GASLIGHT

Any time I throw out, "what do you guys want to game tonight?", the answer is usually GASLIGHT. This scenario found the Great Powers investigating a "fallen star" that hit somewhere in the deep desert.  I brought in some elements from Pulp Alley like plot point areas. There were four minor and one major.

These plot point areas led to some fun bits. 

Uhlans find the Spring

"Look sir, some sort of idol".

Stalwart Ladies, I say

The Brute Class Land Ironclad

The Germas lost 2 guys in the quick sand, the French woke a mummy who followed them around, the British awoke a beast from Beyond, and the German Uhlans found the Guardian of the Eternal Spring. All while a battle was raging.

Other points of interest:

In any game its in, the Killenkanner is either an unstoppable killing machine or a complete dud. This game it was the latter.

The uhlan never got to use the Creature, because the officer commanding him was whacked by an unlucky (or lucky for the French) shot.

The last Lady Hussar on the table was shot unceremoniously from behind by the Roughriders (paging Dr Freud).

Professor Nightshade's Walking Monitor has only been destroyed once before. Over countless battles the Spider has battled the Monitor, always losing to the Professor's contraption. Vive Le France! The Spider took her down.

The dreadful Rokkittruppen manage to live through the fight by hiding in the trees. I ask you Basement Generals not in attendance last night, who do you think commanded them?

That was just a few highlights.

Come along little Froggie

The much maligned clockwork tank stayed in the fight

By end of the night, both sides had captured 2 minor plot points, while the Major was overrun by the Brits. They found it was the ship of yet another alien race, there to warm them of their impeding doom.

Golden Age Supers

A small hamlet in the English countryside is about to become a battlefield. This sleepy little village is actually an Allied secret base, home to numerous top secret technologies and currently the prison for the nefarious Axis scientist Faust.

Guarding these secrets are members of the Freedom Force.

They are soon to be attacked by Team Axis.

Team Axis was giving the choice of spreading out, but we chose to keep it tight and all enter the board in one place. Our henchmen quickly fell under a hail of bullets. Blitzkrieg dashed forward, pummeled Britannia, then zipped away. Kriegshunde then charged up and hammered her. It looked bad for the Allies.

Between Uberman's brute strength and Agent Axis's deadly fire, the soldiers guarding the town went down along with the Druid.

Golden Crusader was surrounded and beaten, while Jack-O-Lantern seemed the only Freedom Fighter capable of dealing any damage.

In the end, the scientist was rescued but KO'd. The radio tower was smashed, and the Freedom Forced forced to flee.

It was a great game. Kriegshunde definitely gets the MVP. That guy took a beating but still kept whalloping the good guys. It was nice to have a small group, including the Boy who tore himself away from Black Ops 2 for once. SS2 always gives a fun night. I'll be starting a new campaign with new heroes and villains, so stay tuned True Believers..... 

6mm Fast Play Grande Armee

We hadn't dug out this old favorite for awhile. Some of the group actually had never played Fast Play Grande Armee, so this was their chanve. Of, course, those particular few didn't show.

I've been battlin' the Two Week Crud so sat this one out, instead helping remember rules we alwasy forget.

The scenario was an Austrian defense in depth. The French were going to have to capture or at least push the Austrians out, of the towns and secure the bridges beyond. The French had a 1.5-to-1 advantage.

The Austrians decided to push as far as they were allowed to deploy forward, taking the hills. As you might have guessed, it was a hard slog to push them off. It wasn't helped by the French left, made of the entire cavalry force. They wouldn't budge. When they finally got moving, they swept everything aside and made a huge wheel around the Austrian right, but not before time ran out.

The Austrians managed to do the same on their left. A defensive strategy quickly went offensive as they began to push back their French opponents.

As usual, a great game with plausible outcomes and a feel for the period. I like that there is built into the rules, a great follow up, post game pursuit mechanism. It pays not to commit all your cav. You can turn a minor victory into a crushing one as your victorious horse ride down the defeated foe. Great for campaign. Wish Sam would publish these by themselves instead as a an add on for Grande Armee.

The great 6mm Baccuss minis painted by Mr. Scott.

A little skirmish

Over the break we played a little VSF skirmish. In our big GASLIGHT story arc, the Germans have been getting new weapons and technology from the alien Visitor. One of their not-so-secret bases is located at Castle Von Lowenbrau. An diversionary attack on the nearby coast by British forces has left but a skeleton crew to watch over the base. Now, British forces led by the legendary Sir Nigel Tuftnell 3rd earl of Spindletapp, are sneaking in. 

The German garrison stand ready

This Lady Hussar guards the lab at all costs

The British are assisted by an escaped scientist who has told them of a secret way under the walls. The British decide to send their Naval Landing Party right at the gates, while the rest find the secret way in. They must find the technology and destroy any new weaponry they can't carry with them.

From the start, the deadly fire from the German garrison is telling. Not a man makes it through the gate house.

Sir Nigel scouts the walls.

Sir Nigel's forces fair little better and only just make it into the castle before being slaughtered.

In hindsight, the Brits should have had more troops, but only a handful of folks made it out. Instead of GASLIGHT, we used my Fistful of Lead rules, which worked great for the small action.

Lady Hussars prove deadly accurate

Captain Pennyworth gets farther than any of his men

Corporal Hastings pays back the Ladies

The Allies were not successful at all. They even got the scientist recaptured. But fear not, a Norwegian observatory has spotted a strange light in the sky, headed directly for Earth!

Basement-Con 2 AAR: Friday

Compared to Thursday night, Friday's Basement-Con was fairly light. Only Lead Addict showed, which turned out to be cool because the blessing and the curse of the Basement Generals is there's a lot of us. Most Thursdays are, in fact, mini conventions. Its hard to find 6-8 player games we can do in 3 hours or less.

So, when I got a chance to do some games 1-on-1 I was excited.

We started with Black Powder: Pike and Shotte. I dug out my Italian Wars, work in progress troops. I had 4 cavalry and 6 foot units, split into two battalia a side. A relatively small fight by P&S standards, but the last battle we did, I used Hail Caesar, and wanted try these out small. 

Pike and Shotte is closer rules-wise to Black Powder than Hail Caesar.

The battle opened with Cavalry charges on the flanks which quickly left us both horseless (I found out later my Gendarmes were tougher, but oh well).

When the pikes finally got to grips in the middle it was bloody and short.

The whole thing lasted about and hour.

Yes, the bases aren't finished...

The heavy horse charges forward

the push of pike

Despite the quick fight, I really liked how it played. We're going to have to be a bit more tactical and subtle. More historical tactics would have paid off better. We should have held the horse back for exploiting the infantry fight. 

I was too liquored up to remember to take pictures....

With the evening still early, and the booze flowing, we tried out a game I've wanted to play for a long time: SAGA. I have a full 6 points of viking warband. Lead Addict was able to cobble together 4 points for the battle. My vikings became Saxons and using the intro scenario we began. Whomever kills the other guy's warlord first, wins.

Neither of us really had time to study the Battle Boards, which are the heart of the game. The actually battle mechanics are simple. It's the subtleties of the use of Fatigue, and Battle Board abilities that win the game. 

Warlords are tough, but mortal. We found that out about turn 2. We ignored the Warlord's death and kept playing. It was all I hoped it would be. Multi-player would be hard. If we play on Thursday's it would mean setting up 2-3 battles simultaneously. 

But over all, SAGA was everything I hoped it would be.

Next: Saturday.....

Basement-Con 2 AAR: Thursday

Basementcon-con2, that mini convention in my basement is now over. I didn't take as many pics as I should have, but here they are.

Thursday: Gruntz 15mm SciFi

Lead Addict brought over his horde of 15mm Sci-Fi minis for a playtest with the group of Gruntz. I have read thru Gruntz a few times and marveled at how simple they looked. We had had a short playtest before that didn't go well. Lots of shooting and no results. We had to be doing something wrong. The Gruntz website has nice videos on game play, which helped.

Listening post Alpha 34

The Mercs

Merc mechs

Human leader

This was battle over a Hyperspace listening post. The opponents would be humans on one side vs alien mercenaries. The reviews I've read have Gruntz as small affairs. For this 8 players battle we changed the rules from single based 15mm figs to whole stands marking kills with a tiny d6.

After a brief explanation of the rules, (which turns out is very similar to a game I've never played, Warmachine) the fight unfolded quickly. You roll 2d6 adding your shooting trait trying to make or beat your opponent' armor rating. A successful hit means you roll 2d6 with your weapon's damage trying to match or beat your opponent's soak value. Easy.

Everyone picked up the rules by turn 2, but we found the missile rules devastating and changed on the fly. Vehicles and troops were dropping like flies. The mercs seemed to have the upper hand. Then the humans destroyed most of the merc's armor and things swung in favor of the humans. That when it ended. I think most found it fun. We might even try a moderns game with them.

The brews for the night's tasting. A Romanian pilsner Timisoreanna. Very smooth. Reminded me of Pilsner Urquell.

Then, the polar opposite. White Hatter by a New Holland. Wow this brew had a bite. Not a fan at all. It was hard to get anyone to taste it after they saw my face. Kinda like when the milk goes bad and you ask your wife, "hey smell this?".

More AAR tomorrow.

Northman vs Norman

It was time for a Dark Age slugfest. I used the same rules (Flower of Chivalry) we use for our "Campaign for the Kingdom". They still work well for 11th century.

A large group of marauding vikings led by Horst the Wily, are stirring up trouble. They've managed to secure some Breton mercenaries and are burning they way across the countryside. The local lord Duc' d'Lindsey, has mustered the troops and moved out to stop them.

The Lord orders his troops

Lord d'Lindsey was feeling spry that morning and was rated as "Brilliant" (more 3 action cards in his deck). Meanwhile Horst was a bit in his cups, as thus, "Plodding".

The Viking horde

The Norman lines

Battle for the hilltop.

A class of Normans

The lines reform, then break.

As the battle started, both sides began a slow crawl towards each other. All except the viking right flank. There, Gregor the Obviously Mad, charged forward. By the time he met the Norman cavalry division, his men were exhausted. They held a small hill top, but would suffer.

On the Viking left, Guilliame the Old led the Breton mercenaries. He waded into the fray with gusto, wiping out 4 units off the bat.

With the victory conditions set at 9 units, it looked good for the Northmen. They had taken out 7 Norman units for a loss of only 4 of their own. Two more meant victory.

But, that is where things changed. Thor abandoned his followers. Within a few scant turns it was tied 8 a piece. Horst's command hadn't lost a unit. The center was tight, but in the end, the Normans snatched away the victory. The vikings fled for their ships empty handed.

As usual, FoC provided a great game. Lots of twists and turns, and always different from game before. I think I'll have to try it at RECRUITS some day. NOw, I'm painting some Dark Age stuff to try this with Hail Caesar and compare.