Board Game Bash

Gotta love summer, gaming in the garage finally becomes a lot more fun in the warmth. I'm sure my brain works far better in summer than winter. (We will probably be bitching about the heat in another month or so)

So today we played mostly board games, with Capital Offensive fist up. In which I got seriously FRAG'ed so quickly it was almost embarrassing ... But then again thats typical of my skill at computer games.. LOL, so nothing to unusual or upsetting about that.

 

After that we played another four player game of Spartacus. I really enjoyed it, being my second game I understood a lot more of what was going on and how to play. I ended up drawing the same house as I had last time which also helped my cause. We started at 7 influence, which is basically a shorter game time. It ended up that Mark and myself had to slug it out in the arena to see who would win as we both got to the 12 influence level in the same turn. The really funny thing was that neither of us had any gladiators left, so we had some slave on slave action. Which basically came down to the roll of dice, which I lost. Defiantly looking forward to some more games of this. The sneaky back stabbing nature of the game is great fun.

Spartacus

Then Mark and I broke out Summoner War's for a couple of games. I got mashed in the first battle between my Shadow Elves and the Mountain Vargath. In the second game I defeated Mark's Benders with the Deep Dwarfs in a massive beating. In both games the order of the draw pile really made/broke one side or the other. Every time I play Summoner Wars the more I enjoy it. So simple a game that can be crazy complex if you want it to be.

To wrap up the day we played a 100 point X-Wing game, 2 players a side. 4 Rebel ships up against 5 Imperial ships. This time my dice rolling was much more even, and Phil's rolling was also pretty good. The Rebels came out on top with some lucky shots and a bit of manoeuvring luck. This game is another one that I foresee being played regularly for some time, as its easy to setup, fast and fun.

(I'm still trying to use my ipad to post to my blog and still pulling my hair out with getting a good photo layout, giving up using the Blogsy app. It just doesn't cut it. Also tried out using Flickr, which is ok, but I don't like the fact that when you click an image to enlarge it, it opens another page, so back to using google for image storage.)

 

The Score Board

Well I’ve managed to miss keeping records on a few game days, but my score board I’ve been keeping this year is pretty close. I started the year out with wanting to play at least one game of everything I have. So far, I’m miles of that goal. One thing that has surprised me is the emergence of board games in our group, which I think is a really nice change. Give’s some of us a chance to catch up on those piles of unpainted models.

The end of year figures will be most interesting, the biggest surprise this year so far (by light years) is the return of 40K to our tables. I would have lost money on that bet. Not that I’m complaining, I got my Trygon onto the table, even if it was for a very short amount of time before he got pasted. .. Roll on Christmas holidays.

Capital Offensive

Ok, so I'm over my brain fart, and now back to what I was going to doing last night.

With a bit of a board game theme to Sundays game day. We started off with a new game that Phil turned up with called Capital Offensive. It's like an old style video game with the object to Frag (kill)as many of your opponents as possible. With your characters respawning once they die in the next turn. It's a really fun game, light and fast. Apparently it's based on a comic book.

Then Mark and I busted out a game of X-Wing at 100 points. I played the rebels with 3 X-Wings and one Y-Wing and Mark had a mix of 5 Tie fighters. It started badly for me and continued that way, with the dice gods laughing at me (So just another normal day). I couldn't hit an asteroid if I flew into it. I did get the prise of killing Darth Vader though.

I can't believe how much fun this game is, I love the manoeuvre mechanic with the dials, already ordered a few more ships and can't wait to see the new ones coming out.

Then to round off the day we played Spartacus. With five of us there, I teamed up Garth since he had played it once before, for a 4 way game. It's a rather well done back stabbing game, I'd need to play it a few more times to really be able to comment on it fully. But after once through the game, I'd easly say it would be money well spent. And if you have some gladiator miniatures about they can really make the game look the part (and of course Mark's gladiators looked the part)

Side note for the geeks:

I've done this whole post from my new ipad, using an app called Blogsy. Setting it up and using it was a breeze. Typing up the text and fonts etc is easy, but when it comes to dealing with pictures.. OMFG .. What an arse. I've found another app called Photogene to edit the pictures and shrink them down which works really well and has some good options on exporting images ready to use for the bog. But trying to do any type of layout in Blogsy is an episode in hair pulling frustration. Off to go look for an app that can actually do a page layout without inspiring suicidal compulsions.

 

Death of Blog

Well it’s a simple thing, to kill your blog. In an effort to clean up all my accounts for MSN, blogger, Facebook etc, after having one of my accounts hacked into. I got a little ambitious and culled out all sorts of old accounts and email address from over the years as I went through and reset passwords. The one small thing I didn’t realise, or see in the fine print….(a.k.a. massive brain fart of the year). Was that when you delete you Google account, any images that were uploaded with that account get deleted, even if they are uploaded to your blog, which you specially DONT delete and transfer to the account you want to use.

Oh yeah, and then there is the backup function of Blogger.com … (Insert Tui’s Beer Advertisement) Yeah Right!.. That only backs up an xml file, and no actual images.

So I was left with a blog minus all the images… (insert obscene language, the type you can get arrested for in most countries, that's if your still alive after being beaten by your wife for using those words.. you know the ones,). Hovering over the Delete everything button It was time to call “Scotch o’clock”

Now after several scotch's to claim one’s self, I realised I could just delete the old broken posts and keep going, … what can I say to such a close call to complete and utter death of my blog..

Smurf it!

SSU vs Axis

After losing a very close game of Infinity against Garth in the morning, Will and I rolled out our first games of Dust Warfare. We went with a 200 point game since that's pretty much what we both had points wise. I tried to use all my different units to cover as much of the various weapons so I can get a feel for them.

Below is what I ran in both games, which worked ok, but I didn’t really have anything to take on the Heavy Walkers of the Axis that Will took except Grand’ma. That’s how it felt anyway on the first two games. A re-read of the rules is in order and a few more games under the belt before I go changing this to much, as I need to get to grips with the rules more.

Faction: SSU ( 199 / 200 )

--- Heroes

Koshka Rudinova with Grand'ma (53)

--- Political Platoon (146)

Upgrade: Cavalry Platoon (5)

Command Section: "The Drakoni" Commissar Squad (25)

1st Section: "Chinese Volunteers" SSU Auxiliary Attack Squad (15)

2nd Section: "Fakyeli" SSU Close Combat Squad (21)

3rd Section: "Ohotniki" SSU Rifle Squad (20)

4th Section: "Frontoviki" SSU Battle Squad (20)

Support: MIL MI-45 Airborne Transport (40)

We hadn’t quite got the suppression rules right in the first game, which didn’t make a difference to the game outcome as Will demolished my SSU. I ran a unit of my Chinese Volunteers up the middle and they met machine guns and got wiped from the board in one go. I also moved up MIL Helicopter up the middle and ended being shot down in turn two.

In the second game we corrected ourselves on a few base rules and that made quite a bit of difference. We did learn playing of the Tactics cards and out of the books was a mistake. Way to easy to make mistakes as there are differences in the cards for Tactics versus the Warfare rules. So I can see myself making up some cards or finding some online to print off.

Overall a fun couple of games, the rules aren’t nearly as complex as Infinity, and the action mechanic is kinda similar in concept as Infinity so pretty easy to pickup. I think after a couple more gaming sessions we will have the rules down and the games should run much smoother. Really looking forward to some more games and trying out some SSU tanks in a few months once they get released.

Zombicide

After having to work all Sunday morning, my gamin this weekend took a back seat, but I did mange to get over the Mark's and get a game in, of his new Zombicide board game that had turned up this week.

Talk about a blast, shooting, bashing and chopping up Zombie’s, what a way to forget about work. The game mechanic’s seem simple enough, but we did mess up the rules a little and make it harder… much harder for ourselves. Pretty much the norm for any experienced war gamer ..(thinking to much into the rules.)

It was a hell of a lot of fun, even if we did all get killed brutally. Looking forward to playing this again. It’s nice and light and doesn’t take to much brain power, which is always nice after a long work week.

Dust Tactics - Nadya KV47 Walker

I finished up my Nadya and first SSU squad tonight. (well all bar the matt varnish.) I ended up gluing in the arms on the Nadya after deciding I want another KV47, which I’ll setup with magnets.

I’m now really keen to see what the SSU Helicopter transport is like, hopefully it turn up this week.

The victorious Vikings

As usual it was another great day down at the South Auckland club yesterday. There was Warhammer 40K, Field of Glory Renaissance, along with a game of Pike & Shot and of course Field of Glory. So just a normal game day at the club.

My first game was up against Chris with his Hungarian army. Poor Chris couldn’t roll a six to save himself, and I had him running all over his own troops. Chris did manage to break one of my battle groups, but the rest of my Vikings just rolled overtop of the Hungarians.

A few strange Egyptian models were hanging about in the fight, as Chris used some of my stands from my New Kingdom Egyptian army as proxy’s until the rest of his order turns up.

The second game I played Jason and his Swedish army. It stared with the Vikings getting shoot up, an me rolling like a demon making every moral check, then Jason had some epic failures of the dice as our main army battle lines clashed in the middle of the table. So it was looking like another walk over by the end of turn two for me. That changed slowly as the Swedish Nights ran down one of my flanking battle groups and the other flank was harassed by Cavalry and a group of light foot hand gunners. The game ended when my Huscarls broken through the Swedish line and went on to sack there camp. The end score was 8 points to 7, so a real close battle.

Here’s a few photos of some of the other games that were going on. Blood Angels versus The Sisters of Battle.

Field of Glory Renaissance.

Brian and Arthur rolled out there first game of Pike & Shot in 28mm, with some very nice looking models.

So the victorious Vikings rolled out two wins, so that’s three in a row, I best go buy a lotto ticket with this sort of luck.