Cruel Seas Battle Report

Mike and both had our forces for this painted (admittedly, mine were painted by Ed) so we decided to give the game ago at the OMG.

We got two games in. For the first we played the introductory torpedo scenario where I had a tanker escorted by a single S-Boat and Mike had 2 Vosper MTBs that were trying to sink the tanker before it got off the table

My plan was simply to move the tanker as fast as it could go (not particularly fast!) and try and sink the British before they could fire their torpedoes.

I turned towards the British boats and opened fire. I soon realized that firing when traveling at full speed is not likely to hit but when I slowed down on the following turn I got some good hits wiping out one of the British Boats

The remaining boat launched one torpedo (Mike had forgotten to launch at the appropriate time and felt that firing only one was a reasonable compromise when I let him fire then later). The torpedo hit and wasn't a dud doing a lot of damage to the tanker but not quite enough to sink it

Closing in the British were able to sink the tanker with gunfire while the S-Boat was turning around

For the second game we were joined by 2 more player and used all the ships we had 2 S-38s, 2 S-100s on the German side and 3 Vosper MTB 1 and 3 Vosper MTB 2 on the British side.

We (the Germans) went around different sides of the island but the British tried to concentrate against Johns S Boats

There was a collision between one of the S-Boats and one of the Vospers (the smaller Vosper, unsurprisingly, came out much the worse) and some fierce gunfire on both sides. The Germans had an advantage both in firepower and luck and all the British boats were sunk to no losses to the Germans (though 2 of the boats were damaged)

Overall the game was a great sucess and Mike and I have decided to buy the British and German fleet boxes respectively.

I think I will run this at Cangames with some larger ships as targets (either Liberty Ships or something like a Monitor)

Plans for 2019

I didn't do a planning post last year and managed to avoid going terribly off course so maybe I am courting disaster by doing one this year but since one of my goals is to use the blog to keep focused I will go ahead anyway.

My basic goals for the year are to play more and buy less. I would also like to paint more but I have realized I need to be in the right state of mind to do that so I am not going to push that but I will make sure I have my painting setup ready to go when the mood strikes!

These are the games that will be in my mind (and hopefully on the table this year)

SAGA

This was my most played game last year and with the appearance of  the Book of Battles looks likely to be my most played this year. I have created the terrain needed for the Book of Battles (as discussed here ) so my next goal is to paint some baggage and livestock that is required for some of the scenarios

I should finish my Spanish Warriors

But I seem to have a bit of a block with them so I might skip ahead and paint the foot troops for the Franks which I think will give me enough of a force to actually play with them (though not enough to use Roland which is my long term Frankish goal).

Next up will be the Black Hoods mercenary unit and beyond that it gits a bit hazy but I want to get some more units painted for my Islamic forces

The Age of Magic will be coming out this year and I will hopefully finally paint the Revenants and I am tempted to paint some Mantic Games Naiad to use alongside some Vikings

The Walking Dead: All out War
Now that the Motel is finished, my terrain goals for this are to finish the Diner and the office building (I also have a swimming pool and playground to go with the Motel that should get done this year)

In terms of painting, I want to get through the figure from the Made to Suffer expansion and once I get those done (at least the survivors, I feel that I have more zombies than I would need now) I will get the Fear the Hunters expansion -- I have some interest in the Campaign rules, but realistically I know that I won't play enough to actually use them.

I have two side projects that I would like to at least do something with this year -The first is to do Cops vs Narcos using the Walking Dead rules

And the second is to use the town terrain to run Gaslands with 28mmish cars -- The Sunday Drivers expansion for the old Steve Jackson Games Car Wars was always a favourite.

Cruel Seas
I have high hopes for this game but I am holding off buying more until we have played at least one game. If it does play well I am seriously considering running a larger game at CanGames with either an attack on the Monitor HMS Abercrombie at D-DAY or and attack on some Liberty Ships in the English Channel

Team Yankee

I should get the airbrush out and finish of my Soviets but I am not sure if that will happen. I do hope to play some more games of this -- it has always been a fun game in spite of itself.

I am tempted by the Czech Dana Self-propelled artillery but there is too much unpainted to add more to the pile.

Flames of War

The OMG club is running a Stalingrad campaign this year and I will play in that but I have no desire to paint anything (I do have some Soviet SMG troops that are primed that I feel I should paint but I don't think they will actually get done)

Hail Caesar

At the moment I have no strong desire to run this at Cangames and my painting passion is more geared towards SAGA so I think there will not be much movement on this front this year

Boardgames

I am looking forward to another year of Boardgames with the Thursday night group 

SAGA Battle Report Moors (Umayyads) versus Normans

At the recent OMG club day I played a game of SAGA with my Moors in the form of the Umayyad list from the Old Friends, New Enemies list in the Age of Vikings book. I was playing against John Cowen's Normans.

I should probably start with an apology as when I looked up the spelling of Umayyad in the rulebook, I realized that I was not allowed to take the Crossbow unit as all levy needs to be equipped with bow (I had my doubts when I put my list together since they are Spanish mercenaries and don't really make sense for the time of the Umayyads but I wanted to do an all foot force so pushed ahead anyway)

As I was packing up to go to the club Canada Post dropped of a package with my new Mats by Mars 3X4 mat that I had bought especially for SAGA. Naturally, I brought that along with me. I am quite pleased with it, the price was good and it seems durable and it rolls up again neatly and it is lightweight. My only real complaint is that it is a bit glossy -- though not as much in person as it seems in the photos.

John got to pick the terrain and put down the 4 forests that I had out on the table -- A bit of disappointment since I had made all the different terrain pieces (and it turns out, not actually allowed under the rules since they permit 3 woods one of which can be large -- I can't imagine this really having any affect on the game)

We got the pincer setup where we each setup half our force in one of our corners and can set up right at the halfway line on the table. It was also a night game which meant if any unit started a turn more than S from a friendly unit it would gain a fatigue

I got the first turn and even though I was restricted to 3 dice I made good use of the Perserverance ability to shoot both my bow and crossbow at the Norman Knights killing a few figures and to charge my foot Hearthguard into the Norman crossbow killing all but one of them.

On the Norman turn the knights charged my crossbow unit but only managed to kill 7 of the Levy (enough that they lose their SAGA dice but leaving enough to still be a bit of a threat) and managed to kill another knight. A Norman foot warrior charged my Hearthguard and were driven back but we both took some losses.

The following turn I used the Discord ability to add some fatigue to the Knights and the Norman Warlord. The Bow then shot them using the Wholehearted ability (which gives me 2 extra attack dice for each fatigue) and got lucky and wiped them out (adding another fatigue to the warlord). The remaining crossbow fired at the Warlord and due to all his fatigue he was killed as well.

 Another attack on my Hearthguard by Norman warriors was set back running but I was down to just one figure in the unit now. Continued use of Discord had most of the remaining Normans exhausted or close to it and the Hearthguard wiped out a warrior unit (dieing himself in the process).

There were a few more fights but by this point it was obviously going to be a Moorish victory.

I had some good luck and John wasn't as familiar with the Norman board as I was with the Moorish one. I do think that with the Perserverance ability it makes sense to make the Moors mostly foot or mostly mounted rather than the more even split I have used in the past. I will have to try a mostly mounted force next time.

Finished Motel, Walking Dead and Saga

The intermittent part of the title of my blog seems to have loomed large again. Red Dead Redemption is probably mostly to blame.

I have finished the Motel to a point where I am happy with it. I would like to do some weathering on it but I think I am afraid that I will make it look awful. We did play a Walking Dead game with it earlier in the month and I think it looks good enough.

The Walking Dead game was quite a lot of fun, we did a game with 3 players and me as the GM. I gave each of the other players a special objective and there were a few special enemies as well as the regular zombies. I used the special objective supplies card to provide clues towards the location of the objectives but I would like to use scenario specific event cards to move the scenario forward (and that would require me to actually do some work to print out the cards so it is less likely to actually happen)

Mike has posted a battle report of the Zombie game on his blog here


The Book of Battles for Saga arrived this month. I was already quite keen on Saga but now I am even more so. My hobby goal for Christmas is to make some "officially" sized terrain for the game since it does feature in the randomly generated skirmish scenario.

Mike and I have split the started set for Cruel Seas so that will also be fighting for play time in the New Year. Luckily Ed was quite keen on the models and painted them up when he was visiting