Blitzkrieg Commander - British v Italians 1941

I bought the Blitzkrieg Commander rules way back in the post pandemic period, along with a starter set of British (and a few extras). I also persuaded Stephen to buy a force. We painted them up and then never played a game. Then I persuaded Martin to paint up a force, which he did. And still no game was forthcoming. Until now!

A simple set up for an encounter game with 1000 point forces. I struggled a bit with the army list picking - we both felt a little more guidance about what a "typical" force might look like would have been useful. There are loads of lists, some of them seemingly quite obscure so a little more guidance for actually putting a first force on the table would have been preferred (by me at least). I suspect the answer is to find an OOB for a specific time or battle and use that as a basis - but I hadn't done that and I'm not all that familiar with WW2 desert forces.

Anyway we fettled something together. Martin initially had a Recce vehicle in his Italian force, but a look at the rules and the basic nature of our battle had him swapping that for more regular tanks. With that we were off.

About 24 hours before we were due to play I realised that although I'd painted well over 1000 points of troops and tanks I'd not actually made any command. So a quick root in the spares and grabbing some 50mm circular Warbases bases I threw three together. They're a bit ummm, unfinished in the pictures...

One command with Matildas supporting infantry.

The other command - A13s and Mk VIs

Everyone arrived on time for the start.

Italians hove into view on the far horizon.

The air grew thick with the razzy noises of underpowered Italian engines.

Low command values and moves of only 10-15cm meant it was slow going.

Eventually a firefight broke out on the British right, and with a flash one of the A13s went up in smoke!

The Italians made good use of opportunity fire.

The light tanks went in to hiding.

Frustrated  by the incompetence of his fellows the CO took Command and ordered some of the infantry and one of the Matildas forward.

The light tanks took advantage of a double move to hurtle to the other flank to threaten the advancing Italians.

One Matilda covered the flank

The remaining A13 was doing a grand job of holding up the Italian tanks. Mainly because I kept failing orders to get it out of there and had to rely on opportunity fire.

Italian tanks didn't like it up 'em and some were supressed.

But inevitably more Italian firepower was bought to bear and the second A13 brewed up.

Thick smoke was now all that protected the British flank.

The Mk VIs sprayed the Italians with fire, but they'd dug in and the shots had little effect.

Meanwhile the Matilda failed to provide much support and the mortar had little effect.

Soon after this we'd reached the turn limit. The butcher's bill was relatively light, but with three British tanks in flames to only one Italian it was a victory to the forces of Mussolini!

It was very jolly to finally get these forces on the table. The rules were mostly straightforward, though we need to look at how exactly opportunity fire works. It was interesting to discover part way through that Martin had a PDF that included several bits of errata and updates that my book didn't...(I thought I was going mad looking for the rules for Dug-In - turns out I just didn't have them).

I liked the look of the game but everything felt quite slow - I'm used to my infantry moving twice as far in Warmaster. The command of 7s and 8s made it feel a bit like using an Orc and Goblin army - maybe only getting off a single order each turn. I don't think the "stand up fight" scenario worked particularly well as a game - I think we'd be much better recreating some real battles, or at least trying some more varied scenarios with more authentic OOBs.

All that said it was good fun and I certainly want to play some more. 

Warhammer The Old World - Daemons v Lizardmen

Deep in the steaming jungles of Lustria in the great pyramid at the centre of the hard to reach temple city of Ixi-Naquaz the Slaan Mage Lord Ouataouanca sat motionless on his obsidian throne. His vast mind wandered the infinite galaxies and possibilities of the universe. Somewhere deep within his consciousness something flickered and drew his attention, something unexplained, something near at hand.

Suddenly in the dark of the temple room the diminutive Skink Priest Tinitodja opened his eyes wide and began to speak. It was not his voice that those in the room heard - it was a voice deep and sonorous and ancient and wise. For the first rime in a generation Lord Ouataouanca had chosen to voice his thoughts.

"Danger is come. Danger to all. The Dread Prince is come. To arms my spwanlings, destroy or risk or destruction".

Tinitodja fell inert to the floor. But the words of Ouataouanca had been heard and the great war trumpets of Ixi-Naquaz began to sound the call to war!

Kenton and I have embarked on a short Warhammer campaign. Designed to help us learn the rules a bit and encourage us to paint more stuff. He's been painting LIzardmen for a bit, I've got some Daemons I'd like to expand and I've got a bunch of jungle terrain. And so a campaign in Lustria it shall be.

Game one was set at 1,000 points, with no Rare choices allowed and no Slaan, Daemon Prince or Greater Daemon allowed. This was to be a clash on the borders of the city of Ixi-Naquaz between the two vanguard forces. We used the rules for the Meeting Engagement scenario from the book. In addition there were two Monoliths on the centre line, control of which would grant an extra 50 VP at the end of the game. All the jungle terrain was dangerous terrain, except for Skirmishers who counted it as dangerous terrain. We also had the 3D6 Lustria table from the End Times:Thanquol book, just to add some local colour.

Both of us had units that wouldn't make the table for the start, for the Lizards it was a unit of Kroxigor, for me a unit of seventeen Daeomonettes. This was annoying as it meant the BSB herald would have to go in the other unit of seventeen Daemonettes with the other herald. So instead of two nice units based on the scared number of Slaanesh (6) as is right and proper, I had a unit of nineteeen and a unit of seventeen. Surely this would displease the Dark Prince. It certainly displeased me.

I hung back a bit - the skink poisoned javelins can be pretty lethal and I didn't want to feel them straight away.

I had some fiends, which I found pretty hard to use effectively in 8th edition.

See, one hanging over the back! How annoying?!

I threw the movement trays together by sticking some steel paper to a some cheap lino floor tile cut to the correct footprint of the unit on the stupid new bigger bases. I only remembered an hour or two before the game that the only waffle bases I've got are for 20mm bases. So they were supposed to be a temporary solution, but I'm thinking if I spray them brown and edge them with sand and static grass maybe they'll be just fine.

Kenton's troops were all on wafflebases. the wrong sized frontage waffle bases in some case, but on bases. It's all OK though we're gentlemen and grown ups, so we can easily work out and agree how many models get to fight each time without having to be strict about bases.

Kenton had also bought a massively tooled up Saurus Warrior as his general and then stuck him on a big old dinosaur. I had almost banned that level of character from this scenario too, wanting to keep it as a low level intro, but had decided that was maybe too harsh. I had forgotten Kenton's tendency to tool up powerful characters and so here we were looking at pretty much all his eggs in a single basket. A basket I had no answer to.

Looks nice though.

Not wishing to hang about I thought I'd see how the Fiends went in the new rules and they went yomping in on turn one.

FBiGO would be a bad result as it would put Ouan-Gar on the back of Bjar-Ni into their flank.

Meanwhile Skinks were keeping an eye on of of the ancient erections of Ixi-Naquaz.

The Seekers slipped around a flank hoping to come upon something from behind.

The fiends did pretty well - going first making much more difference in this edition of the game and so the Lizards sent Skinks in to help out.

If they could just hold the pink ladies had a flank to go at.

Though they were attracting javelin fire.

In the end they did better than hold, both Lizard units gave ground and the Daemons followed up the Saurus and then the 'nettes hit'em from the flank.

The Daemon claws rule is pretty cool and means sixes to wound spell almost certain death!

Ouan-Gar was finding it difficult to point his dino in the right direction.

The Fiends pursued the Saurus and crashed into some Skinks. That left the pink ladies with no choice but to turn to face Ouan-Gar.

Finally Bjar-Ni the behemonth thumped home 

Ouch.

This fight was going better.

Ouan-Gar had a mighty magic weapon that he waved about wildly, murdering 'nettes, while Bjarni jumped up and down on some others.

However the ladies managed to FBiGO and Bjar-Ni failed to catch up with them. The herald managed to pull off their one spell which game them more attacks and better strength! So they charged back in.

The spell meant they won the combat. Ouan-Gar failed his leadership test, ran away and thanks to Slaanesh extra movement the ladies caught him and pulled him apart!

Turns out the answer to fighty dinosaurs is sticking all your heralds in a single unit by accident. Slaanesh clearly isn't as fussed about their sacred number as they should be.

Finally after much lumbering the Kroxigor clashed with the late arriving 'nettes.

While Skinks peppered the other unit.

The Fiends were losing more wounds by pursuing through dangerous terrain than they were to the Skinks.

The poor Skinks were hit hard.

Although the Kroxigor handed out a fair bit of pain in the first round. A flank charge tipped the odds back in Slaanesh favour.

Soon there was just one beast left. Who took it on himself to murder the BSB quite badly.

But it was not to be enough - overwhelmed he turned tail and ran and was duly rent asunder in the chase.

The remaining unit of Skinks slipped away to bring news of the disaster to Ixi-Naquaz.

That was good fun. We played quite slowly (we do anyway) and looked lots of stuff up. It's slowly becoming more familiar. Kenton wisely observed that half the time we know what the rule says we're just checking that it is as annoying and stupid and fiddly as we remember.

But we'll persist and we were both quite enthused to paint up 500 more points for the next game.

Far away, though not as far as the Lizardmen would like, in the temple room in the Ancient Pyramid at the heart of Ixi-Naquaz, Skink Priest Tinitodja once more opened his mouth to channel the thoughts of the vast mind of Outaouanca. It seemed the entire temple city fell silent to hear his words.

"Oh bugger"

Lord of the Rings Campaign - Plateau of Gorgoroth

Mr Frodo and Samwise are nearly at the end of their Quest - they just need to sneak past an Orc army on the march.

General B. was all prepared, so we set up and went for it. The Orcs have to keep moving across the board - if the hobbits are within 6" of the hobbits at the end of a turn they can *spot* them on a 6. The hobbits have to exit the board inside 10 turns.

The Orc overseer cracks the whip to start the march

A couple of undersized Orcs seem to be slighly out of the march...

Like an open square the Orcs race across the board.

At this point the hobbits doubled back and then simply strolled off the board without detection. I#d not thought things through and had overextended making for an easy win for General B.

So we decided to have another go.

This time the Orc column was more dispersed and the front soon encountered the small recruits.

But noticed nothing amiss at first.

The hobbits held their breath and sneaked on.

 

Tipppy-toeing past the blisfully unaware Orcs.

Four attempts to roll a six, none successful and so the hobbits got away agin.

We were a little unsatisfied with this scenario by this stage.

General B. thought he could work out how to win with Orcs, so we swapped sides.

The orcs spread much more widely across the board ad the hobbits hugged the sides.

Sam and Frodo paused to discuss tactics.

Fortifying brew was helping the Orcs. Allegedly.

In the end the hobbits had to sneak through the centre of the formation.

Four more attempts, no sixes Hobbits 3 - Mordor 0

Looking at it it seems the best the Orcs can hope for is four or five attempts to roll a 6 (unless the hobbit player completely stuffs up). So basically that's the game. Can you roll a 6 on 4 or 5 dice? If so the Orcs are likely to win if not then it's an easy hobbit win.

Bit rubbish really.

This joins Shelob and Watcher in the Water in the Top Three Rubbish Scenarios list. Probably number 3 as at least no-one had to buy an expensive, hard to find poorly cast, pig-to-put-together not very nice model to play this one.

Anyway it's on to the denouement next time - can Frodo melt his ring?