Back Again

 It's been a while which is unusual for me, I am just about back down to earth after my two days of War and Conquest with Rob Broom so nothing else seemed relevant.

I have played some games although I did miss one night at the club, after the WAC extravaganza Jimi and I played a Bolt Action 3 game straight from the book, a mistake as these scenarios are just bland. Jimi brought his Gebirgsjager and I had the Russians, I managed to bring my SU-85 which saw action for the first time ever. We should just have went to the pub as we chatted and laughed about all sorts of things and only managed four turns of the game, neither of us were particularly invested in it, I certainly wasn't as my SU-85 was turned to scrap by a StuG.

Deleted battle photos, but here is the offending article.

I have yet to actually pick up the book and give it another thorough read through, there are errata out and I haven't even looked at them yet. Matt Crump uses Bolt Action (V1) and we have cracking games in the Dungeon but V3 just leaves me cold. My main sticking point is the new shooting rules which 'simplified' the procedure by introducing saving rolls, I am certainly not thick but why introduce another step in shooting and calling it simpler. The fact that a tank now has a saving roll just doesn't register in my brain, no matter how they explain it. I get a whiff of change for changes sake, or rather why you should pay £30 for a new version.

I know I should take Matt's route and set up proper scenarios on the table top but that is far easier to do here in the Bunker than at the club and I simply don't play a lot of Bolt Action at home. Maybe I should just go back to V2, we will see. I am hoping that Chain of Command 2 will be a success when it eventually turns up.

I also managed to get to the club last night, Jimi asked for a game of Dead Man's Hand so he could bring along his son, it's school holidays, and we ended up with five of us as Simon and his lad joined in. Basically we had five gangs all trying to either kill or save a prisoner from a hanging. Once again no one took it serious and we had a lot of fun although it looked like most of us had forgotten to load bullets until the closing stages of the game, Jimi's luck had rubbed off on all of us. With a hail of lead sweeping Main Street needless to say no one managed the objective but I think Jimi got the points for dropping the most bad/good guys. My Mexicans as usual did not live up to their reputation.

I continue building up the new Roman army, I am managing almost a unit every two and a half weeks, much faster than I expected, I am about half way through them. I am actually now working on the army list, most of it is straight forward but I have to make a couple of decisions on troop types, the main problem is Lanciarii, these were seen as light troops although they did wear armour, they were also practised in moving quickly and holding ground. I have decided therefore to have two units which will fit these rolls, one close ordered but light and another based as skirmishers. As for the others I am finding that this army will have far more cavalry than any of my other armies with probably six cavalry units rather than four in order to cover the types of horsemen available to the Romans in this period. Cataphracts, lancers, archers, light and heavy cavalry will be covered. War and Conquest has always really been an infantry battle but Rob's new rule giving cavalry two lives rather than one along with the choice of breaking off from combat has been a bit of a game changer.

II Treverorum.

On parade.

The club continues to recruit Dark Age and Ancient armies for Hail Caesar, the former especially being a joy to see on the table, Midgard also continues driven by Stuart who is a convert, I remain in the wilderness atop the hill, dark clouds rolling in as the light fades, still holding up my tattered flag for War and Conquest surrounded by my dead and dying hearthguard.

On the horizon we have our third ACW campaign game on the 13th, I have no plans for anything after that at the moment. The Helion book on wargaming the Italian Wars is being released at Salute, I have seen the proofs and it is a lovely work, maps by you know who of course, I fully expect there to be an upsurge in interest in the period and I look forward to getting my hands on a copy.