Plans for 2024: Marvel Crisis Protocol, SAGA, Blood Red Skies etc.

 Having revived the blog earlier this month to give an AAR for my MCP game with Stan I decided I should probably make an effort to post regularly -- not just for the tiny number of people who read this but because I find that writing these does help me focus (a little bit -- I am still thinking about doing everything and actually doing close to nothing).

Marvel Crisis Protocol was the big surprise for me last year and into this year. Both Stan and Mike were very excited by this and I said I was happy to play but I would be unlikely to buy anything. It turns out it was a really fun game to play (and I notice that I often want to think more about historical games but when it comes to decide what I want to play that games like MCP, Fallout and Star Wars legion are more likely to be on the top of my list). I ended up buying one box just to see what the figures are like (far too many pieces to be honest, but for the most part they go together well) and then after another few games decided to increase that faction (the Winter Guardians who were, purely by luck, one of the smallest factions in the game). Once they were painted (only 4 figures) the faction list increased so I ended up buying the Starter Box. I have all the terrain from the box glued together and half the figures assembled (one of the two sprues -- both Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, the two winter Guardians were on the same sprue). I don't see myself buying any more figures in the coming year but I am considering some of the terrain packs. I do plan to paint everything that I have.

 

At Fall In I picked up some plastic Victrix Numidians to make a SAGA:  Age of Hannibal  Numidian army (I had hoped to end up with an Indian army for Age of Alexander but couldn't find anything) I started painting it late last year before I got caught up in the MCP frenzy. I still have half the cavalry and all the infantry to paint up but I think I should be able to get that done pretty quickly once I get to it since I had the colours figured out painting the cavalry and elephants. I also have a Hun army that I should paint but it isn't really on the horizon.

Also at Fall In, I played in a giant carrier battle game -- which I think deserves its own blog post so I won't go into too much detail here -- and that has inspired me to plan out 2 different games. The first is a carrier clash based on a campaign system in the Blood Red Skies supplement, Wing Commander and the second a game for Cangames based on American Torpedo planes attacking a Japanese carrier during the battle of Midway. I have bought most of the planes I need for these games but I need to start painting and play enough to be comfortable before Cangames. I also need to get a few ships (more for the campaign game but that is further in the future) but I am planning to get some 1/1200 prepainted ones. I also have a some Beaufighters and  Boulton Paul Defiants that are primed from when I was playing Battle of Britain games and hopefully they can get done as well.

Games which are further down my list are Fallout -- there is a new more tactical version of the game coming out which could be interesting (it uses the same figures so it should be east to try it) but they seem to be planning to continue supporting the current more narrative rules as well (which I prefer). I have quite a few figures to paint for this and I would like to do some terrain for this a well. I had an idea that I should paint an ADLG army that I could use at the Fall In tournament and bring to the OMG since I would like to get in the habit of going there again but I really don't know if I want to paint a bunch of 15mm figures so I don't know if that will happen.

The re-release of the Walking Dead is interesting, I don't think I need (or want) to buy anything I don't already have but it will be good to see the new rules. Before they let the game retire, there was a more tactical ruleset but that didn't seem to be that popular (I didn't really like it). I hope to play a few games once this comes out.

I would like to play some more Black Seas and/or Armada as well as Team Yankee (maybe someday I will actually paint my West Germans) and it would be nice to find some rules for 15mm WWII that I would want to play -- I have grown tired of Flames of War through the latest revisions and I think I would find most of the games I played long ago to be too complicated

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Winter Guardians vs Guardians of the Galaxy

 Mike was traveling back from Newfoundland so it was just Stan and I for this game of Marvel Crisis Protocol.

We went through the steps of setting up the roster and the battlefield but we decided to just go with the points in Stan's Guardians of the Galaxy models (14) rather than taking the points on the crisis cards. Fourteen points is also the value of my first 4 Winter Guard so that was convenient! The two crisis cards were "Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan" (this involved grabbing the infected -- which we called spider-babies for some reason -- who could force you to move a short distance in the power phase)  and "Demons Downtown" which set up 3 flaming portals which gave the incinerate condition to anyone close enough to contest them.

My force consisted of Crimson Dynamo, Red Guardian, Ursa Major and Dark Star. Stan had Star Lord, Grot, Rocket Racoon, Gamora and Nebula (not positive about the last 2 to be honest).

My initial plan was to control the 2 nearest portals and grab a few central spider-babies and then use Dark Star to teleport the character with the baby back to my side (I rarely had the power to use that ability as it turned out).

On the first turn we both moved up cautiously grabbing the objectives close to us and I am pretty sure we were tied for points after the first turn.

Next turn I got a bit more aggressive pushing Ursa Major up onto the objective on the newspaper stand and moving Red Guardian into the central street to grab a spider baby. Somewhat foolishly, I left Crimson Dynamo back on the rear portal which meant that my most powerful character spent a few turns just twiddling his thumbs (which was made even worse by me not noticing that he has an ability to spend and action to generate 2 power). 

The Winter Guardian faction power of being able to get rid of a condition at the beginning of  a character's activation turned out to be very useful for this scenario --  I managed to hit Stan's guys several times when they were incenerated but I think I was only affected once or twice.

The newspaper stand continued to be the focus with various characters climbing on top to join the fight. Star Lord had the misfortune to be thrown over the newspaper stand which allowed everyone on my side to hammer on him at will. Red Guardian was KOed in the street but but Dark Star managed to teleport him after he recovered and he managed to get his spider baby back under control.

Red Guardian took over the guard duty at the back portal and Crimson Dynamo went on the offensive managing this quite impressive electroblast which KOed 3 of the Guardians of the Galaxy

A lot fewer heroes are still standing towards the end of the game! We actually played and extra turn because we should have ended on turn 5 because I had reached 16 points. I think the final total was 19 to 16 so it was close.

I think it was a good thing that we went with the 14 points for this game -- I was missing abilities with the 4 characters I had (and they were the ones I was most familiar with) but the game went smoothly so I think we could ramp up next time we do a 2 player game. The Tactics cards are interesting -- I only used 2 of my 5 -- but it is another thing to think about.

I am really liking this game even though I am largely indifferent to the Marvel Universe (I actually read some Winter Guardian comics over Christmas to try and get inspired and it really just reminded me why I am not a comics fan). My plan is to just stick with the Winter Guardians as a faction (they have the 4 I played with in this game plus Black Widow, Winter Soldier and Omega Red) but if we keep playing that may change. I do plan to pick up some of the terrain kits as they are very nice.

Mythic Americas: Tribal Nations vs Maya

 I was quite excited when this game was announced and ordered the starter box at or shortly after its release. I painted up most of the Tribal Nations from the box and ordered some more but was distracted by other projects before I finished painting them. Mike got some Maya when they became available and was also distracted in his painting but we both now have enough to play with (admittedly some of mine are not painted as much as I would like) so we played a game this past weekend.

Mike has posted his version of results here

 

 Based on what Mike had painted we went for 737 points (a good round number!). I wanted to try everything I had so I had the Sachmen with body guard, a Medicine Man with a single bodyguard, a unit of warriors, a unit of archers, a unit of eagles, a unit of Sasquatch and the Wendigo. Other than the bodyguard for the Medicine Man I had no points to spare for upgrades.

We decided to play the first scenario, Build Altars for the Gods (build an altar on the enemy side of the table and protect it) and I had the Call the Storm devotion which rewards me for casting a spell on the enemy side of the table and the Maya has Divide and Conquer which rewards them for sticking close to a particular enemy unit. Since we didn't really have much sense of how things would play out we weren't too concerned about the victory conditions and were playing more to learn than to win.

We both cautiously advanced on the first turn (I did use one of my blessings to move my wolves to within striking distance of the Mayan spell caster). I might have been a bit too forward with the Wendigo moving him up with both his activation dice.

 

Not wanting to lose my Wendigo on the very first combat I charged the Jaguar People (don't remember the proper name) with the Sasquatch unit. That charge went reasonably well killing 2 stands and taking no losses

My Wolves charged into the Mayan spell caster and her bodyguard and that didn't do so well. I did take out a few of the bodyguard (but they came back due to a blessing a little while later ) but I lost most of my wolves.

Later in the second turn the Jaguar People wiped out the Sasquatch only to be killed by the Wendigo who then used his second die to charge into the Mayan Archers. My Eagles tried to drop some rocks on the Mayan warlord and my archers shot at the warlord but they were both ineffective.

 

The Mayan warriors charged into the eagles and wiped them out, I had hoped that the woods my Medicine Man had created would slow them down so they couldn't reach but that didn't quite work out!

The Wendigo managed to deal with the archers but had only one wound left and the Mayan Spell caster had managed to finally deal the last of my wolves so could cast spells again but my Medicine Man succeeded in dispelling every spell she tried to cast. I moved my Sachmen to the hill to build an altar.

The Wendigo charged the spell caster and wiped out the bodyguard but the Mayan warlord joined the combat and eventually killed the Wendigo but lost his bodyguard. My Warlord charged into his and was defeated. We called the game at that point, there was a turn left but we felt it was mostly a draw -- The Mayans could have created their altar and probably destroyed mine and would be a point ahead if we had played it out.

We will probably play with a bit more finesse next time but this was a fun game. I think we got most of the rules but I will be reading them again in the next few days. Non-charge combat feels a bit odd with only one side attacking and no  brave check at the end but that is probably just something we have to get used to. I am certainly inspired to paint up the rest of my Tribal Nations (more warriors and archers) and am planning to pick up either a Inuit or Western Federation force as well

Get the Flagship

 Mike and I played a game of Armada on the weekend. He had just painted up his dwarf fleet and I had wanted to try the Dictator which is the extra-large Basilean ship -- I turns out that his whole fleet is 25 points less than the Dictator so I added in a Tier 3 Wizard and our points were equal but it is illegal under the rules to just take one big ship. (Which it turns out does make some sense.)

 

Mike has a post on his blog here

Based on the fleets we felt the "Get the Flagship" scenario made sense. In this there is one ship that has to sail the length of the table and victory is based on whether or not it gets to the end. The flagship is restricted to battle sails only but is given a few advantages the main one being that it can make repairs and fire in the same turn 5

Mike split his fleet in 2 and the wings closed into me from either side. We exchanged a few shots at range and then  when we got close there was one turn where he did about 30 points of damage in one turn (I think this was the only turn all his ships got a broadside from every ship). The downside of attacking me from 2 sides was that I was getting to fire both broadsides and my stern chasers each turn and was sinking his small ships quite quickly

I managed to force one of his ships to sail straight for a turn with a spell which put that ship effectively out of the battle (it ended up being the sole survivor of the dwarf fleet) and then ended up being chased by the surviving dwarfs. By this point my firepower totally outclassed the dwarfs and it was pretty obvious how things would turn out.

I think if I had taken a balanced fleet it would have been a much more even fight. Despite that it was a fun game. This was the first time that we have used the magic rules and they seem reasonably balanced if a bit bland. I do feel that the dwarfs should be a bit more different (and should be more like mid 1800s ironclads rather than having such high hulls) the engine rules make them a bit more flexible than sails but they still feel similar.

I have some of Basilean small ships to paint up as well as the flyers but I think I will channel any desire to paint ships into getting some more of my US ships for Black Seas

3D Printing Resources

 

 This page is mainly for my own use to try and consolidate the various places I get my STLs from but hopefully it will be useful for other people. It will updated at much the same rate as I do the rest of the blog...

I will only list sources where I have printed something

Modern

Bob Mack -- Really detailed lots of variety, Soviets, US, British and US in Vietnam

Henry Turner -- 15mm Soviet and East German

World War 2

3d Breed -- Good variety, nice models

Ancient

3d Breed -- Romans printed well

Age of Sail

Henry Turner -- Printed Sails and one boat worked well

Aircraft

ROC Works -- Nice Planes

Science Fiction

Modiphius -- Very nice terrain

Battle of Bobruisk

 I played a Flames of War game the other night as part of the clubs's current Bagration campaign and decided to resurrect my blog to post my thoughts on the game.

I was playing against Daniel La Salle who set up the table and was fielding a Hungarian infantry force supported by a unit of Hetzers and a unit of Hungarian tanks with the German "Armoured Train" -- really infantry and some armoured cars-- as well as a German Pioneer unit. As he was out of supply his basic force was reduced.

 

I decided  that since I was attacking a city I would take as much artillery as I could so my force was based around a T-34/85 Battalion with 2 companies of 5 tanks each. I took a battery of Katyushas, one of  152mm howitzers, one of 122mm guns and a small battery of 76mm guns. For Firestorm I had a battery of SU-76 self-propelled 76mm guns plus another 3 T3/85s. To round out I took 7 OT-34/76 flame tanks -- and an armoured car with an observer

We were playing the rearguard scenario so I had 9 turns to win so I just had to be patient and not rush forward while there were still threats around (I have never been able to do this)
My tanks did well on the first few turns bashing the Hetzers and the Hungarian made tanks and not taking too much damage in return but my artillery was not all that effective -- not ranging in and not doing too much when it hit. To be fair I probably fired too much of it at the enemy armour since my tanks were doing a much better job of killing the tanks. Three 75mm ATGs appeared from ambush in the crossroads and did quite a bit of damage, I should have been more proactive in moving out of LOS from them.

Soon the Hetzers were wiped on the right flank and the other tanks were gone on the left.

At this point I should have moved some tanks up on the mortars which were damaging my artillery by this point but I figured with 2 batteries ranged in on them at this point I wouldn't need to do that

Some Hungarian infantry moved up to the hedgeline and got burned to crisp by the OT-34s -- I could have then moved them over to burn up the 75mm gus but I didn't want to disrupt my ranged in markers

The German pioneers moved up in the centre though the houses and took quite a pounding but when I moved my tanks to engage I got a bit too close the Hungarian infantry

They managed to close assault and broke my formation (since I only had 2 tank units in my base force). If I had been patient I think it would have been an easy win for me given the setup but I was to hasty and Daniel took full advantage of that. All lot of the damage my tanks took in my previous game against Mike was also done by infantry so I really need to become more aware of the real threat range of infantry.

The OT-34s are quite deadly, I would bring them out again and going with the T-34/85 worked well, I usually go with either a lot of T-34/76s or a smaller number of heavy tanks and I think the T-34/85 in the middle might be the best choice in general for the Soviets.

I am glad I tried this force and I might try something similar in the future but it is hard to rely on Russian Artillery

Blood Red Skies: Flying Mig Alley Alone

Back in the days when I was playing a lot of board war games. I played a lot of air games  from time to time but I think in many ways I liked the information the games had more than the actual play. The games I played seemed to have so much detail that a lot of the feel of high speed maneuver seemed to be lost but I spent a lot of time comparing the data cards of different planes and in the days of Air Superiority / Air Strike I was always happy to get the latest issue of the newsletter so I could take a look at new planes.

The play of these games was a lot of work so I wasn't to upset to leave them in the past. I played some of David Redpath's games at Cangames and those seemed to work well and I played a few games of Wings of Glory and allied games and thought they were ok but not enough to get me to buy into them.

Some at the club years ago ran a few games of Bag the Hun which I enjoyed but it had a weird mix of abstraction and detail that didn't quite work for me.

Then when Blood Red Skies was released a few years ago I was tempted but always had enough on the go that I wasn't sure I wanted to bother with something new and wasn't sure if it would be for me and wasn't sure if I wanted to invest in the 1/200 planes -- I thought the planes were a really good size but it was a Warlord only scale and I wasn't sure how well they would support the game.

Just as things were shutting down with the Coronavirus, I did a panic buy of paint and Black Seas ships and decided to get Blood Red Skies -- All I could get in the shop I was ordering the paint from was the rulebook  the Mig Alley box set and a box of  Yak-7s.

The jets painted up well and quickly and even the decals went on relatively painlessly. After posting my solo Black Seas game I decided to do the same with Blood Red Skies.

First of we generate the pilots for each side.

The Soviet MiG-15s get very lucky with 2 Aces. I have to add an ace card for each plane to the action deck and just select these two at random from the cards I have

The American F-86E Sabres are very unlucky with two rather poor pilots

The initiative roll was a tie and I decided the Americans needed a bit of a break so I had the Soviets set up first with the American planes behind them.

After the planes are placed the advantage level is determined. The Soviets roll  Neutral Advantage but they have the theater card for "Radar Support" which allows them to make a maneuver check to gain advantage and both succeed

The American bad luck continues with one plane rolling to be Disadvantaged and one Neutral.


In each turn the planes move in order of advantage and then pilot skill and speed to break ties. In each planes turn there are 4 phases -- (1) Shooting (2) Burn Advantage [optionally drop one level of advantage to maneuver or add 6" of speed in the move phase] (3) Move 1/2 to full speed and turn up to 45 degrees (4) Action Phase [one of Shoot, Outmaneuver, Climb]

The first Soviet plane opts to burn advantage to maneuver and ends up facing the disadvantaged Sabre head on. Because it has neutral advantage now it can shoot at the disadvantaged Sabre. There  is some risk to this because the target can shoot back in a head on attack but the MiG pilot is feeling confident.

The Soviet pilot gets 2 dice for it cannons and 5 dice for the pilot. If there is more than one success (as here) it counts as a critical hit and is harder to dodge. The American gets 2 dice for cannons and 2 dice for the pilot and still manages to get one hit. Both pilots will get to dodge but they still take one "Boom" chit for being hit

The dodge roll is similar, the MiG gets 2 dice for agility and 5 for the pilot and the Sabre gets 2 dice for agility and 2 for the pilot and loses 1 because it is dodging a critical hit.


The Sabre is shot down so the American side gets one more "Boom" chit. This takes them to 2 which is 1 more than the number of remaining planes so the Americans will flee ending the scenario. I decide to play a few more turns just to see how movement works.  One thing I have learned so far is that with Jets the starting separation needs to be greater. The scenario calls for 18" but with a movement of 13" the MiG can (as we have seen) get a turn 1 shot.

The second MiG did the same maneuver but had no shot because both it and the Sabre were neutral so choose to outmaneuver the Sabre forcing it to Disadvantge.

Because it is disadvantaged the Sabre can't dive or maneuver in its turn and moves level and turns 45 degrees. It moved less than a full move to stay within 9" of the MiGs so they wouldn't get a free climb for advantage at the beginning of the turn (all jets have this ability) and then climbed to get Neutral advantage (this it turns out is wrong, you can't climb within 9" of an enemy Jet unless you are a later generation Jet).

There were a fewer more turns of the MiGs getting on the tail of the Sabre but not having enough advantage to shoot (and I missed another rule that will give disadvantage to any aircraft that is being tailed) and eventually one of the MiGs got a shot bringing the final Sabre down.

The scenario itself was a bit of a disaster but the choices for maneuver were interesting and engaging (at least as much as is possible when I am playing both sides). I think the game needs more planes -- I am not sure if I will get another MiG alley box but I have since ordered the Battle of Britain box and and box of Hurricanes and a box of Bf110s. I am pretty keen to paint those (though disappointingly they don't come with the decals other than basic insignia) so maybe there will be another solo game not so far away.