SJCW April 2015 Game Day and a New Game!

Yesterday (April 11th) was the SJCW (South Jersey Confederation of Wargamers) monthly game day and today the mailman dropped off a new game.  (Amazon deliveries come on Sunday!)

I have Command and Colors Napoleonics and am looking forward to giving this game a try!

For the game day there were four games played during the day.  A Colonial skirmish with Zulus and Brits, A WH40K game, a Pike and Shotte game (I think, forgot to ask exactly which rules), and a 15mm game of Angriff.  I was in on the colonial game and the Angriff game.

First up the Colonial Skirmish game.

The Umpire setting up the game.  The Green felt is hills (so are the little hills...), the little scrub things are just for show, the village is a Zulu village, I think the building is a farm or some such (we Brits were supposed to make it to there as a VC condition - more on that later), and the building near the road had Molly Sugden (OK, maybe not her) waiting for a rescue.

The British column, led by native troops with cavalry off to the side.  15mm figures and a 10 foot long table or so)

The Brits advance to Molly's place.  The cavalry in this picture (top center) or Boor Riflemen.

Zulu Riflemen appear on the hill to the British Left!  More Zulus rise up in front of the column!  The native troops rush to guard Molly and a British officer comes in on a horse to carry her to safety.

A turn or so later and Molly is rescued while the native troops are overwhelmed by Zulus...  Off to the right you can see the British Gatling gun setting up while farther to the right a Screw Gun is also setting up.  (or set up - when they fire massive swaths of Zulus are mowed down).  Also - the Zulu right horn appears and readies to charge.

Zulus charge the Queen's colors!  Almost all the Brits die except the color bearer!

A little further back the Brits form up the rest of the column while other groups try to get into the fray.  The template on the top right is the Case shot template...

The Zulu Left Horn appears and moves in.  The Gatling gun and the Screw Gun do some massive damage but they keep on coming...  Also, this time the Brit player (me) gets smart and steps back to form a line so that the Zulus are out of charge range.

The Last group of Brits get to form in an L pattern, the previous group of Brits did major damage to the remaining Zulus but were destroyed.  The final line of Brits (left of the road) were charged by the remaining Zulus and the Brits manage to mow them down.  The color bearer is dead, he would be about where that white box of Zulus is on the road.

Final Pic of the game showing the situation from the last pic at a slightly higher angle.  The Zulus are in the boxes and though they have been hurt (5000 to 1000 casualties) they claim the field and a Gatling gun (lucky for us they do not know how to use it)

At the same time I was playing in this game they WH40K game and the Pike and Shotte game were going on.  Since I did not participate in these there are no comments.

First up the Pike and Shotte Game.

Setting up

End of Game.

The figs for the game.

And the WH40K game.  (sorry guys, I thought I had taken a couple more pictures!)

After these games were done the Angriff game started up.  A US and German rumble in Normandy.

US Forces

My (blurry) Panthers taking up position - with Eric's Stug to the right.  I have two more Panthers on the left (one just off the frame)

A Better focused pic.

Panthers move up toward the town.

First shots.  The Stugs took out the armored cars and a the Sherman.  A Panther took out the Halftrack near the church.  So far on this flank no Germans have been hurt while on the left flank it is a different story with Panthers being blown apart by 75mm armed Shermans.  (I have a problem with the penetration charts in the game).

Three Panthers destroyed in one turn by three 76mm armed Shermans at 1750 meters range (yup, I have a problem with the penetration charts in this game, I don't think they take the slope of the Panthers armor into account at all).  To be fair the game was balanced the way it was but I would like to see armor slope better accounted for and more Shermans on the board.  A fun game with Excellently painted up miniatures!  (15mm).

Finally a shot of the game club meeting area.

This is held at the Cape May Court House (that is the name of a town - not a building in the town) Senior Citizen's center and went from 1pm to 9pm.

Hammered Scots!

Played Hammer of the Scots today and got HAMMERED as the Scots!  This is a Columbia Block Game on the Scottish wars with the English.

Setup for the scenario, Blue is Scots and Red are English.  That big blob at the top left are not actually in play.

End of turn 2 (1298).  The big blob of blocks in England (top right) have special rules to enter but when they do they can do some serious damage!

End of turn 3 (1299).  We were both working out how the game plays, the way to win is to have the majority of Scottish nobled supporting your side.  You do this by having control of their area at the end of each year or defeat them in battle.  In either case they will instantly defect to your side.

End of Turn 4 (1300).  Don't remember much of this turn but from the blocks left on the board at the end it was not a good year for my Scots!

End of turn 5 (1301).  A better year for the Scots.  I thought I was going to go from this position and start routing the English!  How WRONG I was!

End of Turn 6 (1302).  The English King finally ends up in the English reinforcement draw.  He and his troops proceeded to annihilate Scottish resistance in the south.

End of Turn 7 (1303).  The king trounced some more of the Hapless Scots but Mornay managed to run and hide, and so Ross was forced to convert to the Scottish cause since Monray was sitting in his area at the end of turn (Ross' area is the very bottom with two blocks in it).  The King has to leave the board at the end of the turn and goes back into the draw pile.  Probably missing his tarts, English swine!

End of turn 8 (1304).  Things are going from bad to worse to rock bottom.  The King was drawn as a reinforcement and then sea moved to the middle of the map with a knight.  The Scots had to scramble to stay out of the way, in the process Ross switched sides once again.

End of game.  The English moved first and caught the Scots.  Edward and his Knights made their attack and scored enough hits to kill off the Scots (Edward rolls 4 dice and hits on a 4 or less, Deadly!, and the other hits on a 3 or less).

A very fun and quick playing game.  I am looking forward to playing it again.  I have some ideas on how to put in a better game next time around and look forward to putting those ideas to use.  First is using a speed bump unit to slow up King Edward.  This game I tried to stop his big stack with a stack of my own - I ended up losing badly.  Second is to buy lots of units at the end of each year rather then building up nobles.  This allows holding territory that has been taken while allowing a unit to stay behind to hold MY territory as well.  If you can force a noble to defect at year end you get them at whatever strength they are currently at while defeating them in battle will leave them at strength 1.  Plus more blocks in play means more speed bumps for the king...

Cold Wars 2015

Went to Cold Wars in Lancaster PA on Saturday and took some pics and a couple lousy videos.

My quick review - it seemed like lite attendance (been saying that for years, probably fine but the weather might have held a couple people back).  About 25% of the tables in the main room seemed empty most of the day and I missed a couple of my favorite dealers this time out.  I did buy a wargame, some products from Paper Terrain (love them!), some decals from I95, and some flock and river sections from Wally's Basement.

For the most part I was not really impressed with the games with the exception of the SciFi table setup in front of the Distelfink.  Sadly a SciFi game was the most impressive at a historical con.  Maybe I'm just jaded or cranky from all the snow lately, hard to say.  On the other hand the Host seemed fine, clean bathrooms and it seemed in rather good shape in the ballroom areas.

On the plus side (for me) was the Eureka was right off the steps in the vendor hall and they had Lardy products on prominent display.

Without further ado here are my limited number of pics and videos...

Sorry that was sideways, I can not get the thing to rotate!

My son participated in a Fireball Forward game.  The UK eventually won after a couple of Banzai charges went badly.

OK, this one looked very nice!

And this one.

Going to borrow this terrain idea.

From the game above.

Borrowing this terrain idea as well.

Lardy products at the Eureka booth.

Two types of fabric glued together it looks like.  Rug pieces perhaps.

Nice Game

the SciFi table