Tring Big Game

I have spent a very enjoyable day at Tring today playing VBCW with some gaming chums from GWP. The game I played was a 2 a side game of Anglican League (me and Ook from GWP) versus Alan (from the local club) and Andy (a newbie to wargaming but a fine addition to our group none the less).

Some pictures below of the game, most of which are a bit arty farty as I got distracted and didn't take many wide shots of the actual game.

My supply wagon in parked up behind the front lines. 

A squad of my infantry move to secure a small farm on the outskirts of town, the chap nearest the camera is there NCO who took 3 turns to jump the hedge while his troops made it in one go. These guys were cut down in two turns of shooting not long after this. 

 One of Ook's Anglican League on the edge of the village preparing to advance on a small orchard occupied (sort of) by Royalist Infantry.

Royalists prepare to cross the same courtyard as my troops. They never actually crossed but took pot shots at me from the edge for a couple of turns. 

The recon shed on the edge of town. It fired twice and ended up jumpy and then suppressed for most of the game. Can't blame the commander I guess he is sitting in a potting shed with wheels. 

My LMG gunner prepares to cut down a Royalist rifleman. Well I say that, what actually happened was that the LMG gunner fired for three turns, and the rifleman fired for three turns and no one died despite us being 3 feet apart . The game ended shortly thereafter. nice and cinematic finish though. 

Bit of a sniffle

Saturday just gone I spent a very enjoyable days war gaming at a small event organised by Mort from GWP. The games were all VBCW and the goal was for the Anglican League to push through the defence lines of the SFF into a village they had been using as a raiding post. I was playing Anglican league and whilst I had a fun day I did not fair particularly well in terms of the battle.

Pulling some unfortunate "Random Event" cards my force ended up dropping dead as a result of an outbreak of the Spanish flu, this resulted in a fair amount of my force retiring from the battle each turn. In addition to that half way through the battle I pulled another random event card which resulted in me losing comms to some of my remaining units. Sufficed to say while I managed to whittle down the opposition and knock out a tankette my sickly army did not make it onto the main table.

Still a great game played against, and with some top chaps. A couple of pictures below (I forgot to take many during the day so these are the best ones).

Playing against Ook from GWP, this is the result of his first shot against my units with a mortar which was being fired from off table as support. 5 out of a 10 man squad wiped out!

Later in the game, I manage to knock out Ooks tankette with a lucky mortar round that scattered off his infantry and onto the back of the tank. Two lucky dice rolls later its main gun was destroyed and the tanks crew were both wounded.

My mortar team moves up to inspect its  work after Ook has withdrawn his forces off the table to the main SFF base/village.

Pulpy goodness!

My wife and I played our first wargame together today! I have been badgering my good lady, who always goes on about us "doing more together", for some time to have a go at wargaming as she said the pictures from the last big game looked like good fun.

So having done a fair bit of research I thought Strange Aeon's would be a good game for us as theres lots of variety in models, and scenarios. I downloaded the demo rules which only requires 5 models to have at each other with.

I played the goodies, threshold agents out to save the world, and the wife played the baddies, lurkers who are cultists and demons trying to undertake nefarious plan's and so forth. The demo is a straight up fight between a quite tough threshold agent and a slightly weaker counterpart, versus a cult leader, minion and a zombie! I didn't have any zombie models so the GW skeleton had to stand in.

The game started quite slowly with us both starting on the furthest table edges from each other. We spent a couple of turns moving towards each other before clashing by the T junction in the centre of the table, near the old barn.

This was my first rules challenge, the demo rules don't have rules for climbing and my missus wanted to pop one of her chaps onto the roof of the barn, after a quick think I decided we would just role a d6 and she would have to get 4 or more to succeed, with 1 being a fumble resulting in a fall from height. Rolling a 2 the evil cultist neither climbed nor fell and instead spent a turn studying the side of the building and its interesting cracks!

Meanwhile I maneuvered my lead character round the side of the building and blazed away at the cultist, after 2 turns of shooting I couldn't seem to hit the bugger and the return fire was equally in effective. However I failed to notice that my wife's zombie had stumbled up behind me. Despite being able to fend him off in hand to hand combat, the horror of being faced with the undead was to much and my glorious leader failed his resolve test and collapsed catatonic at the zombies feet. This resulted in him taking a major injury and being removed from play.

Down to one model I moved round the side of the barn and manged to cut down my wife's cult leader and minion in a couple of turns of hand to hand combat. All the time with the zombie shuffling closer, I moved my last man towards the zombie and combat was joined!

Again though my chap couldn't stand the horrors of the undead and turned and fled an inch in the opposite direction, what a wimp! My wife had the next go and walked her zombie back into hand to hand combat, this threw up another rules question, I felt that as my guy was being hit from behind and running from the undead that he wouldn't be as able to defend himself so decided the zombie should get +1 in combat. Despite this the undead  seemed unable to hit my stumbling model, I presume a lack of eyes was proving troublesome, however as I was back in hand to hand I had to take another resolve test, which of course I failed, so my last guy collapsed catatonic at the feet of the zombie and took a major injury.

Victory for the wife. All in all a fun game and quite quick as well. I very much look forward to trying out the full rules when they appear in the post. Most importantly the wife also enjoyed herself, so an all round success.