To the strongest!

Time ago I finished a 10mm Roman army to play The Art of War, that ruleset so awfully translated into Spanish language, but I never got to play it with them though I have played Art of War with friends' armies a few times.

Today me and a friend tried To the strongest! an intelligent ruleset, easy to remember and fun and fast to play, which also gives you realistic feel of how ancient armies fought, or so I think.

We played and introductory game of 100 points armies on a plain. Gallic vs. Marian Roman. We made a few mistakes, some of them in designing our own armies, but the game went smooth, we loved it and we are planning of playing it as often as possible.

Here you can see some pictures of the game. Romans are from Magister Militum and Gauls from Pendraken (the old range).

Gauls attacking the Roman line

Romans waited for the clash and successfuly rejected the attack, disordering some warbands.

Here the Gallic army had already lost a pair of warbands and its camp had been taken by Numidian light cavalry, plus all its left flank was being threatened by drilled legionnaires. The Gallic player did not buy any cavarly unit and dearly paid for that, quickly loosing his camp and left flank.

The warband with the Gallic general was already disordered and then I charged with my general on its flank but picked up and ace. Being the general I could pick up another card but it was an ace again!

We lost a lot of time setting up the battle so we run out of time and could not finish the game, but the Gauls were doomed. Hopefully they will claim for vengeance next week.

By the way, this will be the last post for this year, so let me wish you all fellow wargamers Happy New Year and many battles to play!

Cleanse and Burn

Another testing of ZoG. This time I chose the mission "Cleanse and Burn" from the original Space Hulk board game from Games Workshop as I wanted to try some fighting in the tunnels. The objectives are burning the last two rooms with flamethrowers. No turn limit.

Instead of using Marines and Genestealers I deployed marines and aliens with profiles for the film "Aliens". Also, as I did not have figures to represent them, I used missile launchers as proxy for flamethrowers.

Turn zero with the two squads ready to rumble.

Troops used their two actions to rush forward, passing the first crossroads but leaving the two SAWs on opportunity fire to cover those corners.

The two groups generated no enemies so far.

But in turn three things changed and I lost my first soldier.

These two critters could not reach hand to hand combat and took cover behind the barrels...

 And they were fried afterwards.

Turn 5 of the game and bugs kept coming.

With the new rule of "gregarious enemies" they were piling up fast

The marine with the SAW had the option to fall back to break line of sight but did not want to risk more creatures disappearing and later joining to newer groups so he stepped forward and fired, killing three of them on automatic fire.

 Things were getting rough for both squads.

But they could break contact and fire back with good results.

First room burned.

SAW guy with supporting opportunity fire from two comrades down the aisle and out of the picture, managed to kill all the swarm except one. This is turn 7 and the last of the game.

Burning the second room. I lost three marines in total, and achieved objectives on turn 7.

 

After that, I played again the same mission but this time changing the Aliens fixed generation points for hot zones (they raise the enemy threat level when your soldiers are close) and it turned nastier and I lost seven marines but I could burn both rooms in turn 7 again. 

All in all good gaming and testing with a lot of tweaking of the rules afterwards.