HOTT in May

We got together this evening for our continuing HOTT Campaign. Dave was unable to make it & managed to somehow have the highest points. Must be the explored towns he found.

But in any case onto the battles. Chen & I went at it again, this time I was defending one of my cities from the Dwarfish Dregs.

The battle was a see-saw affair until Chen rolled a series of 1's which pretty much finished him & he withdrew from the field upon the death of his General. The shot below is where the forces ended. I must say they were quite dispersed.

Meanwhile, Dennis & Stu had declared war on Chris. The image below shows the battle lines before Stu's contingent showed up. Chris had some good opportunities to bag some beasts with his mounted General & Hero, but failed in his dice. Soon after it was all over as Chris's General fell.

We are now in the Fall turn of year 6. We will be fighting 2 more field battles to start out next campaign night.

The standings now sit at

Dave         60
Dennis      45
Stu            24
Chen         58
Chris         36
Terry         58

Mayday Games Convention

Another very successful Mayday convention. We added a new Warmachine tournament thanks to Kevin so that gave us 3 tourneys happening now. This also pretty much fills our venue (we even had to get more tables!)

This also meant we had to set up games in the Social Room (our usual club haunt).

So what about the auction!?! We had the full run of the hall so utilized the hallway for our auction this year. What makes our convention differ from Fallcon is that we are more miniatures oriented vs. board games. That's not to say we don't play board games, just look at that first table in the auction!

There were several of us bloggers who took lots of photos, so I will leave the majority of it to them. I will of course focus on the games I played in or ran.

Up first was G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. Sean & his son Liam came up from Calgary to host this game. This game also filled up very quickly!. In this scenario, all the players played small forces working together to take out the Spice Pirate stronghold.

Sean & his son played the forces of the Spice Pirates....& more...

I chose to play the Camel Corps under the command of 'Black Jack' McCracken (call me Phil) & his trusty Indian sidekick Lal Singh.

A shot of the objective.

Pat was on my flank with his Blue Turban Sikhs & Gatling Gun.

The Camel Corps wiped out a foot unit before it could come to grips, then were charged by the Spice Pirates Camel troops. A huge melee ensued.

It was bloody & when done, Lal discovered he had received a field promotion. They were to continue & were engaged by another swarm of foot troops, which ended the brave charge of the Camel Corps.

Meanwhile our forces Steam Tank drove into the Forbidden Oasis.....there's a reason it was forbidden. A dinosaur emerged & attacked the steam tank. I believe our forces had dino-burgers after the battle.

On the other side of the field, Pat's Blue Turban Sikhs entered the area near the monolith & spawned a Giant Spider. His leader made short work of the spider.

I had left the table after this point (to go look over auction goodies) but I believe our forces did manage to eke out a victory, though when I wandered past a bit later our forces were very much smaller than when we started.

The afternoon timeslot I spent playing War Rockets. In this scenario, a Crashed Xenethian base ship drew the attention of scavenging Pirates. A force of Xenethian ships were enroute to destroy the scum.

The ships surrounding the downed vessel were all grounded at the start of the game. Each turn they would collect 1 cargo up to their capacity ( ie: a tier 2 ship could carry 2 cargo). Then had to lift off & escape off the far edge of the table. They had several small overwatch fleets defending the site.

I played the Xenethian relief force. Though very agile, they discs are not very hardy & I lost 2 very quickly. Things were looking bad right off the get go. I did however recover & was able to destroy several of his ships in return.

The chase ensued & I was able to destroy the tier 4 ship before it could escape. They managed to get off 4 cargo. (Scott said that after 2 previous playtests this was also the amount they were able to get). We replayed the game again & tried some new tactics. Namely using 2 of the cargo gatherers to help defend & then once all the ships had 2 cargo made a run for it. This did indeed work & we got away from the Xenethian tier 3 & 4 ships before they could get close.

For the evening game, I brought out my Pirates! In this scenario, there were 2 merchant Caravels, each carrying a locked chest of treasure. Their goal was to sail off the far end of the table. They turned their dials on the chests so they did not know what it contained. We would only discover that once the ship got off the table.

The Pirates of course heard of this fleet, so were sailing to attempt to get the gold for themselves.  The game of course was cutthroat from the beginning as 1 of the pirates unloaded a broadside at his neighbor...he was short on both shots!.

The Pirates sniped away at one-another as they sailed towards the merchants.

One of the merchants got too close to the rocks & ran aground. He was stuck there for 3 turns. He was engaged by one of the pirates, but came out well ahead as he started picking off Pirate Crew, which totally nullified it being able to do anything but sail.

The other merchant ship found itself sailing into the wind with damaged sails. It was able to maintain its position but was unable to make any headway. The pirate ship closest to the bottom of the image had a damaged rudder causing it to sail straight ahead for 2 turns. This pretty much took him out of the battle, as by the time he was able to come about, the game was nearing its end.

The merchant scored a devastating blow against one of the pirates, sundering its mast & with the other damage, it was quickly sinking.

The pirate crew abandoned ship & started making towards the merchant, but were shot down to a man by the Marines & Officers of the merchant vessel.

The game ended with 1 Merchant having sailed beyond range of capture & had a chest of 300gold. One pirate ship was sunk, another abandoned & the second Merchant's chest being a trap!

Thanks to Jonathan for handling all the Mayday Registration/Website/Schedule. To Bob for handling the Auction & to Scott & Justin to ensuring we had snacks & coffee.

Battle of Adrianople - BBDBA

On Tuesday night, Dave brought out his 28mm miniatures for a large battle of DBA. Each side had what accounted to be 3 armies.

Below is an image showing the historical battle.



Image borrowed from Wikipedia

Dennis & I played the Goths, while Dave & Stu took the Romans. The mounted forces at the edges of the top & bottom table do not start on board.

An image showing our deployment of Goth infantry on the hill. The force consisted of all warband except for 2 elements of bow & 2 elements of Psiloi.

The Romans begin their advance. Luckily on turn 1 Dennis rolled a 6 allowing for his force of mounted to arrive.

It took a couple more turns before we were able to roll another 6 to bring the second mounted force onboard. Below we see the mounted troops preparing to engage. The infantry forces in the back of the picture are almost engaged as well.

The Infantry battle commences.

The Goths suffered some deplorable rolls in combat. Even when they did win, the ran forward (being warbands) & were then usually cut down the following turn. The force of Visigoth mounted I played also saw 4 light horse doubled as I suffered a string of 4 1's in a row.

I was able to take some revenge on the Roman Cavalry as I destroyed his general. Unfortunately by this point, the Goths on the hill broke, thus ending the game.

We decided it was a very close battle, and had the troops on the hill held on a couple more turns, we would likely have seen history repeat itself as the Roman mounted were crumbling.

All in all an excellent game. Thanks again Dave for bringing it out.

Up next is the Mayday games convention. I may get to squeeze in 1 more post of painted models before then, otherwise I will have stuff from the convention.

An Evening of DBA

Last night we got together for some DBA. Dave was kind enough to lend me his II/52 Dacian's & I played 2 games against Stu & his II/56 Imperial Romans.

The first game took a bit of time to come to grips, mainly due to low command pips.

Eventually we got within charging distance of one another. Stu had set his Cav units off to the far left.



 Eventually after several turns of recoiling Auxilia & Warbands, there was a breakthrough.

The game ended with a 5/2 victory for the Dacians.

For the second battle, Stu chose to go with the Artillery instead of the second Cav unit. I ran one of my Psiloi out to draw the artillery fire & on the next turn used him in an all or nothing gamble to destroy the Artillery. The odds were +2 to 0 in Stu's favour. He rolled a 3 & I rolled a 6 (the only roll that would have succeeded, thus destroying the Artillery. Of course the Psiloi was destroyed the following turn, but it was a fair trade. This battle ended at 4/2 again for the Dacians. No Generals were lost in the melee.

Next Tuesday Dave is bringing out some forces for a Big Battle DBA!

Pirate Captain & Navigator

It was a bit of a slow weekend for miniature painting & I was only able to finish 2 more of my Pirate pile.

Here we have 2 Foundry miniatures. The figure on the left is a Captain...seeing he is pointing out the obvious, while I made the right hand figure a Navigator.

These were very nice miniatures to paint with a good amount of detail.

Warbirds at EWG

Tonight we played a game of Warbirds, the WW2 version of Canvas Eagles. Bruce hosted Bob, Andy & I.

We managed to get in 4 games & I think Andy was unfortunate enough to be knocked out first in each game. If I recall, he took a MG bullet to the head, exploded twice & glided to the ground without his engine.

Its a fairly fast paced game with the strategy lying in how you maneuver & outwitting your opponents.

More Pirates

This weekend I completed 4 more of the Pirates...hmm I am seeing a trend where I always seem to finish 4 miniatures.

I believe from left to right they are, Old Glory (x2), Foundry & Eureka.

It's club night tomorrow, so I will have some photos from that.