A snowy day of 40mm AWI!

Well, my son and I had a great game of 40mm AWI today!   Here he is, with his American force!

His rifles killed a lot of my jaegers right away!  Things just went downhill from there...

Here he is, preparing to roll for more of his muskets!  His accuracy was uncanny!

Look at that victorious smile!  Most of his militia survived, as well as most of his continentals.  BTW, he recommended that Washington and Cornwallis should let a unit move AND shoot.  Already coming up with rules!

Dash Rendar, for Armada... all finished!

Hey all!

Okay, I got another hero squadron all painted up... this time, it is Dash Rendar in the Outrider.  It paints pretty similar to the Falcon, as you might expect.  Unfortunately I had to take the photo with my iPhone, as I seem to have lost the memory card and the card reader for my camera... I put it "someplace safe" and then promptly lost it.  Nevermind that we have possibly six drawers in the ENTIRE house... I still can't find them:(

Some moderns shots, including new cars

Hey all!

Well, a buddy came by, and while we intended to play a bunch of the moderns game we only played a bit... although we DID do a bunch of work adding some cars to the collection!

He had bought a HUGE pack of, like, 60 cheap plastic model cars for his table.  He gave me four, because he figured he had enough and it seemed like four was all I needed for such a tiny square.  But MAN they help!

We did two rusty and beat up... this one with the tires missing, and the other one with the tires flat and a few bullet holes through it.

I just liked this shot of the blinds, ready for action:)

Here you can see our squads entering the table on the first square... you can see one bullet riddled car ahead of them.  Wonder what happened to the driver... those bullet holes in the windshield look ominous.

Squads continue up the block.

There was a possible IED in the room... the Bomb Squad guy moved towards it behind a white car, while the rest of the team kept a respectful distance.

But both squads were engaged by a large team of fedayeen up on a nearby rooftop!  Steaking RPGs missed, and a squad of marines quickly moved up the alleyways across the street and stormed the building, killing all of the enemy.  One marine was hit, but was quickly patched up and back on his feet.

The bomb squad guy checked out the trash... turns out it was nothing!

Star Wars Armada Shapeways Shuttle!

Well, my first Shapeways ship arrived!  I got a pack of Shuttles from Mel's Miniatures... I got a variety pack, although in retrospect I wish I had just gotten Shuttles.  I basically just wanted the imperial shuttle!  It painted up pretty well, although the phone photo (can't find my camera card reader!) is pretty bad!

I'll get photos when the rest are painted up.

NJ Game Club game day!

Hey all!

Well, we had our latest game day with the NJ

I ran one game; a run through of my moderns game!  Now, until now it had only been played in the friendly confines of my games room with a few close buddies; this was the first time it was played by other folks!  Still, it generally managed to hold together, and I got some good input from Augie and DJ!

The scenario we rolled up was a humvee evac.  It was a LONG game (3 blocks up and 3 blocks over, the max you could get).  DJ took a Stryker and three riflemen, and Augie took a humvee and full squad of infantry.

Above is one of the blocks; it looked tricky, because of the IED right in the middle of the road and the blinds on either side of the road, but one blind turned out to be bad guys who were just immediately toasted by every American gun.  Then the Americans rolled through the market, simply AVOIDING the road, and rolled off the board, leaving a bunch of enemies across the street out of range and out of options!

This was another block... again, a bunch of potential bad guys on the way out!

This one was a bit hairy, as a BUNCH of elite, fanatical bad guys appeared on the roofs all around.  Thankfully the hurridly-aimed RPGs missed, and the heavy machine guns of the vehicles put out SO much fire that the bad guys had to duck down.  The Americans then stormed the building, grenades blasting doors of hinges, and they cleared the building with only one casualty, who the medic patched up without too much issue.

Here is the final board; you can see the humvee objective in the center.  At first this one looked BAD; there were five enemy blinds on BOTH sides of the board as SOON as the good guys entered, with an IED in the way!  But FOUR of them turned out to be nothing but curious civilians and barking dogs!

While SOME bad guys did end up flooding in as the Americans tried to evac the humvee, they didn't get much done, as the Americans were well established and had a lot of overwatch positions!

So overall a successful game!  A younger game did take over one squad halfway through and did an admirable job... always good to encourage the young folks!

There was also a large Aurelian game being played, with a lot of newbies involved!  Here is the board... Persian line on the left, Romans on the right.

A shot of the dense Persian formation.

The Romans hammer into the Persian left flank...

Meanwhile, on the Persian right, the Roman light cavalry does a neat dance, keeping the Persian light cavalry occupied for a good chunk of the battle!

Another shot of the cavalry-rich Persian right flank.

A Roman formation closes in on the Persian left...

... which forms up and awaits its end!

In the center, archers from both sides exchange fire.

The Romans begin to hit the Persian left.

Meanwhile the Persian light cavalry has largely wiped out the Roman cavalry, but they've spent the whole battle tied up!

The Persian line tries to hold stead in the center...

As the Persian cavalry tries to turn the Roman flank!  But it turned out to be took late, as the Roman attack on the Persian left simply caved it in... the Roman troops are generally excellent when they get stuck in, and they cut through the lower quality Persian troops!

Oh, and I thought I would share one more photo; my son, helping me set up a 10mm Napoleonic table.  He helped me for a good long while, outlining fields with hedgerows and helping to scatter the ground-scatter.  At one point I told him it was my dream to have my son help me set up toy soldiers, and he responded with a huge grin and "Daddy, dat's da best dream EVER!"

A pretty game of "Aurelian"

Hey all!

Well, got in a game of "Aurelian" today, which was good fun!

The battle was Romans (my side) against Persians.  It was a six man game; we adjusted by just using one deck per side, but then adding a second set of "generic" cards to each hand.

The first few shots are before we deployed for the game, and we just had all the troops set up in their respective groups of same units... so they look big and bold, but each stand was actually a unit, once we started playing!

It was a tricky game... I've now played Romans vs Persians a few times, and to be honest, I find it VERY frustrating.  With the Romans you have lots of great infantry, but trying to get to grips with the best archers in the game while keeping your flanks free of enemy cavalry is just not something I've figured out yet.  It doesn't help that I've gone up against two of the stronger and more wily cavalry specialists in the area:(

This game saw the Romans basically set up in a long line, with one flank anchored on some rough ground and held with archers and elite infantry, and the other anchored with cavalry.  The Persians responded with cavalry at both ends and a TON of infantry (excellent archers, cheap infantry, and elephants) in the center.  The Persians, rather predictably, used their cavalry to pick at a flank (damn horse archers are hard to deal with:( ) and ran their archers and elephants up the middle!  We eventually charged down at them, but it was, I think, too late to achieve victory.

Anyway... enough talk; here are some photos!

Some Roman auxiliaries.

The Roman veteran legions are looking for some enemies!

Some massed Persian archers.

Some light archers, fighting for the Romans.

War elephants!

One of the leaders of the Persian infantry.

The Romans are ready!

Last shot of them all together, before the fight...

The game!  Romans are deploying to their left flank to hold it, and then planning to use cavalry to hold the far flank.

Roman veteran legions begin moving to the left flank.  The Romans have a rule that requires them to initially deploy their elites nearer the center of the field, as the Romans actually did.  The Persians have no such qualms!

The Persian war elephants are backed by tons of crappy infantry...

And flanked by a LOAD of quality archers!

The view from behind the Roman lines.

The elephants move up, under relatively ineffective fire from the Roman archers.

They continue forward...

And up the slope!  One elephants is badly hurt and panics, running off, but the others keep grinding the Romans down...

Meanwhile, in the center, the Roman heavy cavalry attacks the Persian archers, who shoot a number of valiant Romans out of their saddles!

The center is a mess!

Several units of archers are smashed under the hooves of the Roman heavy cavalry, but some of the Romans are actually beaten back!

Finally the Romans come down of the hill, but it might be too little, too late.

I had to leave, so missed the end, but it looked bad for the Romans:(