TaKtiCon 2025

 We had a great time (and a few sales) a couple of weekends ago at TaKtiCon in Kansass City (see what they did there with the K and C in the title?). While it's still a new convention it was bigger than last year's first ever. Three tournamnets, and plenty of non tournament games in all scales and genres. Including mine!

Friday I ran Battlesuit Alpha. Space Pirates had landed to steal precious fuel from the refinery. They almost got away with it too if it hadn't been for those pesky Panetary Defense Forces and especially Fancy Dan, mech pilot extraordinaire. 

 

 

Fancy Dan takes on all comers! 

 

The cavalry arrives! 

Then Saturday it was a game of Glorious Adventures in the Age of Steam. We got a few fliers in the game to take the action vertical. Zee Germans were stopped from crossing the board.

 

The Rokkitruppen and Unicycle Uhlans died spectacularly as usual. All in all a great couple of days. Make sure to check it out next time. 

Fast Play Grande Armee: Basement Generals on Tour

We braved the bitter cold to inaugurate the new game of room of fellow Basement General Scott. He provided the game table and the game!

Once more the 6mm might of the French forces were brought to bear on the poor ol' Austrians.
I believe it's a poor general that blames his dice for defeat, but I blame my dice for the defeat. The Austrians just got hammered. First turn my boys marched solidly forward while their brethren on the right flank stood firm. Second turn i rolled a "Withdrawal" while the right advanced.
This set the tone for the game.

It was still fun. And a nice break not to have to host.

Armor Grid: The battle for Grimm Pass

Now that the Christmas hangover has passed, I can post our game form last Thursday. I'm always on the lookout for rules for my big, stompy mechs. The idea of 5 story walking robots is dumb. Billions of credits to build, and a guy with a disposable missile launcher can take one out with a shot to the knee. But I love it.
I grew up playing Battletech, but let's face it, it's not great for a multi player games that has to be over in a couple of hours. I've tried Battletech's newest "easy" version "Alpha Strike". It's nice but pretty vanilla. And I miss marking of circles...
I stumbled upon Armor Grid while perusing Wargames Vault. Lots of good reviews and cheap.
A read through and I loved it.

I dug out all my repainted Mechwarrior tanks, CAV mechs, and Drak Horizon infantry.
Movement and combat is pretty straightforward. Fighting requires a target number based on your target's Profile and speed. You'll notice some markers in the pictures. The "!" denote a unit that has Rushed. They have a harder time hitting. The green radar markers denote unuts that have remained stationary.
Here's where I diverged from the rules. One of the complaints of Armor Grid, is that in the rules the shooter gets a bonus for remaining stationary. So games just end up with people standing around. I flipped it and made units standing around are easier to hit. House rule #1.
moving and shooting build up heat ala Battletech, that has to vented at the end of the turn.

After you hit damage is assessed in a way similar to my beloved Crimson Skies, with a roll on a simplified grid. Different weapons do different damage on the grid. When a "lane" is filled and innards of your mech exposed, criticals come in. Here we diverge again.
In the rules you only take out a vehicle on a 9 or 10 roll on a critical. You can end up hitting the same critical spot over and over without blowing it up. We changed to hitting the same critical sot more than once blows the vehicle up. House Rule #2.
The game play was easy to pick up and fast. We played with balance, identical forces except armament. Lasers cut deep. Missiles spread the love. Infantry are tough little buggers that can take a Mech out.
I'll definitely be playing again.

Alpha Strike: Battle for Meridian Prime Pt 4

With the Rebels stalled last game, they decided to hit another sector. I wanted to scale up and do a larger battle, so I dug out my Battletech stuff and went 6mm.

There were 5 Hold points around the table. Each turn a side held one they got a point. To motivate everyone I did a countdown clock of sorts by rolling a d6 every turn and kept a running total. We it reached "30" the game was over. Most points won.

Alpha strike goes really quick. We had quite a few models on the table.
The Rebels flew across the table and captured 3 objectives right off the bat. It then was up to the Union to push them off.
Losses were high for both sides, but the Rebs pulled out another victory. Now I want to take this fight to space as sympathetic planets try to run the blockade and supply the rebels.

Fast Play Grande Armee

I've posted my love for this great fast play version of Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee., so I won't go into game mechanics. This was a semi-historical re-fight of the action happening at the center at Aspern-Essling. Teh teraain was rolling hills and sporatic light woods.
The French won the first initiative but the center could not get a move on and take the central hills. Meanwhile the flanks got a pounding.

 The road between the two towns.

 Austrians take the hill.

For once, in all the games we've played, the Austrians put up a good fight.
Four turns in, (turns can last 1-4 pulses, which things exciting) both sides were beat all to hell. The Austrians had it slightly worse, and failed their army morale. But, then so did the French. Both sides skulked away.
A truly great battle.
Editor's note: I neglected to mention the valiant effort of the now named "Lucky 13th" or "Lost Brigade". They became separated from the rest of the line. This is terrible in these rules. Attackers get to reroll hits, etc. They managed to hold the a large chunk of the Austrian right wing before being finally crushed in a cavalry charge.

Holiday Gaming

Belated Merry Christmas to all. In the never ending attempt to find that ruleset that combines the right balance in playability and fun for my collection of Mechwarrior minis, I picked up Battletech: Alpha Strike. LeadAddict and I played the original Battletech when it first came out many moons ago. We liked it mainly for it's concept of giant stumpy robots duking it out on the war ravaged battlefields of the future. Never mind that using giant, expensive (as in the GDP of most countries) in just plain dumb. A lowly grunt with a shoulder fired missile launcher could bring one down, and missing is almost impossible. Never mind that the original models were direct rip-offs of Robotech. We were 13!

Yes, the buildings need paint...

Infantry try to keep pace with the mech.

The original rules were a grind. Hundreds of little ovals to fill in every time you took damage. Keeping track of heat build up. So, when I read a several positive reviews of the new, improved quick rules, boasting of fielding several mechs at a time, I had to at least try.

Infantry disembark

They were worth it. The rules are split into introductory, standard, and advanced. The Intro rules are very basics and really only use mechs. As I have a ton of tanks and infantry, I used Standard.
Everyone had picked up the rules by turn 2, with the only reason to check the QRS, was for movement modifiers to hit. Where the game could real shine is with all the bells and whistles.
Now, I just need more mechs.

That was last week. Last night there were only a few of us. I've had some old boardgames around that needed dusting off. One was an old standard, Wizard Kings by Columbia Games. It's a "block game". Really, an upgrade of the old chit games of old. All the info on you troops is there on the wooden block. You get the added bonus of Fog of War as only you see what on the blocks by standing them on their sides. The was a titanic struggle between Orcs, Amazons, Elves and Undead. As the Undead player, I had cheap troops, but slow (Oh, zombies..) or really expensive highly class undead. My swift moving vampires captured two cities single handed. We played 10 turns, and my undead hordes pulled out a win. The geomorphic maps make replay endless. The would be a great campaign system for Mayhem.
That's it. One more week of freedom, then back to my job that lasts only tip February. Then the grey unknown.

FUBAR 6mm

As in the quick one pager rules FUBAR, but I'm sure one side felt that way last night.
I have all these great Mechwarrior minis I repainted. We've used various systems, but as I have mentioned before, we have 6-8 players every Thursday and about 3 hours to get a game done. As a result, most of rules need to quick and dirty and most of all, fun.

Chaos on the battlefield

I have read the FUBAR rules several times. They, for the most part, fit on one page. Units basically have a number they need to roll to activate, with better troops needing 3s & 4s, crap troops higher. One complaint I have read about the rules is that some units spend the whole game sitting around because they missed their activation. You do get put on a type of overwatch if you fail, but I instituted that if an enemy was outside 24" you were allowed a +1 to your activation score.
Every unit has a shoot number and rolls "x" amount of dice depending on the weapon, then the target rolls saves. Pretty simple.
Initiative became the game winner. A side held initiative until it failed an activation. Then the other side gets its, etc. We had a bit of a turkey shoot when the Union forces kept activating and began blowing holes in the League's line.

Infantry seek cover after their APC is blown up

It was fairly one sided. Duke MIlo's forces destroyed the rebels pretty handily. But, I think it still worked. We had 30+ units on the table and finished in under 2 hours. I made cards for each unit which made it easy to remember who moved by flipping them over, and we never had to look at charts. There are some interesting infantry rules that I won't go into, but our ground pounders never really engaged until the end. I have to paint some more.
I'd like to give FUBAR a whirl with 15mm sci-fi, but in the mean time I have some modern African troops to finish for next week.

and I saw the real deal on the way into work!