The battle of Coventry – Game 3 Clear the road

Presenting the scenario we will be playing for our 3rd game!

The stunning defeat of the Martian forces attacking Bedworth buoyed the confidence of the human command, the Martian advance had been halted and although Bedworth had fallen the civilians were saved and the static defenses to the north of Coventry where able to be completed and re-enforced.

However the Martians were not idle they sent a raiding part to the west of Bedworth and managed to secure the main trunk road than runs north to human held territory. All other routes into Coventry are long and dangerous so human command has ordered the trunk road be re taken.

The trunk roads most easily defended point is a ravine with steep sides the Martians have concentrate there forces there to block the oncoming human reinforcements

Terrain

The table is to be set up with a road running from the short edge to short edge, either side of the road is to be a collection of farm buildings and heavy Forrest terrain in very hilly terrain.

Hills block line of sight and anything in the area marked as the road way cannot see more that 4″ out of the road way and vice versa

Forces

The Martian player has 1500 points
Human players have 2000 points

The Martian player must take a slaver which is given special rules below.
The human player must have at least 5 units of the following infantry, rough riders

Deployments

The Martian player deploys his army up to half way along the board from the short edge (ie 3ft in)

The humans deploy there army on the opposite short board edge at the start of the turn.
However the 6 units that are compulsory may be deployed in ambush up to 2ft into the board.

Special rules

Difficult terrain

The humans are attacking to retake this road as it’s the main route into Coventry from the north, the terrain in the area is dense and difficult to navigate, as such 50% of the tank units taken start the game in reserve and will arrive from the second turn onwards on a 5+, then 4+ on the third turn etc

In addition any American units recycled will be delayed 1 turn extra.

There learning!

The Martians in this area have been fighting and surviving with limited support for a long time and have started to adapt to the local terrain. The slave tripod that the Martian player has become such an expert he counts all forests as high terrain to models out side of 10″

What are those locals doing here?

The Martian player must put the slaver tripod and his lobotons / drones in reserve. At the start of the Martians players 2nd turn they will turn up from a random board edge and may deploy upto 6″ onto the table.

Winning the game

The human objective is simple get the road open, the game ends on the 8th turn the humans must get the road clear, there is an objective in the middle of the table on the road, humans must hold this with no Martians within 6″ or the Martians have broken.

The Battle of Coventry game 2 – The withdraw from Bedworth

Hey there reader, today is the first battle report from out All Quiet on the Martian front campaign me and a few friends are running at my local games club in Bedworth UK.

The Campaign is going to be based around the Martian attack on Coventry to try and shout down its arms production facilities. its going to be a series of lined games about once a month so who will win the human defenders or the mighty Martian invaders!

The Scenario we played is a home brew, following on from the last game we played

Following the brief victory of the of the human defenders the Martians have re doubled there efforts to take the town of bedworth!

Human command has decided that its best to withdraw to prepared defences but the combined British and American task force shall stage a fighting withdrawal to allow for civilians to escape the Martian menace!

Scenario – Fighting withdrawal

The table shall be set up to represent a small town on the edge of a heavily forested area. (10 terrain features) human forces have dug in on the main approach to the town.

Human player gets the trench system and 1500 points
6 of the buildings / area terrain pieces may be booby trapped before the start of the game

Martian player receives 2000 points

Game lasts till the 6th turn at the start of that turn the first player rolls a dice on a 8+ a 7th turn is played

Winning the game

At the start of each human turn assign a number to each terrain feature the roll a D10 a civilian refugee token will then exit that feature and begin running towards the human table edge (move as per standard infantry in as straight a line as possible)

If the human make it off the table the human layer scores 100VP
if the Martian player kills them they score 100VP

Victory points for other units are scored as normal
the player with the highest points at the end of the game wins

Here is the terrain we set up for the game the Martians would be attacking from the Left

I have lost the army list for the american (nick) and British (Keith) defenders but from memory they had
3 x 3 MK3
2 x 3 Mk 2
2 x 3 HMG
2 x 3 american infatry
2 x 2 british infantry

might be slightly out but its close enough!

The Martians were drawn from pauls army

and my Tripods!

The human Prey models we will be using for the scenario

THe Humans set up first placing there tanks against the back table edge ready to react as the troops hid in the terrain.

Hipster photo taking a photo of someone taking a photo, smile Nick!

The Martians strode confidently on at the start of the first turn!

Quickly dispatching the human defenders in the trench the Martians thought the withdrawing humans would be easy prey! they were wrong.

The Humans first shot of the game hot and killed an assault tripod the remaining shots pounded another

The Martians moved up the board to try and bring there heat rays into close range, however caring little for there soldiers lives the British had apparently coasted there tanks in asbestos so the heat rays did nothing!

The Martians knew they’d have the last laugh though when the humans died of asbestosis!

It all went down hill for the Martians from there the human won initiative and by the end of turn 3 we were 1500 point down having killed a unit of Mk 2!

A resounding win for the human forces!

So thoughts on the game, well to start of with screw Keith and the dice he rolled in on! His dice where on fire tonight *rarely getting less that 7 hits with his mK3 squadrons) which didn’t help the Martians at all losing 4 assault tripods before the end of the second human turn (we had moved once!!!)

This did highlight a problem with our terrain as tripods can get no cover at all unless its a tall building there may as well have been no terrain on the table from a Martian point of view so when things started going wrong there was nothing we could do,

So we are ordering some bigger buildings to try and make terrain have a larger (read any) impact on the game.

As for the scenario, well its hard to say, the dice loved the humans so much it was an insanely one sided game (in our circle we call it a deliverance style game) so it wouldn’t be fair for me to say if it was good or bad! but if anyone wants to give it ago and suggest changes / alterations go ahead!

However I had loads of fun playing the game again! cant wait for the next instalment where buoyed by there recent success the humans will be on the counter attack!

comments welcome!

All quiet on the Bedworth front

Tuesday just gone my self and Keith (who also went in on the kickstarter) hooked up with nick (who subsequently brought in) and Paul (from all coins spends ) to have out first decent sized game of all quiet on the Martian front!
As it’s now Sunday I can’t remember all that happened so ill just post a few pictures and some commentary.

This is quite early on in the game, before we realised quite how accurate the human shooting was going to be! (We lost a tripod a turn!)

Not long after this the Martian attack collapsed! Commander Keith of the plucky Brits apparently couldn’t roll anything less than an 8 for damage followed by 10 for how many hit points we lost!

I loved this game reminded me completely of why I play with toy shoulders, great mates and a brilliant laugh!

The game system isn’t the best and there’s some glaring flaws both in the rules and balance wise (between units in each army the sides actually seemed balanced against each other) but I don’t really care the game looks awesome we had the entire club come to check the game out so it’s a crowd drawer!

I’ve painted up some puny humans for the mighty Martian empire to crush after this game as it had me really keen to do more hobby!

We are playing again in a few weeks time, hopefully Martian commander kiff and zap brannigan will be victorious if not it’s all kiffs fault in the mean time Martian bro fist!

Triumph and treachery – review

This is something a bit new for me, my first review of a product!

Today I’m going to look at triumph and treachery the new multi player supplement from games workshop for Warhammer.

Probably not a surprise given the content of this blog but I’m a huge fan of 8th edition fantasy battle I think as a rules set it’s a thing of beauty, really enjoyable games, lots of tactics and the most balanced the game has ever been In my oppinion. But no matter which edition you have played the multi player games have been dreadful, this is where triumph and treachery aims to change that.

3-5 players can participate but from my two games I think 5 players leaves the table a little too crowded but 4 players worked well.

The game plays out like a normal warhammer game with a few exceptions, each player is given a symbol (shield, halberd etc) then each turn player is chosen at random by flipping cards with these symbols on, this determines turn order and means a different turn order each round.

During each phase you choose another player to be the enemy then all your actions are directed against them and the other players ‘don’t exist’ for the purposes of that phase.

This can cause some oddities with some magic items or spells like vortex’s but other wise it works pretty well.

On top of this you get ‘treachery’ cards for various things these do things like let you shoot out of turn order or force your opponent to reroll to hit rolls in combat. So far in the two games I’ve had all of the good cards seem to affect shooting where as there are very few that let you alter magic and the combat ones all seemed a little lackluster which is a shame.

You win by collecting ‘coins’ basically VP tokens which works well enough.

From my games so far I think players need to enter into the spirit of the game it’s about stabbing people in the back and making and breaking alliances. In my game today the daemon player set up to run at my elves and deployed to ignore the rest of the players leaving me with no choice but to deploy to fend of this threat turning the game into effectively to 1v1 games that only had limited impact on each other.

The other cool thing about triumph and treachery is the allies, this lets you add pretty much anything into your list. Today I added some empire to my wood elves and wrote a little bit of fluff that i thought I’d share with you!

One day some elves were wondering through there forest when they came across a witch hunter pulling a great cannon, and they were like woah bro you can’t pull that shit through here, and the witch hunter was like nah brah were here to hunt witches not punch trees and the elves were like that’s cool bro shall we help, and the witch hunter was like yeah boiiiieeeeee and this the legend of the empire great cannon and the wood elves was born.

World class fluff I think you’ll agree!

Anyway here’s a few pics of the game!

Overall I really like triumph and treachery, is it worth the price tag? Debatable but for the fun I can see me having with it I’m pleased. And defiantly think it’s worth tracking down someone to play it with even if you don’t want to buy a copy!

For Queen and for Country

Hello there, today I have a battle report from a game I recently played again Paul from blood shines gold

Seen here posing with Siegfried the mad professor!

So it was 250 points dystopian legions, kingdom of Britannia Vs the evil Prussian empire.
Now we know they are evil because in our previous outings the noble Brits got smashed up, and when to the good guys ever start of by doing really well!

So this isn’t going to be a full report but more a run down of key points below is the table and set ups.

I like to add little stories to my games, on this heavily wooded board I imagine its a clash in the Ardennes region.

The game started of poorly for Paul my heavy machine gun section gunned down his artillery before it even got to shoot

This gave me effective control of the middle of the table and the objective. In response the Prussian robots hid behind a wall wind snapping around there pop socks, skirts blowing in the wind

This did cause the Brits a problem the robots still kicked out a lot of dice, the bassetts tried and failed to solve this problem

Both sides traded shots, but the barrage of fire from the British line whittled the Prussians down securing the Center of the table.

On the British right flank a last dash attempt to secure victory for the evil Prussian empire ended in failure as despite causing a lot of casualties to the line infantry the return fire was deadly causing them to flee of the table next round.

That pretty much ended the game with a resounding victory for the kingdom of Britannia!

Overall a really enjoyable game, as they always tend to be against Paul. I do love how dystopian legions looks on the table and enjoy how it plays, there’s still a few niggles for me (namely the rulebook from hell!) but I can’t wait to get playing some more!

The thin red line

So tonight I played my first game of dystopian legions in a few weeks and overall it was an enjoyable if frustrating experience, there’s not a huge amount of photos for this report mostly because my battery died. So I shall plunge in and give some analysis afterwards

My opponent for tonight’s proceedings was shipman from blood shines gold with his Prussians

The list from memory was
1 lieutenant
8 grenadiers with medic and virlinger
3 Teutonic Knights with officer and specialist
2 tankettes
And a HMG

My Brits where
1 lieutenant
10 infantry with drummer, 2 specialists, and sarg
1 Bassett tankette
HMG
And 5 hussars with specialists and nco

Here is the Prussian set up with photobomb from the opposition

My British set up

First turn was pretty straight forwards I moved my line infantry in cover but some spectacular shooting killed half the squad. My return fire was ineffective killing just three grenadiers

Start of turn two shipman played the turn card that sets the IR of the Teutonic Knights to the KR making them pretty much untouchable for a turn meanwhile his tankettes scout out of cover and fell two hussars

They failed the morale check and pined down.

At this point the camera ran out so ill briefly run through the remaining turn.

Shipman won initiative and shot the unit of line infantry down to just the Sargent
My return fire at this point was doing nothing with no line infantry left and the hussars pinned and failed the second morale check that was game over. So we called it.

Now a few things come from this game first and foremost I forgot to use a card to boost the morale of the hussars on the second check, that would have meant I’d passed on the roll I had. That one mistake cost me the game as its unlikely that the Teutonic Knights could have survived the hussars HMG and Bassett all firing at them at effective range. In fact it pretty much turned it into a non game which I found frustrating.

Second the Brits really are the anathema of my unseal play style, they need to block up and play the long game not playing aggressively.

Third with one mistake making such a non game are we playing to small a game? I’m very much of the opinion that yes we are I think 350 ish points will make the game far less Rock Paper Scissors. Case in point at the moment I really don’t have a good answer to the Teutonic Knights but a couple of line infantry units or 3 HMG would probably do the trick to even a 5 Man unit of them.

Anyway this just a quick battle report while the game is still fresh. Ill digest the game over the next few days and post later in the week more thoughts.

Contact! Contact!!

Tonight is the reason I play with toy soldiers!

A fast, fun friendly game with club mate and of flames of war Vietnam and I loved it!
There won’t be a huge description of the battle, the reason will become apparent shortly but ill put a few pics up and a bit of a narrative .

First just a quick note about the system, I’ve had a bit of a love / hate relationship with flames of war over the years, when it first came out I played it a lot but as the late war developed every game I played / watched turned into *insert faction* does the battle of Kursk and that’s not fun for me. Now that’s not to say normal flames of war can’t be, I’ve had some amazing villers bocage games against Keith’s British with my panzer lehr (which reminds me need to do that again!) but it doesn’t feel right.

I play historical games for the way they feel, if its not quite right or turns into something the conflict isn’t I don’t want to play it. Sharp practice for my war of the sixth collation (theres one for you history buffs!) for example gets it bang on same with black powder for the same era. This is where at the moment the Vietnam incarnation ticks all the boxes for me it just feels right.

So with out further ado a quick rundown of the game followed by closing thoughts

Col. Moore stepped out the Huey onto the dry dusty LZ the woods of the highlands of Vietnam surrounded the LZ and made observation difficult first platoon fanned out to secure the LZ and await the landing of second platoon. The 1st Cav (air mobile) had been deployed on a search and destroy mission there objective to secure a small village check for insurgents and leave.

As second platoon touched down, Moore ordered first platoon to advance towards the objective cobra gunships hovered over head to provide fire support should Charlie rear his head.

As first platoon moves of to secure the objective disaster strikes at them LZ camouflaged machine gun nests appear and rake the zone with fire second platoon is pinned down. The cobras move over to support fire disrupting the NVA advance but unable to touch the dug in fortifications.

As third platoon begins to land a company of local volunteers rushes the LZ from the opposite side forcing the slicks to take the precious reinforcements away. Cobras rush over to help deal with the latest threat forcing the to pull back as the machine gun nests pour fire into second platoon.

Things looking dicy at the LZ first platoon secures the objective and digs in.

Before the cobras can move to deal with the machine gun nests some AA guns appear out the jungle sending them crashing to the floor, things are looking desperate at the LZ but the Americans are firmly in control of the objective.

As night closes a company of NVA regulars tries to make a last grasp at the village but the Americans hold the day in control of both objectives!

What a cracking game!
Anyone that plays me regularly knows my opinion on luck and let me tell you Andy got screwed in a 6 turn game nothing turning up till turn 4 and then not once in his objective zone made this a non game in reality but the cinematic moments even in one sided games like this are what make toy soldiering for me. And if everything had have happened a turn earlier for Andy I’m fairly sure the NVA would have carried the day!

So get out there and play some Vietnam 🙂