VSF Thursday

The plan: Get Lady Cottingham and her top secret plans through enemy lines.

Enemy held village

The Luftmarines move so fast they're blurry!

French Marines advance under cover of the Spyder

Sniper in the house!

The Spyder, moments before the Luftmarines attack it and bring it down.

French invade the town

Marines and Lady Hussars duke it out

Lady Cottingham saunters down the street unharmed

The Petit Syper holds the bridge

Another fun GASLIGHT game. Highlights include the Luftmarines diverting the Spyder of her legs, then having come crashing down on top of them. The Killenkanner's, inability to get started, then it's failed hand-to-hand battle with Lady Cottingham! 

Wizard!

A Wizard for Mayhem. He's an old "College" Wizard from GW. I didn't stick to their colors.

Another blog to follow

It's not war-game related, but worth a read. If you ever feel crappy about your job, try walking in my wife's shoes.
Down the Rabbit Hole

Mayhem 2.0

We had fun with the first play of Mayhem, a fantasy combat war-game. It's like a better version of HOTTs to me. Although Cluck Amok would argue the opposite.

The basics are easy to pick up, and the most enjoyable part is the risk vs reward aspect. Each stat a stand has is given a d4, d6, d8 ,d10, d12, or d20. When moving, fighting or shooting, you have, as the owner, the option of playing it safe and taking the default (half of the die type, so a default for 6d is 3), or risking and rolling, taking the chance you'll roll lower than, or higher depending on what you need than the default. The same goes each round with generating Command Points, which are need to move/attack.
So for instance, during the game, my pikemen needed to close quickly with bowmen across the river. I decided to risk it and roll their move die of d6 instead of taking the default 3". I spent 3 of my CPs (1 to move, 2 for crossing a difficulty Level 2 obstacle) and moved 6". This paid off as I contacted them. I still needed to fight. That would cost 2 more CPs (each time a unit does something else after the first, it cost more. Second action costs 2, Third: 3, etc). This ate up 5 of my 6 rolled CPs for the turn, which effective left my other troops standing around, but I rolled and killed the bowmen.

One thing we did wrong the first play was Volley Fire. Longbowmen can give up lethality for a chance to drive back enemy units. You get to roll 3 dice instead of 1 to hit, and 3 to harm (always only keeping one) but can't harm the unit. You may drive them back instead. Before we allowed them to count disorder and kills, and they of course, were vey deadly.
In our battle I successfully punched thru the middle, but in doing so lost my ass. I killed, but was killed in turn. That left the flanks to duke it out.

The Orcs on the enemy left slowly trudged forward. They did little damage until the ogres finally got int the fight. The general in charge "risked" his move roll every time and was rewarded with a roll of "1" six times in a row. He literally moved 6" over the course of 6 turns. Whereas taking the default would have got him 18" in the same time.
I've decided these are the rules I want to use for my dream Greyhawk Wars battles.

2 more supers and yet another blog.

Presented for your enjoyment: the Despot, ruler of a thousand worlds and Perma-Frost deadly creator of cold.

On an unrelated subject, I started a blog to chronicle my musings on starting a new life and career, Here be Dragons.

Fistful of Lead AAR

We only had a couple hours to game Thursday so I knew I had to pull out something that would fit in that timeframe: Fistful of Lead.

The unsuspecting denizens of Lesterville

The dastardly outlaw Krusty Dixon had finally been captured. A detail of US cavalry were to bring him to the county seat in Lesterville and hand him over to the law, where he would board the train prison. Simple enough, except Krusty's gang had other ideas.
The Cavalry had to start at one end of the town and bring Krusty to the Marshal at the jail midway through town. The Marshal's men were allowed to set up anywhere in town but Krusty's men (who had infiltrated earlier) were allowed to see where.

the ambush is sprung!

Krusty's gang were set up on the table. Instead, when they activated, they were allowed to appear anywhere (which cost an action) as long as it was more than 12" away from any lawman.

"Git offa hte sterrt ya dern fools!"

The Marshal's men decided to spread out around town. Mistake! All of Krusty's bots popped up right at the edge of town and ambushed the cavalry.
They only thing the boys in blue had going for them were the poor wounding rolls by the Dixon gang, For awhile, the best they could get was a pin.

Death from above

Eventually, weight of fire finally took it's toll and blue bellies started dropping.
The Marshal's men spent most of the game trying to get in the fight, meanwhile, Krusty got away....
Lots of nail biting moments. Best part is the rules are so easy to pick up (although everyone in the group has been paying them for a decade), I was able to leave for awhile to pick up my daughter from practice without any problems.

Korgoth of Babbaria

An homage to a great little cartoon and a new villain (or hero) for Supersystem.

Gruntz:Modern Africa

Missed posting last Friday. Most of my post Thursday night game posts were done Friday mornings at work. Insert sad face. Now that I'm up and running at home, here we go.
Our own Propaganda Architect has been converting Gruntz to a more modern setting. So far it works great. Our yet-to-be-named nations's struggles have been fun to game.
This scenario involved our Dictator for Life, fearing for the safety of his ill gotten spoils, is moving them to the safety of a neighboring country. Trucks, loaded down with loot must move across the table to the waiting airplane.

His second objective is to hold the radio station for as long as possible. If the people find out he in moving his stuff, they may rise up in rebellion before he escapes.
Thirdly, those boy soldier are bad press internationally. If they could be taken out quietly during the battle (hand to hand), that's a plus.
We decided the trucks were moving slow due to the weight of all those furs, painting, jewels, imported cars and luxuries. That, and if allowed to double move, the game would be over quick.
The dictator had fewer, but better troops. And did we mention an airforce?

Between the jet and the copter, most of the resistance on the left flank was eliminated.
Meanwhile, the foreign mercenaries holding the radio station were slowly being wiped out by the sheer numbers of the resistance.
Two trucks were shot up and forced to stop. One by a crazy technical that braved a minefield to sprint ahead and block the way.
It was fun. Gruntz is easy to grasp. My only beef is the assault rules. Not because of the rules themselves, but the reality of assault (HTH) in modern rules. Just as in real life, you better suppress those defenders if you want to close with them. Timing is everything.
The table looked great with all the extras. Perhaps a post battle beer outside the warehouse.

Tonight's pairing.