Monday 27 July 2020

Update on recent games (plus Force on Force is back!)

Well, it has been a long-time since I have updated this blog.  What reminded me to update is we recently played a game of Force on Force.
We played the introductory scenario.  I forgot how different, and mentally hard, Force on Force is compared to other games.  Everything has a cost.

Other than Force on Force we have been playing Pulp Alley 2nd Edition (Stella Bella aka Star Wars), Runequest with Miniatures, Frostgrave, What a Tanker! and Chain of Command.  I have lost count of the number of Chain of Command games we have played, from Crete, Sicily, to Cassino, to nearly every town in Normandy, the breakout and pursuit, up the road to Arnhem, the US paras and British paras in Operation Market Garden, and from 1942 to 1945 all over the Eastern Front.  We have tried several campaigns, by we are all Pyrrhus and hardly get past scenario 1 without immense bloodshed.

Over in the file section of the blog is a new double-sided Quick Reference Sheet (QRS) for Chain of Command.  I think there is one on the net which is 6 or more pages, that is a Quick Reference Book!

We currently have a US Para, US Army, New Zealand, German Para, German Infantry, Soviet, British Para and Italian armies for Chain of Command.  And, if I get my thumb out of the proverbial sphincter a Japanese army.

Recently, we started playing Pulp Alley 2nd Edition.  I wanted some way of helping our LFGS through the Covid-19 and seeing the nice Star Wars Legion figures decided to give them a try.  I did not fancy another large figure game, and wanted skirmish rules, enter Pulp Alley.  So far, I think we have played 4 games, all with maximum shenanigans!  Marcus grabbed sure victory from Kristof in last weeks game on the last dice.  Extreme shenanigan!  Star Wars is ideal for Pulp style play, and we have been able to create Starwaresque "forces" that are flavourful,

And, we go back into roleplaying: Runequest, D&D and Aliens.  So far, Runequest has been the most fun, and for the first time for me, we used miniatures.  See picture below.

Painting?  Well, an army or three of grey primed ghosts is staring at me.  First the WW2 Japanese need to be finished (95% already done!).  Then more tanks, than an Armoured Division, have to be painted.  An Anglo-Dane army for Saga is all grey and staring.  And, like an idiot, I just bought a British and Mahdi army for 1882-1885.  And then more Star Wars legion figures.


We generally have 3 to 6 players per game, so they are usually on the big side.  We have 7 regulars.  We have a new set of house rules to play Chain of Command with 4+ players without adding too many tanks.  I will post the rules soon.









Runequest figures, in a quick painting method.


Stella Bella (Pulp Alley 2 edition)



Friday 20 July 2018

Chain of Command

After waiting for FOF for WW2 for longer than... WW2? I gave up and started looking at what was on offer.  After reading rules and watching some videos I decided to give Chain of Command a go.  Only problem was finding someone who was keen to play Historical in the domain of fantasy and SF.  I made the mistake of going 28mm, and set about replacing all my terrain.  Time passed.

And then someone showed interest.  We played our first game of CoC.  I was impressed, it gives a good flavour, gives you lots of hard choices, and has lots of support with campaigns, so no fear of powergaming.

Even the patrol phase was tense and fun.  Here are a few pics from our game.  We made lots of mistakes, rule wise and tactically.  Like, I ended up dividing two of my gruppe before I realised the cost.

The Fallschirmjaeger get an order to run as far as possible to the corner, and end up running way to far. 

Germans and US Paratroopers engage amongst the hedges on the east edge of St. Du Mont. 

The elite US pour on the hurt. 

The bocage in the distance becomes a pain, splitting up a squad of Germans and making it difficult to move. 
A very good game was had.

Saturday 5 August 2017

FOF extended WW2 Vehicle list


The EXCEL calculation file can be downloaded from Google docs at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9dspKYuoIlUNVZUc1VkNHRHcU0/view?usp=sharing

Note that the vehicles with a white or grey background have not had their machine guns added.