Operation Squad. Second game.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.