A new SAGA unit.

I have just finished a second unit of cavalry for my Late Roman / Romano British SAGA army with the Gripping Beast's plastics.

I swapped the spear for the dragon standard from the infantry box.

The varnish turned white where it pooled down. You can see it around the heads of the horse and the standard, as well as the neck of the rider :(

A general picture of the two units plus the commander.

A powerful unit of eight hearthguards.

Awaken

I've just finished painting a batch of Aliens from Khurasan and was itching to play with them so I put to test again my home rules "Zap or Glory" in a small skirmish.

The action starts with the doctor, his daughter, his personal bodyguard and a team of mercenaries escorting them, with four men watching the vehicles and two more accompanying them to the entrance of an old and forgotten temple lost in the middle of a jungle of a dark planet; but the temple is not deserted...

First encounter happens automatically but number of creatures and location is generated per rules. Five daemons emerge from the temple with murdering intentions.

The bodyguard throws a HE grenade that kills three of them and the two mercenaries move back and fire without effect while the good doctor and his daughter run away to the transports.

The two surviving daemons charge and kill the bodyguard.

 But with all that noise more are coming. Behind you!

Luckily another grenade puts them off the game and in the meantime doctor and daughter safely arrives the transports.

While waiting for their comrades to reach the vehicles, three more daemons charge them from the bushes but they were on overwatch and could react on time.

Run Forest, run!

In the end they managed to kill all the daemons without having more casualties but run out of ammo.

So the final score was 3 humans vs. 12 daemons down, but shooting was mostly on open ground and with very lucky dice, so it was closer than it looks.

I had to change and add quite a few things in the rules but all in all ZoG is progressing nicely. You can see in my blog other tests with ZoG, an X-Com encounter and an adaptation of Assault on Bunker 17 from Laserburn rules.
Still a lot to test though. I wish I had more spare time.

Crossfire with FOW minis

Almost nine years have passed since the last time I played Crossfire and here we are again but this time with FOW armies. As everybody in these parts have a FOW army I decided to buy a second-hand one and try to lure some disenchanted ex-FOW players into Crossfire.

This report you can see here is our second game which we played in the local shop El Kraken using its boards and terrain, and so far my victim is loving the game! and I hope to draw a few players more into the dark side.

We played the second generic scenario in the rules at level company, Bridgehead. I play '44 Germans and my opponent his British paratroopers; he defended. Germans deployed at the bottom, in the ruins, British at the top, in front of them. They used two barbed wires on the left and two hidden minefields on the right. I have to capture and hold for five consecutive initiative phases four pieces of terrain in his half of the table.

 Starting of turn one. The calm before the storm.

Closer picture. As you can see by the markings in the back of the bases, 1st platoon with PC+2 and HMG is on the left, a reserve platoon at the back , CC and HMG in the middle and out of sight on the right and lined behind the hedge, the 3rd platoon.

Closer picture of my FOW bargain Germans 1st platoon (PC+2 plus 2 squads). I bought them unpainted so the painting you see is all mine.

British player advanced his two unattached HMGs from the fields to the hedges and I cross fired them with my 1st platoon and suppressed one HMG and pinned another squad; then I withdrew my platoon in reserve and then I sneaked them behind the hedges on the left flank and assault the position.

I won the close combat on the HMG but my squad resulted pinned and couldn't reach the other enemy infantry squad. What you see on the left is his 2" mortar FO that later I automatically eliminated in close combat when I first destroyed his surviving infantry squad. Second objective taken; the first one was a mined building in front of my troops that can barely be seen at top right of the picture.

  

Meanwhile on the right flank I fired several times my 81mm mortar with devastating effects and took the opportunity to risk another close combat assault on the forest which after some struggle and back and forth action I managed to hold. Third objective taken.

With three objectives taken I bombed the hill in the centre with my both 81mm and 120mm mortars and then assaulted it.

I took the hill (objective four) and then he received 12 points platoon reinforcement but he couldn't do anything with them as the rest of his forces were practically annihilated and every time he tried to jump over the hedge I suppressed most of his squads until we reach five initiative phases and Germans won the match.

We both had great fun and very good vibrations with this rule set, I had to re-learn everything as if it was the first time, and my opponent was talking about having more games and about involving some of his friends in it, so it was a great success on all accounts!

Long life Crossfire!