Javier at war

Cachatan

2012-02-13T12:42:00.004Z

After my last skirmish game from my ITEN campaign in 6mm I felt the itch of painting some more 6 mm minis, so I picked up these pseudo Cachatan minis from Dark Realm that my friend SpaceJacker generously gave me and here is the result.

Pics clickable.

Normally I prime in black for such smaller figures to get a greater contrast, but my eyesight has worsened with the age and now I cannot distinguish a thing if I undercoat in black. So I primed in white, block coloured, then washed them with GW's Badab Black and finally highlighted with the original base colours.

They do not turned up to bright as with black undercoat but at least I could paint them.

In the Emperor's name with Combat Cards.

2012-02-09T12:57:00.010Z

Although my buddy and usual wargaming opponent thinks CCs are shit (literally), I decided to give them another opportunity. Mainly because I felt like playing my itEn campaign so long abandoned but whose combat rules I had forgotten and I did not feel like reading them again in that moment, lazy me.

So I would sacrife saucy details from itEn in favour of a more generic and easy to go system as it is CC.

Nonetheless, as I felt Space Marines are better than normal infantry but different to the next category which is Mechanized units, I made some new units to play itEn with CC:

Space Marines (New unit - Heavy Infantry)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Very Heavy
Points Value - 2

Devastator (Anti-Armour)
Fire Power - Heavy
Range - Long
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 3

Librarian (Fire Support* + Trained)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 4x2 = 8

* Every Situation of Fire Support would allow him to use his psiquic power Path of Shadows (teletransporting at Rapid Move distance).

I spent my earned victory point from the last mission to buy a Rhino: a Mechanized Unit with transport ability (infantry can enter and exit from it as if moving in cover area, and received cover area bonus while they are in it).

I rolled on the Breakthrought mission chart and scored four:
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY.
A traitor in the Enemy’s camp has signalled a willingness to betray them into your hands. The informant has had to flee, though, with the Enemy close at his heels. Find the informant before the Enemy does and escort him off the board.

SETUP: The encounter would take place in an abandoned and long time radioactivity poisoned city. Mark ten terrain features that are possible hiding spots of the informant, none of which is closer than 4” to another. The two deployment zones must be at least 15” apart.

OBJECTIVE: The player must search each marked terrain feature by moving a model into base contact with it and rolling 1d6. On a roll of 6, the player’s model has recovered the informant and must now move him off the table. The model carrying the informant cannot fire ranged weapons or run. On successfully moving the informant off-table, the player’s team will earn 5 Victory points.

Then I rolled for secondary force list and got Squats.

My Space Marines costed a total of 27 army points and the Squats 20 points. The Squat forces were composed of 1 Command, 1 Infiltrator, 1 Mechanized, 1 Heavy Weapon and 4 Infantry.

I played with Epic miniatures on a 60 X 60 cm. board. The game took me two hours but I played both sides and took pictures as well.

All pictures are clickable.

Space Marines in the left and Squats in the right. At the beginning there were a lot of Confusion Situations. The Rhino was the first target for Confusion and all the infantry inside would have to move out walking or wait until the driver recovered. In the end they all waited except the Librarian who teletransported himself to the building in front of him.

Black dice mark Confused

However, Marines quickly reached the first three buildings but they did not find the traitor there. Squats more slowly were exploring the nearest buildigns but they neither could not find anybody.

In the following turns the Marines explored the buildings in the middle of the board except the big one which was registered first by an Squad Infiltrator

-Hullo!

After exploring all the building except the last one in the bottom left of the board, it was clear where it was going to be hiding the traitor. As the Squats were next to that building they discovered him and tried to exit the board with him.

The traitor is the Squat with blue helmet

The Marines were about to lose the mission but then good cards arrived all together. In the following turn the Rhino made two Rapid Moves and disembarked some infantry who shot and forced to Fall Back the Mechanized Squat out of the board. Then the Librarian teleported in the target building and shot to the Squat escorting the traitor, forcing them to take shelter in the same building.
Squats discarded several times and scarcely moved. Their Command unit was supressed by the Devastator fire.

Green dice mark Shaken

When the Squat with the traitor tried to escape again, the Librarian made Opportunity Fire and left him Shaken. Then one Space Marine tried to Assault him by the back but was stopped by Opportunity fire from the Command Squat who had recovered the turn before.

The Squat between two wooden sticks is Dig in and Hidden

Then it came the Rhino and the Squat Command desperately Assaulted it, resulting Shaken and Out of Action after two consecutive melee rounds.
The other Space Marines who came in the Rhino shot the Squat with the traitor and killed him.

Red dice mark Out of Action

The Command Squad finally died and the Rhino picked up the traitor

The Squats were decimated and could not stop the Marines. The Rhino moved to its border at full speed while the rest gave it cover.

In the last turn of the game the Devastator was shot at the back and assasinated by the Squat Infiltrator, but the Rhino finally moved out of the board thus winning the mission and earning five Victory Points.

The last turns of the game were very tense as the Marines snatched victory from Squat's hands in the very last moment, and it was exciting to draw new cards from the deck every turn in the hope of getting the right one to give the decisive blow.
Combat Cards game changes positively when you add objectives and victory points to the games.

I'm seeing CC is not so bad after all but I still think that games like itEn, FUBAR, SBH and especially CR 3.0, which use dice and charts and no cards, and with similar scope, are faster and more fun to play than CC. Also, it was a bit cumbersome to play both sides at the same time as I had two hands to play with.

On the other hand, the game was set up very quickly and the cards gave a very welcome level of uncertainty to solo playing.

All in all I will probably finished my itEn campaign using CC system, but after that I will rarely use it again and rather play other types of rulesets instead.

Pendraken Painting Competition 2012!

2012-02-06T22:31:00.006Z

I just finished painting these ten Orcs for the Pendraken Competition of 2012. I love these little critters as they have a lot of character and the look I have always thought Orcs should have. They remind me of those GW's Orcs from the eighties.
They are on individual bases instead of a big one forming a diorama, because I want them for my 10 mm skirmishes.

All pictures are clickable.

Apart from these Orcs I have also presented some other models for the Comp but I do not expect to win in any of the categories as the level of past year was already too high and I am sure this year will be even higher.

The Comp has been an excellent excuse to finish these tiny Orcs who have been waiting in the painting queue for two years. Visit the forum of Pendraken and do not let pass the occasion to see some great painting on such tiny miniatures. Good luck to all the participants!

Combat Cards.

2012-01-29T22:38:00.010Z

Two weeks ago I saw on the excellent blog Tiny Solitary Soldiers a post about a new ruleset called Combat Cards. As I read it I instantly got interested as the ruleset had a different approach: gaming cards with no dice and generic enough to represent different periods and scales; so I thought of Hordes of the Things for modern combat, and I bought, printed, read and played it.

For my first game I used my Epic forces as I could easily deploy all types of units in the game. We played a standard 36 points game which lasted more than three hours! and it was very disappointing. Firstly, it took too long to play a game, taking into account it is simple, and generic and plays with so few units per side.

In the second place, the game was terribly static as there were very few opportunities to move your units and then they moved very slowly; 5 cms. most of the time (very short distance halved because of terrain).

My Marine forces consisted in one recon on the left, four mechanised and one command in the center, one tank at the back and off board artillery and aerial. The Orks with similar forces in the cover of the wood and top of the hill.
Although the game works in any scale, it felt odd to play with a dozen tiny stands per side on such a big table.

All are pictures clickable.

And here a picture of the last turn of the game, three hours later. As you see the units hardly moved.

After this fiasco I could not understand how this guy from Mac's little friends could have such enjoyable games with Combat Cards. So we thought the Epic scale did not help and that for our next game we would add much more terrain to avoid long fire lines. We also thought that we spent a lot of time reading and understanding the cards as we are non native English speakers, and that in our next game that won't be an issue as we already knew the effects of the cards just by reading their title.

Decided to give the system another opportunity (especially after spending on it 10 dollars plus 8 euros more for printing the cards and ruleset), I wrote three times to the authors with doubts we had during our first game and I have to say that they answered on the three occasions within 24 hours and in a very friendly and helpful way.

So next weekend we planned to play two consecutive games. The first one would be a la Infinity, using 28 mm. miniatures in a bombed and ruined city; and the second one would be the free scenario number six, set during WWII.

For this second game my force, from left to right, consisted of one recon, three mechanised, one command, three infantry, one anti armour and one heavy weapon plus two aerial units and one infiltrator not in the picture.

My buddy chose one behemoth, one armour, two mechanised, two commands and four infantry plus artillery and aerial.

First turn. Most of my forces at the bottom of the pictures, inside the two main buildings.

In the first turns my buddy put some of my units out of action with aerial and artillery attacks.

After that I decimated his infantry units with my mechanised ones.

As the rules says, we finished the game after one hour and a half and I won for a couple of points more. Although the scale was more appropriate and we knew the content of the cards and had some experience from our previous game, still it was very slow, especially when moving or doing things with troops. Most of the units never moved, and only a few fired excepting artillery and aerials. An infantry unit had to spend at least three move orders to go from one cover to another; actually only my mechanised units managed to complete the move from one place to another.

We were already quite demoralised about this ruleset but nonetheless we tried a second game, one designed by Tactical Assault Games to be specifically played with this ruleset. So we set the game board and chose our forces. My Germans playing as Russians and my Buddy's Americans as Germans as we did not have the exact forces for that scenario.

The Americans on the left had three tanks, one command, one recon and two infiltrators plus artillery and aerials off board. The Germans on the right had deployed in the woods one bunker, one aerial defense, one command, one anti- armour, one infantry and one fire support (a mortar), plus two more infantry squads in the forest ahead and one artillery and one aerial off board.

The Americans decided to dig in and then hide in the open and in front of the Germans and then start pounding their positions, whereas the Germans tried to flank the enemy tanks with their infantry.

Soon my units started to accumulate shaken, fall back and out of fight counters. Then I lost my artillery in a counter strike, but luckily my infiltrator killed the American command and later I had the pleasure of killing one tank with my infantry shooting at its back.

In any case, the game was again very static and luck dependant, and soon we got bored and started to look at the watch to check if the reglamentary hour and a half had already passed. This time I lost for a point.

After these two games we still have the same bad feelings about this ruleset. It is simple and generic yet it takes the same time to play than any other more complex and more challenging and rewarding game. Hordes of the Things for example is generic and it plays with a dozen or so units, but the game lasts about half an hour and it is much much more strategic, fast and fun than Combat Cards.

We never experienced that Aha! moment that Mike comments about Combat Cards; he enjoyed it a lot as other gamers do, so maybe it is us who are wrong.

All I know is that this is the first time I wrote such a negative review of a game and that I won't play CC again.

Great Ogres

2012-01-11T12:13:00.004Z

Actually they are Orcs from the Magister Militum's 15 mm Blood Dawn range, but I gave them flesh tones to use them as Ogres for my 10 mm skirmishers.
It is the first time I try to paint bronze rust but I think it turned out okay.

Pictures clickable.

Here you can see one of them next to a Copplestone's 10 mm figure.

Battle at the Ford

2012-01-09T17:55:00.005Z

This Sunday we played our first game of 2012 and second of SAGA with 6 points armies. Me with Vikings and my buddy with his Foundry Vikings as Anglo Danish in the upper part of the river. We both got victory points per warriors crossing the fords to the other side of the river in seven turns.

The big six sided die is marking the turn number two, and we can see how the forces are approaching to the fords.

On turn three the Danes tried to pass through the right ford but they were rejected by my Vikings though they ended very tired due to the melee and the Danish exhaustion order.

On turn fourth I tried to charge through the left ford but the enemy used my fatigue marker to shorten my moving distance, stopping me before the clash.

On the following turns the Dane Huscarls charged my Hirdmen in the ford and died all my eight men and six of his!; whereas in the right ford his leader charged side by side with his two handed axemen unit and slaughtered my unit of bondi.

My bondi on the left tried to hold the ford but in the last turn they were massacred and the Danes got pass with a second activation. On the right ford it only remained my heroic leader and one following bondi holding the ford, and the Dane leader and half of his ceorls with all the huscarls dead, after both leader being fighting for three consecutive turns.

My opponent managed to squeeze five victory points in the very last turn of the game.

I am liking more and more this game as it is fast, different and very violent. My only minor complaint is that the first game and this second one were too similar and a bit boring as they were just a straight clash of warbands. I hope following scenarios will be more asymmetrical and in case not I will have to look for new scenarios somewhere else. I think Warhammer historical Shieldwall book had a few...

Baccus EIR skirmishers

2011-12-25T11:54:00.007Z

These skirmishers come from the Baccus Celtic javelinmen blister (AC3). One blister is enough for three Warmaster Ancients units with five figures in each base.

All pictures clickable.

Here is what I have painted so far. All the infantry for 1.000 points for WA except the artillery (next in the painting queue) and all the cavalry, to be painted next year.

Merry Christmas to all fellow wargamers and Happy New Year!

Baccus Roman archers.

2011-12-17T11:57:00.004Z

I finished my two Warmaster units of EIR archers that will also be used for other systems such as DBA BB. I should have painted their tunics in blue or green to make contrast with their bows and the flesh tone.

All pics clickable.

Here you can see a comparative among my Pendraken archers, the ones from Baccus and one base of Heroic & Ros Classic Indian archers that I painted eons ago. I wish the Baccus archers had a shooting pose instead.

First SAGA game.

2011-12-13T20:22:00.008Z

This was our first game of SAGA and we played it with 6 points war bands. As we both have Foundry Vikings but did not want to play Vikings vs. Vikings, my buddy chose to play with Anglo-Danish.
I chose two groups of twelve Bondi each, one group of eight Hirdmen, one group of four Berserkers and the leader. My opponent picked up two units of twelve Ceorls each, one unit of six Huscarls and another of six Huscarls with two handed axes and the leader.

We decided to play the first scenario which consisted in trying to kill the opponent's leader. So we deployed the terrain and the miniatures according to the instructions of the game and started to push miniatures.

All pictures are clickable.

Leaders were mounted on rounded bases to easily distinguish them from the rest. This is the battlefield after the first turn. As we did not want to accumulate fatigue markers so soon, neither of us moved more than once.

The two war band leaders with their respective bodyguards met just in the middle of the battlefield but only clashed the Huscarls and Hirdmen as their leaders were too far.

I attacked first and tried Heimdal + Thor but he received me with Hard as Iron. My horrible dice roll made the rest and I lost four Huscarls to three of them.

In the next turn I attacked his leader with mine using Heimdal + Ullr, which allowed me to re-roll all failed Attack Dice. My opponent did not have any dice left on abilities and had to sacrifice two of his Huscarls to save his leader's life! Thus balancing the situation in the middle.

On the left flank one unit of Ceorls charged my unit of Bondi. They used the Push and won the melee. On the right flank my Berserkers took the tower and from there waited for a good occasion to charge the enemy. Regretfully, my opponent used Intimidation on them for several turns and they could do nothing for most of the game.

When they finally were able to move, they charged the closest unit of twelve of Ceorls who used their dice in defence and managed to resist the Berserker's charge. Then they killed three of the four and suddenly the dreaded Berserkers were not so. It seems that Berserkers are one shot weapon so I think I should have used my Berserkers with Heimdal + Ullr + Valhalla, thus getting 32 Attack Dice and the possibility to re-roll the failed ones! Next time baby.

I was losing the battle as my opponent had already destroyed one full unit of twelve Bondi, all my Hirdmen but one, the Berserkers and half of the Bondi of the last unit of warriors. But then my leader charged again the Anglo-Danish warlord and killed him outright as this time he had not any more expendables bodyguards near him. Victory for me although I did not have many men left to celebrate it.

SAGA resulted to be a very fast, intuitive and fun game and we will keep playing it in the following weeks. Now I am thinking about buying some Perry's Crusaders to make a Norman retinue.

6 mm Baccus vs. 10 mm Pendraken EIR

2011-12-03T16:04:00.008Z

I finally finished my four Baccus EIR Auxilia units for WA, next will be archers. This time there are no decals for the shields but I think they came out neat. All the standards are broken and lost due to a small domestic accident.
All pictures are clickable.

A rear view where it can be better appreciated the Auxilia's bronze helmets inherited from the legionaries.

A comparative shot of 6 mm. Baccus vs. 10 mm. Pendraken legionaries.

And now one of the Auxilia.

I'm still not sure of which scale is better but I think I choose Baccus as it gets a better feeling of massed regiments. By the way, in case someone maybe interested I'm selling my DBA 10mm Pendraken EIR army. See here.

Some old pictures of my father as a military man.

2011-11-25T21:55:00.006Z

Recently I discovered some old pictures of my father as military man, and have decided to scanner and post them in my blog. My father (1914-2002) who retired with the rank of colonel of Infantería de Marina (Marine Corps?), fought in the Spanish Civil War as well as in Africa. He told me some stories about him during the Civil War that seem to be taken from a movie.

The following pictures were probably taken during the Ifni-Sahara campaign, as I remember him showing me his medal for that campaign. Regretfully, after my father's death one of my elder brothers gave all his medals to an acquaintance of him without asking me first if I was interested in them. Now I am trying to get them back as well as his sabre, who owns it another person.

As usual all the pictures are clickable.

My father is the first on the right, in white shorts.

Driving a jeep. Here you can see the major's eight points star on his chest.

And here with some officers. He is the first on the right and holding a cheetah.

Inspecting the Moorish troops

I do not know where he was or what he was doing but it smells like adventure.

The picture below was taken in the old part of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria city, where my father met my mother and married her, and where I was born and still live. He is leading the parade.

The same parade from another perspective

My first 6mm Early Imperial Roman legionaries

2011-11-18T20:24:00.005Z

Here is my first batch of Baccus Early Imperial Romans. Two blisters of legionaries enough for four units for Warmaster Ancients although I will be using them for DBABB, DBMM and HC as well. Now off to paint four Auxilia units :)
Pictures clickable.

Four units for Warmaster Ancients

This would be a unit for Hail Caesar

AE Bounty second game.

2011-11-06T23:08:00.007Z

Following our first game on a planet surface we wanted to try a new one inside a star ship, so we set a random Space Hulk map and after designing our crews we rolled at random for mission, second objective which we both forgot during the game, and to see who was going attacker or defender.

Having in mind that we were going to fight inside a star ship I designed my crew with few and good members, picking two Old Guard units plus a veteran Sergeant Hero Marksman (oh yeah!). The five men wearing heavy armour and LRF Particle guns as in the ship there are not cover nor long distances, so I chose the maximum protection and rate of powerful fire at short distances.

Pics clickable.

My buddy chose his same pirate crew from our previous game and gave them the same weapons as me but no armour at all.

We rolled the mission get to the escape pods and me as attacker and having to reach those escape pods. Though luck as all my men were slow due to their heavy armours and I had only eight turns to do it.

I started in one extreme opposed to the escape pods, and the defender in a chamber in the middle of the board. As soon as I activated, I started to rush forward with the enemy melee specialists with mono blades waiting for me.

Fortunately I gained initiative again and managed to blast away two of three devils from that unit. The survivor charged my forward man who lost the melee but was saved by his armour. My sergeant aimed and shot down this last pirate during the melee.

Here my buddy complained and moaned that I had designed a very cheesy crew and that it was impossible to him to kill me, but he did not have to kill me, just delay me to stop me reaching the escape pods in eight turns.

My buddy a bit demoralised, fell back with the rest of his crew and waited for me to come. The environmental conditions of the ship together with my inability to sprint due to the heavy armour plus a couple of suppressions I suffered, made me lost six turns to get near the escape pods.

Almost at the exit the pirate crew revolved and attacked me throwing some frag grenades that killed one full Old Guard unit and wounded my sergeant.
The other unit was too far away to change the course of the action and we quit the game on turn seven as it was pretty obvious that I was not going to reach my objective on time.

Definitely fun game and totally different to our first one. We liked it and now we are seriously thinking about starting a campaign, but there are so many different game to play.

Foundry Vikings for SAGA

2011-11-05T14:23:00.003Z

As many people are doing lately, here I present my Viking warband for SAGA. I have a lot of Foundry Vikings that I painted years ago for WAB, but as never got to paint berserkers and as I need some for SAGA, I painted the berserker personalities blister that I had in a dark and forgotten back corner of my wardrobe.

Pics clickable.

Now I have enough variety and quantity of Vikings to play SAGA.

Regretfully, although I pre ordered the ruleset to Maelstrom Games on August, I cannot play the game yet as they sent me the rules without the four colour laminated battle sheets necessary to play it.

After four emails I finally received answer saying they were sorry and would send them ASAP, without further explanations.
I am still waiting for them and I am afraid I will have to wait quite more as I suppose that ASAP means as soon they are printed again and they restock.
I will think it twice before ordering to Maelstrom again.

Another project :P

2011-10-31T18:50:00.006Z

I ordered an EIR army to Baccus and it arrived in no time and so, before I had time to regret having spent some money in the hobby again, I was cleaning and painting these little bugs.

They are very well sculpted and easy to paint for being 6 mm, but as they are literally hundreds, I thought about a fast method to paint them and so I did a test.
What you have here is my first test and I am quite happy with the result in quality and speed, so I will probably paint the whole army this way.

Pics clickable.

The recipe is priming in white, then spraying them with Tamiya TS-42 Light Gun Metal, after that block painting red for tunics, flesh and leather, and finally covering them with a home made magic wash and lastly some lights where needed.

The decals are really tiny and need some finesse. You can notice that my first are the ones to the left.

AE Bounty first game.

2011-10-30T23:02:00.005Z

Today we finally tried the ruleset AE Bounty by Darkson Designs, the Mordheim game set in sci-fi context.
The best part of this ruleset is the designing of a warband or crew. For this first occasion I wen for a simple group with few models (only six) and all of them human and with similar gears. One sergeant hero unkillable, 2 Old Guard veterans, one hitter with rocket launcher and two regular hired guns, all armed with a variety of range weapons to experiment with.
My buddy chose a bit more exotic pirate crew with half of their members specialized in hand to hand combat.

We played the unplanned scenario Ambush with me being the attacker. I deployed his troops in the middle and then deployed mine on the right border and a unit behind the bunker's wall in hidden deployment thanks to the dirty trick Scout.

My buddy thought range weapons were not so deadly at long range and risked all his hand to hand troops in the open, which resulted into a slaughter. None of his hand to hand troops reached melee, but the rest wearing medium armour killed most of my men. In the end there were only left my sergeant against his captain. The game was a bit boring as the objective was simply to kill or rout each other.

It was our first game and lasted about one hour, so we decided to play a new scenario called Hostage situation (there are 18 scenarios plus 12 secondary objectives). This time I was defender with three hostages (innocent nuns) that I had to take out of the table whereas my buddy had to stopped me from doing it. The game lasted six turns and I started in the centre of the table.

As the hostages could escape if nobody within six inches was to controlled them, I chose to put my toughest unit next to them, my Sergeant. Again I surprised my opponent with my Old Guard veteran squad with three activations, who blasted away all his melee troops. The rest were too slow to catch me and although I suffered a few casualties I could easily escape with the hostages and win the game.

This time there was a more specific objective and the game was fun, and faster. Generally speaking, we liked the game as it is easy and fast to play yet it has a lot of flavour. It has many many possibilities in order to design your crew, a good number of scenarios, experience and rewards and campaigns, some inside starships as well!

Next weekend we will run a few games inside a starship and see how it goes.

Destroy that cruiser!

2011-10-28T18:07:00.009+01:00

Today I am only testing bombers, torpedoes and attacking Capital ships. I decided to confront two light fighters and two bombers armed with two torpedoes each, attacking a Battle Cruiser Capital ship.

The cruiser must reach the buoy to hyper-jump and escape. The game begins with the attacking flight sighting the cruiser coming out from an asteroid field. They activate first and all hit Afterburners; the cruiser start to accelerate and launches two light fighters.

On turn two the light fighters hit Afterburners again and fire all their weapons and missiles, destroying one enemy light fighter and making the other one to use his Afterburners to avoid destruction. The bombers move normally towards the cruiser and reduce speed to star locking on torpedoes next turn.

Now fighters are in the cruiser's Flak defensive fire range and one of the bomber is forced to chance course. The cruiser launches his last two light fighters.

A fierce dogfight ensues and one bomber launches his torpedo towards the cruiser.

Another enemy light cruiser is down and the other bomber launches another torpedo while the fighter locks on a FF missile on the cruiser as well. The pilot of one of the attacking light fighters fall unconscious by enemy fire and the ship drifts forward uncontrolled.

Enemy fighters tail drifting ship and blow it away with a Heat Seeker missile, but then another enemy fighter is down and the cruiser receives another torpedo hit, with the bridge being smashed!

A third torpedo hits home and the heavily damaged cruiser is rendered without shields. He then fires all his Flak turrets against one bomber who reacts firing back with all his guns, hitting several times the unprotected cruiser and destroying it.

The explosion of the ship catches one of the bombers and destroys it as well while the enemy light fighter and the two remaining attacking ships go unscathed. In the end the Capital ship resulted destroyed by gunfire after three torpedoes making impact.

Many corrections had to be taken as usual but the game is running smooth in general. Although after talking to Joey Beutel I am thinking of changing the normal THW activation order, but this is something I still have to think about and test.

Micro Mythic Greece

2011-10-20T12:52:00.004+01:00

This morning I felt in the mood and painted some more 10mm. miniatures for my project of adventuring in the mythic Greece. The Centaurs are from Pendraken and the Harpies from GW's Warmaster range. I have not found yet nothing so good in that scale as some of the Warmaster ranges; a pity they never made something similar with Historics.

Pics clickable as usual.

The Harpies are not individually based because I will probably based them in the future for Warmaster.

DBN 2.1

2011-10-09T22:32:00.009+01:00

We bought the rules in 2008 but until today we did not have the opportunity to try them, thanks to a friend who based his old H&R Napoleonics in DBX bases. So we hastily assembled one French and one Russian armies of 12 points each and started a game using the rules of Attrition.

The game first already started and with the French HC having suffered one hit by the Russian artillery

On this occasion I commanded the French and easily beat my Russian opponent by finishing all his cavalry one by one (I was a bit lucky).

End of the game, with several units damaged.

In the end the game was a bit boring and disappointing, and we felt the attrition rules added nothing really interesting to the game. Also, my friend was totally against the rules and role the authors gave to light infantry, stating they had no idea about it.

For the second game I commanded the Russians as attackers, this time without the attrition rules, and the game was faster, more tactical and fun. Actually, the more the game closed to its original form (DBA) the better it was.

Initial deployment with Russians at the bottom

My cunning plan of attack was ruined by a series of catastrophic rolls and I lose miserably to the French.

Russian forces about to charge French line.

Two things we liked of the rules were the compulsory move of the attacker and the two extra pips it has in the first turn. I did not find the ruleset so bad as my two friends did, but I liked much more DBA than DBN for sure.

In the end I was happy with this result as it saved me of buying and painting a Napoleonic army! :D

5150WC

2011-10-01T14:45:00.004+01:00

Well, here it is the second testing of 5150WC. This time the Confederation is on an attack mission of two Nav points. Killrathi are controlling.
Investment level of Confederation is 4 and of Killrathi is 3. Good intel for the Confederation.

The Confederation started the mission with two new Rapier medium fighters, a fast and manoeuvrable fighter with a big payload of guns and missiles. Both pilots with Rep 4.

I rolled for terrain and got some gas and dust clouds on the right and no asteroids at all. There is a jump buoy next to Nav point 1 and two PEFs with Rep 2, one in the upper left square and the other in the centre of the table, behind a dust cloud.

The Rapiers accelerated towards the first PEF and soon resolved it. There were two Dralthi light fighters hiding behind the dust cloud. Both Rapiers bank to starboard and fire all their guns and 2 Friend of Foe missiles. Both Dralthi returned fire and one pilot of the Rapiers (Rapier A) got unconscious for the following four turns.

In the next turn one of the FF missiles detonated on a Dralthi with its shields depleted and was destroyed, forcing the other one to leave the battlefield.

Rapier A advanced uncontrolled at maximum speed, banking right and left randomly, with Rapier B behind and trying to get contact by radio.

The other PEF never moved during the mission but it was resolved as the Rapiers got near, resulting to be a Killrathi outpost. As soon as it is discovered, it started to fire with its Flank cannons.

On the next turn, the pilot finally regained consciousness in the border of the table, he tried to execute an Immelman but failed and exited the game. He would meet with Rapier B in Nav point 2 if the it survived to the outpost!

Rapier B turned around and fired its last FF missile, and then its two Dart DF missiles but without any remarkable effect on the phase shield of the outpost. But he destroyed all Flak cannons with its laser and particle guns instead.

The outpost launched one Dralthi but it was blasted away by Rapier B after its In Sight test.

Then the outpost launched its last Dralthi. A Rep 3 who managed to get behind Rapier B and place a Claw Heat Seeker missile on it. Rapier B successfully reacted and launched Chaff pods, but the missile guidance rating smarted the pilot and made direct hit. BOOOM!

The pilot could safely eject on time but as he was in Killrathi sector he was practically doomed. Game over.
Next time I will try to test bombers with torpedoes attacking Capital ships.

Wing Commander 5150

2011-09-20T21:32:00.009+01:00

I loved the PC game Wing Commander and I played all its sequels. I loved it so much that since then I wondered about the possibility of playing it with miniatures on a board. I wanted to play it solo as with the PC game, but I never could find an appropriate ruleset for this.
But then 5150SA was released, and I bought it and played it, and I realised that its campaign system was so good and robust, that I could easily adapt it for anything.
Well, I have adapted it for Wing Commander and here is the first official test:
All pics clickable.

THE BRIEFING:

Moral of the Confederation is 3. The Killrathi is 3 as well.
The Confed is contesting a Killrathi sector. Confed Investment level is 2 and Killrathi is 4.
There are no solar flares or radiation bursts (weather) but even so, the pre mission intel went bad.
The mission is a patrol with two Navigation points to recon.
For the mission I counted with a wing of two Arrow light fighters. I rolled for their Reps and got 4 and 5. The Arrow has a maximum speed of 6, an acceleration of 3 and a turn rate of 3. It is armed with 2 laser cannons and 2 ion cannons, plus 2 Pilum Friend or Foe and 2 Dart Dumb Fire missiles.

Then I rolled to generate the terrain and placed the 2 PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) per Nav point. At the bottom right you can see the Arrows, with the two PEFs in the middle, and Nav point 1 (the white dot) and a jump buoy at the top. There are also several gas clouds spread on the table.

On turn 1 one PEF moved directly towards the Arrows while they headed for the first objective.

On turn 2 I resolved the first PEF which resulted to be a false alarm. Also there weren't any surprises with the bad intel and it was a normal mission in the end. The other PEF didn't move.

On turn 3 and 4 the Arrows kept advancing towards Nav point 1 and the enemy PEF didn't move (it had Rep 3).

On turn 4 the PEF split into two.

On turn 7 the Arrows were very close to their objective when I rolled doubles on the activation. A random event happened and it was a Rep 6 Killrathi ace pilot hunting in the sector, who suddenly dashed out from the dust clouds, hitting afterburners and blazing its laser cannons against the two surprised Arrows.

The Dralthi's laser cannons failed to penetrate the Arrow's light shields, but in the next turn the Killrathi ace turned around and locked on a Stalker Heat Seeker missile on one of the arrows. Fortunately he could react on time, and hitting his afterburners he left the board and the missile behind him. The other Arrow did the same in his activation and was out from the board as well, heading to the next Nav point.

For Nav point 2 I rolled again in the terrain generation table. Then I deployed my Arrows and placed the new PEFs. Nav point 2 was in the far upper right corner of the board (the white dot) and I put my Arrows in front of it, thus leaving the two asteroid fields to port.

On turn three one PEF got near enough to be resolved and it turned into a Killrathi military transport Dorkati class with an escort wing of two Jalkethi heavy fighters, all of them Rep 4. I quickly turned starboard to avoid the dangerous Dorkati's defense Flak cannons and tried to barrel roll, but only one did it.

On turn 4 I rolled doubles again, and again it was a Rep 6 Killrathi ace piloting a Dralthi light fighter (this is because I haven't thought of any more random events in space! I'd appreciate any ideas from imaginative readers). This time it appeared in front of the Arrows and immediately hit afterburners and opened fire on them. He made many hits but none penetrated the Arrow's shield. Then the Arrow returned fire and collapsed Dralthi's shields, seriously damaging its hull as well.

The Dorkathi's Flak cannons fired at the other Arrow, damaging its engine and leaving the pilot unconscious for one turn.

On the next turn the Confed activated first and the unharmed arrow turned around and fired the unshielded Dralthi in the back, shredding it into pieces.

Chalk up another one!

The Arrows' armament was too weak to damage the Dorkathi Phase shields, therefore they were trying to surround it and its escort, to safely reach Nav point 2 and complete the mission.

One of the Arrows reached Nav point 2 whereas the other was with its shields down and moved backwards to avoid the lethal Dorkathi's Flak cannons, thus dangerously approaching to the border of the board.
The Arrow near Nav point 2 took the opportunity to try to destroy one of the escorts by locking on it a Pilum Friend of Foe missile. The Jalkethi released a Chaff pod but the decoy was launched too late, with the missile detonating nearby and producing half damage. The impact overloaded the Killrathi heavy fighter and forced it to flee forward using its afterburners.

On the next turn the Arrow near the border tried to hard brake but it failed, damaging the ion drive and exiting the game. The other Arrow was so heavily hit by the Flak cannons that his pilot went unconscious, flying straight ahead for five turns and suffering such a punishment by the Dorkathi during all its flight that it was finally destroyed.

Well, the mission was completed so it was a success although one of the fighters was destroyed and its pilot killed as he couldn't eject because he was knocked down.

The test was a success as well as everything went smooth and I only had to make a few tweaks here and there. I'm having a lot of fun with this home ruleset so I will keep working on it for a while.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :)

Squats reinforcements

2011-09-03T12:56:00.003+01:00

These are the last ones of my Squat retinue.

Trouble in the frontier. ITEN 6 mm solo campaign

2011-09-01T16:41:00.007+01:00

As I only have painted Space Marines, Chaos, Squats and Orks so far, I decided to run the campaign "Trouble in the frontier", using Space Marines as my personal retinue, Space Orks as main enemy and Chaos and Squats as secondary ones.

As usual, all pictures are clickable.

I have in my retinue one Librarian with the psyker power "Path of shadows", 1 devastator marine with missile launcher (as it does not exist in the weapons list, I chose rokkit launcha stats instead), and 4 Tactical Space Marines with Power Armour and Bolters.

I rolled "Whispers in the dark" in the investigative missions chart: A member of the Enemy camp wishes to come forward and offer assistance to your investigation. The informant (placed in the middle of the board) must be safely escorted off the board. If the player gets him off-table, he will earn 1 Victory pt.

The Ork retinue consisted of 1 Warboss, 1 Nob, 4 Komanndos, 3 boyz and 1 'ard boy.

Ork line racing forward

In the first turn both retinues run towards the objective in the centre of the board (the traitor, represented by a Chaos Sorcerer figure).

In the second turn the Librarian reached and captured the traitor. The Devastator shot and killed the 'Ard boy first, and then thanks to its Gun kata, he fired again and killed the Warboss! The rest of the Space Marines fired and got one Kommando KO.
The Ork Nob avenged his boss and killed the Devastator with his big shoota.

In the third turn the mauled Orks gained the initiative and advanced and fired, missing all shots. Marines started to fall back and missed all their firing as well.

In the fourth turn Marines gained the initiative again and kept retreating and firing, most of them taking cover in the ruins. The Ork Nob, using Torrent of fire, managed to kill another Marine, the one who did not get to the ruins!

In the next turn Marines moved first again and the Librarian and the traitor left the board, thus accomplishing the mission. The rest of the Marines kept moving back and shooting, this time killing one more Ork and leaving two of them KO.

The Tactical Space Marines behind cover, buying time for the Librarian to escape.

Epic Bad Moon Clan retinue for itEN

2011-08-30T15:20:00.003+01:00

I chose Bad Moon because yellow can see from afar in 6 mm. These are the first Orks I have painted and I have realised they are much more difficult to paint than plain Space Marines with their one colour armours.

Anyway, with these boyz finished I'm ready to start my itEn solo campaign. Soon they'll see some action!

More Corvus Belli Celtiberians.

2011-08-29T00:33:00.005+01:00

This time 3 Warbands. With these I already have more than half of the DBA army, which I am very slowly painting due to the continuous "ooh shiny" interference.
Pictures clickable.

Ahora 3 bandas de guerra. Con estas ya tengo más de la mitad del ejército de DBA, que estoy pintando a paso de caracol por culpa de las continuas interrupciones de otros projectos.

When I had them based, I realized I used too much blue in the shields, but I will fix it using other colours in the next three warbands.

Cuando ya los tenía basados me dí cuenta de que había abusado del azul en los escudos, pero ya lo arreglaré usando otros colores en las tres siguientes bandas de guerra.
A picture of all the elements together so far. 4 Ps and 3 Wb.

Una foto de todos los elementos hasta ahora. 4 Ps and 3 Wb.

In the Emperor's Name 2nd edition

2011-08-23T09:37:00.003+01:00

Today it has been released the second edition of In the Emperor's Name, a free skirmish 40K rule set. The rules follow the KISS(Keep It Short & Simple) philosophy as in FUBAR, the other great free rule set by the same guys of Forge of War.

Epic retinues for In the Emperor's Name!

2011-08-21T23:53:00.006+01:00

I am finishing my retinues in 6 mm for the incoming release of the second edition of the 40K skirmish rules, In the Emperor's Name!

As usual, all pictures are clickable.

Blood Angels with Librarian, Captain, Sergeant, Devastators, Tactical Marines and an ancient Dreadnought.

Chaos Space Marines with a Dreadnought from the time of the Space Crusade. The Beastmen will probably proxy as Chaos Cultists.

Squats retinue in the works, and after this one the Space Orks!

Now if I only can put my hands on a Genestealers sprue I'd be a very happy wargamer. If someone reading this has an spare Genestealer sprue and wants to sell it or change it for other Epic stuff, please contact me.

Si alguien tiene una matriz de Robagenes de Epic, se la compraría o cambiaría por algo de Epic.

The Killrathi are coming!

2011-08-19T14:28:00.004+01:00

Here is my latest batch of spaceships. I do not know yet which ruleset I am going to use with them; actually I am tinkering with some ideas of my own, but the spaceships you can see below are going to be Killrathi no matter which ruleset I will be using!

Pics clickable.

A wing of Dralthi hot pursuing an Arrow or maybe a Ferret

A wing of Jalthi or perhaps Grikath

Without fortune - Arhem 1944

2011-08-02T23:01:00.007+01:00

Without fortune - Arhem 1944, is a campaign booklet from Iron Ivan Games that my buddy and me started to play last Sunday in his house, using the ruleset Disposable Heroes for the first time.
As we only have Germans and Americans, we are playing the scenarios as they are, but imagining it is Normandy instead of Arhem.

All pictures are clickable.

The first scenario was Recon rescue, here the Allied forces had to recover important documents from a jeep destroyed in a crossroads. The Allied had three squads mounted on jeeps starting on the East, while the German forces deployed in the nearby forests 2 Panzer Grenadier sections, 1 platoon HQ and 1 sniper team, awaiting for them.

The first two first jeeps entering the board, blazing Vickers.

The Allied came straight ahead in their jeeps, firing their HMG Vickers and killing many German soldiers, but then the Germans fired back. In the end there was a massacre. The British got 0 battle and mission victory points whereas the German only got 3 mission objective points. On the German side only survived one gunner and the sniper, on the British side none.

The German sniper team hidden in a forest.

The game was very straight forward but it helped us to familiarize with the rules. After this, we hastily prepared the table for the second scenario, "A bridge too late", which we could finish in the same evening.

Paras coming out from the woods, surprising a German patrol in the road.

Here British parachutes with 1 platoon command, 2 Bren sections and 2 rifle sections, had to take a bridge and avoid the Germans blowing it up. The Germans had a Reichsdeutsche Conscripts garrison of 2 rifle sections, 1 recon squad and 1 2 cm Flak 30/38, plus a squad of Pioneers from the 10th SS division Frundsberg, who had already set the charges in the bridge.

German Pioneers in the house and Flak on the bridge.

The British gained the initiative in the first turn and managed to kill an entire German section on the road and wound the other who fortunately was not pinned and could move to a near forest from where they resisted several turns and delayed the Allied advance towards the bridge.

The German recon squad was wiped out in the open with Bren fire from the house, and the Flak in the bridge run away after taking some casualties. Then the Pioneers tried unsuccessfully to blow up the bridge and then were annihilated when defending the bridge.

Although the British started very slowly and it seemed they would not take the bridge on time, they did it in the very last turn, destroying all German units in the process.

So far Disposable Heroes looks a simple, fast and very bloody game, which it is not necessarily a bad thing. We will keep playing the whole campaign and I'm sure our opinion of the rules will be changing as we progress through it.

Spaceships!

2011-07-25T17:27:00.006+01:00

I am feeling the space ships combat bug again so I just painted some plastic EM-4 space ships from the Silent Death range, and also I dusted off some pre painted Chinese space ships that I bought in Ebay some years ago.

Estoy otra vez con la fiebre del combate espacial, así que he pintado unas cuantas naves de plástico de EM-4, de la antigua game de Silent Death. También he resucitado algunas naves pre pintadas que compré en Ebay hace años.

I will try with then the rules Squadron Commander Reheat from Brigade Games, and later perhaps Silent Death and the yet to be released space combat rule set from Two Hour Wargames. I also have an unfinished home brew rules that I might try some day.

Las probaré con las reglas Squadron Commander Reheat de Brigade Games, y quizás más tarde pruebe Silent Death, y por supuesto las que van a salir de Two Hour Wargames. También tengo unas reglas caseras sin terminar a las que a lo mejor les doy una oportunidad.

Here you can see part of the Federal or Human Fleet. I hope to make the Alien or Rebel Fleet later on.
Pictures are clickable.

Aquí pueden ver parte de mi flota humana o de la Federación. Espero hacer más adelante una flota rebelde o pirata o alienígena.
Las fotos se pueden ver más grandes si pinchas sobre ellas.

Star Fighters.
Cazas.

Heavy fighters or medium bombers.
Cazas pesados o bombarderos medios.

Heavy bombers or perhaps destroyers or transports. I have to put them on individual bases.
Bombarderos pesados o quizás destructores o incluso transportes. Tengo que ponerlos en bases individuales.

Frigates. I have to fix them to put them horizontal and on smaller bases.
Fragatas. Tengo que hacer que queden horizontales y también ponerles unas bases más pequeñas.

Light cruiser.
Crucero ligero.

The whole fleet so far.
Toda la flota hasta ahora.

Some ITEN scenarios played

2011-07-19T10:41:00.004+01:00

Last Sunday, my gaming buddy and I tried a the campaign rules for In the Emperor's name! with a Terminator vs. Genestealer cult setting. The first thing we realised was that such classic encounter of Termies vs. Genestealers is boring with ITEN rules as all of them has Grit 2+, and you have to roll 1 to kill someone, so the game become long and repetitive. My buddy suggested to use Grit 2+ only for leaders and special characters, and I think it was a good idea that we will try some other day.

The situation of the campaign was that a Space Hulk crammed with Genestealers and perhaps some Orks, had crashed on a abandoned planet only inhabited by savages and gangers. Our Librarian was almost sure that in that Space Hulk was a very powerful and long missed pre-Heresy weapon, so he set up a squad and landed near the Hulk to explore it.

We rolled in the Investigation table and got "Whispers in the dark", so to keep it with the Terminator's fluff, we changed the informant for a dead Terminator which had to be retrieved.

As usual, all pictures are clickable.

We used Termagants as Hybrids and a Tyranid Broodlord as Patriach, but with different stats.

As everybody had the same Grit (2+) and penetration power (Fighting value + weapon bonus -Genestealers 5+2 and Termies 3+4-), it was hard to get some kills, and then the game derived into a general and endless melee around the objective.

In the end both sides suffered almost same casualties (2 Hybrids and 1 Genestealer vs. 2 Termies) but the Genestealers' speed made them to win the day.

As the Terminators had lose the scenario, they had then to fight a "Survival mission". We rolled on the appropriate chart and we got "What a piece of junk!". They had to find the supplies to repair the airspeeder whereas fight off the Agents of Chaos who were trying to destroy the ship.

Both fallen Terminators passed a Grit roll and made it back on time for the mission. The four Termies faced thirteen gangers, fallen guards and one Chaos Space Marine.

Terminators got in cover and then the agents of Chaos had to make huge Torrents of fire to have a minimum chance to kill some of them.

They failed and then the Termies charged into melee, each of them attacking two enemies at the same time, as this was a faster way to kill people than shooting (there is no rate of fire in ITEN).

The Chaos Space Marine was the first "smart" guy to go for the ship but was shot in the back.

Seeing the baddies that they could not penetrate Terminators' armour, the broke off melee and split to avoid being caught grouped. They tried to sneak through Termies line to set the satchel charge in the ship, while the Terminators chased them down like in a rabbit hunting.

Well, they killed ten of them but could not finished them all, so the ship was blown away in the end and the Termies lose this mission as well.

We rolled again on the Survival mission chart but we looked at the wrong chart and then we finished playing "No stone unturned" with the forces asked for "Ambushed!" LOL. Thus, there were only two Terminators to check the ruins. Now, according to the scenario, there have to be at least 24" from the Terminator's starting point to the first of the buildings, and the figure must spend one full turn investigating the building.

Well, this take you four turns to do it, and the scenario has a six turn game limit; therefore we could only check two buildings. In one of them there was nothing and in the other three Genestealers.

The Terminators killed them all but as he could not find any evidence in the buildings, he did not gain any Victory Points and consequently the mission was failed.
At this point we decided to quit the campaign and try a single game with different retinues containing lower Grit and different characteristics and weaponry.

So we played "Kelly's heroes" with an Imperial Guard vs. a Orks retinue, and this time we had fun.
Both groups run towards the objective and when they were in range, they started to fire at each other with small Torrents of fire of two, three members each.

As soon as the first casualties took place, everybody got in cover.
As my Orks could not run because they were seeing the enemy, they never were able to charge the enemy from cover, and when they tried to do it in the open they were massacred by the Hellguns (the two guys in the open in the picture below).

This handicap turned the battle into Imperial side and the Orks were quickly overwhelmed as they could not use their strong point which was melee. Anyway, the game was fast and bloody and we enjoyed it.

Tiny Sacred Band II.

2011-07-15T17:36:00.005+01:00

Here are some Fauns for my 10 mm. Labour of the Gods project. They are Satyrs from Eureka's 10 mm. fantasy range. They are all the different poses you can find in the blister.
Click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Aquí tienen algunos faunos para mi proyecto en 10 mm. de Labour of the Gods. Son de la marca australiana Eureka. Estas son todas las poses diferentes que hay en el blister.
Pincha sobre las fotos para verlas más grandes.

Rebel attack!

2011-07-14T18:57:00.008+01:00

Sergeant Blacksmith made it to the base on time to let them to prepare for the imminent Rebel attack. The weather had worsened and there was no Intel or support so far; the men nervously made a defensive line on the nearby woods and set on wait for the enemy to come.
All pics clickable.

Mission: Defend.
Terrible inclement weather. No aircraft during the mission. 12" visibility.
Star Army Investment Level 5. Rebel IL 2.
Mission Intel 3.
Pre-mission Intel bad!
Squad Y formed by Sgt. Blacksmith Rep 5, ASL Rep 3 and rest of the squad Rep 5. SA standard armament and armour. One asset with missile launcher.
Squad R formed by Squad leader Rep 3 and the rest Rep 4. SA standard armament and armour. One asset with missile launcher.

Turn 1. Star Army 3 - Rebels 2.
The three PEFs moved. One PEF is revealed but it was a false alarm. As there was bad Intel, the situation turned to overwhelming odds and the PEFS were doubled!

Turn 2. SA6 - R5.
SA did not activate.
Another PEF turned into nothing and one more became a Rep 4 squad. Both sections from Y squad reacted and fired to them. Seven troopers failed their shots and Blacksmith run out of ammo! Fortunately, the ASL hit them hard with his grenade launcher, making 2 OD, 2 OOF, 2 Stun and their leader Duck Back.

Turn 3. SA1 - R1.
Doubles and a score lower than the enemy Investment Level, which meant a random event. A sniper! who shot at the ASL of the Red squad but failed.

Turn 4. SA6 - R2.
SA did not activate.
The surviving Rebel squad leader charged the SA position and was turned into pink mist by the defensive laser shots.

Turn 5. SA4 - R2.
SA Red squad sergeant section moved left encircling last known Rebel position. Yellow squad ASL section charged the Rebels in front of them and took them prisoners for further interrogation.
Two more PEFs revealed and turned into nothing!

Turn 6. SA4 - R1.
All SA troops moved fast towards last PEF.
Last PEF split in two.

Turn 7. SA4 - R3.
The activation dice scored a seven, reinforcements for the SA. They received an off board fire support, an artillery strike.
Sergeant's Red section rushed forward under the cover of a small wood and spotted both PEFs; one was a false alarm, and the other a small bunker!

The bunker is small, Rep 3, with a Fire Power of 8, and SB armour. It opened fire on the Red section and let two men Stun. Then two men of the section with laser rifle fell backwards into the forest, and the one with the missile launcher fired at the bunker, reducing its Fire Power to three.
Then the artillery strike hit home and the bunker collapsed, with all the men inside Obviously Dead.

Mission accomplished. Return to base.

Blacksmith gained two Fame points for this mission, so he has now a +1 Fame Point (-1+2 = +1). The SA has also gained +1 Morale campaign whereas the Rebels lose 1 Morale campaign and 1 Investment level.
Next mission is attack and Blacksmith and his platoon are confident enough to crush definitely the Rebel uprising.

In the Emperor's name!

2011-07-12T18:52:00.009+01:00

This morning I played in the local shop a game of ITEN for the first time. We played the scenario Kelly's heroes with a retinue of Space Marines vs. a retinue of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. Both squads had to retrieve an Archaic Record located in the centre of some ruins.

The SM retinue was formed by a sergeant with Bolter, a SM with a Plasma Gun, and three more SM with Bolters, all of them in Power Armour.
The Iron Warriors were formed by an aspiring champion with Bolter and Power Fist, one with Plasma Gun and two more with Bolters, all of them in Power Armour, and one lesser daemon with flamer.

A very classic encounter between good and evil forces!
All pics are clickable.

In the beginning the Space Marines were cautious and this let the Traitors to reach the ruined building in the centre before them. Seeing this and realizing that they could not shoot at the Traitors inside the structure, the rushed forward and made the first blood by killing the daemon on the left flank.

2nd turn of the game

The Iron Warriors entered the house unopposed and retrieved the Archaic Record. The Space Marines then dashed into the house in hot pursuit. There were several shootouts but the Power Armour and high Grit in both sides avoided casualties.

As the Traitors were escaping with the mission objective, one Space Marine run and engaged in close combat with the aspiring champion, with fatal result. Then the aspiring champion killed the Space Marine with the Plasma Gun, whereas another Iron Warrior locked in melee with a SM at the entrance of the building, and the two other run away with the Archive Record.

Seeing they were leaving the area with the objective, the Space Marine charged in hand to hand combat again with the closer enemies, and threw a hand grenade to the ones escaping, but missed.

The aspiring champion was stun, but when he recovered, he charged and killed the sergeant SM. The rest escaped with the Archaic Record.

In the Emperor's name! is a simple (rules are 3-4 pages) and really fast game (it lasted less than half an hour), and very fun to play. Moreover, it has a very promising campaign that we will soon start to play. It is great to play again with those W40K miniatures in the Rogue Trader universe! ITEN is a free downloadable game from the guys of Forge of War and FUBAR.

Blacksmith, Star Army Sergeant.

2011-07-11T20:48:00.009+01:00

Gaea Prime dominance, Third Ring, planet Aesir. Its planetary colony has rebelled and proclaimed independent. The planetary Defence Force has been unable to restore order and the Star Army has been called to suppress the rebellion and purge the planet.

The Army has just arrived and the situation is so chaotic that Intel is nonexistent. A SA squad under Sgt. Blacksmith has been sent on patrol near one of the insurgents areas. Star Army controlled planet.

Star Army Investment Level is 5. Rebel IL is 2.
Patrol on daylight and weather conditions OK.
Successful aerial reconnaissance.
Intel Level 4 but Bad Pre-Mission Intel. Uh, oh. This is no good.
Insertion by walking.

Blacksmith's squad:
Sgt. Blacksmith, Star, Rep 5, HB armour, Rapid-Fire Laser Rifle (ME!). Assistant Squad Leader, Rep 5, HB, grenade launcher. 5 troopers Rep 4, HB, Laser Rifle.

Mission: Patrol with Rebels attacking.

Ruleset: 5150:SA by Two Hour Wargames.
Miniatures: Old 15 mm. Laserburn sci-fi range.
All pictures are clickable.

TURN 1. SA2/R2
Doubles, and lower than enemy's Intel Level. Random Event! but I ignored it as there is nobody on the board yet.

TURN 2. SA2/R3
Rebel PEFs activated before SA squad. The three PEFs advanced 16" towards the enemy. As there was nobody yet, I decided to move the PEFs towards the SA entry area but without entering them into it, so they got pretty close to the SA squad entry point. Blacksmith's squad entered on sector 9, rushed into a big building in front of them and then spotted the three enemy PEFs at the same time!

Although there was Bad Intel, there weren't bad surprises. Moreover, the first PEF turned into nothing, but the other two resulted to be two full squads in defensive position. The closer Rebel squad (all Rep 5 except the one with the SAW, the rest wearing Assault Rifles) took the In Sight Test first, opened fire and made one Obviously Dead, one Out Of Fight, 2 Stun and three Outgunned and Duck Back (AR rate of fire outguns Laser Rifle!) OUCH!

TURN 3. SA2/R2
Doubles again, and this time a sniper shot the Assistant Squad Leader who was already Duck Back, and missed him.

TURN 4. SA6/R3
Star Army squad did not activate as their higher Rep was 5. Now Rebels activated and, as they were attacking and started the turn within 12" of the enemy, they charged them. Blacksmith's men could fire at the Rebels while charging, but they couldn't because they were wounded, stun or taking cover. Nonetheless, they managed to kill two rebels when they finally rushed into the house. After that, there was the melee. It was five Rebels against 3 remaining SA troopers. The Rebels score four dice more than their enemy, so all of them resulted OOF. But as Blacksmith was a Star, he could shrug it off.

TURN 5. SA4/R3
There could be reinforcements on the SA side, but as the game was practically over I decided not to roll for it. Blacksmith was the only survivor of the patrol and was locked in melee with a Rebel squad, so he broke off and was shot in the back when he run towards his base. Thanks to he activated first, he managed to move out from the game board with Fast Movement and two Stun results, which were saved by his Star Power.

Game Over. Mission was a total failure. Blacksmith is the only survivor, with a -1 Fame Point.
Next mission will be defend with a new full squad.

Tiny Sacred Band.

2011-06-16T18:54:00.006+01:00

With the release of Labours of the Gods I felt the urge to buy and paint a lot of Greek Mythic 28mm but after the first moment I realised I did not have time nor money for such project so I turned again to 10 mm.

Con la publicación de Labours of the Gods sentí la necesidad de comprar y pintar un montón de figuras de la Grecia mítica, pero después del primer impulso me dí cuenta de que no tenía tiempo ni dinero para semejante projecto, así que regresé de nuevo a los 10 mm.

As I did not have any hoplites around I took some Pendraken Macedonian pikemen and converted them by swapping heads and adding spears, swords and shields. The one with the red cloak is a Roman general from Magister Militum.

Como no tenía hoplitas a mano, cogí unos piqueros macedónicos y los convertí sustituyendo algunas cabezas y añadiendo espadas, lanzas y escudos. El que lleva una capa roja es un general romano de Magister Militum.

I like how they turned out and I especially enjoyed painting their tiny shields. All pictures are clickable.

Me gusta como quedaron y disfruté muchísimo pintando los mini escudos. Las fotos se agrandan pinchando sobre ellas.

Here you can see my sacred band cornering the Minotaur.

Aquí pueden ver a mi banda acorralando al Minotauro.

And here trying to snatch a treasure from some skeletons from Hades.

Y aquí intentando quitarles un tesoro a unos esqueletos del Hades.

Next I will be painting some Satyrs from Eureka and Centaurs from Pendraken.

Lo próximo que pinte serán unos sátiros de Eureka y centauros de Pendraken.

10 mm Weird WWII WIP Pendraken's "Mecha"

2011-05-22T21:16:00.004+01:00

Pendraken's sci-fi range has Marines in battle armour which I'm using as Uber Soldaten, but it also has a walker (SF9) that I painted as a mecha for my Weird WWII project. I have only added a machine gun that can be seen next to the green windows.

El rango de ci-fi de Pendraken tiene unos marines en armadura pesada que estoy usando como super soldados, pero también tiene un walker (SF9) que he pintado como un mech para mi proyecto de Segunda Guerra Mundial Alternativa. El modelo es tal cual se ve, tan sólo le he añadido una ametralladora junto a las ventanas verdes.

When I was looking for some decals for my panzer mech I found some very old Tamiya 1/35 decals for German helmets and I decided to use them as shoulder pads for my Uber Soldaten. I think they turned out pretty neat.

Cuando estaba buscando calcas para el panzer mech descubrí unas calcas de Tamiya 1/35 de cascos alemanes y las usé como hombreras de los super soldados. Creo que han quedado bastante bien.

More to come: Allied in Powered Armour, German zombies, Red Skull, etc.

Cosas por hacer: Aliados en armadura pesada, zombies alemanes, cráneo rojo, etc.

10 mm Weird WWII (was Wolfenstein) WIP

2011-05-17T19:29:00.004+01:00

I decided to expand Wolfenstein to Weird WWII and here there are some good guys and some Uber Soldaten that can either be used as heavy stormtroopers in Weird WWII or as bosses in Wolfenstein.

Me he decidido a expandir Wolfenstein para usarlo en Segunda Guerra Mundial alternativa y aquí tienen a algunos de los buenos y también unos super soldados que pueden usarse como tropas de asalto pesadas o como los jefes de Wolfenstein.

All the miniatures are from Pendraken. Pictures are clickable.

Todas las minis son de Pendraken. Pinchando en las fotos se agrandan.

British Commandos.

Comandos británicos.

Three Uber Soldaten with heavy assault rifle STG46, one sergeant and one specialist with heavy AT rifle.

Tres super soldados con rifles pesados de asalto STG46, un sargento y un especialista con un rifle AT pesado.

A size comparative picture of one Uber Soldat vs. one British Commando.

Una foto comparativa de un super soldado y un comando británico.

Return to Wolfenstein WIP. (edited).

2011-05-10T11:30:00.007+01:00

Do you remember that great PC game called Wolfenstein 3D? It was one of my favourite games.

Se acuerdan de ese gran juego que se llamaba Wolfenstein 3D. Fue uno de mis juegos favoritos durante mucho tiempo.

Pendraken's 10 mm dungeon is meant for Fantasy settings but when I painted it in grey it reminded me the walls of the first Wolfenstein.

Here there are the first Nazi Germans and soon will follow powered armour troops, mechs, zombies and of course the good guys!
All the pics are clickable.

El dungeon de Pendraken en 10 mm está pensado para Fantasy pero cuando lo pinté de gris me recordó a aquel maravilloso juego para PC que era la primera versión de Wolfenstein.

Aquí están los primeros Nazis y pronto seguirán tropas acorazadas, mechas, zombis ¡y por supuesto los buenos!
Pincha en las fotos para verlas más grandes.

The guard dogs are wolves from Warmaster. They are a bit big sized but they will do.

Los perros guardianes son los lobos de Warmaster. Son un poco grandes pero servirán.

A close up of the bad guys.
Un plano corto de los malos.

The converted werewolf is unfinished but here we can see it learning to salute properly, although the stupid beast is still rising the wrong paw!

La conversión de hombre lobo está sin acabar pero aquí lo podemos ver aprendiendo a saludar correctamente, aunque la estúpida bestia todavía sigue levantando la pata equivocada.

BTW, can anyone tell me how to make 10 mm petrol barrels or where to buy them? TIA.

Por cierto, ¿alguien puede decirme cómo hacer o dónde comprar bidones de gasolina en 10 mm?

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-05-01T22:21:00.006+01:00

I have just been nominated for the Stylish Blogger Award by Ruarigh and I am pleasantly surprised as I never imagined being nominated for any award. I am very happy of having started this blog a couple of years ago because it has allowed me to share my hobby and to know a lot of interesting people from all around the world.

1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award.
Ruarigh of The Ooh Shiny Complex and Heitaroi . Thank you for thinking about my blog for this award.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

One day I started to play all kind of board games, Role and strategic games with miniatures as well as computer games and I haven't stopped since then.
I live in Canary Islands and I went surfing for many years.
I have being reading and collecting comics for years.
I love reading Fantasy, Sci-fi and "historic" novels like Bernard Cornwell's.
I like dogs but I do not have any.
I definitely quit smoking after 22 years!
I have never written a book but someday I'll publish one ;-)

3. Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award.
This is the list of the blogs I keep visiting more often. In no particular order:

Heitaroi Wargames is a Spaniard mate like me and his blog is full of wonderful projects that he shows step by step, like his gladiator's schola and gladiators. He writes in Spanish and in English.

Ruarigh at The Ooh Shiny Complex who has many points in common with me in the hobby and not only the Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventurers games.

Ruarigh again with his other blog Talomir Tales where he is narrating the funny adventures of brother Cedric in the world of Talomir, using the rules Warrior Heroes.

Dropship Horizon as an excellent source of information of 15 mm. sci-fi gaming and miniatures.

The Historical Miniaturist. A bit of everything, especially of THW games.

Chroniques du Fort Bastiani is a French and English language blog with excellent sci-fi BATREPs and very well painted minis.

Geektactica shows awesome painted Impetus armies and BATREPS as well.

Mik's minis. He publishes faster than I can read!

Iron Mitten for his absolutely lovely cartoons.

Doctor Mercury's Lab. All Iron Ivan games with lots of great BATREPS.

4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.
Done!

ON SALE. SE VENDE.

2011-04-29T13:23:00.043+01:00

I do not have any more room at home and also I need some cash, so I am selling some things I am not using lately. If you see something you like it and you want to help a hobby mate, send me an offer. My email is frajahema [@] yahoo [dot] es.
Check this from time to time as I will be putting more items to sell.
Items in red are already sold or reserved.

Con dos niños en casa me he quedado sin espacio para tantas cosas, así que necesito desprenderme de algunas. Además, con la crisis y el paro, todo dinero que venga es más que bienvenido.

Si ves algo que te gusta y además quieres echar una mano a un compañero friki, puedes mandarme una oferta a mi correo: frajahema [@] yahoo [ punto] es.
Visita esto de vez en cuando porque iré poniendo cositas a la venta.

Vendo a cualquier parte del mundo. Gastos de envío a cargo del comprador. Envíen email para consultar precio. También lo pueden mirar aquí directamente: Tarifas de Correos

Pondré en rojo lo que se venda para que se vea claramente.

EJÉRCITO ROMANO IMPERIAL TEMPRANO PARA DBA EN 10 MM. 60 EUROS.
Ejército EIR con figuras de Pendraken de 10 mm. muy bien pintadas. El ejército consiste en 5 bases de blades (una general), 4 de auxlilia, 3 de caballería (una de general), una de arqueros y una de artillería, pintadas, basadas en madera DM de 3 mm de grosor, y con dos capas de barniz. En total unas 100 figuras pintadas.

También se incluyen figuras suficientes para hacer dos bases de caballería ligera y una de caballería pesada, para así tener más combinaciones, tanto del ejército temprano y medio tanto Occidental como Oriental.

REGLAMENTOS

Armies of Arcana. Original en inglés. A estrenar. 10 euros.

Pig Wars. Original en inglés. Usado pero en buen estado. 12 euros.

Typhon de Alternative Armies. Original en inglés. Nuevo. 6 euros.

ORCOS W40K. 50 EUROS.
Tres armas pesadas, uno con pistola y sierra y un noble, todos de metal, más 8 de plástico. Basados en washers de metal y pintados como mutantes para Fallout, por eso tienen la piel tan clarita.

GW'S OLD CHAOS EPIC SPRUES. 10 EUROS CADA UNO (EACH).

6 Matrices completamente nuevas del ejército del Caos de Epic Segunda Edición.

4 Matrices del ejército del Caos de Epic Segunda Edición imprimadas en blanco y con los marines del Caos y los Enanos del Caos arrancados de la matriz y pegados en sus bases correspondientes. 6 EUROS CADA UNA.

TROLL DEL SEÑOR DE LOS ANILLOS / LORD OF THE RINGS. 10 EUROS.
Troll de metal de escala 25 mm. raspado y varillado en cabeza, brazos, piernas y cintura, e imprimado en blanco. Listo para pintar.

CAJA COMPAÑÍA DEL ANILLO. 15 EUROS.
Antigua caja de la Compañía del Anillo con las figuras de metal de Aragorn, Gandalf el Gris y Legolas bien pintadas. Falta Sam Gamyi, que no vino en la caja :(

EJÉRCITO ALEJANDRO MAGNO WARMASTER ANCIENTS. 40 EUROS. Todas las figuras son de escala 1/72 en plástico blando y de la marca Zvezda y Hät. Pintados con la técnica dipping hay 4 unidades de hoplitas con escudos con calcas de LBM, 1 unidad de compañeros, 1 unidad de arqueros y 1 de escaramuzadores. El resto del ejército hasta llegar a 1.000 puntos está en sus cajas nuevos sin estrenar. Las bases de las figuras pintadas son de DM y miden 60 x 40 mm. Hay una caja de elefantes, una de falangistas, una de ejército con un poco de todo, otra de infantería ligera, y los restos de una de caballería de Zvezda.

Puedes ver más fotos aquí: fotos.

REGLAMENTO OPERATION SQUAD + PELOTÓN DIVISIÓN AZUL. 30 EUROS.
Operation Squad Ruleset + 12 men Blue Division squad painted.
Operation Squad es un reglamento para escaramuzas de la SGE a nivel de pelotón y lo vende Warlord Games. El reglamento está completo con la tabla de armas y todos los marcadores necesarios para jugar. Está en inglés pero si quieres te paso por email su traducción al castellano .
Las doce figuras son de plástico de 28mm que también vende WG, y están pintadas con el uniforme e insignias históricas de la División Azul en Rusia. El pelotón se puede usar en Operation Squad como División Azul (hay lista oficial) y también como infantería alemana. Las figuras vienen basadas con washers, pintadas y barnizadas tal como se ven en la foto.

Para ver más fotos (more pics) pincha aquí

MASTINES DEL CAOS DE GW. 20 EUROS.
Pintados, basados y barnizados.

JINETES BÁRBAROS DEL CAOS DE GW. 20 EUROS.
Pintados, basados y barnizados.

EJÉRCITO DBA CONDOTIERO ITALIANO IV/61. 60 EUROS.
Todas las figuras son de Essex 15 mm. y las bases de DM de 3 mm. de grosor. El campamento es una tienda de resina de la marca Baueda. Tanto la tienda, como los escudos y banderas son históricos (copiados de libros de Osprey). Junto con el ejército regalo varios blisters de infantería suficientes para hacer bases de arcos largos y de auxilia o blades. También incluyo figuras de caballeros suficientes para hacer alguna peana más.

Para ver más fotos aquí: link y link .Las fotos se amplian si pinchas sobre ellas.

CAJA ORCOS SALVAJES SOBRE JABALÍES. 15 EUROS.
Caja antigua de los Orcos Salvajes sobre jabalíes con los Orcos totalmente de metal. Nueva.

REGLAMENTO DE WAB Y SUPLEMENTO DE ASEDIO. 15 EUROS.
WAB 2ª edición y suplemento de asedio con muchas reglas nuevas para el WAB. Los dos libros están en inglés y en perfectas condiciones.

EJÉRCITO AMAZONAS PARA HORDES OF THE THINGS. 30 EUROS.

28 Army Points pintados de Amazonas en 10 mm de la marca Pendraken. El ejército está compuesto por 4 x shooters, 6 x Warbands, 1 Hero(ine) y 1 Magician. También hay sin pintar un blister de Amazonas sobre camello para hacer de Riders (2 AP). Las bases son del rango de Warmaster de Games Workshop, de 40 x 20 mm. excepto las de los héroes.

Puedes ver más fotos aquí: fotos.

BATTLE FLEET GOTHIC. 180 EUROS Se vende todo junto. Las naves están a un 25% menos de lo que valen en la tienda online española de GW. Las naves pintadas están al precio normal. Te ahorras más de 100 euros sobre el precio de coste, sin tener en cuenta el pintado de la mayoría de las minis y lo que ya no se consigue.
Lista de naves de la flota:

La caja original inglesa en perfecto estado y con todo incluído: reglamento, dados especiales, contadores de cartón, matrices de 4 cruceros Imperiales, etc.
1 Retribution class battleship pintado.
1 Imperial Vengeance Class Grand destroyer sin montar.
1 Dauntless light cruiser lance variant pintado.
1 Dauntless light cruiser torpedo variant pintado.
6 Imperial cruisers de plástico pintados.
3 Sword class frigates pintadas.
3 Sword class frigates imprimadas en negro.
3 Firestorm class frigates pintadas.
4 Cobra class destroyers pintados (ya no se venden). OOP.
3 Defence platforms de resina sin montar de FW(diferentes a las de ahora).
3 Monitor ships imprimadas en negro (diferentes a las de ahora).
30 interceptors, la mitad pintada (diferentes a los de ahora).
24 bombers, la mitad pintada (diferentes a los de ahora)
25 assault boats de resina sin montar de Forge World (ya no se venden). OOP.
48 torpedos pintados (ya no se venden). OOP.
De regalo un planetoide y una nave "scratchbuild".

Puedes ver fotos aquí: fotos.

2 EJÉRCITOS PARA CROSSFIRE MÁS REGLAMENTOS. 50 EUROS.

Dos compañía completas, una de alemanes y otra de americanos; cada una con 9 pelotones de infantería, 2 ametralladoras pesadas y 1 mando de compañía. Mandos de pelotón y cazacarros en bases independientes. Las bases para Crossfire son de plástico rígido de Peter Pig y miden 40 x 40 mm.

Además, un montón de soldados alemanes que pueden ser rebasados para formar una nueva compañía para Crossfire y así jugar escenarios de 2:1.

Los reglamentos son la única edición existente hasta ahora de Crossfire y el suplemento de escenarios "Hit the Dirt". Los reglamentos están en inglés y en perfecto estado, incluyendo un aparte en cartón con las tablas del juego. Ambos reglamentos están agotados en el mercado y fuera de producción.

Puedes ver más fotos aquí: fotos.

DBA Corvus Belli Celtiberians

2011-04-23T11:51:00.003+01:00

I am starting a new army for DBA and here there are the first four units; all the psilois in the DBA Celtiberian army. Next there will be the six units of Warbands althought it will take a lot of time to get painted as I am doing other things at the same time.

I copied the shield designs from LBM. I think they turned out OK but I hope to improve with the following Warbands.
Estoy empezando un nuevo ejército para DBA y aquí están las cuatro primeras unidades; todos los psilois del ejército de Celtíberos. Lo siguiente serán las seis unidades de bandas de guerra aunque tardarán bastante porque estoy haciendo otras cosas al mismo tiempo.

Copié los diseños de los escudos de LBM. No salieron mal del todo pero espero hacerlos un poco mejor con las bandas de guerra.

More Magic Wash joy.

2011-04-04T12:46:00.004+01:00

Here you can see two pictures of my HQ squad for Disposable Heroes. I will definitely be using Magic Wash to paint all my army for DH with the plastic miniatures from Valiant.

Aquí tienen un par de fotos de mi pelotón de mando para Disposable Heroes. Definitivamente usaré el Magic Wash para pintar todo mi ejército para DH con las miniaturas de plástico de Valiant.

I edited this entry to upload two more pics of my second squad for DH. Here you have.

Edité esta entrada para colgar un par de fotos de mi segundo pelotón para DH. Aquí lo tienen.

Escape from the dark. Einar's saga chapter eight.

2011-03-24T10:16:00.005Z

When Einar regained consciousness he found himself lying on the floor in a filthy and very dark room. The unbearable pain on his head grew even worse when he remembered how his childhood friend Fafnir had died in the hands of that troll. He was in Valhalla now and he should be avenged.
There were muffled voices gossiping in the dark, but when Einar raised his head they silenced, and then he felt some eyes fixed on him.

There was his friend Rialto, thanks to Ymir, and next to him two miserable dwarfs with long beards and fire in their eyes, gazing at him fiercely. They quickly stood up and introduced themselves as Brythnot, chieftain of the Eroded Rock Clan, and his assistant Uri, a dwarf warrior. They told Einar they were the last survivors of a war party sent to recover Soul Reaver, his lost sword; but they were ambushed and captured by the Red Sun Dwarfs, and give them as a tribute to the lord of this dungeon, a powerful wizard who was also very interested in Einar's sword.

From the Dwarfs' tale Einar learnt that Soul Reaver is a very powerful tool that the Undead Lord wants it to unite the evil forces and make a total war crusade against the civilized nations. The sword was on his way when Einar's party intercepted and snatched it from those evil Dwarfs.

Thank to the all the gods that the master of the dungeon was out on a trip, but he was to return soon. Brythnot and Uri sworn in front of Einar to help him to retrieve Soul Reaver and keep it away from the Lord of the Undead. Rialto told them he can easily open the door of the cell and so they plot to escape that night, before it was too late.

After many hours of waiting, Einar, Rialto and the Dwarfs finally came out from their cell and went straight ahead, ignoring lateral doors without knowing exactly where they are and where was the exit.

All pictures are clickable

They hastily opened the door in front of them and bumped into one Black Orc and one Orc archer who were on sentry duty. With an animal shout Einar charged them and they dropped their weapons and routed in terror without even thinking of sounding off the alarm. Einar's group kept striding forward to the next door; behind it there was a narrow corridor with a hidden trap in it, but the expert eyes of the Dwarfs quickly detected and disarmed it.

Then they entered into a new chamber with some tombs and coffins, and boxes full of skulls; but without any living creature to be afraid of.

After that, they faced a new door in which Rialto had to use all his ability to open it. Once they trespassed it, they reached a great room panelled with shelves and shelves of rare books, and in the centre, an altar covered with black stains of victims' dry blood. They could also glimpse in a square on the floor their lost equipment, and Soul Reaver! But there was something else in the room...

Maybe the Lord was not at home, but he had left a guardian dog. From the dark shades of the front wall emerged a terrible monster. It was like an Ogre but with the body of a dragon. Uri muttered in fear its name, an Ogre Dragon. They were doomed.

Without uttering any sound, the terrible creature jumped onto Brythnot, swinging his brutal two handed axe towards him, but Brythnot reacted on time and evaded the hit by stepping aside. Rialto let slip a moan of pure terror, but Einar got over and charged the monster, with Brythnot and Uri who, jumping onto the altar, managed to hit the dragon's spine and stun it while the other distracted it. The creature fell back in surprise and then Einar delivered such a killing stroke upon it, that all its armour and hardiness could not stop it!

The group stood in silence around the agonizing monster, still not believing what they have done. When the creature finally breathed its last liter, they run for their things. Einar drop the rusty Orc scimitar and took up his sword again, whereas Rialto found many many interesting books, and among them, the one he was looking for. Brythnot discovered a magic axe of ancient Dwarf manufacture.

When they exit to the next room they realized it was the one where they had fallen in ambush. From there they could find the exit without further trouble and fade away in the dark of the night.

Well, Einar and his new group managed to escape from prison and with the sword, but still they have to avoid pursuit and capture. They run as fast as they can towards the Border Kingdoms.

Einar is now Rep 5 as he had to Cheat Death in his last encounter. His Hardiness has also fallen down to 3 due to his severe wound and conditions in prison. His Social Standing has also dropped to 8 as it was not very popular Fafnir's death, nor being captured by Orcs.
Brythnot raises his Rep from 5 up to 6 as well as his Hardiness to 2. He also found a magical weapon with a +1d6 in melee. Uri raised his Rep to 5. Both Dwarfs are stumpy, stubborn and has developed a hatred against Orcs (as if Fanatic all melee turns against Orcs).

La Blau with Magic Wash.

2011-03-20T21:52:00.005Z

I just finished painting a squad of the Blue Division with the Magic Was h. I made them with half box of Warlord German plastic soldiers as they had the same unifom and equipment.
I block painted them and then washed them with the Magic Wash mix. The result is OK but I think this technique gets better on smaller scales like 1/72 th or even 15 mm.
They will soon see some action fighting against Communism in Russia! Here you can see some pictures of them. Pictures are clickable.

Acabo de terminar de pintar un pelotón de la División Azul con el Magic Wash. Los hice con media caja de los soldados alemanes de plástico de Warlord ya que usaban el mismo uniforme y equipamiento.
Los pinté con color base y luego les pasé la mezcla por encima. El resultado no está mal pero creo que esta técnica funciona mejor con escalas más pequeñas como el 1/72 o incluso los 15 mm.
¡Pronto entrarán en acción luchando contra el Comunismo en Rusia! Aquí pueden ven algunas fotos. Si pinchan en las fotos se ven más grandes.

Sargeant and Corporal. Sargento y cabo. Assaulting troops. Tropas al asalto.

Two Mg34 teams. Dos grupos de Mg34.

Group picture. Foto de grupo.

Magic Wash

2011-03-08T21:14:00.005Z

I've been using wood stain to dip my miniatures for a time, but I haven't tried the Magic Wash with the Johnson floor wax so far, basically because that product does not exist in Spain. Now I have to paint around 80 Valiant German infantry to play DH&CF7B mainly, and the brown dip does not look OK on the German uniform IMO, so I decided to look for a floor wax to try to make a Magic Wash with black ink.

Llevo usando el dipping con barniz tintado desde hace un tiempo pero nunca he intentado el famoso Magic Wash, básicamente porque en España no se vende la cera acrílica para suelos de la marca Johnson. Ahora que tengo que pintar dos cajas de alemanes de Valiant para usarlos principalmente con Disposable Heroes, y que el dipping marrón no me gusta como queda con el uniforme alemán, me he decidido a buscar una cera que sirva para hacer un Magic Wash con tinta negra.

After looking in all the main shops in my town, I entered in Mercadona and there I found colourless brilliant floor wax by Bosque Verde. Next to that product there was Johnson soap for wooden floor, and the shape of the bottle was identical to the other one. Then I read the small print at the back of the bottles and noticed they both were made in the same factory in Valencia. Then I thought that maybe the Bosque Verde floor wax was a white brand of Johnson floor wax for Mercadona, that they were the same wax; so I bought one bottle for just two euros and run to try it at home.

Después de patearme todos los grandes comercios, acabé en el Mercadona de al lado de mi casa, y allí ví la CERA Autobrillante Incolora para suelos de Bosque Verde. Al lado estaba un jabón para parquet de la marca Johnson y la botella era exactamente igual a la de cera, así que leí la letra pequeña y descubrí que ambas se hacían en la misma fábrica en Valencia. Entonces pensé que quizás la cera Bosque Verde era una marca blanca de Johnson para Mercadona y me compré una botella por dos euros y volví a casa corriendo a probarla.

Once at home, I hastily block painted two Valiant German riflemen and then applied on them a mixture of Bosque Verde floor wax with a few drops of the old GW's black ink, and here you can see the results.

Una vez en casa pinté rápidamente dos alemanes de Valiant con color base y luego les apliqué una mezcla de cera con unas gotas de tinta, y aquí pueden ver los resultados.

I do not know if this wax is the same that Johnson's but I do not care as I am quite happy with the result and I am going to use it to paint all my Germans in one go! Now I must find the exact mixture of ink and wash, and maybe use lighter colours, especially for the uniform and the helmet.

Yo no sé si esta cera es o no la de Johnson pero la verdad es que me da igual porque me gusta como han quedados las miniaturas, y así es como voy a pintar el resto de una patada. Sólo tengo que encontrar la mezla correcta de tinta, y quizás usar colores más claros para el uniforme y el casco.

Down into darkness. Einar's saga chapter seven.

2011-03-01T13:06:00.006Z

Einar, Fafnir and Rialto are travelling East, deep into the land of the Orcs, avoiding the evil Dark Elves and towards the Border Kingdoms. They travel keeping low profile and avoiding all contact with the Orcs, but as they cross the border and progress into the country of the Orcs, Rialto becomes restless, and when Einar inquiries about the matter, he confesses that he joined him as a mean to travel safe and retrieve a very important arcane tome lost in the hands of an Orc raiding party. He then asks Einar for help to find it as he feels it is near.

Einar feels a bit treasoned but also feels in debt with Rialto for helping him to get his sword, so he decides to help him in the end. They start to search the area and soon discover a hidden corridor that goes down into darkness.

As usual all pictures are clickable.

As soon as they entered they sprung a trap, but they managed to avoid any harm. Then the corridor turned right and they spotted a door at the end of it. The door was locked but Rialto, a resourceful magician, picked the lock easily.

Beyond the entrance they could see what it looked like a sentry room, but it was empty. The chamber had another trap and three closed doors. Rialto quickly pointed at the central one, a thick door made of stone. This one was also locked and proved to be more difficult to open, but again Rialto picked the lock without much effort.

Then they entered in a new corridor wich also had another door at the end. As they advanced towards the new door, Einar wondered in surprise why they had not met anyone so far; where the hell were the Orcs?

The group commenced to relax as nobody appeared; with a bored expression on his face, Rialto started to pick the lock of the new door once again. But Alas! Suddenly they met face to face with a huge band of Orcs, and with some Trolls too! They were waiting for them, it was a trap!

Einar reacted faster than anyone and led a charge against the brutes. He engaged with one Black Orc whereas Fafnir charged the Troll to his left. Rialto casted a domination spell on the Troll to the right, and convinced him to attack one Black Orc next to him. Pushing back and forward and exchanging blows fiercely they tried to kill each other, but the lack of room avoided any serious injuring.

One Orc close to the door tried to escape and sound the alarm, but Rialto spotted him and swiftly kill him with a "Steel Wind" spell. Another Orc joined the enraged Troll of the left to help him killing Fafnir, who managed to slain him in return but at the cost of losing all his Hardiness.

A new Orc tried to sound the alarm and this time Rialto could not stop him. Then the Troll engaged with Fafnir, released a devastating blow that almost ripped off Fafnir's head, smashing him against the wall instantly dead! Rialto, shocked in horror, tried to dominate the Troll, but he was not concentrated enough and suffered a backlash, falling to the ground out of combat.
Einar killed another Orc but then he was totally surrendered, outnumbered and outmatched.

A tremendous hit on his head left him unconscious and out of combat. Einar and Rialto were taken prisoners then and locked up in a deep and dark chamber.

Well, what can I say? This was totally unexpected. I painted a whole dungeon with lots of furniture and I have not been able to use it properly because the suckers fell in ambush too soon. Now what? All these months of Einar travelling distant lands, fighting fearsome enemies, losing dear friends and comrades, and finally getting the sword of his prophecy, for nothing?
We will see it in the next chapter ;-)

Operation Squad. Second game.

2011-02-16T21:40:00.010Z

Today we played the mission 5 from the rulebook, but slightly modified. All the wonderful miniatures and terrain are from Estudio Porto.

I commanded a squad of seasoned Panzergrenadiers with two Mg34 and two servants, vs. a Red Guard squad with one sniper and one DP light machine gun with servant, commanded by Adolfo.

All the pictures are clickable.

The battlefield

There was a partisan in the middle of the table with vital information and we both had to capture him and his documents for interrogation.

German forces about to cross the road

I deployed one Mg34 with server and supported by one rifleman on each flank, and the rest of the squad behind the central wood. The Russians deployed two soldiers on the left flank, only one on the rigth one, and the rest inside the central wood in his deployment zone.

Machine guns giving support to advancing troops

While the central forces advanced towards the partisan, both flanks were shooting at each other, with the Germans dominating the left flank and the Russians the right one.

Germans dashing through the road and Russians crawling through the woods, towards the objective.

Germans exchanged with Russians wounded per dead, and soon the numeric superiority was noted.

-Schnell! -Davai!

Finally, the Germans managed to capture the partisan and take him back to their lines. Axis victory.

Operation Squad. First battle.

2011-02-02T21:41:00.012Z

Today we played our first game of Operatio Squad. Our game did not go very well as I had not slept the night before and besides I had got flu, and my opponent had not read the rules. Actually, we run out of time and we could not finish it, although the victory was closer to Germans.

We played in one of the board games of a local shop, and with some of the figures from its studio.

We played the scenario number three, take the bridge, and we quickly were shooting at each other from the forests.

(We had to move the bridge off the road and put in the centre of the board as per the scenario).

Below you can see some instants from the game. All pictures are clickable.

Russians on the right flank spotted and pinned, with comissar in the forest at the bottom.

More Ruskies with a sargeant and a sniper on the left flank.
Germans closing to the bridge using the forest as cover

Germans on its left flank pinned by the Russian sniper

Here we can see the German and the Russian sargeants next to the bridge and throwing grenades at each other. The German was wounded and the Russian KIA.

I hope to post a proper battle report from our second game on friday.

HotT 48 AP battle with 28 mm. minis.

2011-01-22T21:53:00.011Z

As we did not fancy anything very complex to play (we're getting old) we decided for a game ofHordes of the Things. So my buddy dusted off his two 48 AP armies and we quickly readiedthem for a battle.

I took an army of Rohan from LOTR and my buddy a Goblin army from GW. My army consisted of 1 Kn (Gn), 1 Kn, 6 Riders, 4 Wb, 4 Shooters, 4 Sp with a Sub general in it, 1 Hero and 1 Magician. The Goblin army contained 3 Behemoths, 1 Kn (Gn), 2 Beasts, 4 Shooters, 3 Riders (one of them sub general), 4 lurkers and 12 Hordes.
Below you can see the armies arrayed and already moving towards each other.
I got a lot of PIPs at the beginning and could go through the forest in no time, as my opponent unwisely chose not to use his Lurkers to stop me there. On the left flank I run with five Riders whereas on the left flank there were the Knights with the general, one Rider, the Hero and the Magician; on the center all the infantry with two shooters on each flank.
My opponent moved all his hordes between the two rough hills to protect both flanks, tried unsuccesfully to deploy his shooters on the bigger hill, and advanced with his general and the three Behemoths on my right flank.

The first melee in the battle was with my Hero against a Behemoth who retreated and stomped his general! (the one in chariot with wolves). As this was the first contact and we did not like to start a game again, we simply swapped places with the general and other unit and kept with the battle.
After that, a fierce fight for the hill ensued between the two generals, mine with knights and Hero and his with Behemoths. I had a slight advantage for being on higher terrain but my knights followed and lose such benefit, being subsequently crushed, and then the Hero and the Rider forced to retreat.
On the left flank I squeezed three units of Riders to disorganize the solid block of Hordes, while the center kept slowly advancing forward.
My three Riders on the left were surrounded and effortlessly eliminated, and my Hero barely held against the Behemoths while the Magician did nothing (actually he did nothing during all thegame due to the lack of PIPs). My infantry on the center finally clashed and started to massacre Hordes of Goblins.
The Goblin general and his Behemoths kept pressing and killed my Hero and then my Magician. All the Hordes killed were quickly redeployed again into the battlefield. I had already lost my general and now my main army, and the infantry was unable to do something effective, so we decided to finish the game in that moment with a major victory for the Goblins.
48 APs armies with 25/28 mm. figures look really impressive on the table, especially for me, used to 10 mm.

Wings of War

2011-01-18T22:56:00.015Z

Right after New Year we gathered to play Wings of War, a game easy, fast and fun to play to start off with this 2011; but I could not post it until now as my PC melted down after nine years of loyal service.

The Richthofen's red Fokker I own belongs to the first serie of the game wich came without pilot, so I decided to put one and took one old GW's Epic Imperial Guard trooper and painted it like a WWI pilot; the scarf was done with a tiny piece of paper.
All pictures are clickable.

One moment during a game. Richthofen in peril!

We managed to play three games during the evening in which I was quickly shoot down in all of them, and then I played a solo game trying to destroy a balloon, but my Nieuport 16 missed all its rockets and then was shot down again by the AA.
Next day I encouraged my six years old son to play a simple game, and he enjoyed it a lot and was willing to play again another day, even though I shot down his plane!

Wings of War is an excellent game as it is very easy to learn, fast to play, miniatures are already painted and there is no need of terrain as you can play on any flat surface.

WHAA Big Battle

2010-12-29T19:02:00.015Z

Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventures is a ruleset for skirmishes, but it also contains some rules in case you want to play a big battle ala Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Armies of Arcana. So today I decided to try those rules for the first time, and then I gathered all my 10 mm minis and quickly arrayed them for battle. I made four units for each side and deployed them randomly.

Orc deployment from left to right: one unit of orc warriors Rep 4 AC 2, another unit or Orc warriors with a standard, one unit of Black Orcs with two Trolls in it, and one unit of Orc archers in the wood.
Altengard deployment from left to right: one unit of arquebusiers Rep 4 AC 4, one unit of infantry Rep 4 AC 5, one unit of allied Mirholme warriors Rep 4 AC 5, and finally one unit with four knights Rep 5 AC 6.

The battlefield with the Orcs on the right and men on the left.

On the first turn only Altengard activates and moves forward all its units. On the next turn only the Orcs move and the first unit are the archers who advance and then charge instead of firing as they all are frenzy. The arquebusiers shoot them and one Orc dies and two retreat but the rest charges, killing more than half of the unit in one go, and exterminating it in the following turn.
Then the unit of Black Orcs charges the Altengard infantry, killing most of them as well.
The Mirholmen is the only unit which holds heroically against the Orcs, treating them on equal terms.
The last unit of Orcs tries to charge the knights but in the last moment stops and the charge is failed.
In the last turn the knights are finally charged, being killed two of them and the other two routed. The rest of the Altengard army dies except the warriors from Mirholme, but I finished the battle here as they were outnumbered by four to one and its situation was hopeless.

Four were the main causes of the Altengard's defeat: first they did not have any standards and consequently most of the soldiers routed instead of only retreating. Secondly, excepting the Mirholmen, all the human units were outnumbered. Third, The Humans had bad luck rolling for activation and could only stand and see what was happening, whereas the knight being capable of activating a couple of times due to their Rep, failed all his charges and stood still watching the Orcs coming at them. The fourth reason was that all the Orcs were Frenzy and this give them the extra edge they needed to win all the melees.

WHAA Big Battles works perfectly to simulate WHF style battles; melee is deadly and the game is fast.
I think I am going to use WHAA BB as a bridge between WHAA skirmishes and Rally Round the King for mass battles, for my Campaign of Einar.

Jackals pursuing wolves. Einar's saga chapter six.

2010-12-20T18:45:00.014Z

Short time after seizing the sword Soul Reaver, Rialto tells the party they are being followed. Einar gives an order and the party starts to run northwards. After a couple of hours Rialto tells them they are about to be caught and Einar puts a faster rhythm, but Tiku cannot keep up with them.
They are running for their lives, nobody looks at Tiku and she says nothing.

After a couple of hours more, the Dwarfs are closing again and they have to go even faster. This time it is the archer of the group who sit on a rock and watches in silence how the rest disappears in the distance.
Now the party goes faster but the Dwarfs are in their territory and know all possible shortcuts, and after a couple more hours of hot pursuit, they are finally caught and have to stop to fight for their lives.

You use the lower Rep of each group to check how the pursuit goes, and Tiku had Rep 2 and delayed the whole group, so I decided to drop her. Then I start again to check and this time Einar's party had same Rep as Dwarfs (4), so they could escape more easily. But luck was with the Dwarfs and after a couple of rolls I had to drop the archer too, to try to definitely escape, as the next lowest Rep in the group which was 5. Well, even having the Dwarfs worse Rep than Einar's group, they managed to catch them anyway, so now Einar had to fight with only two men against a horde of vengeful Black Moon Dwarfs.

As soon as they could see the Dwarfs, Rialto casts spell "Fear me!" on them which is intervened by a Dwarf caster, who fails and becomes dazzled; half of the Dwarfs are now terrorized.
The Dwarfs charge as fast as they can but none of them reach close combat yet; the arquebusiers miss their shots.

The Dwarf caster resulted to have Rep 4, like his predecessor, so he could badly do anything against Rialto. When he tried to stop Rialto's spell he failed and got dazzled instead, losing one point of Rep to cast, and going the same way during all the encounter until reaching Rep 1.
Ignoring the pathetic efforts of the Dwarf caster to stop him, Rialto successfully summons an skeleton to use it as his bodyguard. Now all the Disciples of Null reach hand to hand combat. Fafnir barely holds but Einar quickly slain one Dwarf and engages the Big Bad, a Rep 5, AC 6, H 3 with a two handed axe. In an epic fight, the Dwarf leader resists many blows by Einar and falls stunned several times until he recovers and hits Einar, but without harming him. The summoned skeleton resists and successfully defends its master from a Dwarf attack.
Rialto summons three wolves in his aid, right on time as the tentacled Dwarf kills his skeleton.
Einar finally kills the Big Bad, and Fafnir runs to help Rialto. But now the rest of the Dwarfs arrive and Einar is charged by four of them. In a very heroic style, he instantly kills two of them and puts in flight the other two!

Einar with Rep 6 and Hardiness 4 and Soul Reaver (produces terror) has become a fearsome and almost unbeatable opponent. It is time for him to search for bigger enemies such as Trolls and Ogres, but we will see this soon as they are heading towards the land of the Orcs. Also, Rialto unbalances all games with his powerful magic so far, so I definitely need to include more powerful opponents in future encounters.
A straggling band of Dwarfs arrives but now Rialto casts "Flee you fools!" and suddenly eleven Dwarfs run away from the battle! Einar and Fafnir quickly dispatches the three remaining Dwarfs and once again they win the day.
The Dwarfs are so terrorized that they will not chase them again, so they can peacefully head towards the Border Kingdoms, through the territories of the Orcs. Einar has kept the Sword and has raised his Social Standing to 9. Also, Fafnir has raised his Rep to 6!

PORTO en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

2010-12-15T21:33:00.010Z

Porto era una humilde tienda de wargames y librería que abrió por 1.998 y que desde entonces ha sobrevivido a otras tiendas del hobby que abrieron y luego quebraron, principalmente debido a lo bien que se encontraba uno allí y lo mucho que te ayudaban en cualquier tema de pintura, modelismo, conversiones o tácticas de juego, y luego más tarde, por su buena administración.

Porto was a humble hobby shop that has been opened since 1.998 and that has survived many other hobby shops in this small city, firstly because its friendly and helpful atmosphere, and later also because its good management.

La vieja tienda.
Ye olde shoppe.

Hace unos pocos años llegó Adolfo y se hizo cargo de la tienda, y desde entonces no ha parado de crecer cada vez más, hasta el día de hoy, en que ha abierto un nuevo local mucho más grande y moderno. La tienda tiene casi 200 metros cuadrados, 10 mesas de juego, talleres, aire acondicionado, muy buena iluminación y cualquier cosa que puedas necesitar para el hobby.

A few years back Adolfo took charge of the shop and since then it has been growing and growing to the point of opening today a new and much bigger and modern shop. The new local has around 200 square metres, 10 gaming boards, air conditioning and anything you may need for the hobby.

La nueva Porto.
The new Porto

Estoy muy contento porque es una maravilla jugar en este sitio y también porque la tienda va a tener un destacado espacio para jugar históricos como DBA, Impetus, Napoleónicos, Blitzkrieg Commander, Disposable Heroes, Nuts! y Flames of War entre otros. Así que estoy como unas pascuas porque después de más de 25 años de estar jugando en esta ciudad con los de siempre, por fin hay una auténtica tienda donde comprar y donde quedar para jugar y pasarlo bien, ¡e incluso encontrar oponentes para jugar históricos!

Personally, I'm very happy as this new shop is going to devote not only to Games Workshop games but also to historical ones such as DBA, Impetus, Blitzkrieg Commander, Disposable Heroes, Nuts! and Flames of War among others. So yes, I'm very happy, because for the first time after more than 25 years of wargaming in this city, I'm going to have an authentic shop where to find anything I may need for the hobby and where to find opponents to historicals!

Lander terminando los 10 nuevos tableros para DBA. ¡Pronto habrá un torneo!
Lander finishing the ten new boards for DBA. Soon we'll have a tournament!

Si vives fuera y te pasas alguna vez por Las Palmas, no te olvides de visitarnos y echarte unas partidas con nosotros. Si vives aquí, simplemente no puedes perderte esto.

If you live abroad and someday you visit Las Palmas, do not forget to come by and play some games with us. If you live in the island, you simply cannot miss this.

De izquierda a derecha, yo haciendo de reportero y Adolfo, el manager.
From left to right, me visiting the shop and Adolfo the manager.

In the land of the Dwarfs. Einar's saga chapter five.

2010-12-12T18:35:00.011Z

After the disaster of Treyine, Einar and his men travel East towards the lands of the Black Dwarf. During winter they cross the north frontiers of Hykar and Mirish, avoiding all possible contact with unwanted patrols until they reach their destine.
It is Spring of 897 and it has passed more than a year since Einar started his quest to find a sword of power to build his own kingdom, but they finally arrived.
The land of the Dwarfs is dominated by great dark mountains and desolated wastes. They start searching for anybody or anything which may help them to find what they are looking for, but they find nothing and keep moving towards the heart of the country. After a month of travelling Eastwards, Rialto's senses warn him that a group is approaching by the road behind them. As they are in unfriendly territory and also they have to "borrow" the sword, Einar decides to set his group in ambush.

As soon as Einar arrived at the Black Dwarf territory, I rolled in the Quest Table to see if he has found the item of his quest. I roll 5 and 1 which meant there was nothing there. Einar's party then move inside the country and again I rolled the dice but this time I got 6 & 6! The object was finally found and I had to go to a Raid encounter. I rolled again and the Raid was to have place at a village; as I did not know how a Dwarf village is nor had any suitable building to represent it, I chose to play the Raid in the wilderness and changed the raid for an ambush.

I'm playing with 10 mm. miniatures in a 60 x 60 cm. board and with all distances halved and rounded up. As usual, all the pictures are clickable.

After being hidden in the rocks for almost two hours, they finally spot a caravan of Dwarfs led by what it look some kind of priest or sorcerer, wearing ceremoniously a long sword sheathed in a barbarously jewelled scabbard, the sword of his quest!
Now, according to the rules my party was of 120 points of CV and this means that I had to fight against 60 Dwarfs approximately, which was absurd; Einar alone worths 40 points of CV so go figure. Therefore, I decided to use the How many of them chart from LOA instead, in which they use a number of figures instead of CV; but as 6 figures was going to be too few to fight against, I used the Hardiness of each character as a number of figures; so Einar's party had a total of 16 "figures".

As soon as Einar sees the sword he jumps on his feet and let the Dwarfs spot him. The Ambush is spoiled.
The Dwarfs came down the road and when they were near the ambushers I rolled to see how the ambush worked. I rolled 5 dice for the Dwarfs and 3 dice for Einar's party (Tiku had dropped her Rep down to 3 in the last encounter). The Dwarfs passed 2d6 more and the ambush went off early and surprise lost. Ambushers were revealed and Activation dice were rolled with the battle going on as normal.

Einar's party activates first but only Rialto and the archer accompanying him. Rialto casts Fear me! and the Dwarf caster tries to intervene. The Dwarf caster tries his best but fails miserably, suffering backlash and remaining dazzled until his next activation.

Rep of Dwarf caster was yet to be determined, so I rolled to see which was and I rolled 3 and 1. The Rep was 4, not very good. He lose by 3d6 more in the test of magic, but saved his life by a hair's breath and only resulted Dazzled. Rialto produced Dread on the first eight Dwarfs with his spell.

Then, the nearest Dwarfs react and charge Einar, Fafnir and Tiku, but two of them stop in the last moment due to the dread Rialto casted upon them. Einar easily parries his opponent and Tiku kills hers outright, forcing the nearest disciple of Null to retreat.
Two Dwarfs at the bottom and armed with harquebuses, fire at the far archer, who covers behind the rocks and returns fire, killing one of them and making two more to retreat.
The Dwarf caster keeps Dazzled, holding the magic sword with his arms and incapable of doing anything else.
The Dwarf caster finally recovers and tries a spell, but is intervened by Rialto and Dazzled again. Now the rest of the Dwarf warriors charge en masse but are rejected once more as Einar and Fafnir kills one warrior each, while Tiku with her two swords holds for the moment. The harquebusier misses.

Fafnir kills another warrior and Einar defeats their leader, the Big Bad, producing some break offs and routs from the battlefield. Then Rialto spells Blinding light and all the remaining Dwarfs get Dazzled; Tiku takes the opportunity to kill her blinded opponent.
The archer fires and hits without further effect.
Rialto casts now Steel Wind and perforates the poor unarmoured Dwarf caster, converting him into pink mist. The remaining Dwarf with harquebus routs and Einar slays the last of the Disciples of Null.
Piece of cake. Mission accomplished, return to base.
Indeed it was an easy encounter, but this was mainly due to the Fear me! spell that Rialto casted in the first turn. More than half of the Dwarfs had dread and failed tests of charge, crisis, leader lost, etc. as well as having worse performance in melee. Then it came Blinding light and the remaining Dwarfs were helpless and doomed. Also, the Big Bad resulted to have only Rep 4 and the Dwarf caster did not have a high Rep neither.

So Einar finally got his magic sword to to become king, according to the prophecy made on his childhood. He passes it to Rialto to check it and he explains to the group that the sword has a name, Soul Reaver. This sword is evil and greedy of souls and carnage; it will help to conquer a throne, but not to rule it. The sword produces terror in the enemies of the wielder; it also adds +1 to impact when used in melee, and +2 against magical creatures and +3 against Daemons. Once a month, the wielder has to roll 2d6 against his Rep; whenever he passes 0d6 he will move one step towards Black Moon worship. So for example, if Einar who is now Twilight alignment, passes 0d6, he will be Rising Moon, and if he fails again then Full Moon. The sword attracts evil.

After designing the sword I proceeded to roll for the Einar's party advancements: Einar raises his Rep to 6 and Social Standing to 8, Fafnir also raises Rep to 5, but Tiku falls to 2 (something must be happening to this wild creature). Rialto raises his Hardiness to 3 and the archer downs his Rep to 3.

After the ambush and looting the corpses, Einar and his friends decide to move directly northwards to the lands of the Orcs as fast as possible to avoid retaliation, and also as the shortest and safest (avoiding the Dark elves) route to the Border Kingdoms where to find their own army, castle and lands.
I will see you all in the next episode of Einar's days of high adventure!

Elven arrows.

2010-12-06T23:29:00.011Z

This time I wanted to use a bow based army to see how it worked, and so I borrowed from my buddy some Warmaster High Elves. The Elf army of 396 points was composed of 12 archer units plus two spear units with the general in one of them. All the units are Rep 5 and AC 4, and the archers are also elite. Elves Battle Tactics is C, their War Rating 3, and made Encircle flank deployment (30%-60%-10%).

Their opponent were an Orc and Goblin army of 398 points and composed of 6 Orc Warriors Rep 4, AC 2, 3 Black Moon Orcs Rep 5, AC 4 with the general in one of them, 3 Trolls units Rep 5, AC 4, 10 Goblin archers (foot skirmishers aka meat shield) Rep 3, AC 2, 2 Wolf riders (mounted skirmishers) Rep 3, AC 2, and 1 Boar rider unit Rep 5, AC 2 (shock). Trolls, Black Moon Orcs and Boar Riders produce terror. Orcs and Goblins Battle Tactics is A, their War Rating 3, and made Penetrate Center deployment (20%-60%-20%).

In the first picture it can be seen how the Orcs & Goblins have already moved in their first turn, while the Elves waited for them in the forests. The Orcs had a screen of Goblin skirmishers in front of them and all the cavalry in the right wing.
No heroes nor magicians on neither side on this occasion.
All pictures are clickable as usual.
Second turn and the Elves right wing had already pivoted to face the charging Orcs whereas in the center the Goblin skirmishers suffered two hits each, although they resisted as they were heavily supported (+3).
The Goblin skirmishers accomplished their goal which was to protect the Orcs from enemy fire, and then they stopped and let the Orcs charged the enemy through them. All the Elves resisted the charge and shot before the clash, producing one hit on each of the Orc units, who kept charging and then melee was joined. The Orcs on the left pivoted to face the Elves' right wing whereas the cavalry stopped at charge distance, threatening Elves' left flank.
The archer Elves in the center were outnumbered and routing on both extremes at a rate of two units per turn, and in no time there was only the general with the spears holding the line. On the left flank the Elves rejected the Orc charge, and on the far right the archers finally decided to leave the forest to try to help their general.
The Elves had an extraordinary luck all through the battle, rolling sixes to hit and ones to hold their place, and thus they completely wiped out the Orcs' left wing, held in the center, producing many hits and even pushing back one unit of Trolls and one of Black Moon Orcs. On the right flank, one unit of archers resisted the Boar riders charge and forced them to retire!
But finally the Elves in the center broke and their general died, and as there were only five Elf units remaining on the battlefield, I decided to finish the battle at this point. Most Orc and Goblin units were badly injured nonetheless.

Green on green.

2010-11-28T08:23:00.015Z

This was my second game of RRtK and this time I introduced new units like flying creatures, a giant, Magic, a hero and also some skirmishers, to learn more about the game and see how they behave on the battlefield.
Today, some Goblin tribes had gathered led by a powerful Goblin shaman, and had invaded an Orc territory to teach a lesson to their bigger cousins.

From left to right, the Goblin army of nearly 350 points, consisted of one unit of light chariots, one Giant, eight units of Goblins and one of Black Moon Goblins with the general in it, all deployed in two ranks to get full support; then three units of Ogres and finally three units of Goblins Wolf Riders acting as mounted skirmishers.
I commanded and deployed the Goblin army as I wanted to use the Magic rules.
All the pictures are clickable.
All the Orcs of the area had heard of the good news of fun with the Goblins, and quickly assembled an army to fight them off. From left to right, one unit of Wild Boar heavy cavalry (shock), three units of Trolls, six units of Orc warriors plus one of Black Moon Orcs with the general in it, and on the hill one Wyvern and two catapults.
The "machine" play the Orcs and I rolled Encircled Flank deployment: "Attempt to slowly push through the center as one wing made up of the fastest units attempts to turn one flank of the enemy. The other flank is defensive and tries to prevent the center from being encircled. (60% in the center -up to 10% in reserve-, 30% on the right and 10% on the left flank).
Goblins were the attacker and moved first. Moving from their right to their left, the chariots moved right to outflank, the Giant and all the Goblins and Ogres moved straight ahead in one solid block, whereas the three units of mounted skirmish race forward (they move 16"!) to engage the enemy at shooting range. When the mounted skirmishers reached enemy's threat distance, they were charged by the Wild Boars and all the Trolls, resulting in one unit of Wolf Riders routing and two retreating, leaving the Goblins' left flank unguarded!
The Orcs cheered and laughed at the sight of the routing goblins, and advanced their center line, whereas the Wyvern took off and charged the Goblin chariots. The poor sods were so terrified at the sight of the incoming monster that retreated at full speed. Now, Goblins right flank was also threatened. Yay!
In the next turn, the Giant faced right to challenge the Wyvern, and the Goblin's main body pivoted left to meet the Orc warriors who counter charged with two units of warriors. The Goblins revealed their great shaman and the Orcs their hero as well.
OK, it was going to be my first try with magic, so I decided to go for an easy spell and concentrate in a few units, to minimize risk and failure. The Gobbos had a Level two magician accompanied by one of level one, and they tried a difficult one spell (the easiest) on only two units. Thus, they casted Steel Wind and failed horribly, and all users were now at risk. Guess what, both casters failed again and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Sixty army points vaporised in an instant!
The Orcs laughed even louder and finally charged "en masse", crushing the Goblin line and killing many Gobbos, only resisting the tough Ogres. The catapults now in range, together with the Orc Hero, produced terror among the enemy ranks.
The Wyvern ignored the Giant and flew after the fleeing chariots who routed the battlefield. On the right flank the Orc Boar riders charged the two remaining Goblin Wolf riders who also routed.
The Goblins were doomed. Their General surrounded and barely resisting.
The Trolls and the Orc hero kept pushing and the Orc Warriors pivoted right and close the trap. The Goblin general was slay and the few surviving Goblin units routed. The Wyvern tried to charge the Giant by his back but failed the charge test. Also, the Boar Riders finally arrived from their far pursue of the mounted skirmishers, and hit on the Ogres' back, routing them. The Goblin cause was lost and the Orcs had a great time. Game over.
What can I say? I was miserably defeated by the machine. Well, for a start the promising Magic failed me from the very first turn, and also the Giant did not enter in combat. All Goblin cavalry deserted at the early stages of the battle as well.
I think my main mistake was that I am ill playing DBA style, and RRtK is something totally different. Here it is very important to act having in mind the unit's reactions, specially with the Enemy Threat Reaction. Deployment also is something decisive.
Regarding the Orcs, they had two units which were key to their victory. On one hand the Wyvern, a flying unit producing terror and capable to move all around the table and charge from any direction; and secondly and most important, their hero.
Heroes are too powerful and almost impossible to kill that they outbalance any battle. I think they should only be used in campaigns but not on single scenarios.

Rome against the Green Horde.

2010-11-22T22:11:00.013Z

As this was my first game with Rally Round the King, I did not pick any heroes, magicians, monsters, flying units nor skirmishers. I just picked my DBA EIR army that cost 302 points in RRtK, and an equivalent points force of Orcs; eleven units of Orc warriors and a Black Moon Orc unit with the general in it. I neither wanted to bog down with new terrain rules so I deployed the armies in a clear plain with a solitaire wood on one side.

The EIR army consists of one unit of cav (shock cavalry according to RRtK), four units of auxilia, five of legionaries (having one of them the general), one ballistae and one of archers. Legionaries Rep 4 and auxilia Rep 3 are elite and have throwing pila and javelins which give them a +2 in the first round of melee. They also have AC 4 (armour class), which proved to be decisive in the battle.
The Orc army consist of eleven units of warriors with AC 2 and one unit of Black Moon Orcs Rep 5 and with AC 4 with the Chieftain in it. All of them frenzy and undisciplined.
Both armies have Battle Tactics class A which consists of armies heavily dependant on melee troops which try to close ground as fast as possible. I commanded the Roman army whereas the Orcs were manned by the "machine". I rolled for their deployment and tactics and they got Penetrate Center: Heaviest melee units are placed in the center with a light screen of skirmish types in front, while the wings hold back to prevents being encircled. Objective it to push through the enemy center. 60% of units in the center with up to 10% in reserve, 20% on the left and another 20% of units on the right flank.
Both armies deployed up to the maximum distance allowed from their baselines, 12 inches. The table is 4'x3', so the armies started approximately at 12" of distance between them.
Romans moved first at their maximum speed (6"), with the cavalry going right to later outflank, and two units of auxilia and the archers heading for the forest. The artillery fired and inflicted one hit on one Orc unit at very long range.
Then it was the Orcs turn and they also moved 6" forward, and being at 1" from the enemy the were dragged into melee. I did not expect them to be upon my Romans so soon!
Being all the Orcs frenzy, they easily passed all their Wanting to charge tests, and all the Roman held except one auxilia that which gave ground and took one hit. The Orcs could not hurt the Romans with their heavy armour and the only wounded were two auxilia that gave ground. On the other hand, the hitting power of the Romans added to the poor armour of the Orcs, inflicted a lot of hits on them.
In the next turn the ballistae routed two Orc units next to the wood, and the equites charged on the right flank routing another one. Meanwhile the legionaries in the center were pressing the Orcs, exchanging some hits and losing one legionary unit in the process.
The Black Moon Orcs, commanded by their leader and supported around by many boyz, proved to be a tough nut to crack, but in the end they routed when the Black Moon Orcs had six hits!
One unit of Orc warriors charged to the equites flank and rout them. Game over.
The Romans lose one unit of legionaries and one unit of cavalry whereas the Orcs lose eight warrior units and the unit of Black Orcs. victory points: Romans 456, Orcs 146.

I have to play some more games to have a better opinion but right now I can tell RRtK is an excellent ruleset to play solo, and possibly head to head. The campaign rules also looks promising. RRtK plays differently to DBA or HotT, and have similar results in different ways, so you must use different tactics.
Something that maybe some people do not like is that troops not always do what you order to them, and you have to live with that. Perhaps it is more luck dependant than other systems but that also adds uncertainty to the game, which is not bad.

Mech Breakthrough.

2010-11-21T22:48:00.010Z

My gaming buddy and I decided to pass the Sunday evening playing a battle of mechs with the rules of Mekatac. We set the game at 400 tons per side and randomly decided to play the scenario Breakthrough. He played defender and I had to exit the board behind his line. I won victory points per tons of mechs exiting the board and he per tons destroyed. We used his Advanced Squad Leader de luxe boards as the MWDA bases fit perfectly in their hexagons.
My forces started at the right with a 90 tons Fire Starter as the most heavy mech, and then a Black Hawk, one Mining, one Forestry and one Agromech and one Arbalest. My friend chose similar mechs although more faster and also being one of them a scary 100 tons Mad Cat with twin Plasma Cannons and SML.
All pictures are clickable.
In the two first turns both sides rushed towards the center of the battlefield, forming two close firefights and fierce melees on each flank, while on center my Arbalest run through, crossing with the Mad Cat which ignored it and headed for the last of my mechs.
My Mining mech fired first its three XLML and Rail Cannon with a total damage capacity of 12d10+3d6! I could have destroyed that devil cat but I missed all my shots except one. Then he returned fire and melted my mech with his Plasma Cannons. Ouch!
On the right flank my Black Hawk and Forester met three enemy mechs, one Wasp, One Hollander and one Arbalest. There I managed to destroy the enemy Arbalest and some weaponry of the Wasp, but in return my 80 tons Black Hawk resulted deadly wounded.
He tried desperately to run and exit the board with its jump jets, but burning from flamethrowers and hot pursued by the Wasp, the Hollander and the Mad Cat, he collapsed under a rain of plasma and missiles at two hexes from the sideboard.
On the left flank my Fire Starter failed with its Heavy flamer and Rail Cannon and pushed through enemy mechs, leaving behind its Lance mate, the Agromech which toppled down and got straggled.
Although badly mauled, the Fire Starter managed to escape from his pursuers, but not so the already depleted Agromech on the left, and the heavily outnumbered Forester mech on the right, which tried to escape using covering terrain as much as possible, but was blown away at point blank by the Mad Cat in the last moment.
In the end I escaped with two mechs for a total of 150 tons and my buddy destroyed four for a total of 250 tons. Decisive victory for him and lots of fun for both.

Meka Tac GSR Patrol

2010-11-04T13:13:00.017Z

I recently discovered a free ruleset to play with giant robots or mechs called Meka Tac and written by Lloyd Krassner. I read and translated it into Spanish to play with my mates but then I discovered GIANT STOMPY ROBOTS , a Meka fansite with lots of optional rules, and a revised edition of Meka Tac, with many changes and improvements in it. I liked so much what I read that run to print the game cards and grabbed some forgotten plastic mechs and readied this game. As I was playing solo I borrowed some rules from Two Hour Games like the PEF (Possible Enemy Force) system, and here is the result.
All pics are clickable.

A 240 tons Nova Clan Mech Lance is commanded to patrol the bottom of a canyon where a possible enemy infiltration is expected. The Lance consists of one 60 tons Nova Cat Mech piloted by the commander Janis, one 70 tons Crimson Hawk, one tons 80 Black Hawk and one 30 tons Koshi small scout. They can read multiple signals on their screens (3 PEFs markers) and move forward to check them. Both two first possible enemies resulted to be a false alarm, so the whole Lance headed for the third marker behind the top of a big hill. The first to pass the crest of the hill is the Crimson Hawk and it runs into an enemy Mech, a Skorpion mech assault class which shoots in opportunity, exchanging some damage with the Crimson Hawk, which after that, reverses and gets some cover behind the crest. The Koshi and the Black Hawk get close and poorly fire against the Skorpion. Now the Skorpion moves to close combat with the Crimson Hawk, firing all its armament and making a total of 23 damage points! Janis is too far to help. The Skorpion attacks first again and made 19 damage points against the mauled Crimson Hawk, but now the Black Hawk charges it on its flank and smashes the pilot cockpit(critical hit), killing him instantly and leaving the mech unmanned. The Koshi keeps moving forward and spots a hidden enemy scout mech class, a Frog (a Koshi variant), shooting against it. The Frog ignores the Koshi and runs passing and firing to the Crimson Hawk, adding some more damage to its already debilitated structure. Suddenly, some reinforcements appear, a PEF which splits in two, one of them being a Wasp and the other still unknown. The Wasp flies straight ahead and fires all its weapons against the Crimson Hawk but fails. Now the Frog shoots at Janis and then jumps over her, but she turns around and shoots it down with its two Laser Cannons and SML salvo! Two enemy mechs down. Now the Black Hawk closes to the Wasp and releases all its weaponry, making two critical hits that ruins its computers and produces a reactor core. In the next turn and before the Wasp's reactor explodes like a bomb, Janis goes up the hill, shoots at it and wrecks it. Chalk up another one! In the meantime the Koshi discovers the last enemy mech, a 40 tons Hunchback armed with one plasma projector, one small flamethrower and one small mortar. The Hunchback closes to the Koshi hoping to kill it in one go but misses the plasma and mortar. The Black Hawk come in help, producing a lot of damage and one critical hit that destroys the mortar. The Hunchback tries it again and this time kills the little Koshi, but then it is quickly dispatched by its big brothers. The Nova Cat Clan has lost one 30 tons mech but salvaged an almost new 80 tons Skorpion and win the day. The game was great fun and fast, and the rules gave me the feeling of commanding giant robots into battle. Soon I will be playing another game!

[WIP] Red Sand Purple Sky. Chased in the woods.

2010-10-07T13:53:00.015+01:00

Beran had been walking through the dense woods for a week and running for his life since this morning. It was still dark when he felt an evil presence stalking near the camp. He quickly packed his things up, and run southwards trying to escape from whatever was chasing him. He soon heard the howling of several beasts calling for the hunt.
After a couple hours of pursue, Beran spotted a ruined woodcutter hut and decided he had enough. He had about half an hour advantage over his pursuers, and without wasting time he set up two traps on both entrances to the hut and then he laid in wait inside, hoping the house would mask his smell. He was ready.
After a few minutes of waiting, he heard noises of something running through the wood, but then the sound vanished. Again, he thought he had heard something, but nothing happened. (the two first PEFs resulted to be false alarms). After a few more minutes of tense waiting, Beran was about to come out from his hiding, when suddenly a nightmarish creature came out from the vegetation. Beran almost jumped on his place when he saw it, and the werewolf instantly spotting him, dashed for the closest entrance.
Beran moved to the entrance to lure the beast into the trap, but the werewolf noticed it and with an evil growl he jumped over it and attacked Beran (it passed the test and detected the trap). The other wolf closed to the second entrance.
The werewolf gripped Beran's shield with one claw and the with the other ripped Beran's chest, heavily wounding him! Beran desperately attacked the monster but it easily dodged him. The other wolf failed to see the trap at the back door and was deadly wounded.
Now the werewolf heavily bashed Beran's shield and knocked him to the ground, where he attacked him again trying to bite off his throat. Beran blocked the attack with his shield; then the beast tried it again, but again Beran could stop it on time.
The werewolf swiped at Beran's head but his quite battered shield blocked it again. Beran took advantage to rise on his feet again and stroke powerfully the beast's left arm, almost breaking it. The monster fell to the ground in pain but Beran did not know to finish it.
Then the werewolf stood on its paws and attacked Beran again, but weaken by the wound, posed no threat for the barbarian who easily stood his place for a couple of rounds, until the beast fainted and fell to the ground spent where Beran smashed its head repeatedly with his morningstar. He made it alive by a hair's breath (only one die pool remaining).
Looking at the dead beast he noticed a golden ring on one of its paws and took it. Immediately the werewolf turned into human shape of a skinny bearded man, perhaps the woodcutter? Not daring to use the ring, Beran put into his bag and resumed his way to the South.
Beran gained 25 APs and now has a total of 64.

[WIP] Red Sand Purple Sky. Undead night attack.

2010-09-30T10:00:00.011+01:00

Beran came back to his village and told them what had happened. The villagers listened to him in awe but also very scared, thinking of the possible retaliation from the undead. Beran explained them that their leader, the witch, was slain, and the menace had disappeared. But that night a horrible scream woke up everybody in the village; they were surrounded by the undead. The monsters without the guidance of their master, and very hungry, had headed en masse to the village for a late dinner.
Beran, the chieftain and some warriors quickly armed up and dashed outside to face the attackers. They heard strange noises coming from the north, so they run towards it but found nothing; they advanced a little more and again found nothing. But the creeping noises kept coming from the dark outside the village, so they dare to go even further in the night and suddenly discovered a horde of zombies led by an ill pale eater of the dead, a ghoul!
One of the warriors of the village madly charged without second thought and smashed against a wall of dead flesh which effortlessly engulfed him. As the warrior disappeared, Beran wisely decided to step aside and wait for the rest.
Half of the zombies were attracted by Beran whereas the other half was still devouring the fool, when all the warriors charged and clashed against them. The chieftain sliced off the guts of one zombie and one warrior nailed the ghoul's head with his spear. Beran lose his melee and one zombie hit his groins, causing him a serious wound and forcing him to give ground.
The undead kept pressing but were not able to penetrate shields and armour with bare hands. A veteran warrior killed another zed, but most of the zombies were now behind Beran. Fortunately for him, they were so slow that only two of them could attack him at the same time. Beran spent four dice and managed to kill one and kept at bay the other one. That was close, but he was running out of dice very fast.
The zombies were resisting the warriors (many draws and pushing back and a few knocks down) and Beran desperately needed to brake from melee and drink a healing potion as he was only one die left from the pool. He was barely holding and waiting for help.
Finally the warriors could overcome the zombies and run to help Beran, who could drink his potion and join the fight to help to finish the rest of the zombies.
Beran killed two zombies and then moved apart and let the warriors finish the remaining ones. The village was safe, but the villagers blamed Beran for awakening the undead and bringing them to their homes.
The council decided to exile Beran immediately, and only let him to take with him the battered shield of the fallen warrior and a new healing potion of 5 dice pool that the healer of the village gave him.
Beran left the village without never looking back and headed to the forests of the south in search of new adventures. He had gained 20 APs in this encounter.

Bocage, St Andre de L'Epine. 11 July 1944.

2010-09-27T11:35:00.011+01:00

This is the last scenario from Hit the dirt that we could play with the forces I own, and even so, I had to adapt it. Americans count with four Shermans instead of five according to the scenario, and Germans with one Pak 40 instead of two. Also, the American engineers are represented by German troops in camouflage.
The objective of the German troops is to keep control of the crossroad for five hours whereas the Americans must take it in that time and without suffering more than half of casualties. All German forces start hidden and count with three barbed wire sections, three snipers and two mine sections.
We played at my game buddy's house and most of the scenery is his.
As usual all pictures are clickable.

First turn. Americans entering the board.

As soon as one Sherman followed by the engineer platoon, passed the hedges by the road, the PaK 40 hidden behind the bocage fired against the leading Sherman, which was hit but not penetrated. As the anti tank gun did not miss, I was afraid of more reactive fire to moving the other Sherman next to the road, so I decided to move forward the one to the left (bottom).
But to my horror, two German squads shot in ambush their later Panzerfausts, and destroyed that tank!
The Pak 40 shot again but missed. In my next activation I advanced my infantry who was shot by another hidden German platoon with an attached MG, and pinned almost two complete American platoons (crystal markers for pinned squads). In the firefight I managed to kill most of the German in the orchard, so I forgot about them and crossed with a platoon to the right which naturally was caught in the open by the remaining German squad, who suppressed one of the American squads and snatched the initiative.
Now the German player unveiled his 81 mm. mortar FO and bombed my troops in the open, scoring three hits and killing the squad in the centre and suppressing the others! Then the remaining rifle squad in the orchard cap one of the suppressed American squads and retreat out of sight and deployed next to the Pak 40.
He also faced his platoon at the bottom forest towards the tanks in the road, circumstance that I used to shoot some smoke in front of the anti tank gun and dash with a platoon deployed in the left.
There I killed the German MG but after that I failed my firing and then the German rifles in the wood killed two rifle squads and then the tank in the road with their Panzerfausts.
After that I sent my engineers, and assaulted and killed all the Germans in the wood, shot more smoke on the road, rallied all the pinned squads and moved one platoon to the right to cross the road and flank the AT gun, but they stepped into a minefield and suffered one kill and one suppressed.
Americans had already suffered more than 50% of casualties and the day was lost. Good game.

I think this will be the last Crossfire game for a while, until the Plastic Soldier Later German infantry will be released, and I expand my companies to battalion level. By that time and with a little bit of luck, the second edition of Crossfire will have been released as well.

Reconaissance before Ponte Corvo, Italy. 19 May 1944.

2010-09-26T00:16:00.013+01:00

Our second game was a reconnaissance scenario from the book Hit the dirt as it was company level and it let us use the hidden rules as well. All German forces were hidden and counted with one fortification package and three snipers. I played with the Canadians (my American infantry) and my objective was to successfully observe German positions and make it back alive in less than five hours and a half.
We played it at Porto, a local shop whose manager kindly let us play to games he does not sell in the shop, as well as use his tables and scenery (thanks Adolfo!).
As usual all pictures are clickable.

Canadians entering on the right. Germans hidden.

The German player did not place his troops very well as they were very separated among them and without supporting fire lines. Even worse, once a German position was spotted, he left them there unsupported until destroyed, instead of retreating them out of sight, for example. I merely had to attack each time with two squads against it.

Sniper!

Neither German mortars of snipers had luck suppressing or killing Allies except my FO, and although Canadians suffered a few casualties, they easily managed to explore the whole board in half the time allowed, killing most of the Germans in the process, and getting 20 Victory points and a Victory. I did not get a Decisive Canadian Victory by just one victory point.

Ambush!

Below there is the last fire fight of the battle. A Canadian platoon is ambushed in a forest and when another Canadian platoon from the left jumped the hedge to help them, was intercepted by the last German platoon, hidden in rough terrain. He did some damage but not enough, and then in my initiative I finished the German in the wood and then retreat all my troops out of sight from the ones in the rough terrain, to finally exit the east board edge will all my remaining troops.

[WIP] Red Sand Purple Sky. A new hero is born!

2010-09-21T10:55:00.014+01:00

What I am starting here is a personal campaign project. I love Two Hour Wargames (THW) rulebooks and I'm enjoying at the moment the Einar's saga campaign with Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventurers (WHAA) and just finished the Spartacus one with Red Sand Blue Sky (RSBS). Another game that I loved a lot was the computer one "Diablo" from Blizzard.

This new project is about that. I want to play a fantasy campaign of one hero ala Diablo; a barbarian who hacks and slashes and accomplishes short quests whereas gains experience, skills and better weapons and armour.
To do this I am using RSBS for the melee, with its dice pool system to represent the stamina of the hero and enemy bosses; plus Legends of Araby (LOA) to interact with NPCs and get quests, and also some new things from CR 3.0 and WHAA like PEF markers and new missions. All this together with a lot of house rules of my own to fills gaps and give coherency.
I baptised the monster with the temporary name of Red Sand Purple Sky (smart, isn't it?).

So I picked up a GW's plastic Marauder and painted it with its head and arms separated, and stuck with blu-tack to later swap them with heads with different helmets and a variety of weapons and shields, as the character progresses in the campaign and gains new items and skills.

Our new hero will be a Northern barbarian, a little bit more beefy and taller than his neighbours (XL size), with starting Rep 4, armed with a crude morning star, some light armour on his lower legs and belly, and equipped with an amulet (+1 against some magic spells) and some healing herbs (+3 dice pool when taken -one use-). His armour total weight is 36 so he is allowed to move up to 5 inches.

The story starts in his village. There have been some strange missings, the last one a child; also cattle devoured and weird noises around the streets of the village during the night. The villagers gossip that something uncanny is happening in the far and now desolate former village, where the cemetery is. Thus, that night, Beran heads for the cemetery with the intention to unveils the mystery.

I borrowed all the terrain from two friends but miniatures are all mine. As usual, all pictures are clickable.

At the top of the picture below, our hero is about to enter into the ruined and haunted village. The zombies you see are PEF markers representing possible enemy forces.

Beran advances and meets the first PEF, but it results to be a false alarm. Perhaps he is a little bit nervous, being a superstitious barbarian and all that.

Our hero entering into the unknown

The second PEF resulted to be a lonely zombie who seemed very surprised of seeing somebody alive in its neighbourhood. The zombie does not reach Beran (it moves only 3 inches).
In the next initiative Beran attacks it but fails and has to fall back and burn 1d10. Now it is zombie's turn but he fails as a zombie he is, and Beran smashes with the morning star into the zombie's chest and he is out. In this short encounter Beran has spent 5 dice pool and so he still has 15 left.
Beran keeps advancing without resting and as he enters into the cemetery, he spots a woman with a floating book in front of her, surrounded by opened up tombs, and chanting some spooky litany that although he cannot understand it gives him creeps. The witch also spots him and gestures her hand to casts a spell.
She tries "Shield of magic" but fails. Then she tries again with "Air of Strength" on her before the barbarian gets closer, but once again she fails and moreover, she suffers a Backslash that leaves her dazzled and with 5 dice pool less!
Seizing the initiative Beran charges her, but somehow she manages to stop him for now.
The witch is still dazzled but nonetheless she tries a new spell. She tries "Suggestion" on Beran, who fiercely fights it off and escapes unscathed. Now Beran counter strikes and smashes her left ankle, knocking her to the ground.
The witch is lying on the floor totally spent and begs for mercy, but the barbarian with a mighty blow, squishes her skull and spills her blood all around. -DIE WITCH!
The mystery now looks solved. The tiny necromancer was unresting the old dead from the abandoned cemetery. Beran picks up the witch' spells book and goes back to his village to explain everything.
He has gained 19 Advancement points.

Bridgehead.

2010-09-18T21:46:00.011+01:00

Crossfire is a ruleset of WWII that I bought years ago and never got the opportunity to play it until now. So in one evening I took all my 1/72 plastic soldiers mounted on individual bases and rebased them in bases of 4 x 4 cm. but as I did not have many of them I only made one American company and one German Company.

We played the generic scenario Bridgehead at company level, being the Germans the attacker and with their platoons reduced to two squads each, but of veteran quality. The Americans took the defensive role and deployed one bunker (the grey ruin in the middle of the board), three wire sections (the three hedges next to the "bunker"), and one minefield hidden in the forest to the left of the wire.
Pictures are clickable.
The Germans concentrated most of their forces on the right flank and after bombing with the 60 mm. mortar and firing with two unattached MGs, launched an assault to the house occupied by the Americans. I was very lucky with the dice rolls and wiped out all the assaulting squads. Here we realized that playing with just one company per side is a bit limiting as once you lose a whole platoon, it is almost impossible to win.
In the their next initiative, the Germans tried again the same tactic and this time it worked. They killed the troops inside the house with MG sustained fire (he rolled and rolled and rolled dice without losing the initiative and until he suppressed them twice and killed them afterwards). After that they took the house and the field to its right (so far they have captured three terrain features of four needed to win).
As Germans committed all their forces in the assault to the house, they left unguarded their left flank and I moved out from the bunker and the hill one full platoon with a MG attached, and maneuvered them avoiding enemy reactive fire lines, until I placed them on their back and then exterminated all the German in the rough terrain and the house. The American reinforcements were not needed. Game over.
Crossfire can be very fast and mobile at moments as other games cannot. You have to pay attention to fire lines and must manoeuvre to outflank the enemy, using smoke, suppressive fire or diversion strategies. Although it is a bit abstract I quite like it and I will play it again soon. I just wish I had two companies of each instead one.