Men of Company B: 15mm Vietnam War

 Men of Company B is published by Peter Pig. It uses a grid with the table being divided into 60 squares. Our mat has crosses marked on the junctions which aren't to obvious to spoil the look. I took the South Vietnamese army. My mission was to search the villages, destroy caches of equipment and interrogate villagers for information. John took the Viet Cong, Kev refereed as he owned the rules and none of us had played them before.

Starting positions were random, we rolled again for a VC unit that appeared right in front of the enemy. The Started with two platoon leaders with a squad each. They were able to recruit from villages. Three more VC units would arrive later as well as two tanks and another platoon for the South Vietnamese army.

I made a good start moving a platoon off the road into the jungle where I could shoot at the enemy exposed in a paddy field, causing one casualty, my command group moved forward to see and called down artillery destroying the remaining stand. I moved the other platoon into a village to interrogate a villager, who died, giving a victory point to the enemy. And their search turned up an ambush that caused me a casualty.

 John's remaining leader moved into a village and recruited the locals. I moved a platoon across the road into the jungle where they shot at each other without much effect. I moved back across the road so my HQ would be able to see the enemy when they followed.

 

A new VC unit appeared in another village and recruited a new platoon. My tanks arrived and fired on them from the road, killing another villager and giving away more victory points. My third platoon arrived and started searching and interrogating in the other square of the first village, they discovered a cache and killed another civilian.

 

 I now planned to press my advantage and storm all three platoons across to attack the smaller enemy. However in the next two turns the remaining VC groups appeared at the other end of the table and recruited the villagers there.

My HQ moved to a position to call artillery on them, the stand it killed was replaced by a newly recruited one the following turn and another civilian was killed. My tanks moved to engage them as well. Kev had taken over by now and the VC in the centre moved forward. threatening to assault my tanks and I repositioned to face them. The VC killed most of my platoon in one round of firing.

The VC at the bottom of the table surged forward to assault my platoon which was destroyed, I expected them to move onto my HQ but the assaulted the tanks instead, unsucussfully.

 

In my turn I destroyed one VC squad, but triggered them to get opportunity fire that destroyed a tank and then failed my second action.

Meanwhile at the top of the table my advance had failed. The first platoon failed to call in medi-vac and were caught in the open when the VC made a long distance move, losing most of their troops. I pulled the back behind the village and managed to evacuate the casualties but my second unit failed to stop the enemy moving into the village with them.

The game has a count down with players choosing one to three increments each turn. As it was impossible now to get near any of the other villages, let alone search them I started choosing the maximum to try to run down the clock before I lost most of my force. 

 

The VC player also reduced my victory points my removing their dead, reducing the bodycount. Counting the victory points gave the VC a solid win, most of the villages hadn't been searched and most of my attempts in the one village I occupied cost my victory points. 

 

Lion Rampant: Robin Hood vs Guy of Gisborne

 Lion Rampant is published by Osprey and this game used the new 2nd edition with an unofficial Robin Hood list. Robin Hood and his inner circle form an elite infantry unit with bows, the rest of the army are two units of archers and four units of skirmishers. The Norman force has two units of mounted knights, one led by Guy of Gisborne, one unit of crossbowmen and three units of foot knights. 

The scenario requires the Normans to get three wagons from one corner of the table to the opposite corner. The Bandit force is deployed in all three remaining corners. I had Robin Hood and Kev had the Normans.

In the South West corner are archers and skirmishers, I planned to move towards the centre to get in range and shoot the convoy from there. Kev had other ideas though and sent the cavalry to attack them. The new mission became keeping the knights occupied while I tried to take out the wagons.

The skirmishers killed a knight as they fired and evaded, and another in the melee, in which they were unsurprisingly wiped out. The archers killed 2 more before they had to turn their attention to the second unit coming round the lake. They survived the first charge fairly well and killed 2 knights before being overwhelmed and fleeing.

I

The wagons moved forward, my skirmishers in the South East corner were slow to intercept them due to failed activation rolls. Robbin Hood's unit shot from the woods. 

 I had misunderstood the units given to me and had put down a unit of archers as two units of skirmishers, wasting their long range until it was noticed late in the game after they had been lurking in the corner until then.

 

 

I wiped out the crossbowmen escorting one chariot and discovering my mistake earlier brought my reclassed archers out to attack the next unit. The wagons wavered due to turns rallying and failed commands long eneugh to wipe out a second escort. 

By now the knights had crossed the table and quickly wiped out the skirmishers that were blocking the exit. I was able to reduce them with some more shooting as they threatened my archers.

 

A unit of foot knights closed on my skirmishers who held them off for a while, getting one kill each turn and the knights being shaken and having to spend the next turn rallying. Eventually the Knights got into melee and destroyed the skirmishers. With the remaining cart nearly off the table and no longer in reange for one unit and line of sight for the other my heroic unit charged the foot knights, reducing and shaking them in the first turn then destroying them in the second.

Casualties were high on both sides, victory was determined by the wagons, two were abandoned and one crossed the table giving victory to Robin Hood.

 

 

 

  

Star Wars: Rangers of Shadow Deep

 This game used the Rangers of Shadow Deep rules with a Star Wars adaption found on line. We played a five part mission over two sessions. We each had a hero and two companions against randomly generated enemies. Some of the scenarios are from the Rangers rules and some from an Star Grave expansion. Star Grave and Rangers of Shadow Deep are both based on Frost Grave.

 

 

 The overall mission was to infiltrate an imperial base, find out what was going on there and then get out. We were Imperial special forces sent by one Moff to spy on a rival. It was known that a Star Destroyer wason it's way to destroy the base and we had to avoid being there when that happened. We had to complete each stage before the end of turn random event cards ran out.

We descended a mountain side by a rugged path being attacked by the local wildlife along the way.

Next we had to swim through a swamp to get to the entrance. There were more creatures. We silently dealt with a possible rebel who was watching the base and then found that the Stormtrooper guards were actually zombies. We made it in at the last moment.

We crossed through a storage area where hordes of zombies emerged. We were joined by Nick for these games. This trooper didn't make it, although he returned for the next stage having lost some fingers from the casualty table.

Next there was a laboratory area where force fields randomly divided the playing area periodically. Both my companions were casualties this time but survived to fight again.

Having established that the base was overrun by the walking dead it was time to exit. We aimed for the transport which was most likely to get us to safety before the base was destroyed.

A group of living opponants appeared from another door also intent on escaping, including a senior officer. I tried to bluff that we were on the same side but they weren't buying it.

We got there first, shooting some stormtroopers, and shot and fell back into the vehicle. Some dice rolls succeeded in getting us airborne and escaping, leaving the enemy to their doom on the landing field.

The stormtrooper zombies are 3d printed, the other figures are from Star Wars Legions.

Hordes of the Things: Bristol tournament 2022

 Last weekend we hosted HottBarn at Lincombe Barn in Bristol. We had 12 players, a few from our own club and the rest from around the country. The tournament was delayed due to uncertainty about Covid which caused last years tournament not to happen.

We had five rounds, it was going to be four but games went quickly and we had had three by lunch, which was pies cooked by our treasurer Andy.

An all American affair here, Colin Evans' semi-historical Aztecs vs Martin Smith's Eastern Forest Native Americans.

 

Carol's Hyborian Barbarians.

 

Keith McGlyn's Smashing Pumpkins v Colin O'Shea's 1868 Abbysinians.

Mark Skelton's Undead Horde vs my Frogs of War.

Kev Casey's semi-historical Arthurians

Pete Duckworth's Trojans won the tournament. Sadly I didn't get a good picture of his stronghold, Troy. Keith McGlyn was runner up.

 

Star Grave: first game

 We had our first game of Star Grave at the club on Sunday. We had played a lot of Frostgrave in the past and had several long running campaigns. For this game we had two teams of two and each of us used half our crew with either the Captain or the First Mate. Nigel ran the game for us and controlled the hostile locals.

Kev had his captain, I had my first mate, a cyborg. I succesfully added armour plates to him pre-game but forgot to use his restructure body ability which was also pre-game. We deployed in a corner, there were a couple of ruffians guarding the nearby loot.

Carol and Kev set up in the opposite corner, a group of them dealt with ruffians on their side.

I took out one ruffian and Kev took out the other has he sped past on his way to the centre. More ruffians appeared in our rear, some of my crew stayed back to deal with them while a couple more moved on to the loot. As I took them out more appeared and we ended up having deal with six of them. My cyborg first mate took out some with his flamethrower.

This frog thing is a defurd, which is one of the harder monsters appeared and stunned and poisoned my pathfinder (not in the picture) with it's spitting attack. My medic wasn't going near that thing so the pathfinder was finished off. It also hit my cyborg reducing him to one action per turn until my medic healed him.

A Warp hound appeared to attack Matt's crew, another of the more dangerous monsters and killed a couple of the crew.

My hacker secured a data loot token and exited towards the centre, with the medic to help fight for the central objective, and away from the frog.I had planned to contest the loot item further along the table but the frog would make that too risky.

Fighting was underway between Carol and Kev's forces in the middle.

One of Kev's crew was climbing the tower in the centre, of of Matt's was in pursuit and they fought inside. Matt won and climbed on for the loot at the top.

Annother of the big monsters appeared, I can't remember what it acually was but we were calling it the soup dragon. This piled into the members of Matt's crew that had survived the warp hound.

Kev had lost most of his crew by now. We each had one loot (out of five) and our escape point was still blocked by ruffians and the frog thing would block us off if we hung around. We decided to make a sharp exit. One of Kev's troopers was cut off and fell to the frog.

We took out the final pair of ruffians and escaped, surviving one last spitting attack from the frog.

Carol now tried to get the last piece of loot and a chase ensued. The frog took out her crew member and the loot was lost.

There were a lot of casualties, mostly from the local inhabitants. The game was a lot of fun.