Games! (For lack of a better title)

Last week, on a very rainy (3" of rain in one hour) Wednesday, I headed over to the FLGS for another  head-to-head game of Grimdark Future.

I brought my fantasy lizard folk again, but with a slightly different order of battle. In addition to the spinosaurus, I brought my triceratops battle wagon:

 

As one person commented, a transport that actually transports.

Long time readers will note the added railing on the howdah, in addition to the permanent goblin green base. I've long had an issue with the crew falling off when moving the triceratops around the table and this prevents that quite effectively while looking appropriate.

 Here are some pictures from the battle: 

 

The space ork deployment. *boo hiss*

The Children of Bokrug deployment. Yay! (The archers have "scout" and get to be beyond the standard deployment zone)

 

Squigs!

Green vs green! My crocs (Gator Hero and Gators in Age of Fantasy) did OK this game. Not as good as last time.

Carnage! My favorite image from the game! I think it conveys a certain gonzo joy.

If brevity was my thing, I'd have just posted this picture to summarize the whole game!

From a game perspective, my lizards got stomped pretty badly. But from my perspective, they had some awesome moments of glory and some remarkable fortune that made the story of my army more than enjoyable for me. 

My opponent and I discussed it a little afterwards and we were both somewhat convinced that in Grimdark Future, a primarily melee force increases the challenge level.

As I have previously mentioned I intend to make my own version of a Penitent Host (40K thing), which will feature Sisters Repentia - armed with chainswords - as the dominant infantry. However, they'll have Celestial Warrior Sister squads in support. Those units are much better shooters than the best lizard archers, having a 24" range for their rifles (30" for the HMG), hitting on 3+  vs 18" range, hitting on 5+.

So much painting to do to even get to field phase one of my Blessed Sisters force in Grimdark Future! 

And of course, I ran out of black gesso, which I use for primer. So there will be a delay there until the weekend when I can get to the art supply store. 

In any case, Saturday, I set out the Bleid, Belgium 22 Aug 1914. scenario for Great War Commander again. 

This is 2nd turn? The French platoon with the MG are already gone.

This time, I tried to move French leaders around in an effort to bring outlying units into cohesion. Unfortunately for the French any kind of movement order card came few and far between (I attributed this to a indecisiveness in command), and they suffered a jam on their MG the 1st time it fired. The next turn, the infantry unit carrying it were destroyed. That was turn 2, if I recall.

It went almost entirely downhill from there for the French. 

The one bright spot for the French. The French unit marked Veteran was the result of a field promotion in response to fire received. Perfect timing because they were going to have to defend in melee. And they won handily. 

 

But the Germans kept coming and the French collapsed.

Surrender! The French had lost six units - five infantry and one leader. For the second time, Rommel was sidelined early and played a minimal role in the ensuing battle.

It seems to be a tough scenario for the French - most of the units are out of cohesion from the start. Even if you bring the leaders to them, you have to round up the units to all be in a group (adjacent hexes within the command range of the leader) to get the most out of the orders. That requires more movement orders itself. And, as I said, they were few and far between. I ended up using Advance and Offensive to accomplish movement for the French, but those have limitations/requirements that Move does not and so aren't always as useful. 

I suppose if the Germans were circumspect in their approach the French might have had time to reorganize their infantry, but I have read Rommel's Infantry Attacks and he *is* one of the leaders on the board Therefore, putting the French back on their heels was the name of the game.

As it was, the French reached their surrender point of 6 units lost, thus ending the game automatically in a German victory. Meanwhile the time tracker had advanced exactly ONCE. 

I plan to play it yet again this coming weekend - both to help the rules thus far to stick (there's no artillery in this scenario, that's the next one) but also to try to use the French leaders to bring units into cohesion, perhaps with better luck and also to see if I can keep the French on the table long enough to force a sudden death.

I believe this might be possible by falling back and consolidating as soon as possible, as opposed to starting a firefight on turn 1, which greatly favors the Germans.. 

This theoretically/ideally would force the German "player" to wait for/use up orders for movement and minimize losses. If and when the time track advances, the defender (French) get 1 VP automatically so the more card time the Germans spend trying to get their troops to the village, the better for the French. 

This approach  *will* sacrifice objective control, but the benefits might be worth it - especially since I don't think the French can really hope to hold more than two of the four objectives on a good day (at least when I'm running them!).

 

Friday Night Under the Lights!

A new game shop opened in East Atlanta recently. They're primarily focused on card games, like Magic and Pokemon, but they also have space for miniatures gaming.

It is significantly closer to me than any of the other places I've gamed - 10 minute drive and actually in the city vs 40-60 minutes and out in the burbs (Atlanta traffic is no joke - so those times only go up if there's traffic). Like several area game stores, they have a Discord server and when I saw someone post on Wednesday about setting up an OPR game, I jumped on the chance.

When I mentioned the only 2000 point army I can field at the moment is a fantasy lizard army he offered to run his space orks as fantasy orcs. However, both Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy are virtually identical rules-wise and I had seen game reports of sci-fi vs fantasy OPR games on YouTube and suggested that. So we played Space Orks vs Fantasy Lizardfolk outside the shop under the lights, on Friday night!

I didn't get many photos - I was too busy getting my butt handed to me!

This is my favorite picture.

That gator hero had been sitting primed for months. 20 minutes of heavily thinned acrylic to fake contrast painting over the primer, with a light dry brush after, for the win.

My biggest issue, that wasn't my absurdly bad dice rolling in the 2nd and 3rd turn (such as rolling 20+ dice to defend against attacks and only succeeding on four or so of those dice), was not being familiar with my units' abilities. I should have studied my roster better. Still, I had a great time and came home inspired to finish up the Goblin Green rebasing project and to get my Blessed Sisters up to 2000 ASAP (ordered a 3D-print Immolator proxy - it's the same base as my Rhino but with a dual flamer turret).

My standout unit was a unit of Gators (technically, my Egyptian crocodile unit) lead by a Gator hero (the Egyptian mamma-croc - also finished quickly, on Thursday night). Had I known their attack strength (4 figures, 9 attack dice with armor penetration), I would have had them in the middle but instead had them on the right flank and basically away from the action for most of the game. When they finally got into the mix, they destroyed one of the ork trucks with ease.

We're talking about another game sometime in May. That will give me time to finish the Goblin Green basing and maybe review my roster more closely!

All's Quiet

Not a whole lot happening over here, hobby-wise. Well, wargaming hobby-wise. 

I *did* play Grimdark Future Firefight yesterday against another human. It was the first game I've played in awhile.

He messaged me on Thursday or Friday on Discord, we hashed out schedules and locations and all that, and then Sunday we got together at a local-ish (30-40 minute drive for me) store. The rules have moved up a version since I last played, but nothing too dramatic has changed in Firefight.

We played two games. 

The first featured his old school Iron Hands Space Marines vs my old school Plague Marines. I took quite a beating. The only consistently good showing was the figure with the plasma rifle. Although, on the last turn, I managed to take out one of his Space Marines in a melee counter-attack with the figure with the Plague knife. It didn't change anything but it felt cinematic.

All of the dice I rolled in that game were retired for the the next one! 

For our second game, he took his Iron Hands again, but switched out some rifles for a Terminator. I benched my Plague Marines for my Battle Sisters. I had 7 models to his 5 but mine were fragile in comparison, especially the two Sisters Repentia. 

Luck was on my side this game - I took out the Terminator with a combination of a Battle Sister with  Storm Rifle and my Cannoness with her Power Sword.  Then I dropped his RPG after a brief exchange of fire with a Sister with a Bolt rifle. On turn 4, I dropped his leader. In the end, I held 2 of the 3 objectives free and clear, and was contesting the 3rd. 

I didn't take any pictures, but it was a lot of fun and hopefully we'll meet up again soon. 

Of course, now it's got me thinking again about how to get at least one of my forces to 2000 points for the full-size game. 

This is the team I fielded yesterday. Pummeled badly, but I still love them.

 

I almost forgot that I ran a session or two of our family and friends RPG campaign since I last updated - I forget when exactly - and we have a session later this month. 

The party has turned to murder-hobo-ing. They are actively avoiding an RP opportunity I set up in the dungeon proper and seem to be speed-running the dungeon. I need to poll them to find out why. I'm happy to terminate the adventure at any point, if they aren't enjoying it. The characters themselves aren't obligated to go straight through, they could go back to town or even to another adventure.

 

My sister and I worked on clearing my parents house out last week to get it ready for sale. This sign hung in the basement bar of their first house. I remember it from my very early childhood. It now hangs on my wall to welcome and set the mood for my RPG players.

 

Most of my free time, I've been spending on music.

I picked up a Behringer Edge (percussion synth) a few months ago and then an Arutria Drum Brute Impact (analog drum machine) about month later. I have been having a blast attempting to make various forms of electronic music as a result - mostly industrial, ambient/drone techno, and power noise. I pretty much do that every day and just get lost in the beats.

It's nice to do something musically where I have no particular purpose except to have fun. 

In fact, I can lose hours to it. It's almost a dangerous as doom scrolling Instagram, except I'm actually creating instead of mindlessly consuming.

That's in addition to practicing trumpet every day (I took up the trumpet on September 6, 2024 and I've practiced every day since). When I started playing it was just for giggles, to return to my first instrument and maybe someday play in a community band. But then I fell in love with it way harder than I expected and suddenly I had musical dreams again - like I did when I was 14 and took up guitar. We're at the point now that when people ask how it's going, I tell them that when I grow up I want to be in a professional jazz band (I do. And by grow up, I mean in about 10 years). And maybe a touring ska, soul, or rocksteady band.

And finally, icing on the cake, a band I was in that hasn't played together in 16 years is reuniting for a November show and I've got to re-learn songs I have long since forgotten. It's punk rock, not prog rock, so it's not difficult, but I just need to sit down and do it to the point I can play them in my sleep again. And remember which song is which just by seeing the name on the set list (never my strong suit - I've many times, in many bands, leaned over and asked a bandmate to quickly sing how the song starts!)

Me and the boys. 2008? 2009?

Archaeology is Hard to Spell

Despite recent setbacks for the Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force (AVEF), the civilian explorers who had tagged along on this inter-planetary adventure were not content to stay put in the security of the AVEF strongholds. 

Thus, it was that Professor Blackwood led an expedition to an ancient site that had piqued his curiosity - a site that bore evidence of a pre-lizard civilization, or at the very least, a center of pre-Bokrug worship. Accompanied by Lady Pennington, late of the Geographic Society and a celebrated traveler of Central Asia, a team of Royal Engineers and an armed contingent of French Legionnaires under the command Lieutenant Candide (who had volunteered his services in hopes of catching the attention of Lady Pennington), the party enjoyed a relaxing afternoon ransacking liberating artifacts from the ruins.

Lady Pennington and Professor Blackwood admire the heretofore unknown iconography.

Unbeknownst to the expedition, although not unanticipated, a native warband encircled their position.

When the fighting started, Lt. Candide ordered the civilians to retreat. Lady Pennington was reluctant - obeying orders isn't high on her list of priorities - but the professor seemed keen to return to safety.

"Ladies first, Lady Pennington."

He was, as she discovered, a bit keener about it than she had realized. Aided by Lt. Candide who engaged one of the great Saurian warriors who had taken a targeted line of attack for the retreating civilians.

"On second thought, age before beauty!"

The lizards breached the walls, but the defenders held their ground - certainly better than the AVEF had performed in recent clashes.

A second Saurian had attacked the Royal Engineers before turning his attentions to Lady Pennington. She would have none of that.

"You filthy creature, do you know who I am? I am your worst nightmare."

As the good Lady put her knife fighting skills to use, the surviving engineers made for a ford and crossed the river.

Lady Pennington left the wounded Saurian and fell back across the river - time was running out to get to safety, as Professor Blackwood reminded her. At least that's what she thought he said - he was running quite fast by that point and moving away from her rapidly.

"Devil take the hindmost!"

Speaking of devils and hindmosts, Lt. Candide was brought down by the fierce leader of the warband. At least he would never experience the pain of Lady Pennington's piercing brushoffs.

Both sides suffered significant loses - the Venusians more so than the Earthlings. The fighting ebbed until both sides disappeared into the jungle in the directions of their respective security.

For the AVEF, their valuable civilian scientists had survived, and the Legionnaires had held the ruins long enough to ensure their escape.

It was not a resounding triumph, but still, it was a much needed boost for the flagging morale of the AVEF troops.

****

Rules used were Age of Fantasy : Skirmish, half ranges for everything since I was playing on a 3' x 3' square. This was a 300 point per side game. The lizards used the AoF:S Saurian list, while the AVEF used the Duchies of Vinci (I use the crossbow stats for the rifles - it works). 

I set 5 turns for the game - to win, the AVEF had to get their two high-value targets out of harm's way, and hold the ruins long enough so they could escape.  

The ruins were contested when the game ended, but Lady Pennington and the professor had escaped.  So that seemed good enough to call it a minor victory for the AVEF (they needed one).

To further aid the AVEF, my lizards were distributed by die roll, which led to them being spread quite far apart - which made some of the heroes abilities to give bonuses to other figures moot.

If you're wondering why the Royal Engineers took off across the river - after they delayed the one Saurian warrior they had really done all they could do. They only had melee weapons as they were on artifact liberation duty.

Lady Pennington, by the way, as is fitting for her, was statted as a Duchies of Vinci assassin (Quality 4+, Defense 5+, armed with dual poisoned arm blades as well as throwing knives). The professor was a Vinci Scholar. Poor Candide was a Vinci Leader, for all the good it did him.

I should add that Lady Pennington and that coward Blackwood have plot armor. If they had been killed, they would have been captured instead.

Purple People Eaters

A lot of people got their wargaming start with Games Workshop games/figures/etc and then discovered there's a whole wide-world of wargaming that goes beyond what GW dictates.

I seem to have gone the opposite direction.

Now, I'm not particularly interested playing 40K - the rule book costs too much for something that  I am not convinced is anything remotely close to worth it. One Page Rules are free, or if you want to shell out $5, you can buy the advanced rules PDFs on WargameVault and they get updated for free whenever OPR updates the files. Plus,  I have met several former GW gamers who say OPR is the fun they used to have before GW sucked the joy out of the room.

However, while yes, you can get 3D printed stuff or use models from any company to play OPR, I just happen to really love a lot of GW's sculpts. While aesthetically I prefer the more comical looking models of the 80s and 90s (Orks, I'm specifically looking at you), the current models are things of beauty, and panting them can be as complicated, or in my case, uncomplicated, as desired.

All that is to say, here's an update on my Tyranid termagants:

After priming, a wash with Magos Purple. Call it what you will GW, this is clearly Grape Juice.

Pallid Wych Flesh dry brush, Leviathan Purple applied, Ulthuan Grey dry brush on the purple, Reichland Flesh Shade on the gun bodies. Why can't their paints have normal names?

Presenting the first completed members of Hive Fleet Leviathan

The other side, so you can see the eyeball on the guns. Painted with craft paint! Let the clutching of pearls begin!

There are things  I see in close-up that make me annoyed and I'll go back and fix. Maybe. This is a horde army, individual models will blend into the mass. Even in Grimdark Future: Fire Fight (GD:FF), in a 300 point game I can field nine of them (if using the Force Org rules) or all of them (if I don't use Force Org rules).

And, this arrived Saturday:

Looking ahead (are wargamers ever not planning something more?) I am considering adding a canoness and three paragon warsuits but not until these are painted up. That would get me up to a 1000 point Grim Dark Future list (about 500 points in GW terms as I understand it) to bring to the Georgia OPR group (which, amusingly,  I am an admin on the FB group despite playing one game with the group).

Speaking of OPR, I got in a (solo) game of Plague Marines vs Blood Ravens on Father's Day night using GD:FF

Terrain provided by the neglected army men bin in my son's closet, which contains some things that used to be in my collection (CTS PZ IV, 21st Century terrain bits. The PlayMobil prison is his, but I have it earmarked for my collection :D ). Board provided by the Space Marine boardgame

The forces of Chaos demolished the forces of the Imperium - the one above is the sole survivor.

I used the kitchen table/small space rules for Grim Dark Future: Firefight, which halves all the ranges. However, I may have mistakenly set up the armies on the short sides which put a lot of distance between them (I couldn't be bothered to look at the rulebook PDF which on my laptop and not on my phone where it would be convenient).

 In Kill Team, the thing GD:FF approximates, Plague Marines have a base move of 4" compared to 6" for Assault Intercessors (all of my Blood Ravens are Assault Intercessors). But GD:FF does not give the Plague Marines the Slow trait - so they move the same. But about half of the Plague Marines had rifles vs the pistols of the Assault Intercessors, giving them a decided advantage with so much ground between the two forces.

Up next, more Tyranids! And an Ultramarine Infernus converted to Blood Raven Infernus (the three figures and paint sets come with the Ultramarine symbol molded into the left pauldrons instead of decals) to give the Blood Ravens a little bit more umph if not range (same range as a pistol).

2023 Christmas Game

Christmas Eve, 1942

The Germans have a vise-like grip on Europe with little signs of cracks in their defenses. They’ve made holiday present delivery nearly impossible with anti-aircraft guns firing at anything in the night sky. For obvious reasons, we can’t risk The Jolly Fat Man.

Our battalion is tasked with delivering presents to some isolated but occupied mountain villages. The children have had a terrible year under German occupation and we’re going to bring them a small spark of joy.  And by “bringing them a small spark of joy” we mean toys and killing Nazis.

Your platoon will be dropped South of Le Village Au-delà Des Pommes de Terre (a village in the alps between Italy and France)

Your mission:

• Eliminate and Infiltrate German defenses south of the village..
• Deliver the right present to the right recipient.
• Blow up the railway.
• Escape to the Extraction Zone.

If you miss the extraction flight, head south over the alps until you reach Italy. There you can make contact with Agent Dominick. The Reindeer cannot climb the hills of Italy, as you know.

You will each be given two spheres of Christmas Magic to assist you. Use them wisely. 

Good luck, and we’ll see you in the canteen for eggnog, post-mission.

Maj. Gen. Blitzen

Such was the set up for this year's Christmas day game for family and friends.

Players would each play a member of Santa's Animal Nighttime Tactical Assault Force (the acclaimed S.A.N.T.A. Force) - each worth 100 points in One Page Rules terms for Grimdark Future Firefight.

Of the three cats present, only Theoria was interested in helping.

The table layout. A tripod MG-42 team has the central hill, the others are held by bipod-mounted MGs.

Sam the Snowman is a North Pole operative deep undercover. Players can rendezvous with him for additional Christmas Magic.

By this point the PCs had handily eliminated the MG teams. Rat King (missing an ear) orders his Swarms forward

Rat Swarms engage a German infantry squad.

Rat King (foreground) makes contact with Sam the Snowman. Penguin thinks twice about standing in the road with a mobile MG barreling down towards it. 

One of the presents that had to be delivered.

Penguin trying to avoid the kublewagen's MG.

German reinforcements start to arrive.

Penguin takes out the driver and the kublewagen crashes and explodes,

Hedgehog is carrying the beacon and starts heading for the hill.

Owl targeted the NCO.

Beaver would single handedly destroy this tank. His chompers have a bite of AP4 and he tore it up like it was a tin can.

Hedgehog lit up the extraction beacon. The smoking SDK was thanks to team effort with Beaver delivering the final blow.

S.A.N.T.A. Force members made their way to the hill. The vehicle takes two turns to arrive.

Owl finished up some business first.

Extraction unit arrives and the party begins to climb in.

The pilot takes off under a hail of MG and rifle fire (the party's minis don't all physically fit, but in-game they had all boarded)

A completely successful mission!

****

For the third year running, I have run a game on Christmas for our family and friends. It is safe to say at this point that we have a tradition. And there is talk of someone else picking up the reigns for a Thanksgiving game next year (I run a game for our Family Fall Festival and Christmas, I need the break in between).

This year I wanted to make use of things I already had, rather than making or buying anything new - it seems a waste to make these things for a single game, never to see the light of day again. So, you may have recognized some of these things from previous games.

To add variety, I looked to the missions.

There were five presents, each to go to a different house. The present was an image representing the title of a Christmas song. Each building contained a piece of paper with the name of a song. The present had to be given to the house that matched. The song for each house could onl be revealted by a delivery attempt.

The images weren't difficult to decipher but some were just enough of a challenge to be entertaining. It also provided a challenge for the players, as quite often the player with a needed present was nowhere near the right house. Players could pass presents to other characters(owl for instance took one ,as he was faster and unhindered by terrain) but no animal could carry more than two presents, or one present and the extraction beacon.

One really game-y rule I put in place was that all player figures had to be beyond 18 inches from their baseline before any presents, but other than that, the players were free to handle the objectives in any order they desired.

To blow up the train tracks, the player had to roll a die, with the chance that it might not go off, or worse, it might be far bigger than expected. In the event, it only blew up what it was supposed to!

The first reinforcement (a single squad) arrived one turn after shooting started. No other reinforcements were set to arrive util turn 8. That gave the party 8 turns to take out three MG teams and a squad, and deliver presents, before the bulk of the German force arrived. 

Players were not required to contact Sam the Snowman, but if a player did, then Sam would give them a Christmas riddle to solve - a couple of them were math based, some were brain teasers. I let the whole party participate but only the player who met with Sam got the reward (two more Christmas Magic beads)

To avoid any kind of unfairness, I involved the players in the German reenforcement placement.

I indicated six spawn points on the table. On turn nine, Germans would arrive from two spawn points, for each of the next three rounds, but they could only arrive from a given spawn point one time. 

The players were asked to indicate which points were used for which turn, but they didn't know what would arrive. In the meantime, I had a list of order in which the reinforcements would arrive but no idea where each would come from. 

This worked out better than expected, with the party splitting up to deal with different threats before they decided on a plan for the extraction. 

Oh, one last thing, Christmas Magic. The player received two silver beads. They could be turned in for either:

• +2 to the current roll (even after the result was known)
• 1d3 wounds healed
• Force the enemy to re-roll

I wanted them to have interesting choices to make rather than specifying a particular effect. This is not dissimilar to Hero Points in FUBAR.

The game ran for a little over 3 hours of play time, with a break for dinner around the two-hour mark (We were supposed to be done BEFORE dinner, but there was some confusion and some people didn't arrive for two hours later than initially indicated). It seemed like everyone had a good time and with the exception of my son who was very tired by the end, everyone was engaged until the final flight back to the North Pole.