Category: AARs

Thursday Night gaming

          Another game of Net EA. This time Pat and his wife popped by and my wife’s mother was over. Freddie showed up also. In all my years of playing I never had no chics ask me nothing about any game. Both the girls were interested in how the game was played.
         Julia only speaks Spanish, I don’t, and all the rules are in English. She seemed to understand enough to get through an activation. Pat’s wife did want to throw any dice, but seemed to show a lot of interest.

          This is the first time we have fought solely over/in a city. I used model train railroad bed foam stuff for the roads. I did have enough FW roads. They are almost impossible to find. The buildings are mostly FW, JR, or Gamecraft.

          We played the Total War City fight scenario.  It can be found on TacCom here; http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21344 Only change being the deployment zones. We choose the corner set up as my dining room table is too narrow. Looking back, 3000 point is way to big for that table. Also the river was a bad idea. It completely limited our tactical movement.
          I deployed on the Church side. Freddie took the other with his Fists. I played BAs with the stormravens. Once again the stormravens failed to activate the first two turns. My death company failed every saving throw. That ensured Pat an easy win when Fred had to leave. 3 to 2.

          There are only 2 pictures. Both of the table set up before deployment. This is because we were smacking glasses early. One day we will get a proper battle report.

Ahhhh Cardhu!

          Cardhu is one of my all time favorites. There were years when I could not get any.  I had to bring back as much as I could carry from London. Once we moved to the Hudson Valley, I can’t go any where without tripping over a bottle.

Pat carried over a bottle of Bruichladdich “Rock.” Never heard of it before, nor seen it. It’s not bad. I don’t think I would ever buy a bottle.  The finish is very fruity. It’s just not my kind of favor.

Thursday Night gaming

          Game night returns. It was Fred and me again. We got a very late start, 7pm. There are no pictures, as we were drinking without dinner in our bellies. We skipped the tourney objectives and had a slug fest over a central building. We ended in a drunken tie with our wives coming to drive us home.
          The game was 3000 points a side. Fred played Imperial Fists. I got some Stormraven models about a year ago and they sat in the mountain. Until tonight and with Fred’s OK, I played the Blood Angel’s list version 2.12.
          They look evil. I was worried that the 4 one shot plus 3 Bloodstrike missiles would be too powerful.  I did get off the all 12 Bloodstrikes at once. They crushed his Terminator detachment but did not break them. I will need a few more games to judge if they are under priced. Fred wisely never let them effect his battle plan.

          I replaced one of my Tactical squads rhinos with 3 gun ships at 75 points each. My thinking was that 6 AP4s at 30 added to the 6 AP5s would make them a Detachment breaker. The mistake I made was taking them with a Tactical Detachment. As 6 Razorbacks are cheaper and give you the same danger close support.
          I should have taken the Stormravens as transports for my Assault Detachment or as their own Detachment. The problem is once the Bloodstrikes are gone, they need to be danger close.
          Blood Angels V2.12 is pretty solid. I never felt short of activations or unable to counter what Fred threw my way. I will continue to test drive the list over the month.
         

Thursday night gaming

                                                        Rematch! 

     Last time Fred got the win. I never really had a chance and was playing for a tie the whole time. I was not going to go down again. My game plan was tempo and movement, focus my fire, and let it rain.

    We play a 6 objective game. The large bridge in the center, 2 small bridges on the flanks, the air field on the hill, and one building in each others deployment area.   

 
Left flank with air field objective and small bridge
Center Bridge and the tall buildings in the deployment zones

                                                    Right Flank with small bridge

     Fred’s deployment

 Left Flank. Speeder det., Land Raider det., and Tactical det.

 Center. Bike det., Predator det., and Tactical det.

Right Flank. Speeder Det., Whirlwind det., and Tactical det.

My Deployment. I gave up the right flank completely. Leaving units there to draw attention and refuse that flank.

Left Flank. Assualt det., Tactical det., and Bike det.

Center. 2 Tactical det., and Devastator with a dread and Razorbacks

Right Flank. Land Raider det., Whirlwind det., and Speeder det. 

                                                Turn One

Right Flank. 
Fred’s Whirlwinds fire put a blast marker on my Land Raiders. The Tactical det. doubles toward the center bridge, and the Speeders advance to the bridge shoot, and break my speeders.

               
 My Whirlwinds put a blast marker on Fred’s speeders. The Land Raider advance to refuse the flank. My speeders double, shoot adding a blast marker.

                                                                Center.
           Fred’s Bike det. doubles toward the brigde. Speeder Det fails to activate and advances. Predator fail to activate and do nothing. Tactical Det advances and occupies the building objective in Fred’s deployment zone.


        My Tactical Det doubles on to the bridge, shoots Fred’s Bike det. killing two and adding 3 blast markers. My Devastators double occupy the two building to the right of the bridge, shoot and put a blast marker on Fred’s Speeders. 2nd Tactical det. marches across the small bridge to deploy around and occupy the building in front of the devastator

                 
                                                           Left Flank
Fred’s Tactical det doubles to the edge of the Air Field. They shoot my Tactical det.killing 2 rhinos and add 3 blast markers. The land Raiders advance just behind them.

My Tactical det double for the Air Field, gets there first and gets shot up. The Assault det advances. The Bike det. secures the bridge.

In the the End Phase My speeders rallied. What unit removed blast markers were not recorded.                                                         
                                                 TURN 2

                                                             Right Flank
Fred’s Speeder shoot my Land Raiders, failing to kill. They added a blast marker. The Whirlwind det advances and shoots the Land Raiders. Again killing nothing, but adding another blast. Fred then saw that he very nicely place his Whirlwinds in my Land Raiders LOS.

My Land Raiders shoot the Whirlwinds. Fred makes every save and takes a blast marker. My Whirlwinds in direct fire at his Tactical det on the bridge, clipping the bikes. The Bike det lose one and break off the table. The Tactical Det loses a rhino and 2 stands, collecting 4 blast markers. My speeder advanced to sit on the building in my deployment zone.

                                                     

                                                              Center

          Fred’s Tactical det. on the bridge, shot mine killing a rhino and adding a blast marker. The Speeder det shot, fail to hit, and added a blast marker. The Predators rolled up, shot, missed, and added a blast marker.

           My 2nd Tactical Det in the building to the left of the bridge fails to activate. It made one move, spreading out into line for cross fire bonus. The Tactical det on the bridge shot Fred’s on the bridge, handing out 2 blast markers. The Devastators failed to activate, collecting a blast marker. They shot and broke Fred’s Speeders.

                                                         Left Flank

Fred continues his abuse on the left flank. His Tactical det kills another rhino and adds 2 blast markers. My Tactical Det fails to activate, marshals, and rolls a 1! Fred’s Land Raiders fail to activate and make one move forward. I jump the Assault det up to contest. My Bike det remain on the bridge with a hold action.

In the End Phase;

                                                       Turn 3, the end.

                                                             Right Flank

Everything stay the same. We sat there and traded blast markers with no advantage to either side.

                     
                                                            Center
        Fred’s center collapsed. His Tactical det was shot down to the man, the predators broke, the Tactical det in the building was a blast marker away from breaking,

          The stars for me were the two Tactical dets. and the Whirlwinds. They cleaned the bridge off and slapped around those in the building. The Devastators broke his Predators.

                                                        Left Flank

        The Left Flank was pay back. Fred wiped out my Assault det. Then poured fire into the my Tactical det, securing his hold on the Air Field.

                                        
In the end I had no broken units, held two of the bridges, and the entire center of the board. Fred took the objectives on the far Flanks. A 4 to 2 victory.

                         

Thursday night gaming

We had a solid group and we would throw down every week.  Summer is a rough time.
            Tonight, I have a coworker over for some Net AE. The fan maintained version of GW’s Epic Armageddon. The rules are free and most everything can be picked up cheap on ebay.
He is new to table top wargaming. I choose to break him in with AE because has lots of dice, is easy to learn, and plays fast. We have completed the demo games. (I have removed the Flyers and War engines.) We will be using SM armies in a mirror match. Mirror armies, I hope will reduce the what is this and that bit we seem to go thru in every game. Also to reduce any surprises until he gets use to the units and capabilities.
Step one we reviewed the units and stats, went over the turn sequence, and the 5 objectives. We stuffed our faces and grab a cold one as we set up on the back porch. 
 Why you say? Man it is crazy hot tonight. The porch is screened, there is a large heavy stable table already there, and the baby can’t steal things. Nor will I get bitched at because she thinks dice are food.
 Fred’s set right to left
                                  Whirlwind Det, Speeder Det, and a Tac Det
    Land Raider Det, Assault Det, Tac Det, Bike Det, and Devastator Det with dread
                    Devastator Det with Razorbacks, Tac Det, and Predator Det
My deployment right to left
                                     Land Raider Det, Bike Det, and Tac Det
                          Tac det with dread, Assault Det, Tac Det, and Whirlwinds
            Predator Det, Speeder Det, Devastator Det with Razorbacks and Dread
The plan was to take pictures and a detail account of the action. But the amount of beer consumed is inversely proportional to the amount of pictures taken. So, no pictures from the first turn to the finish. In the end  both Fred and I had a unit fail to activate in the last activations. If either popped tall, the end would have been very different. Time was running out and we still had to go back in at work. Fred had 2 objectives, 1 contested and me with 1 objective and  2 contested.
The two rules questions we had to look up were;
1)      What happens to troops in a transport that was killed?
Answer:  The units must make an Armor Save or a 6+ Cover Save to survive.
2)      Can a Whirlwind move and shoot? Trick question!
Answer:  Yes. An Advance, Double, or Hold action is taken. Target must be in range and LOS.
Answer:  No. A Sustained Fire action is taken and the Indirect Fire rule used. Target must between 30 and 90cm, no LOS required, and a there is +1 to hit.

All answers were found in the ” EPIC ARMAGEDDON COMPENDIUM V2.0” available to download on http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/