Doctor Who Game 14th Jan 2014

Here's hoping I manage to not delete the post this time :). Caught up with my Uncle today and had a game of Crooked Dice's Doctor Who Miniatures Game.

The scenario was set during the Dalek Invasion of Earth. The plans for building a stellar manipulator along the lines of the Hand of Omega had been placed into the data banks of two droids which have been hidden on Earth during the Dalek Invasion by an unknown protagonist. All factions have the objective of tracking down the hidden droids and getting them off the board. The two enemy factions have a secondary objective of capturing the T.A.R.D.I.S to prevent the Doctor from leaving the field.

The game area

We had three factions for this game

The Daleks and their Robomen Slaves

Two Units of Sontarans and a Robot Slave

The 11th Doctor and his Unnamed Companion

My wife Jenny and I took the Daleks and the Robomen, my Uncle and eldest daughter took the Sontarans and my youngest became the 11th Doctor himself. We decided that the secondary units (Robomen and 2nd Sontaran unit) were unable to do anything except basic reactions without an order from their primary unit. Myself and my Uncle took control of these.

The game begins with the Robomen being ordered to search the storage tanks and control desk next to the deployment and finding the T.A.R.D.I.S. nestled in among the storage tanks. The other players all proceeded to move toward some of the other objective points around the board.

T.A.R.D.I.S. Found!!!

Sentry's set up

By the third turn no one had found the droids in there nearby search zones so people were forced to head across the board which began the combative portion of the game. The Doctor and his companion holed up in a corner while he began work on an anti-Robomen device in order to free the T.A.R.D.I.S. from their clutches.





The Jen's Daleks heading straight across the center of the board single minded attempt to find the droids presented a tempting target to Theresa's Sontarans who proceeded to open fire, missing them completely but alerting the Daleks to their location. After an extended fire fight with the Sontarans gaining the upper hand both factions called in their reserves leaving the T.A.R.D.I.S. unguarded.

The Sontaran's slow, but convincing victory over the Daleks

The Robomen encounter the second unit of Sontaran's and lose their 1st man to their blaster fire.



Seeing the T.A.R.D.I.S. no longer guarded by the Robomen the Doctor leaves his plans to invent a device to assist him against them and resumes his search for the droids. This also saw the end of Jen's and my Uncle's factions and the dissolution of the Robomen due to their lack of controller. With a mighty shot the Sontaran commander Theresax the Unmerciful took out the Dalek patrol leader. As their last act before becoming suicidal the Robomen managed to take out Gaviax and the last of his squad.

The visible threats neutralized Theresax decided to head toward the toxic runoff area to continue the search for the droids. Unfortunately the Dalek resistance fighters turned up and ambushed them from behind. This proved to be too much for the valiant commander and a tactical regrouping back at the ship was decided to be the action for the day. The area now free from hostiles the Doctor was free to search the area and upon locating the droids returned to the T.A.R.D.I.S. to lock the information away safe from the wrong hands.

Whoops Bolt Action Shots Take 2

Had a bit of an issue with the tablet refreshing on the blogger app and managed to delete the last post.

Don't have the time to retype it all at the moment but I figured I'd put the pics back up for the moment and edit it up later

German Position End Turn 1

US Position End Turn 1

Mortar team stalls the Sherman's advance

As the only high point of my game and an average on at that the four panzerfaust's managing to set the Sherman on fire was well worth two separate photos

Should hopefully be getting in a Doctor Who game this Tuesday

Dreadball Training Match, Eclipse and some Kickstarters

Had the usual Monday night games night this week and pulled out a group favorite (and as my youngest daughter insists on me mentioning her game) Eclipse. Set in the future after a intergalactic war it pits up to 6 factions rebuilding their strengths and exploring a now unfamiliar galaxy. The game runs over 9 turns with several rounds per turns with players taking as many actions as there empire can afford (based on controlled planets vs system maintenance, actions costs). It ended this week early due to my kids bedtimes but we managed to squeeze in 5 turns before I had to call it for them. After a tally of victory points I had managed to pull off a 3 VP win (mostly thanks to the Terran's 2:1 trade ratio and some lucky combat VP draws).

Tuesday morning saw me heading to my Uncles to run him and my brother through a demo game of Dreadball. Unfortunately on the way over my brother got a call from his work and ended up going in to cover the other butcher that had managed to put a knife through his thumb. So I ended up playing against my Uncle. My Veer-myn team vs his Corp team. It was quite a good game with plenty of scoring on both sides.... but my rats got tired. 3 rushes of incomplete passes or just plain misses and some favorable scattering for my Uncle results in a rush 14 landslide to the Corporation. Had a good time though and have recruited another coach for the upcoming 2014 inaugural Lucid Cup League.

Also for anyone interested I've jumped on to another couple of Kickstarters

Games and Gears Battle Boards - injection molded hard plastic modular 2' x 2' terrain boards with a few different thematic options. I've upgraded my pledge to the x 4 early bird and added for some of the grid sheets for Deadzone and dust tactics, the dice and gaming tray bundle and the 10mm card building scenery. I'm keeping an eye out for the carry case they're working on which will be coming from Battlefoam as of last update. 

Zombie Miniatures - some rather nice Zombie and survivor minis with some urban themed terrain. They've got some themed bonus zombies for pledging before Christmas eve or following and sharing on facebook, twitter etc. I've jumped in at the Decomposition reward tier giving my 2 packs of the 12 zombies and 1 of the 5 survivors, it's running till Jan 10th and they're currently reassessing stretch goals and looking at seeding a few extra minis through them.

That's all for this week. Doesn't look like I'll be getting a game in next week, but my Deadzone package is on time at the moment for a Monday delivery so I'm thinking an unboxing post will be the call for next week :)

Finally Dreadball Ultimate :)

My mates and I have been playing a fair bit of Dreadball since I bought it last year, so it seemed to make sense to make my wife and kids buy me a copy of Dreadball Ultimate and a few other bits and pieces from Mantic for my birthday. After sitting on the shelf for the last month thanks to a variety of work-related reasons we finally too it down and played it's inaugural match.

Six teams and two balls on a pitch with 3 halves.... what more could you want.

We made it through 3 rounds before Trent managed to pull off a landslide victory with his Corp team. Possibly heavily assisted by my Veer-Myns inability to connect that final vital pass to the striker in the zone each turn and Toby's fixation in beating.... "attempting" to beat my strikers to the ground with his Orx I should say. Grant's Robot team managed 2 points with his 1st ever use of striker form and my daughter Arwen's Female Corp team managed to pick up a 2 pointer tho they later lost a point from Trent's use of her goal for his 3 point victory shot. My wife's Forge Fathers unfortunately didn't quite make it out of there zone having possibly started a little too far back in the zone for they're stumpy little legs.

It makes for a interesting match though, trying to keep track of 2 balls and 5 opponents, but I feel it'll become a semi regular on games night from here on out.

Here's a couple of shots from the night

Also if anyone's looking for a couple of different tabletop options this kickstarter might be worth a look in.

5 different design options with 6 different 2'x2' tiles in each (although some are still locked), comes pre-painted and with a variety of add-on options. Free postage to a decent amount of countries as well.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554355176/games-and-gears-battle-boards

Unfortunately the Flodden game as been postponed but still hopeful I'll get atleast one more larger miniatures game in before Christmas

WIP Hills and Scots for upcoming Flodden Game

Just a brief update this week.

My Uncle is hosting a Flodden game on the 7th December with myself and my brother as the Scots vs a few of his mates commanding the English.

We started playing around a bit (to be fair he'd already done most of the starting) to organize some hills for the game using lining from hanging baskets.

We'll be finishing them off this week, strengthening the material with some paper mache and/or some chicken wire.

And just a sample of the Scottish troops and nobles

Update 19/11/13

Long time no post. I've been pounding my head against the wall for 6 solid weeks now thanks to work. It's looking like things might actually be settling down to the usual Christmas time mess so I may actually have a usable amount of spare time again.

But rest assured in the minutes I've had spare I have not been idle, I've still managed 3 out of the proposed 6 weekly board game nights and been back to my weekly gaming days with my brother and my uncle, although they've been board game days as well lately (not that I'm complaining a games a games as far as I'm concerned).

Still I've got a few pics of some stuff I've been working on and the games I got in this week. Hopefully a mini game in the next week or two as well.

 Got all the figures I was missing for my Stargrunt NSL Platoon (based on the Panzergrenadier example in the rule book) I had two squads from when I was around 12 and fleshed it out to the full platoon the other day. It's in a semi painted and assembled state, but it's my current "front burner" project at the moment. The Eureka Miniature bags in the back are the power armoured soldiers waiting their turn to be assembled.

I've also been working slowly on some building to help fill my Bolt Action (or any other appropriate period) games. Pretty happy with the way they're progressing as I've never really had a go a terrain/buildings before.

 Also this week got in a game of "The Call of Cthulhu" LCG with my uncle. I really enjoyed it. Fairly simple to pick up, quick easy game play. Definitely going to be picking myself up a copy at some stage. We've also been playing "Kingsburg" for the last couple of weeks. Another one I'd highly recommend and will be picking up :).

 Games night was "Zombies!!!". Build as you go map, simple mechanics, many, many, many opportunities to make zombie groans both male and female. What more could you want. After a couple of near wins for myself, my eldest (almost 2 weeks a teenager now) managed to snag the "The Keys are still in it" card letting her move 10 spaces instead of rolling the D6, then proceeded to kill the 9 zombies between her and the helicopter to win the game and earn the nickname "Helicopter Torrent" which she doesn't seem to like yet, but I assume it'll grow on her....

Then tonight a family game. "Small World Underground". Think Risk without dice rolls and a limited troop pool. During the game you put your race into decline and get new ones as required gaining victory points depending on areas controlled and the race's innate abilities or matched powers. I thought I'd managed to grab the game with 101 vp only to have my youngest snatch it from me with 116.


I'm hoping to get a minis game or two in next week depending on work and everyone else's availability and with any luck at least get my 4 base squads finished up.