Saga Tournament at the OMG

This past weekend we had a Saga tournament at the club. Because my painting had been slower than planned (big surprise!) I had planned to take a Saracen warband rather than the Mutatawwi'a list but Mike convinced me to use my camels so I went with the Mutatawwi'a (but I had not really read over the battleboard, and I think it is a tricky one).

Before I get to the details of the games, here is a recap of the mistakes I made with the rules (or at least the ones I am aware of).

Melee vs Melee/Reaction -- Both "Suicidal Charge" and "Allah Provides" are Melee abilities which means I shouldn't have paid for them (by sacrificing units) until after the attack dice are calculated (contrasting with Melee/Reaction which are done before the attack dice are calculated). This would have meant I was more likely to kill the unit I was attacking. This also makes the "Fatal Blow" ability much more appealing

Naffata -- This I got completely wrong (my only excuse is that someone made a similar mistake in a battle report I read and I find the rule book hard to read without my reading glasses which I had left at home).  I was using them as a melee unit where they should only get a ranged attack every time their unit moves. This attack has range S and does the 1-3 dice with "1"s killing the Naffata (the part that I did get right). If the defender takes any hits they also take 2 fatigue (3 if mounted) and the unit the Naffata is with takes a fatigue.

I played 3 games, the first against Stan's Crusaders the second against George's Vikings and the last against Nick's Anglo-Saxons

Game 1

The first scenario was the one where you have to kill the opposing warlord. At this stage I had no real idea what to do with this force but moving forward always seems to be a good strategy.

I had used the "Move Like the Djinn" ability to move my foot troops up quickly but then realized that they should be fatigued if they don't end up in contact with the enemy so I ended up resting them on the second turn so it ended up not being as useful just for moving up.

This was my first try at the "Suicidal Charge" ability -- it was quite devastating to the enemy but it is probably not really cost effective to trade 7 of my Hearthguard for 4 enemy Hearthguard!

With the left flank looking bare, I moved up on the right.

At the end my Warlord facing off against Stan's Warlord and his Warrior Priest.

This was the only game I won (and I think I was quite lucky at the end to win it).

Game 2
The second game against George's Vikings, I don't remember the mission but the victory was based solely on slaughter points,

For this game, I used the camel hearthguard as 2 units of 4 rather than one of 8 but kept everything else the same.

Again, I moved forward as quickly as I could.

The most exciting part was our warlords in a fight to the death which I won after many rounds. My warlord fell to George's hearthguard the following turn and I lost on slaughter points but it was still an exciting game. I had a slightly better grasp on my battleboard this time but George knew how to use his Vikings.
Game 3
 In game 3 against Nick's Anglo-Saxons we had to bid to defend the village. Neither of us wanted to defend so we diced off and I ended up defending.

The defender has to end the game with one building so I put one foot unit in each of 2 buildings and left the third one empty. I probably should have concentrated my mounted troops but I had visions of them galloping (if camels gallop) around the fence and striking the Anglo-Saxons as they reached the buildings.

Nick moved up to attack the first building and drove back my cavalry (it would have been smart to put them more than M away from the Anglo Saxon start line)

My camels moved up to the fence as the first building fell under the Anglo-Saxon attack.

After the Anglo-Saxons attacked one of my camel units and then the other did the "Suicidal Charge" (this time with "Allah Provides") there wasn't much left of the forces that weren't involved in the fighting for the second house.

The house managed to hold out (with one figure) until the last turn but couldn't last that turn. I think this would be a very hard battle to win against a foot force.

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I really enjoy Saga and should play it more (at least enough  so that I can use at least one faction well -- I don't think I have played any faction more than 3 times). This tourney has kickstarted my painting as well, finishing of my camels and working on the rest of the Mutatawwi'a.  

A visit from Ed

Ed came up from Kingston a week or so back to help motivate me to get my Germans finished and also to drop off the container ship for our upcoming Force on Force game.

It is quite an impressive model!

With a cat for scale purposes

With a Tiger for scale purposes

Covered in containers (which I should be painting!)

The name of the ship may bring back some traumatic gaming memories!

Lifeboats

A selection of anti-piracy equipment.


While I was painting my Germans, Ed painted "Inspector Magnum":

As well as touching up my other cops:

And painting the two freebies I got with my last Warlord order:

Mad Jack Churchill, who should go in every scenario possible.

And the downed British airman who looks completely awesome.

(And soon I will put the finishing touches on my Germans and post pictures of them!!!)

Bolt Action Assembly and Play

I played some  Bolt Action at the club this weekend run by Jeff. We played a series of 2 linked games. In the first, we as the British had to intercept a hafltrack carrying a secret cargo before it ran off the table and in the second we had to attack a V2 launch site and capture or destroy the rocket.

I didn't take any pictures but to give a rough rundown of the action: In the first game we had 2 sections of infantry, 2 Bren gun carriers, a medium mortar and a 2nd Lt. The Germans had 2 squads, an armed Kubelwagen, the halftrack and their command unit had 3 figures. We were probably about equal in firepower with the British having more figures. We moved up towards the road and exchanged fire for a few turns and then managed to rush out a heavily pinned unit to capture the halftrack. The Germans counterattacked and killed the section that had captured the halftrack but in the end it was a British victory.

For the second game we had the mortar, 6 sections of infantry, the HQ and a Sherman. The Germans had a mix of troops, a PAK 40 AT gun an Armoured Car and a Haftrack.  We were a bit hesitant about moving forward and probably concentrated too much on the AT gun so we eventually realized there was no way we would get our victory conditions. I am not entirely sure what the best choice would have been but we certainly needed to push harder.

 We had some new people out to the club for this game so that was good as well.

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I finally have all of my original German figures painted. They just need to have the basing done and I may try to put the decals on their helmets (I will post some pictures soon). The support weapons are nearly done as well.

Once I got the last bit of paint on, I decided I should start assembling the Canadian troops. I had forgotten how much of a pain it is to assemble the Warlord  Games figures. I generally prefer plastics to metals and these are nice figures just a pain to assemble. Each of the arms are separate and the weapon is another piece so getting all 3 of those together in a way that looks sensible is a bit of a challenge.

The helmets are also separate from the heads which is an extra step. In many ways this is a good thing but it is also a bit of a pain. This blog suggests that the best way to do this is to glue the weapon into the right hand before attaching the arm. I tried this for my Germans and I gave it a go for the Canadians as well but I find the best way is to glue on the right arm without the weapon (but checking how the weapon will fit so that it is in a reasonable position) and then doing the left arm and the weapon once the glue is set.

The legs for the kneeling guy are also a bit more trouble than they should be -- they really can only go together one way so if there had been a tab to keep things aligned it would have made the task trivial. I think that is my main complaint is that they didn't really think about what they could do to make assembly easier. I believe that they are getting better, the new German sets have the weapons attached to the arm (or at least the hand?) which should make things quicker.

I have managed to get 5 guys together so far (3 rifle, 1 PIAT and 1 light mortar) and I think I should be able to get the others down over the next week or so.

The little pieces in front of them are the water canteens and the bayonet scabbards. I didn't put a lot of equipment on my Germans because they are Panzer Grenadiers and they are on the defensive but I will load up the Canadians (which reminds me of one more complaint, the weapon sprue could do with more shovels and more rifle -- and a hand with a light mortar bomb would have been nice).

Despite all my complaints I do like these figures and the Germans were easy to paint up once I got past my painters block.

I also assembled some metal support weapons -- a vickers MG, a medium mortar and a 6 pdr AT gun

These were much easier to get together (but I think the plastics will be easier to paint)

Rumble in the Desert

On Friday Mike and I got together for some gaming and decided to play some Flames of War. Mike wanted to do some Early War Desert which sounded it good. It turns out that since he only has Germans and I only have Germans and Italians we would have to do an axis on axis game. I am not usually a big fan of that sort of game but the Germans and Italians are quite different and I was keen to get my Bersaglieri into action again.

We rolled for the mission and got a defensive mission but I asked for a reroll (what is the point of all those motorcycles if you are just going to dismount and dig in) so we ended up with Free for All.

In a fit of common sense I dismounted my MGs and AT guns and put them in the town on the left hand side to protect that objective and then spread out the rest of my force with the smaller motorcyle platoon and the howitzers protecting the other objective.

Mike had 2 platoons of Pz IIIs some armoured cars and some motorized infantry.

On the first turn we both moved some stuff forward and (starting a trend which would last the whole game) my air support came on but was completely useless.

The motorcycles came up the hill in the centre (where both my artillery and my Stuka managed to not damage anything in the cluster of trucks that was there before the infantry dismounted) and the two groups of tanks advanced on each flank. I should have dismounted the other infantry so they could dig in but I like having them on their motorcycles for the coolness factor! (My Italians win glory much more often than they win games!!)

Machine gun fire from the motorcycles and the armoured cars managed to wear down the German infantry but my tanks were losing the battle with the Panzers.

The motrocycles line up for the assualt on the hill as the tanks on either side of them get wiped out.

They win that small unimportant battle but then the Germans sweep forward to victory.

It was a fun game but I should have had a better plan (and better luck) I think if I had driven all the bikes towards the objective in the town and dismounted I could have forced a close in fight that would have worked better for me.

I have a bunch of desert infantry for the British but no tanks. I should get some at some point so we can do a proper early war desert game.

Frostgrave -- First game and some thoughts

On Friday, Mike came over and we played some Flames of War (I will post some pictures of that soon) and Frostgrave.

When the "Nickstarter" for this was announced I wasn't super excited about it. I had lots of other stuff to paint and don't have a lot of 28mm terrain suitable for fantasy. As I read more about it, I realized I could use some of my existing 28mm collection including the stuff that I had accumulated for D&D over the years as well as those figures from Descent that I have painted up. I picked up the kindle version of the rules and they seemed like they were worth giving a try.

We decided we would use some modifications after reading some reviews on this blog and some discussion on the Lead Adventure Forum. These mostly increased the XP for getting treasure and removed the XP for killing opposing wizards.

My warband consisted of a Sigilist (I think a Reaper Dwarf Cleric) and his apprentice (a Grenadier wizard from one of their first D&D sets), a Templar (a GW figure from the first "End Times"), 2 Archers (Warlord Roman Archers), 3 Thugs (Perry Korean Peasants) and 2 Thieves (Gripping Beast Welsh slingers). I didn't spend a lot of time choosing my spells as I was more interested in seeing how the game would play out. I spent all the money on the warband so I didn't have any magic items.

For the fist mission we played the Keep which has 2 treasure in the centre of the table and 4 others each of which is on a teleportation pad which can move you to another teleportation pad if you end your move on it.

I started by moving up to the edge of the large building that was on my table edge. I divided my force into 3 groups, 1 with the wizard, 1 with the apprentice and the 2 archers by themselves. (Still not really sure how best to arrange the force at the beginning)

I managed to get lucky when I moved my thief onto the teleportation pad, he didn't move and he was set to bring the treasure back to my side.

Meanwhile, Mike was moving his warband up as well. He made really good use of the "Leap" spell to get people onto the treasure and to get the treasure of the board. Summoner is the opposing school for the Sigilist so it wasn't even an option for me.

My wizard and his retinue made it to the treasure in the centre at the same time some of Mike's henchmen got there.

Meanwhile Mike was having some trouble with a wandering monster (a bear dressed up as a Yeti).

I had some wandering monster troubles of my own as 2 ice spiders tried to stop my thief making it off with the only treasure I managed to grab. They weren't as dangerous as they sounded and my archers managed to kill one each.

My thugs rush up to try and grab the treasure that was dropped after the Yeti/bear killed one of Mike's minions.

The melee in the centre of the table heats up as I get more guys in there. We reached the time limit at that point. Mike had manged to get 2 or 3 treasure off and I had managed 1. I had not suffered any losses (though one or two were wounded) and Mike had lost 2. We went through the end of turn stuff and I went up one level and Mike went up 2.

For the next game we decided try the Djinnin bottle mission. For this one each treasure has a 25% chance of releasing the Djinni when it is picked up.

This game was much less interesting as we both concentrated on the treasure on our own side of the table and Mike had the bad luck of getting the Djinni and a minor demon wandering monster attacking him.

We ended up both getting the 3 treasures that were closest to us and we each got 1 enemy with our archers and Mike took a bit of a beating from the Djinni and the demon.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I feel that the changes we made may have been fixing problems that might not be there with our play style. The turn limit really seemed to reduce the opportunity to interact with the opposing player and getting XP as well as treasure seemed to just amplify this. (I get the impression that the people who suggested these changes have played it more than we have so maybe things will look different with some more experience).

I think that adding things like traps and treasures of different values (so treasure further from your start point is worth more) will make things more fun and even making the turn limit more in game (something like after turn 5 a wandering monster will arrive each turn is going to force people to get off the board in fairly short order).


Mike has posted his report here