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!

Painting the last and end of my army

I have just sold both my WWII 10mm German and Russian armies to the same customer who understandably asked me to finish painting six vehicles I have never finished because I am that lazy.

So here they are, after playing German for years without big cats because I did not felt like painting them, I finally painted them for this customer, and now they are leaving me without a single game. I just hope their new owner gives them many battles!

Two Tiger I from Minifigs

German officer standing next for size comparison

Two Panthers from Pendraken

Again, a size comparative shot, this time from above

And finally two German trucks from Pendraken as well.

I hope the customer is happy with the final result and that the parcel arrives safely without incidents.

Blood Eagle High Adventure

Having sold all my Vikings long ago and itching for a BE game I dusted off some Fantasy minis for a quick game. As I was playing solo and chose one figure to represent me and as I did not wanted him to die by a sudden stroke, I created a new attribute yet to be named.

The idea is to give the miniature a second and a third opportunity to live for another day and keep playing in the same encounter. For this I decided that his Fate would be rising at the rate of the difference of the failed roll to save and his current Fate; and when he reaches Fate 10 he is definitely out of combat. For example, if my hero has Fate 4+ and is hurt by a spear, he would need a 6+ to save the hit. Let's say he scored 4, then instead of getting out of combat he would result wounded and with a new Fate of 6+.

Something similar can be achieved with the Hero attribute and the Hero points but it's not exactly the same; and actually that could be combined with this new attribute!

This game is based on the scenario Vengeance. A group of Barbarians are chasing a raiding Orc warband who just sacked, burned and killed their farmsteads. I did not put all the Orcs on the board but they were coming out randomly. The wooden square you see at the hill represents the entrance to a cave.

 KILL EM ALL!

 The character representing me is the one with the red chit as he has just received his first wound. He needed a 5+ to save but scored 4+ so now he has a light wound and a new Fate of 5+. Otherwise he would have died at the first strike.

 A group of Goblins ambush the Barbarians.

Nice people, huh?

 The berserk went to help but was slain by the cunning brute. It seems his shield is giving a hungry look at the berserk ;-)

 Suddenly everybody charged and the slaughter commenced.

 The Orc leader is down. Two-handed axe baby, YEAH!

Aaand his cousin chopped down one of the Goblin archers on the hill. More YEAH!

But the tide starts to turn. - Frrresh meat!

Alas! Our leader is surrounded by greenskins and he is wounded!

 Thank to all Gods his brothers quickly come to help him.

But lo he is wounded again and one of his comrades falls dead!

And then another one is down and moreover, he breaks his sword and has to fight with his dagger!

 Our hero kills the last Orc and then one Goblin is killed by arrows from his kin.

The ones who killed their mate though they don't seem too worry or sad about it. Actually they look they having a lot of fun!

But fanciful Fortune rolled her dice and our hero ended gutted out by the last critter. He needed to score 7+ to save (late Fate 6+ from his two lesser wounds plus -1 from the sword) and scored 1; so his Fate raised to 12 and he went with Crom. 

I think the new attribute works well but I will keep testing it in my solo adventures. 

If you are interested, here are the stats I used for Barbarians and Orcs:

Barbarian: Fate 5+,  FV 2 , SV 1, Speed 1.

Barbarian hero: Fate 4+, FV 3, SV 1, Speed 2, Leadership 1 plus his new attribute.

Orc: Fate 5+, FV 2, SV 1, Speed 0.

Goblin: Fate 6+, FV 0, SV 0, Speed 0.

Orc Boss: Fate4+, FV2, Sv 1, Speed 0, Leadership 1, Tough.

I gave the Orcs and Goblins a new attribute I called Evil. Being evil means you must fire at enemies in combat with your allies if you don't have any other target to shoot at. And in this game this happened a lot!

Armour and equipment what they wear (WYSIWYG).

Numidians

It's summer time and I am having plenty of time to finish some projects. After painting six points of Romans for SAGA now I finished my Numidian small allied army for my Romans for the The Art of War rules.

Not much really, but with one blister of cavalry and one of infantry plus one elephant give miniatures enough to play as an ally army.

Full army with encampment

Late Romans for SAGA 2

After playing SAGA 1, quit and sold all my Foundry Viking army, I have started again but this time on the cheap. I bought one box of Gripping Beast plastic Late Roman infantry that gives me five points of warriors for SAGA, and after that one box of plastic cavalry that gives me three points more. Eight points in total with just two boxes.

So I received the cavalry box and quickly painted five riders for one unit of hearthguard and the leader on horse, to have a six points army to play SAGA again. Right now I am using them as Last Romans or Byzantines, but later I will be using them as Romano British for the Arturus and Aetius supplement.

This picture below shows what it gives you the infantry box, five points army.

I gave them base colour, acrylic bitumen of Judea and then quick lights from waist upwards with the same base colours. Shields are LMB decals.

Two units of eight warriors with archers from the box.

I used LBM decals for the Gripping Beast metal figures which resulted a bit smaller than for their plastic range, so I had to paint the outer borders to cover the whole shield as you can notice from the picture below.

Here a picture of the six point army I am playing with at the moment but I am painting another unit of cavalry!

Another caption of cavalry next to infantry and mounted on Sally Forth movement trays.