6x6 Challenge Round 1 / Game 2 : Attack / Defend

I finally got my second game in for my 6 x 6 challenge, so I am still on the wagon!

You can see the rules I am using and the previous game here.

Scenario

I shifted the max "right" two hexes and played a Battalion de Chaussurs (BdeCh) counter attack against the same industrial objective fough over during the previous meeting engagement.
They have 4 armor platoons, 3 mech infantry platoons, a MLR battery in support, and a battery of air defense calliopes.

The 125th Panzer Grenadiers have reinforced their units that seized the objective last game and have 3 Panzer platoons, 1 Mech infantry platoon, a battery of MLR's, a platoon of Panzer Jaeger's (hypervelocity rail guns), but not air defense support.

Not going to do a blow by blow description, but here is how it played out.

The terrain setup and the BdeCh.'s scheme of maneuver.  The terrain is fairly close, so they hope to use their infantry to good effect. The 125th has posted a platoon of armor forward to delay and the single platoon of hypervelocity rail guns back with a looooooong field of fire.

 First contact, the forward Panzer platoon takes a beating, but manages to withdraw before being destroyed, while killing one BdeCh armor platoon and mauling another.

 The BdeCh northern flanking force is in position and begins its attack, and their southern task force continue to reorganize.

 A close view of the action, you can also see the Panzer platoon in the town is contonuing to regroup from the damage it took initially.  I am using Pyrkol microblast markers to track hits.  single markers = 1 hit, and the larger 3 blast marker = 3 hits.  So that Panzer platoon is down to 4 hits

 The fighting intensifies with the northern flanking force.

Finally, the 125th finds itself in an untenable position, with the BdeCh infantry close assaulting the town and being whittled down to 1 platoon each of mech infantry, armor, and panzer jaegers.  The Frenchies did not get off unbloodied, though, losing 3 armor platoons as combat ineffective.

I will try to get another game in before we go to Southern Front and on vacation.  Whenever I get it on the table, Hammer's Slammer's themselves will be making an appearance.  Until then, good gaming!

6x6 Challenge Round 1 / Game 1 : Meeting Engagement

Thank you to everyone who has expressed support for my attempt at the coveted 6 x 6 Challenge.  I will be tracking all of my games here. 

So, what is more important in the 6 x 6 challenge, playing games or blogging about them?  I am going to select playing the games, so I regret that my battle report will not be incredibly detailed.  But suffice it to say that I had a fun solo game in about 45 minutes and so far I am happy with how the rules are turning out.

This is a meeting engagement between two small task forces, both with the objective of seizing an industrial town.  The forces consisted of: (fort force descriptions, see my last post)

125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment

• 3 x Armor Platoons
• 1 x Mechanized Infantry platoon
• 1 x Panzer Jaeger Platoon (heavy rail guns)
• 1 x MLR Battery

Battalion Chassuers

• 3 x Armor Platoons
• 2 x Light Mechanized Infantry platoons
• 1 x Calliope AA Battery

 The table layout.  The 125th PG is entering from the right-hand side, the Frenchies from the left.

 The 125th PG at the line of departure.  The Heavy Rail guns would do sterling service when positioned on the hill to the left and could dominate most of the battlefield

The Chaussures roll into action. 

The Germans draw first blood

The endgame.  The arrows show the rough axis of maneuver.  The Chaussures lost all but 2 infantry platoons, who did gain some measure of revenge with buzz bombs against tanks at close range.  The Callaiopes tried to counter the 125th's flanking movement unsuccessfully, although they did take a tank platoon with them.  With the loss of the air defense unit, the 125th could bombard the remaining Chaussures with impunity, so this ended as a solid win for the 125th.

In the next game, we will see if the 125th can hold on to what they have taken.

Good gaming!

Bug Hunting with Tom

Still playing catch up on the blog, but I managed to get a game in with Tom at Borderlands about 4 weeks ago. He set up the whole things, with a really good looking cavern for the players to try to make their way through.

There was a really neat fog of war with the covered tunnel areas, and we were forced to explore most of it because we had to find the energy crystal left y a previously wiped out recon team to power the commo unit to call the retrieval boat.

He used a modified set of rules called Swatters by Ganesha Games.  It was a great set and the game played really well.  I think if I ever do a bug hunt game again, I will use these.  You maneuver fire teams and it really gives a good feel of pouring on massive firepower in a desperate attempt to stop the bugs.

Here are a few pictures, enjoy!

Pre-Historicon, Game 2

Got a second game in with the nephew before we went on vacation before Historicon.  This time, we played "Last Stand of the Zulus" from Nordic Weasel's Battle Pack #3.  The basic scenario is a group of special forces types are holding on to a hill against pursuing forces while waiting for extraction.

I adapted the scenario for 5Core, and added some skill cards to get the flavor and add some complexity for the boy.  We rolled a d6 at the end of each turn, and when the count reached 30, the extraction ship arrives, ending the game.

As you can see, I have a mix of SF troops, these are AT-43 troops versus Starship Troopers mobile infantry.

Here we see the pursing forces, 8 troops with body armor, one with machine gun and one with rocket launcher (treating a grenade launcher for this game)

And here we see the extra for the 4 SF operators, I gave them several skill cards to reflect thier ability and even the odds.  They had 3 assault rifles and one grenade launcher.

The pursuers start to move in.

SF trooper on the lookout.

Repositioning

The extraction ship lands... (A Finger and Toe model Tactical Bumble Bee)

A really fun game, the SF operators made it out with only 1 casualty, a good game for replay as well. 

Next time, one more game, then I will start posting vacation / Historicon pictures.

Pre-Historicon, Game 1

I am about a month or so behind in updates, wen on family vacation that morphed into Historicon.  Also had my wife's nephew with us again and we got a few games in.

I ginned up some stat cards for 5 Core Skirmish for Sci-Fi games and we got 4 games in before we left.  The vacation itself was great and I will be posting pictures from James Town as well as pictures and my thoughts on the Air and Space annex in Virginia.  Finally, hopefully in the next few days, I will give my take on Historicon 2015.

Meanwhile, here is a quick game we played, Karmans versus Humans.  The Karmans have dropped in with the mission of destroying a power generator, the humans mercenaries are tasked to guard it.  my nephew had the Karmans, and they managed the vitory, but lost 50% of their strength.  The cards are working out well.

Next time, more 5 Core action! Click pictures to enlarge.

The apes were all in Power Armor and armed with machine guns

There were 6 mercs, armed with assault rifles and 1 grenade launcher.

Here is the table setup

Here is your narrator with his opponent.

The big apes move in!

The end of the game had 4 out of 6 mercs down and headed for the rear, with 2 apes down.

A quick 5Core SciFi Skirmish

Had a nice, quick game of 5Core skirmish with my wife's nephew again last weekend.  Just a 30 minute game, was able to quickly set it up using my new Terrablox terrain, or actually, I let our nephew do it.

He played Space Marines and I had some Orks.  The game was fast and fun, you cannot ask for more than that from a set of rules!

Meanwhile, we have been pretty busy around the house, but we are off to Historicon in 2 weeks!  The whole family is going up and we are going to spend a few days at Williamsburg and doing the Smithsonian before the convention starts.

If you'd like to help me with pocket money, please feel free to see the last 2 posts for figures I have for sale. :)

Good gaming!

OGRE in miniature, a quick and dirty project

Going to play a game with Mrs. Tin Man this weekend, but here is a quick project I did a few months ago.  I never played the original (although I knew of it), but last year I picked up the pocket edition reprint of OGRE.

It is great fun, and Mrs. Tin Man and I even played it on our last cruise back in December!  So, given my fascination with 3mm picoarmor, it was an obvious project to convert to miniatures as a side project.  Others have done this project with great attention to detail and with amazing results, but I wanted something I could knock out in a weekend and play just every once in a while.  Quick and dirty.

First up, I took an 18" x 18" vinyl floor tile that looked vaguely like a blasted nuclear landscape and then added a 1" hex grid with a Litko spray paint template.  I think quickly added craters and ridges with a hot glue gun, painted them black, and dry brushed the,  Easy peasy.

Next up, I ordered two "cyber tanks" from Javalin 98's Shapeways shop to serve as my Mark III and Mark V OGRE's.  A quick paint job and they were ready to go.  I did di everything in Army Painted quick shade so they would be "armored" and I could store them in ziploc bags.

Then I painted up an order of 3mm scifi vehicles from Picoarmor.  They painted up fast, I did not put too much detail into them.  Also, except for the infantry, I decided not to base them, but just leave them loose.

Here is the CP (made from a monopoly house) and howitzers.  I did not bother to covert them to static, just do not allow them to move during the game.

Here are the heavy tanks and missile tanks.

And here are the GEV's and Infantry.

All in all, a fun little project.  It looks better from 2 feet away in real life, and is good enough for some fun games of an elegant and clever system.  Plus, the whole think cost me maybe $25, not counting the spray paint template I already owned.

Thanksgiving Game with Nephew

Behind on updates, but here are some quick shots of a game of 5 Core Skirmish with my wife's nephew over Thanksgiving weekend.  We played Space Marines versus Orks, and he pulled off a win with the Space Marines.  The rules were darned easy to teach and we were up an playing in no time!

Enjoy!

5 Parsecs from Home Campaign

Like many of us, I spend far too much time making terrain, painting figures I may never use, and reading rule-sets rather than actually playing.  So, I decided I want to play a 5 Parsecs from Home campaign and see how the rules work.

So let’s start with our cast…  (click to enlarge)

First Job
For my first game, I wanted to dive right in, so I assumed the platoon secured a patron for a job.   Using the Five Parsecs from Home book, I generated the following mission:

• Patron: Wandering Preacher
• Mission: Find Someone (Who?: Technician)
• Enemies: Zealots
• Mission Type: Strike
• Opposition will have player figures 1 less figure than the player.
• No stealth, daytime

This was quick ad easy using the tables in the book.  Now to turn this data into a narrative and play the game!

A wandering preacher from the Reformed Church of COBOL has hired a technician to translate some of the early church documents from an old mainframe.  Zealots from the Fundamentalist Church of COBOL have kidnapped the technician to prevent this from happening.  The platoon's mission is to locate and free the technician in the abandoned industrial district at the edge of town.

Here are the results are some random shots of the game, used a different camera than I usually do, so they turned out not a good. Buildings mostly by Finger and Toe models.

 "So, padre, what can I do for you?"

Initial setup for the zealots 

 Riley's Renegades moving into the area of operations

 After several turns of exchanging fire and maneuvering

One of the platoon members down

Fortunately, Riley managed to kill the only zealot guarding the technician inside the warehouse, and they ran the rest off. 

Post mission wrapup:

• Results: 2 Enemy OOA, 2 Bailed off the table, technician retrieved, mission success.
• 1 private rendered OOA, needs 2 campaign turns to recover.
• Acquired new enemy: Zealots from the Church of COBOL
• Loot: Gadgets, roll twice on Found Gear table and get…
• Scanbot: This will be useful for defense scenarios, although it is unarmed.  It will help during stealth missions.
• Assault Attachment: Allows figures to receive a +1 chaging bonus even when not charging.  Going to keep this for my officer…
• Trade Items roll:  Local Map: This is a onetime use item that allows a free scurry move at the beginning of a scenario.

Overall Impressions:
This is not a full review, but just some of my random thoughts.  

The rules played very, very smoothly.  I have been playing Two Hour Wargames rules for many, many years, all the way back to Chain Reaction version 1, and I am a firm believer in skirmish rules that make it risky to prance about in front of unsuppressed enemies with automatic weapons.  5 Core does this well and in a very fluid manner.  Chain Reaction sometimes gets in to multiple cycles of “shoot/received fire test/shoot back/received fire test…” while 5 Core handles this with one set of die rolls. (note: I have not tried Chain Reaction Final Version 3.1 yet)

An example of firing in 5 Core is an active figure with an assault rifle shoots with 1 kill die and 1 shock die.  I pull a red d6 for the kill die and a yellow d6 for the shock die and roll them at the same time, so if I miss, there is no extra step to see if the target ducks back or scuttles off.

Reactive fire is (almost) always suppressive and usually just uses shock dice.  Cover helps by making you less likely to run away when shot at thus more likely to be in place to return fire on your turn.
The flow of the battle felt right, with guys trying to suppress enemies while others rushed forward and fields of fire were critical.  Stationary defenders were able to drive off the attacker until the attacker could achieve fire superiority.  All very good stuff with elegant mechanics.

I was a little skeptical of the lack of quality stats for each figure, but the use of skills does seem to offset this.  My officer was “inspiring” which allowed him to convert “bail” results to “flinch,” making it easier to keep guys up and shooting, which the NCO was “tough,” which allowed him to shake off his first hit.

My final thoughts:
• I like the single die roll for both damaging and suppressive fire.  Much less die rolling than other rules.
• The Scurry and Firefight actions that can occur during a turn add a nice element of uncertainty that should be present in a short range firefight.
• The rules are simple enough that I can use them with non-wargamers.
• The campaign rules are great and really add flavor to the game.

I will continue my campaign and will be playing these rules more!  

The price is also right and 5 Core and the Sci-Fi supplement 5 Parsecs from Home are both available from Wargames Vault here.