2nd November - 1st Nov Saga vs The Brother vs The Eldest

Headed over to The Brother's house yesterday to meet my new nephew and get game in. After a bit of general catching up with him and his family we got down to the gaming. He'd surprised me with his newly painted Pagan Rus force and offered The Eldest the helm of his Welsh so we set up for a three way clash.

Vikings

 
 We played a four point per side game with The Brother and myself just using the standard starter warbands (Warlord, two hearthguard and two warriors with one of my hearthguard being beserkers) The Eldest settled on a mounted warchief, two hearthguard choices (one of which was also mounted) and two warrior options.

Welsh

The Brother and The Eldest claimed two corners of the table for deployment so I took the middle of the opposite long edge.

Pagan Rus

The first turn had all of us begin to advance toward our opponents holding fairly closely together until an opportunity presented itself.

 

 

It was the second turn when things began to get interesting. The Pagan Rus it appeared had brought a hard climate with them as The Great Winter swept across the board slowing down all the warbands as they advanced. While attempting to push up and come across into the Welsh flank my unit of Hirdmen (hearthguard) found themselves getting bogged down in the Frozen ground and were unable to complete their second movement. The Welsh thanks to Children of the Land were able to move through the forest at a fairly rapid pace considering the weather, however the Teulu (hearthguard) cavalry found themselves isolated in the dim twilight that the Pagan Rus had bought with them and exhausted themselves with their panicked cries for help and frenzied searching (Fear of the Dark).

My warchief decided at this point that perhaps the Pagan Rus needed his attention slightly more and he swept across the battlefield to lend his support to his Beserkers and their accompanying Bondi (warriors). The Hirdmen ran into more trouble with their attempts to close with the Welsh running into Holy Ground. The Teulu  horsemen took time to rest but then spotted some Pagan Rus Militia and proceeded to taunt the men who broke ranks in order to close with the infuriating Welsh. Meanwhile the Priodaur managed to catch up to the Teulu, but as the Pagan Rus force reshuffled to cover the hole in their battle line the Endless Wastes claimed the lives of three of the Welsh horsemen.

The winds gusted and snow again fell as The Great Winter came back in full force. The last mounted Teulu vanished into the Endless Wastes. The last Teulu disappearing into the unknown proved to be too much for the Priodaur on that flank as they too began to suffer from a Fear of the Dark. The Viking warchief was forced to change his plans on the fly as the oncoming mist and snow meant the Beserkers would be unable to close with his ideal target and ended up with both flanks just continuing their steady advance to close with their enemies. The Priodaur faced with the oncoming Viking Bondi hurled their javelins with accuracy but the swift discipline of the Vikings prevent any of the brave men from falling to the cowardly Welsh attack. The Teulu emerged from the forest at that moment putting additional pressure on Vikings facing them.

The Pagan Rus reposition ready to attempt to fend of the obviously incoming Viking rush. The isolated Priodaur lost more men to the Endless Wastes. The Welsh Teulu pulled back into the forest hoping to lure the Viking men into an Ambush in my opinion. The Beserkers after being held back from their targets for such a long time swept into the Pagan Rus line calling on Frigg and Ullr, the Militia were Standing like Bears and with a warcry of For The Khagan! the melee began. At the end there was nothing left but corpses and one rather battered and shocked looking Pagan Rus man.

As luck would have it capricious Loki was attending this battle and that lone Pagan Rus warrior was claimed as his. Unfortunately The Great Winter showed no signs of breaking and the warriors again found themselves battling against the very earth itself just to move. The Bondi closed with the Priodaur but were replused losing over half their number and only managing to pull down a single Welsh man. The Priodaur heartened by their success against the Bondi hurled their javelins at the Hirdmen but with the adrenaline pumping in their veins they were unable to even look like hitting any of the professional Viking warriors. It was this moment that the Welsh warchief found his mettle and bravely charged the remaining Viking Bondi. He fought valiantly but was cut down by the Welsh man. Once again Fear of the Dark and Endless Wastes took out more of the Priodaur on the far flank seemingly forgotten by their warchief.

The Viking Hirdmen charged the Welsh warchief but a nearby Priodaur managed to leap into the melee saving his warchief from being cut down at the cost of his own life. The Welsh warchief with bellowed command smashed into the Hirdmen along with the Priodaur. The Hirdmen cried out to Thor, Ullr and a rainbow bridge appeared to Valhalla itself with two of the brave men crossing over then and their causing their fellows to fight with a redoubled effort with the Priodaur being forced back and the Warchief left to fight alone against the now frenzied Hirdmen who while managing to kill the last Viking was only left in his saddle thanks to his resilience. The game came to a close with the last Priodaur on the Pagan Rus flank being swallowed by the Endless Wastes.

Awesome game! The day went to The Brother with twelve victory points. The Eldest and myself tied with six points each. The Eldest plans to keep her force more tightly packed next time she plays against the Pagan Rus and I'm going to be practicing judging distances better so my warchief kills are stolen at the last minute by nearby warriors :). As always when I play The Brother he's put up a companion post on his blog Stand and Deliver! feel free to go check it out.

22nd October - 20th October Bolt Action vs Toby

Just a quick update today, back to covering holidays at work :). Got a game of Bolt Action in with Toby after a couple of weeks of postponing. I've had my Tiger 2 painted up for a while now and had yet to get it onto a table so we knocked up a couple of 2000 point lists.












I managed to get the Tiger on and it survived the first round from one of Toby's two Chaffees but the second turn saw it taken out on the first order die. We then proceeded to get stuck in to some pretty heavy house to house fighting until the next highlight.

I got my SdKfz 250/10 on the table towards the end of the third turn and with some exceptional shooting (many many sixes) I took out one of his tanks with the anti-tank gun on the front :).






At the start of the fifth turn we were tied for victory points but not enough for the win so I took a couple of gambles charging two US infantry squads dug into houses to get my Brandenburgers close enough to take a few shots at the remaining Chaffee with their panzerfausts. While I did clear both houses gaining the two victory points I needed for the win I also lost one of the my units giving Toby one as well. Of course after that the Brandenburgers then failed to hit the tank and the game ended as a draw.





Hopefully I'll get a bit of painting down over the next few weeks, but we'll see what happens as time will be limited.

15th October - General Update

Just a quick one today, the holidays are over and I'm back to work this morning. Didn't get as much painting done as I planned but that's the way these things go.

I'll put up a few pics of the Infinity Operation Icestorm game against The Brother first. We played the first four scenarios on Saturday night which all went my way (though to be fair he'd just finished a ten hour day and was fairly tired by the last game). Then on Sunday I headed back over after lunch and we finished off the scenario set. The last game went to him four victory points to three with neither of us managing to secure the roof top of the primary objective. It was good to catch up and get to push some figures around and he's now looking at an Ariadna Caledonian Sectorial force.

Hobby wise I've put together the 4Ground kits myself and The Wife picked up while we were down in Sydney at MOAB. It was great to meet the guys from War and Peace while we were there and I'm pretty sure it'll be a repeat trip for next year as both The Daughters enjoyed the day as well so next year we might stretch the holiday an extra day and get into a few demo games or maybe a tournament. Back on topic I picked up some of the new Ruins of Daldorr kits while The Wife grabbed a couple of Norse buildings for me.

While at MOAB The Eldest also decided she liked the look of the Malifaux models, so after getting back to Brisbane we sat down and watched a couple of battle reports. So I'm now the owner of a two player starter set and I picked up a few of the Plastcraft ColorED sets.

While I have nothing painted to show at the moment (those Abyssal Dwarves are coming along though), The Wife put the finishing touches on her first two completed forces. Her Anglo-Danish for Saga and her Shaltari for Dropzone Commander. I think they look awesome and now she's got her Bolt Action Japanese on her part of the table I'm looking forward to seeing how she does with them.

Anglo-Danish:

Huscarls w Danish Axe

Huscarls w Spear

Warchief

Ceorls

Ceorls

Four point Warband

Shaltari:

Birdeaters

Tomahawks and Kukri

Gaia, Edens and Havens

Coyote

Ocelot

Braves

Skirmish Force

That covers it for today, Kickstarter wise The Wife and I are waiting for the Dropfleet Commander one to start and are in fairly heavily on the current Battle Systems Post Apoc Terrain one. I've got both the Sci-Fi and Fantasy sets and I have to say that it's a great modular system and I'm happy with the quality of product they put out.

12th October - 10th Dropzone Commander vs The Wife

The Wife finished off her first wave of Dropzone Commander so we celebrated by having a large skirmish sized game, we've got the models to stretch out to a decent sized clash game but as it was our first game using commanders and therefore the cards we decided we'd stick to a smaller game this time (that and we need to grab a few extra building packs or some 4Ground buildings if I can stretch the wallet).

We played a search for intel scenario with all of the buildings in the two centre quarters of the game mat. I won the first initiative phase but opt'd to let The Wife go first. She began by activating one of her warrior battle groups and bringing out all of her Gaia and two Edens. Her Havens quickly came out of the Gaia and while one headed toward the centre buildings the other teleported one of her three units of Braves into the corner building. I responded by bring on my Slayers dropping them down and sending them out in order to begin bringing down some of the buildings on that side of the table. The next few activations had both of us bringing out the remainder of our forces and the turn finished with my Warrior group, the Marauder heading up to the centre of the table disgorging my two Invaders who streamed toward two buildings one of them making it to the doorways of the one in the corner which the Warriors stormed into. The other while falling short of the building found a secret tunnel allowing the Warriors aboard to make it to their target building after all.

The second turn saw two Underground Monorails unearthed beneath two of the buildings currently being searched by both forces.

The Wife won initiative and began by shooting at the large building in the centre of the map, but my Warriors managed to dodge the falling masonry without any hassles. I decided my answer to that was to activate my Slayers and their Marauder taking a huge chunk out of it's stability and making the Shaltari Braves decided not to make us of the facilities and hold their ground. My Hunter's then moved up and took a shot at her Kukri but failed to do any damage. Her Commander decided the centre needed re-enforcing and sent his Coyote porting between the Gaia and the centre Eden gate. My Reavers decided to risk the return fire and flew around the corner opening fire on the Kukri, but with their energy shields working overtime only one of the tanks succumbed to the plasma fueled onslaught. Their return fire while successful only grazed one of the Scourge attack craft. Meanwhile the Scourge soldiers took the monorail to their next building. The unfortunate ones in the centre found a booby trap but again avoided casualties and loaded up into Invader so they could move in relative safety to their next objective. Finally the rest of The Wife's Braves beamed into two more buildings, which was going to give her quite the lead.

More Monorails were discovered. I opened the turn with my Hunters who's fire against the Kukri once again proved to be easily defend against. Of course I'd forgotten about a certain Coyote who poked his head around the corner and proceeded to decimate the Hunter's in return. The Reavers split their fire between the Shaltari commander and anti air skimmers but only managed to take out one of the Kukris. The remaining one opened fire and took out the already damaged Reaver. I sent my Slayer out to open fire on the Birdeaters who were slowing my advance on that flank, the plasma stream took out one of the Shaltari vehicles and the other was barely saved by it's shields though whether you'd call the smoking vehicle safe to operate was open to interpretation. The Wife then made her first big mistake of the game which I had to capitalize on moving her Gaia up toward the centre of the table (I did ask her if she was sure that's what she wanted to do and her reasoning made sense but she'd forgotten about the Reaper's just around the corner). Sensing a juicy target the Reaper's streamed around the corner opening fire and the massive Shaltari gate was down limiting The Wife's ability to move.

The third and what would be the final turn had me win initiative and press my advantage with the Reaper's turning the corner and bringing down one of The Wife's two Edens. She conceded the game at that point though she did insist on one last salvo from her Tomahawks bringing down one on the previously damaged buildings.

It was a really good game once again and the commander cards definitely add an nice element to it. I also managed to introduce The Brother to Infinity over the weekend playing the Ice-storm box set from start to finish. I've got a few pictures from the last game so I'll sort out a small update over the next few days.