Axles & Alloys - 5-person game

I had another game of Axles & Alloys yesterday, this time with five people. I was driving the school bus, Bryan was driving the van with the buzz saws, Dave had the fire truck (which he equipped with a flame thrower... fire truck indeed), Mattie had her little convertible with the bat wings, and Ryan had his crazy evil hot rod.

The game took a lot longer with this many people, but it was still fun and it didn't feel like it was dragging at any point. Mattie had never played any sort of miniatures game before, and she was the last one to die. There were some epic and exciting moments, with multiple crashes, cars zooming around on fire, people machine-gunning each other left and right, and traps laid all over the table.

One turn in, everybody has just left their starting positions.

Ryan's hot rod faces down Bryan's buzzsaw van.

The School Bus, delivering a load of hot napalm to the townspeople.

Things start to heat up in the centre of the table

The buzzsaw van takes a bad hit and is the first to break down.

Dave's firetruck is next, but not before he manages to lay a path of spikes. Above you can see the napalm I sprayed on the ground to trap Ryan, but he managed to put out the fire with no damage done.

The end of the game. I rammed the hot rod to death, and at the end of the same turn Mattie's convertible finally succumbed to the fire started by one of my napalm traps.

Trumpeter Salute 2014

Last weekend I attended the yearly game convention of the Trumpeter Society in Burnaby. I attended Friday night and all day Saturday, but skipped out on the Sunday session.

Attendance at the games I hosted was disappointing: I had one player for my Quar game on Friday, and none for my Clay Havoc game on Saturday. Even so, I was able to get in some fun games throughout the weekend.

Quar: Double Cross

We played the Double-Cross scenario from the book, which has the game start with an exchange of pigs for weapons, and ends up in a full-blown firefight.

The Partisans show up with a couple of pigs to trade

The Crusaders appear with a crate of guns. Let's hope nobody loses their nerve and starts something!

Shortly after someone starts something, the Crusader sniper climbs atop a rock promontory to trade shots with the Partisan sniper.

The Crusader Heavy Shotgun team sets up in the woods.

The Partisans escape off the board with their crate of guns while the Partisan Wagon sets up for some machine-gunning.

Crusaders advance down the right flank while one of their number takes off with a pig.

Escaping with the pig.

Crusaders advancing, shortly before getting torn up by Partisan rifle fire. I pushed the Crusaders pretty hard, which was probably unwise, but I also didn't want to play a whole game where we just sat and traded shots from across the board.

Prone (not injured) Partisans lurking in the woods.

The Crusader sniper, now in some cover, gets the only Crusader kill of the game when he takes out the Partisan sniper.

The Partisan wagon, happily decimating the Crusader HSG team.

The crusader assault on the left flank falls apart when the lead rhyflers are butchered.

A few right-flank Crusaders are forced into cover and never make it into the assault.

The Crusader assault on the right flank meets the same fate, and that's pretty much the end of the game.

Pulp Figures

The good chaps from Pulp Figures hosted a game  that started late on Saturday morning, which worked perfectly for me, since I arrived late. The scenario featured an archaeological party on Venus besieged by rampaging lizard people, and a detachment of British colonial troops and Canadian militia sent out to relieve them.

The archaeologists barricade themselves within their camp.

The Brits and Canadians arrive by boat.

The archaeologists hunker down under the fire from the lizard folk.

The Brit tank and limbered Gatling gun begin to make their way onshore, while my Canadians still flounder in the river.

The British troops disembark...

... and Lizard folk emerge from the undergrowth to meet them!

...while my Canadians still struggle to get ashore on their crappy boat.

Landed at last, the Canadians form a firing line.

The Lizards retreat back into the jungle under a hail of fire.

Brit troops pass behind the Canadians to secure the ford for their tank.

The Brits and their tank press on while the Canadians give covering fire.

The Lizards set up a bombard cannon to shell the archaeologists!

At that point I had to pack it in and get ready for the Clay Havoc game I was set to host, so I left the battle unresolved - but things were looking good for the humans.

Ran - Ronin Skirmish

Nobody (except my wife) had signed up for Clay Havoc, so after a few minutes of waiting I went looking for something else to do. David from Kingsford Miniatures was running games of Ronin, with miniatures from his company and a scenario based on the movie Ran, and I was able to jump in on that.

I was playing the defenders, and I had two groups of enemies to contend with. I played a fighting retreat and by the end of the game things were looking grim, but despite being outnumbered the enemy still hadn't made it into the castle.

My troops (with black bases) beat up on the elder son's attacking troops. I was outnumbered, but my men acquitted themselves well and caused a lot of damage.

On the other side, the younger son's troops surround my lone defender and kill him - but not before he takes one of them out.

My 2nd in command and arquebusier defending the castle staircase.

A small force holds the castle gate against more of the younger son's troops. I expected them all to die, but they slowed up the advance and went out covered in glory.

Cannae - White Rock Gamers

The White Rock Gamers always put on some amazing games, and I was excited to play in their version of Cannae, the famous one-sided slaughter of a Roman legion by Hannibal in the 2nd Punic War.

I played as the Romans, with the center of the line my area of responsibility.

After some maneuvering, we finally come to grips with the Carthaginians. My Triarii are stuck behind the line, and the unit on the left never actually sees battle.

On the right flank, and against all odds, the Roman cavalry actually holds off the Carthaginian cavalry and keeps that flank intact.

On the left flank things are much messier, but only one detachment of Carthaginian cavalry manages to sneak around our flank.

After a couple of rounds of fighting, the Carthaginian line is pretty much wrecked. The Carthaginian troops are not as tough as the Roman ones, and historically the Carthaginians fell back before the Roman advance, giving their cavalry wings time to sweep around and completely encircle the Romans. I was facing a young player in the center of the Carthaginian line, and he probably didn't know about that, so he got stuck in with his infantry and paid for it.

On the right side, the Romans are about to be flanked by a band of screaming Gauls, but those Gauls in turn are about to be smashed by my Triarii.

The end of the battle. My Roman legion has crunched through the Carthaginian front line and caught Hannibal, ending the game.

Battle Report: Busy Day In Kandahar

I had a game of Force On Force with a friend today. We played Busy Day In Kandahar, which is a slightly modified version of a scenario from the Operation: Enduring Freedom sourcebook (modified to turn the USMC soldiers into Canadian Forces troops, plus some victory condition tweaks).

The game lasted about 4.5 hours and it was a blast. Every time I play FoF I like it more. Between the way the battle played out and the random events thrown in by the Fog Of War cards, a proper little narrative develops - events not directly related to the battle situation begin to snowball and turn into full-fledged side-stories.

The scenario pits a Canadian Forces (CF) platoon, with support, against a whole bunch of Taliban. The CF have divide their attentions among three objectives: first, in the NW quadrant, they are tasked with recovering a wounded soldier and extracting him across the board to the Helicopter Landing Zone in the SW. Second, in the NE, they have to provide protection to an EOD team disarming an IED under the guns of the Taliban. Third, they have to clear the HLZ of all Taliban in line of sight to provide a safe area for the helo to land. Together, it's a pretty tough list of objectives for the Canadians to achieve.

The Taliban, as usual, earn victory points for killing / wounding / capturing CF soldiers. The Taliban are terrible troops, but there's a conveyor belt of reinforcements arriving all the time, and their victory conditions make no mention of losing troops, so they can sacrifice whole squads in the hopes of doing a bit of damage to the Canadians.

On to the photos:

Initial deployments, viewed from the SW. CF section 1 stacks up in an alley with the EOD team up ahead, waiting for the infantry to clear the area. The LMG takes an overwatch position on the roof to their left, and the CF sniper is badly placed at the start of the fight, out of picture to the south. To the NW, Canadians deploy in a compound ahead of their attempt to retrieve their injured comrade (that little black dot visible at the very top of frame).

Looking at the west side from the north. In the clearing between the compounds you can see the injured CF soldier, looked over by a couple of Taliban cells. The Canadians suffered a serious casualty in the firefight with the Taliban, but wisely called in a smoke mission from the off-board artillery to mask their recovery of the soldier, and were able to get him to safety .
Meanwhile, at the top of frame, a cluster of civilians emerged from the building where the Taliban were taking cover and approached the Canadian soldiers, begging for help with a child who had been wounded in the fighting. The CF were able to render assistance, but the presence of the civilians complicated matters a great deal.

Canadians set up to cover the EOD team on the east side. Farther up the street, the EOD robot examines the IED while the Taliban gets ready for action. West of the IED you can see a Taliban sniper team flipped on its back, having been PID'ed and wiped out before getting off a shot.

After a few turns the battle has begun to take shape. A Taliban cell at hotspot 3 hunkers down to cover the HLZ - this hotspot was key, as the Taliban kept funnelling troops into it as they got mowed down by Canadian sniper and LMG fire so that they could deny the HLZ to the Canadians. The Taliban had bigger and better plans for that area, but that building was a killing zone so they couldn't form up for a counterattack.
Meanwhile, to the north, The Canadians in the compound engage in fire coming from the compound in the north and the smallish building to the west. The civilians in the courtyard of the small building make it very hard for the Canadians to bring fire to bear on that building, which will have a huge influence on the outcome of the fight.

The sniper and LMG on the rooftops that caused the Taliban so much trouble in the south. To the northeast, the Taliban had been pretty much wiped out entirely and the IED had been disarmed, so the Canadians were beginning to fall back to the HLZ.

Here we see a bold play by the Taliban that eventually cost the Canadians the game. The 2 Section command element (leader and medic) had approached the civilian base to try to disperse it, but fell casualty to Taliban fire. Before the Canadians could get another team in place to check on them, the Taliban darted out of the building and took them captive. The Canadians were reluctant to shoot into a group that contained their own people (and was interspersed with civilians), and couldn't quite catch the Taliban to launch an assault, so the CF command team was still captive at the end of the game.

The Canadian medevac helo waits above the battlespace for the call to land and pick up casualties, but the call never came. A sandstorm had blown up, restricting movement, and it became impossible for the CF to extract to the HLZ in the time they had available.

The EOD team, with the IED disarmed and no Taliban remaining in sight, hunker down and wait for the resolution of the fight elsewhere.

Canadians scramble to assist the fight in the west, but with the sandstorm forcing them to move slowly, they can't get there in time.

A single Taliban sniper covers the HLZ, but it's enough to render it too dangerous for the helo to land.

Final disposition of the fight in the west. The Taliban disappears into the field with their captive soldiers, while the CF clears the building and gets ready to give chase. It's too late, though, as the Taliban have just enough of a head start to make good their escape.

The game was great fun and the result was very close. The Taliban won by a literal inch, as the escaping cell with its captives was just that far ahead and, the way the turn cycle worked, they couldn't be caught. With some more turns in the game they would have been dealt with, as there was really nowhere for them to go and the other CF section was on its way to cut them off, but we reached the end point before that could happen.

Force On Force (the scenarios in the OEF sourcebook, anyway) give the Coalition forces a tough job. The Coalition victory points are all objective-based, so they have to control the battlespace and stay focussed on the mission; the Taliban, on the other hand, get victory points for injuring, killing, or (especially) capturing Coalition soldiers. The Canadians can (and often do, like in this game) take out dozens of Taliban troops, but they gain no direct advantage from causing casualties. The Taliban have pretty terrible troops and they have a hard time getting casualties on the Canadians, especially when the Canadians are in hard cover, but they just need to keep throwing out firepower in the hopes of causing damage. Add in all the counter-insurgency restrictions on the Coalition actions, and the Canadian game becomes a very difficult balancing act. The Canadians performed extremely well in this scenario, and just lost by that crucial inch that made the difference between recovering their captured soldiers or losing them to the Taliban.