Gamestorm 2011

Mostly board games this year, and almost exclusively with Carl and Phil... Carl brought his wife, Chris, who was a very good sport all weekend. I forgot my cameras, so the photos are from my camera phone....

Friday, Phil introduced us to a game he's been playing with his daughter and her fiancee, A Touch of Evil. Pretty cards, lots of characters and opportunity for roleplay in a early 1800's horror milieu. It's not about winning and losing, it's how you play the game.....

Saturday started with a zombie game from the same company (Flying Frog Productions), The Last Night On Earth. Rather more literal and colorful game board, with some modular variation, lots of stock characters and plenty of zombies, followed with a trip to Powell's.... I should not be allowed to go to bookstores.

Saturday night was the annual Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition:

The game ended with no bragging rights and an extended recrimination phase..... Chris actually played as the US, built lots of stuff and had launched Operation Torch with substantial forces. But the Italian Navy was going to put a stop to the naval side with a side operation to take out the uncovered air power in Gibralter. The Russian front was a bloody mess with no clear winner but the Japanese had taken China and were ready to move on the Russian's naked backside and the German industrial capacity was still at a high level. The British had strength in India to argue the point with the Japanese, but my money would be on the Germans eventually burying the Russians in an avalanche of tanks and infantry backed by air power. Also, the Japanese had landed a powerful invasion force backed by carriers...in Alaska. This was bound to distract the US player from Operation Torch. See, extended recrimination phase..... ;o)

Sunday was devoted to Hordes of the Things and the drive home. Here's a pic of Phil's new Beastmen, another gorgeous army fielded by him and not done justice by the camera phone.... According to Phil this was one of those nobody-makes-a-mistake balanced-on-a-knife-edge near run things that give great satisfaction to gamers....


Meanwhile, on the next table over, Chris was winning her first Hordes of the Things battle by defeating Phil's Goblins under my command with my Orcs.... It would have been humiliating, but they were Goblins, after all, a flawed tool at best.

Desolation Con - November 20, 2010

Desolation Con 2010 has to rate as a general success. Lots of gamers had lots of fun, many playing new things. Gamemasters had new gamers and their tables were filled with joy.

Here's some pictures from the basement of the Richland Odd Fellows Lodge.

A crowdshot from the last session of the day.




Gearing up for Hordes of the Things. I ended up with eight players on four battle fields, some of them entirely new to even the notion of miniatures battles....



Best plane photo of the day....



Space: 1889 RPG "Rescue the Princess"



War Eagles presents Wooden Ships and Iron Men

Enfilade HOTT Tournament

I should have had this post up a month ago, but various activities and, well, lazy.....

The Enfilade Hordes of the Things Tournament 2010 had eight entries this year, up from six players in the tournament two years ago. I remembered the camera this year, but didn't take a lot of photos.

Results:

Round one: We laid out the battlefields with some paired armies and threw all the armies in a hat and each player drew an army.

Tom Condon v. George Allen, George was victorious with a general kill and 4 additional army points
Chuck Morris v. Henry Thomson, Jr., Henry was victorious losing only a hero to Chuck's losses of a Knight General, a horde, a paladin and a shooter.
Jeff Condon v. Phil Williams, Jeff was victorious with another general kill, Phil losing 9 additional army points
Buddy Scott v. Joel Hahn, Joel was victorious over noob Buddy Scott, Joel having finished second in the tournament two years ago.

Round Two: Losers chose an army and then the winners drew an opponent.

Jeff Condon v. Tom Condon, yet another general kill for the win, Tom setting a record for hard luck this year, losing this time to his own brother, adding insult to injury.
Phil Williams v. George Allen, in a clash of my oldest friends, Phil abused George by throwing an aerial hero behind his line and engaging the hero general before the battle lines could be joined. George lost, game over. Wow.
Chuck Monson v. Henry Thomson, Jr., and with still another general kill after Henry's god wandered off, this time Chuck with the win.
Buddy Scott v. Joel Hahn, another rematch of the novice vs experienced player, I don't remember the details, but same result.

This consumed our time allotment and the tables were unavailable and the players were committed to other games, so the two undefeated players, Jeff Condon and Joel Hahn made arrangements for a playoff on an open table on Sunday.


Jeff Chose the Goblin army and Joel chose Elves, the Goblin army defending. The experienced players arranged their lines and advanced to the fray, with some maneuvering that ended up with both lines locked in a huge melee. The opposing hero generals ended up opposing each other and the result of a clash of heroes is always one of them loses.... It was Jeff, this time, but really, that could go either way, every time.


There was a lot of fun had.....

RadCon 5B

By all accounts it was a huge success....

Some pictures:

Attendance was down about 5 percent, but you wouldn't know it from the game room....



The Space:1889 Screw Galley HMS Timbonin was a good draw, especially for Hill Martians....



We played Wings of War off and on all weekend.

Retitled due to comment spam

UPDATE: For some reason this post has become a magnet for comment spam. I've had to reject a comment just about every week since February...

The family had a pretty good Christmas, Grandma Joan came down to stay for the holiday, the tree was thoroughly looted by all and everybody got stuff that the wanted. Or needed. The following fits in both categories:

Ideal for the hobbyist toy soldier painter, this is on wheels so it can be moved, has lots of short drawers and the top two have eighteen compartment dividers. Plus the fold outs can be used to add workspace. I found it at Fred Meyer while killing time when Jen was singing Christmas carols with the Greenwood Players. Had to have it.

Speaking of had to have it, I found this at the same time. It's a little on the small size for 25mm, but it should convert nicely to a Space:1889 light screw galley. Add a Nordenfeldt and some crew and the propeller off a balsa and rubber band plane and we have air support at last....

New work

In the couple of weeks after Game Day and Before Tactical Solutions Gaming, I finished up the All-Aerial Hordes of the Things Army. The army list is 2 Aerial Heroes (6 AP each), 5 stands of fliers (2 AP Each) and and 2 stands of Lurkers (1 AP each). Alternately, the army can be fielded as 1 Aerial Hero (6 AP) and 1 Magician (4 AP), 5 stands of fliers (2 AP) and 2 stands of Beasts (2 AP). You could also make it just the two aerial heroes and 6 stands of fliers, since everybody but the AH's has wings... The second configuration would give a little better bad going options.

The Full Army.

The alternate Beasts or Lurkers, there are two stands of these.

The command stand with a leftover medieval oriflamme, Duc of Orleans, IIRC. I used it because it has a swan (wings, y'know) on it....

The Female Aerial Hero, or alternately a Magician. The figure is from the Anima Tactics figures, painted per the drawing supplied with the figure.

The Male Aerial Hero, again from Anima Tactics, painted per the drawing supplied with the figure, because I lack imagination.... ;o)

Tactical Solutions Gaming 2009

I've been painting and basing some miscellaneous new stuff, of which I have not yet taken photos to share over the last few weeks, getting ready for Tactical Solutions Gaming 2009 which happened October 9, 10 and 11 in Spokane. I loaded up some new music on my MP3 player for the trip and when I set off, the MP3 player randomly queued up Beethoven's Ode to Joy.... Auspicious, no?

I had a boatload of fun playing and presenting games and spent a lot of time photo documenting the event. Herewith, some favorite photos:

Mark Rounds awaits the first gamer of the day....

An example of Mike Clinton's new Caproni 3 engine bombers for Watch Your 6.

The gaggle of Caproni's thunder overhead under assault by German fighters.

Tank columns from the big multiplayer Flames of War on Sunday.

A failed assault from the Flames of War Tournament. First the tanks got popped, then the follow up infantry assault got equally massacred.... I suppose you had to be there to see it unfold. Gruesomely.

Zulu Hordes vs. Victorian British in Hordes of the Things. This is the second wave of Zulus. After killing at least the every stand in the Zulu army at least once and watching the new hordes forming up to come across the table yet a third time, the British commander withdrew in disgust.

I don't think I had any fun this weekend. I don't think.... ;o)

Why I like Hordes of the Things

Where else could you see this:

Update

I know I haven' t been keeping my blog up lately, but I haven't been completely useless. Here ar the completed Hill Martians. It's been hard to watch the Mariner's, high expectations have been alarmingly disappointed and so progress was much slower than it should have been.

Last weekend we went up to Mom's cabin on Lake Coeur d'Alene. My pile o' blocks looks just like it did when I left it, should be good for quite a while.








Mom had just returned from a trip to California and a visit with older brother Bruce. He sent us this gift made with his own hands:

















And this is what it takes to actually qualify as a blowhard in this family.... ;o)































And, of course, every trip needs a visit to a tourist attraction, this one is in Worley, Idaho.

Just because --- Pirates!

More Enfilade

This was the game I had the most fun in at Enfilade this year, The Sword and the Flame on Mars, using TSATF with vehicle modifications for Space 1889. It wouldn't be Space1889 without a flyer, this is a custom conversion using a model of Jabba the Hutt's sailing barge as a base.... There was a lot of nice conversion work on the table.

The armor contingent includes a pair of spider walkers converted from the Burger King Wild, Wild West toys and some WWI tank miniatures with Steam Engine fittings added on.

Ooops. The natives have an armored unit in the woods. This evidently is the only unconverted vehicle on the field, something purpose built for steampunk games. It popped out of the woods and shot up my Martian sepoys, the spider walkers followed it back into the woods where they supported a British infantry unit against a civilized native company (they had a few shield guns, infantry with a musket that pokes out of a shield, supported by lots of hacker weapons). Between splitting fire to support the infantry and firing on a native muzzle-loading cannon supporting the native armored walker, one was destroyed and one was incapacitated and they failed to further incapacitate the native armored walker. The native foot units were decimated, but the infantry ultimately ran the survivors of the British infantry off.

The goal of the scenario is to rescue these guys. They moved away from their broken tank, triggering the swarm of natives that pretty much destroyed them.

And the armored units are too far away or out of line of sight, unable to support them.

The referee ruled it a marginal Colonial victory due to some successes and we apparently got farther down the table than anybody previously, but I Don't Think So. We failed the primary mission and without a good bit of time to do more damage to the natives, I don't think we have really impressed them so much.... That's my tank and the remains of my Martian Sepoys behind it in the center left of the photo. After being ambushed by a native rifle unit twice their size and the native armor unit, they are under 1/2 strength and next turn they decamped. The turn after that, they rolled a 20 to rally in the presence of the force commander.... I figure they are shedding uniform items and planning a religious conversion. ;o) I let Kimberlyn run the tank for a turn or two, she rolls better than I do.

Some notes from Enfilade 2008

Much Fun Was Had By All

Never Give A Fifteen Year Old A Tank and a machine gun unless mayhem and destruction are a goal.... The teenager in question was Kimberlyn. Because she has an upcoming unit on the Russian Revolution, the battle below between White and Red Russians (and some uncommitted units that committed at an uncomfortable moment) in the Russian Civil War was a natural. I got her started and wandered off. When I came back, her tank, MG and rifle company had annihilated two rifle companies, a mounted company and a MG. The MG and the remainder of the rifles (she did take casualties) were holding the right flank, while the tank (below) had wandered off to the center of the battle field (the right flank is directly below the tank off picture) where it was still killing Commies.


Never Leave an Entire Flank of the Stronghold Undefended at Deployment. Note the two heroes and rider supports approaching the undefended flank at full speed. It went badly....


These existing light pictures looked much better on the little monitor.... Had a little tripod and a timer and everything. Obviously I have more to learn....

And another one gone....

Radcon has come and gone yet again, and much fun was had by all. HOTT GotS went well, and looked good, but I only took one photo as I was having too much fun and forgot:

During a lull, Rick Ingram and I took out a couple of biplanes and Rick's Richthofen shot the ... out of my Rickenbacker, reversing history.

My big event was Stones River and I took a panorama of the table at setup:


Lots of experienced gamers involved, Phil and Terry gave poor McCook to Joe who had helped playtest at War Eagles and Bryan, (a new guy) and Terry's buddy Kayle had the Confederates.

McCook got buried in the first turns by a flood of gray, unhampered this time by bad command die rolls.

Terry tried something I've thought should have been tried before and continued Crittendon's assault across the river and was in a fair way to annihilating Breckenridge when the Recrimination phase ensued (we ran out of time). But with McCook annihilated without extracting much in the way of casualties from Hardee, I have to wonder how well Thomas (in a much more open field than Chickamauga) could have stood against Hardee AND Polk with no help available but the Union Cavalry....

We had a lot of newbs for the HOTT Tournament, so it was more like open gaming than tournament, but Hunter looks like a likely recruit for starting an army of his own, and another player whose name I don't remember signed up on the HOTT list and is looking for a copy of the rule book.... Good signs. I have posted many pictures of the armies before and the only new one available was Andrew's insect army which still has not seen the elephant, so I didn't go find the camera for the event.

Laura asked me to take on Gaming Chair for next year, apparently for lack of stupidity on the part of other available parties, so I have an official position on the concom again. I foresee hate and discontent, and then another successful con....

Andrew's Bug Army

Regular readers may recall that I promised Andrew I would build an army for Sparky, his Aerial Hero, to command. Herewith are the bugs....

The front rank is a Scorpion (Blade), a giant spider (Shooter), a giant ant (Behemoth) and another giant spider (Shooter). The second rank is four spider Hordes and the rear rank is the aerial contingent, two flyers flanking Sparky.

Andrew woke up and followed the army like a moth to a flame....

A picture worth a thousand words....

HOTT GotS Ready to Go

The armies for HOTT GotS are done, completa, fin... On the right are the Old Glory figures as Lee the Magician and Grant the Cleric. The Union army has some available alternatives, you can choose from generic infantry as Spear with some Zouaves or Western troops in Hardee hats rather than kepis, and a stand of black troops as Warband, any six stands out of the available nine.... Hidden behind the Zouaves is Berdan's Sharpshooters as Sneakers, giving you an option of two artillery or one artillery and the Sharpshooters. The Cavalry on the left are either one stand of Riders or one stand of Knights if you use the stand with GA Custer on it....

The Confederate army doesn't have any options, seven stands of AK-47 armed infantry as Blades; one stand of artillery; one Lurker (Mosby's Partisan Rangers on the left in the photo) to make the AP come out at 24; one stand of Knights with JEB Stuart in command and Lee as the Magician....

Now all I need is to come up with something for a stronghold....