Club Night 10th February

Steve K organised a Black Powder using our 6mm troops from the Battle of Alma the club put on a while back. The scenario was based on Inkerman, with me taking the Russian Naval Brigade, new club member Lyndon, the two regular brigades adjacent to me, while Bob took the later arriving brigades. Against us Steve and Ben took the British, with a Guard and French Brigade in reserve.

It started badly for me with my unreliable units not moving, once I got them moving I made slow progress, and even blundered ordering my gun, so four turns in it had retreated back to where it started! The other Russians were not doing much better, making slow progress, although their artillery was proving surprisingly good at suppressing the enemy artillery with counter battery fire.

We finally pushed forward to the tiny units of skirmishers holding the ground ahead of us, only for them to fall back, although we eventually caught them. By now Bob had arrived and was having about the same luck we did in getting his force across the bridge on the post road and deployed ready for battle.

Then my sailors suddenly got three moves and swept up the ridge behind Lyndon's troops, attacking and destroying an artillery battery on the flank and a unit of skirmishers. Meanwhile some of the main British force had advanced and Lyndon was valiantly fighting it off on the road up the hill, however he then launched a counter attack, which was repelled with a unit destroyed and the supporting units streaming backward.

On the other flank Bob had made it up to the high ground and was gradually forcing Ben back, although Lyndon was giving spectacular support from his artillery and rifle armed battalion, the British refused to break (rolled double-6 twice for break tests at a hefty -4 modifier).

By now the evening was advanced, and with the French and Guards coming up, while the Russians were battered ad quite spread out, it did not look like they would be successful and it was declared an allied victory.

This was a good scenario by Steve, although the skirmishers seemed a bit too effective (they were a tiny unit with a stamina of 1) and we will need review the rules and check we were doing them right.

Club Night 16th September

Having missed the last game I persuade Phil to run another Check your 6 air combat game as I really wanted to try out these rules. He fortunately obliged and run two scenarios for us based on the start of the Battle of Britain.

The first game saw me commanding flight of Hurricanes, chasing down some unidentified aircraft under Phil(history is unsure what they were but most likely RAF Blenheims), while some of the shiny new Spitfires under Bob attacked me in turn. yes, this was the historical recreation of the first aerial kill by a Spitfire and not a Jerry in sight!

I swept around to try and use my superior speed to run down the more ponderous aircraft and happily ignore the Spits' as why would my own side fire on me! However they did damaging one of my Hurricanes, which eventually crashed after I tried to climb after the 'enemy' bombers and stalled and my green crew were unable to recover. The rest if the Spitfires made attacks, but missed and then broke off as they ran out of ammunition. I managed to make a few passes at the bombers inflicting some damage before I also ran out of ammunition.
We then had time for a second game. This time involving the enemy! Bob and I shared some Messerschmitts while Phil took the British photography mission (I think they were flying Defiants, but I can't recall). Here the German should have had the advantage, but one of the down sides of air (and naval) games became apparent. If you don't play them regularly you don't have a full enough understanding of the limitations and manoeuvrability of your craft and fail to take advantage of it fully or place you self in poor positions. And this is what Bob and I did, not flying to take full advantage of our aircraft, while Phil made full use of his. This combined with our poor shooting and the annoyingly accurate Brits meant we failed to chase them down, took damage ourselves, although mostly ran out of ammo firing from disadvantageous positions.

Despite this I really enjoyed this, and a possible project for next year is the Jet-Age update, flying wither over Korea or Israel.

Club Night 1st July

Luke, Steve and I dusted off my 6mm Epic and played a game of Futurewar commander. Steve and Luke took the Imperial Guard and I took my Eldar. Initially it went all in the Eldar favour as Luke failed repeated command rolls and the Eldar jet bikes swept forward and drove back the guard. On the other flank the heavy tank and the Titan pinned down the Imperial armour and prevented it advancing.

It begun to swing when the enemy infantry were pushed back into the city ruins, and the enemy artillery came in to play, while on the other side the Imperial heavy tanks finally bought down the Titan.

It came down to a close finally with the Eldar jet bikes trying to get the guard infantry out of the ruins and the armour swinging forward on the other flank as the Eldar heavy tank was destroyed leaving the flank with no armour support.

The Eldar reached their breakpoint first, but held on, but the guard reached there and their battle group broke gifting the Xenos a narrow victory.

Great Lakes Naval

Just a quick post, I have foudn some wonderful card ship models at the Warartisan, whch I ave purchased and plan to build and detail with Rod Langton figures and guns. This will be a wway off, but I will keep you posted.