Banzai, err, Doner und Blitzen

I had a great evening at the club last night, which was required after two days in the PO and another two and a half weeks to go. We were doing Dystopian Wars which had been put off the week before as the second edition rulebook had not turned up at Simon's, it still hasn't turned up but we went for the game anyway as three of us hadn't a clue. I have played it a couple of times but with long intervals in between.

This time I took the Prussian Empire with Ryan while Simon took the British with Julian, Simon has a huge collection of toys for this game and they are just lovely to look at, the Steampunk quirkiness is everywhere. The rules do seem a bit complex and we missed out a lot of the more intricate ones but Simon assured us that second edition is more player friendly, there is a lot of depth in this game and it is something you need to invest time in to get the full experience.

The Prussian fleet attacks.

 I decided to simply run my squadron at the enemy and hope to overwhelm them, there was no time for fancy manoeuvring and anyway I thought it a good plan for a club night. Yes, here it comes, a big mistake, my Krupp guns must have come from Kraft as they missed everything, but the returning fire of the British was deadly. Julian missed a couple at first and I responded with 'what a shame mate' which soon turned to 'give us a break' as he threw six after six for the rest of the night.

'Bloody RAF' was heard after this failed attack.

I lost four frigates in the opening turn and it was some time before I managed to sink a couple of destroyers, Ryan was trying to be a real admiral and was chuntering all over looking for the perfect position, it paid off and he made our first kill. Although we were taking a beating and quite a few of our ships were awash we were actually winning points wise, if only we could maintain this until the clock struck ten.

Things were desperate enough to send in the airships.

 Of course the British had no intention of letting this happen and there were some last gasp attacks from their fleet as they attempted to even the score, they succeeded despite some really good saves at one point from me. Why Banzai you ask, well when we got our first kill a huge cheer went through the Prussian fleet before being reminded we were Germans, so next up was Donner und Blitzen, although we still managed a few more Banzai's before the end, just for laughs.

Just before I lost two cruisers and lost the game.

Playing a simplified version we soon got the hang of shooting etc. and the game picked up, the best thing was we had some fun and a laugh, just what it's all about.

A quite night at the club this week, a Saga game and a boardgame and that was it. It is back to WAC next week and my third outing against the Seleucids as Simon and Julian are not present, Ryan has bought an elephant for this encounter, now that will be interesting.

Weird Wars

Like the rest of you I have been chilling and enjoying the lovely weather, although I believe it is not quite as nice in other parts of the country or Europe, but that is a welcome change for us here in the Northwest. I have dabbled in the garden, twice now, cleaned the outhouse of primer dust, washed the car and sat in the shade with a cold drink to hand, today we are heading off to Kendal as the missus wants to go shopping. Fair enough as there is an excellent fish shop in Kendal and I want a paint pallet, I might even have a look at some books although I don't really need any at the moment.

The club, Simon volunteered to bring his Dystopian War stuff on Tuesday, he must have almost everything for this game but he settled on another naval action, we have done one before. I of course was British being an Imperialist and he was the Russians, the British have longer range guns but the Russians have a special armour which you have to get rid of before you can damage them, this is a big advantage. My force was a mix of large ships, cruisers and destroyers with a couple of squadrons of 'tiny flyers' I love that phrase, Simon had two big ships and six slightly less bigger ships with some attendant destroyers which looked like UFO's.

The Dystopian universe as you might expect has some fantastic design for all manners of things and Simon has complemented these with some conversion work of his own, the carrier is one example.

The carrier.

Simon split his forces into two groups so I decided to feint against the left hand one and then make a run for the other, I advanced slowly as I outranged his guns but it didn't really make much difference as the nearer you are obviously the more effective (or the more dice you have) your shooting is. This actually made no difference for me as I only managed one really good salvo all night. I threw a squadron of destroyers and a group of tiny flyers against the left squadron and they were very successful and their torpedo salvoes took the special armour off one of his big cruisers but as so often happens, I could not actually sink it. On the other side I closed the range and threw everything including the kitchen sink at the Russkies but failed miserably to inflict any damage. Meanwhile I lost a squadron of destroyers and several cruisers along with damage to my carrier.

British battleship and destroyers.

At this point I hoisted the signal to flee, it was every ship for itself, those that were left that is. When you get down to it the game is a pretty good naval action despite the weird looking vessels and there is a great depth to the mechanics which will take time to learn, we played a fairly basic version as I am a beginner. The game can be very involved as you can also bring in land and air forces.

Boo, hiss, Russians.

My feint is over and we head for the right hand group.

 My Bolt Action forces are only literally a couple of figures off being complete, a Bren gun team in fact. I want to get a little mini campaign up and running, a series of linked battles which give a point to each encounter. To this end I bought the Chain of Command campaign booklet and a campaign aptly named 'The Scottish Corridor' for my Normandy forces, I have given the former a quick look and there are some really good ideas for this type of mini campaign in there. However, and here's the snag, my opponent in the first such game will probably be Simon and he has Russians, I have pulled back from the brink of buying Eastern Front buildings and suitable terrain and covering everything in all the new snow products. I will therefore do an 'Into the Reich' set of games with the Russians bulldozing their way through Germany in late '44 or early '45, my poor British will have to wait their turn, hopefully my son will join me in Normandy.

So I have given myself quite a bit to do in the near future, I have all those troops to reflock, a couple of kits to assemble, new buildings to build and the others to 'tart up' and a campaign to sort out. I am also thinking aloud about the end of the year and this possible Byzantine or Pyrrhic army.

Weird War

Club night and a real winters evening, dark, dank, wet and cold, there are a huge amount of leaves lying about on the approach to the club and I continually worry that I am going to end up on my backside with soldiers everywhere one of these evenings. I can at least rest safe in the knowledge that the money not being used to clean the pavements is being spent wisely by the Council in saving Lancashire from some horrendous eco crises. As usual I digress, the club game last night was Dystopian Wars, something I have heard about but never played, I have seen Simon's collection and it is impressive, the models are wonderful and he has painted them with care and attention. We were having a naval game, I was the Royal Navy of course as suited an old veteran and he was the Russians.

As I had not a clue about the game or rules and Simon hadn't played for at least two years we kicked off with two starter fleets, we each had one battleship, three cruisers and eight small ships in two squadrons along with an air squadron, I chose torpedo bombers, Simon took fighters. Each fleet has its own characteristics, the British have long range gunnery but the Russians have 'ablatov' armour, I could have spelt that wrong, which you have to knock out before you can hurt them, Simon assured me it was nothing but it was much better than nothing.

My fleet prepares to meet the enemy.

 For some reason Simon split his fleet on deplyoment and left his three cruisers out on a limb opposite my whole fleet. I decided therefore to go straight at them, despite being warned that the Russians were also built for ramming. Tooled up for that they may be but Simon turned his cruisers towards his battleship not my line, I opened fire and managed to sink a cruiser with some extraordinary shooting, not long after another Russian cruiser went to the bottom. By this time I had almost lost all my small ships with one lone survivor of a squadron keeping up the best traditions of the RN by bravely, but foolishly attacking his battleship at full speed. My torpedo bombers made a quick attack on a destroyer screen and sent one to the bottom before making for home but falling foul of Russian fighters on the way.

The mighty Russian battleship with strange, round, destroyers.

My own battleship, typical RN, ugly but functional.

What with the introduction to the rules we ran out of time, at the end my battleship had taken a pounding but my three cruisers were virtually untouched, on the other hand Simon was down to one cruiser and I had managed to remove the extra armour on the battleship. My hope at the end was if my battleship could get the initiative it might manage to damage the Russian enough for the cruiser squadron to sink it, which would leave his cruiser overwhelmingly outnumbered, but that's one for the pub recrimination phase, I do miss that part.

There you have it, a good game and despite being a sci-fi setting the naval warfare was pretty good and better fun than my last run out with the WWI fleets. Elsewhere there were a couple of Bloodbowl games, SAGA Cross and Crescent and a run of Blucher. I was intrigued with the pre-battle movements of Blucher and thought this a good idea, but the rest looked like a game with toy soldiers as do many systems/rules these days.

Online banter is building to a frenzy as the WAC Tournament approaches, insults are being thrown around and no one is crazy enough to throw a boast into the ring, at least not yet. Defending champion Jenny is the one to beat in the Dark Age tourney while it is up for grabs in the Classical. Dave Toone, organiser and sculptor has turned out another fine individual figure for those attending, his best yet I think.

I am on my way with the Praetorians, those spine shields were a real challenge, very 'footery' for an old guy with bad eyesight. The way the figures are made I decided for the first time to do the shields separate and then glue them on once the figure is complete, I will have to decided on the eventual colour scheme tonight. I am thinking of going with a white tunic and a red or blue cloak, the red because my Romans don't have a lot of the traditional bright red on them and maybe blue to fit in with the shields. Blue also being my favourite colour, of course it would be signalling ; trustworthy, honest, loyal, wise, sincere, reserved, quiet, reliable and responsible, who writes that muck...... mind you....