle behind the fancy gate. But my apothecary had a horn of destruction and used it to open a whole in the board planks underneath the 2 enemy soldiers who were opposing me. I was able to grab the treasure, but the apprentice or crossbowman got a shot in taking him down to one health! But I was able to fall back and bring up a soldier to support and cover. So that one is limping back. Various other battles going on, with an ineffective shot here and there.

My guys running for cover, allot of the treasures are off now, the Elementalist and Necromancer both have 2, and 2 Knights from the Elementalist have the one from the center in their control. I don't have any yet, but one is close and the other I am holding behind the gate. Sometime around now a treasure hunter walked past the pit so I got my bonus card exp.

By this point it's pretty clear who has what treasures and everyone is retreating basically. So we decided to do a few more activations and call it good.

In the end everyone made out pretty well, I think everyone got 2 or 3 levels. We rolled allot of spell books, I got 2 of them! But learning new spells is kind of cool always good to have more options. But there is a tendency to end up with them being borderline uncastable. I have strike dead at 20! I had a bunch of money so I hired a captain to replace my dog that got killed and fired a thug and got a bard. Have to set that up for next time, not exactly sure what the other went for.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Frostgrave Ulterior Motives Terrain & Modern Adventurers

Hello All,

Right about time for another painting update. Got some cool stuff finished in the last little period. Some new terrain bits for the last Frostgrave Nickstarter, and some more modern guys. They are for either Zombie Survival games, or Spy Games, a bunch of them can go either way.

Frostgrave Terrain:

First up here is the new terrain set for Frostgrave. A magic gateway, statue, rune store, secret door, pit, and tomb. They have a new set of 40 cards that give you random secondary objectives, so this will entail setting up possibly some of these items and then you will have interact with them during the game. For example there is one where you start off with a cursed treasure and if you can toss it down the pit you get a bunch of experience. Sounds pretty cool to me, and some neat terrain either way. I gather that the door way is meant to stand up by a wall.

Hitman, Angry Axe Man, and Gun Guy:

For the first of the modern adventurers I have these 3 guys, all from Hasslefree. I think they had a sale way way back so I picked up a few guys to use as enemies for the Spies I did a while ago. Basically just randomly got some models I thought were cool!

Ex-Army, King Pin, Mad Fireman:

Next trio I have is a former military guy, cool hat and a beard anyway. Then there is the King Pin, he looks allot like the comic book character, so I went with the classic purple pants. I guess he will be the crime boss of this group of criminals. Finally is the fireman with a pistol and a smaller but still pretty big axe. I decided to go with a black fire outfit, not really sure why just seemed like the way to go. Everyone around here seems to have the brown ones, but in google I could find some black ones so they do exist!

Jack, Mechanic, Jogger Girl:

And the last of the hassle free stuff for now. Here is Jack who looks allot like the main character from Stargate so I went with that. Then there is a mechanic type guy, I gave him the bag a wrench so he can be a guy to get objectives, or smack a zombie with the wrench I guess. Have a second version of him, they give you 2 bodies and 4 hands. The other one has a gun but not sure I still have the 4th hand as I didn't notice this right away... Last is a lady with a gun, big boots and a pistol, happy to shoot zombies or spies I am sure.

Knick Knack and Jaws:

Finally for today is this duo of Bond henchmen. Pretty obviously based on their movie counterparts. Couldn't resist painting these guys just fun! They are from crooked dice not hassle free. I tossed in a guy from the last group to act as a bit of a scale. Jaws is quit big, and Knick Knack quite small!

I still have a few more hassle free guys left, like half a dozen army guys basically. But I have started on the next thing, and need to get some fancy bases from them so that won't happen until later. But hopefully these guys were cool enough!

Pledge Status, 2017:

Bought: 134 
Painted: 180
Total: 46

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - The Walking Dead All Out War

Hello Folks,

Time for another Wednesday Wargaming Battlereport! This week we tried out a game of the Walking Dead, time to fight some zombies! I just have the starter set painted at the moment, but reinforcements have been ordered, so this is a pretty small game. But I thought it would be a good idea to test it out and see if it seemed fun, and if this has potential to be a cool zombie game to play.

No terrain painted for this yet really, so we just used the card terrain they provide, but I did swap out the paper mat for a different one so it would not be as shiny, also just looks better. We used the roads on that to mark out the size so it is slightly larger then the map provided.

They have a getting started scenario so we did that, Rick and Carl both with guns, vs Derek, Sandra, and Patrick, Derek has a gun and Patrick a baseball bat. The idea is to fight off the zombies and other survivors and get the most supplies (the round tokens).

Here is an early shot, Derek has moved up to a barricade and knocked down one zombie, which draws the attention of others. Patrick moves to block with his bat, and Sandra moves around to the side. On the other corner Rick and Carl are being more quiet.

Some fights starting now, Patrick and Sandra both trying to fend of zombies, Rick and Carl still mostly free. At the end of every turn you draw an event card so some zombies will get moved, and more might show up, and the threat usually increases which counts down to the end of the game. Shooting guns and fighting in hand to hand also increases the threat.

We were making a fair amount of noise and fighting allot and didn't have real kind event cards, so more and more Zombies are showing up. Not good!

Everyone starting to get swamped now, but Carl has managed to search for supplies and found... an empty box!

I finally got a space to search one and got the hockey stick, and Carl searched a car and found ammo I think. Some of my guys are starting to take hits now, both Derek and Sandra are bitten. They ahve special dice you roll for combat, it's pretty easy to knock them down but to kill you need a ! which is usually 1 per dice.

Sandra hops the car to search another token and gets bandages. As a runner she can jump things easily. Everyone else is left to fight! Carl and Rick and re grouping going for more stuff.

Killed some of the zombies swarming in but more are always walking on! At this point we had made to much noise so the threat tracker got filled up. At the end My team had 2 supplies and Rick's team had 3 so they are the winner!

So that is the walking dead, I found it to be pretty fun. Will be better with real terrain and more stuff in general. I think there is lots of room for expanding the table and creating more scenarios, but need more cards and zombies and survivors. So buy more sets is the answer basically!

Thanks;
Mike