Fire As She Bears

Last week I tagged along to a six player, vaguely Napoleonic Fire As She Bears game.  Three players per side, with twelve British ships against sixteen French.

Congratulations Captain, the enemy are directly to our stern... 

I had a pretty good time overall, due to the fact that because the rules are extremely well balanced and well paced, but also because I did next to nothing the whole night!  Now this was my fault really, I didn't pick up on the nuances of the movement rules, meaning I made a couple early manoeuvres that took me completely out of the game.  Hence, my squadron and the one opposite me didn't fire a shot at each other until the final turn!

Meanwhile, at the exciting part of the table...

On the plus side, watching the other four squadrons blow seven shades out of each other for a couple hours was highly entertaining.  FASB does a really nice job of marking damage and representing how that damage impacts fighting effectiveness.  That combined with the reactive fire mechanic means you're always doing something.  In fact, we were close to a sinking late in the game (an unusual occurrence,) only thwarted by Hugh's spectacularly poor dice roll, 3 on 3D6.

Look!  We're facing the right way!  Roll some dice!

This kind of scale game (number of models, not the actual scale) is drawing me in more and more recently, mainly due to my lack of painting and modelling time.  Quick to paint models, cheap cash cost, minimal scenery.  I fancy tackling a Punic Wars naval project soon, around 1:2400 or smaller, about twenty ships each.  Anyone out there have a good suggestion for suitable a ruleset (not Roman Seas though.)

Big thanks to Andy for providing everything, models, tokens, stat cards and the scenario.  Next time, I'll try at least to get my ships pointing the right way!

Nuklear Winter 68

A couple games have appeared at the club lately.  First up was our trial of In Her Majesty's Name (the photos of which I still haven't looked at,) and a new(ish) boardgame, Nuklear Winter 68.

One of Scott's finds, it's an alternate history/Weird War Three tactical boardgame, played through a series of thematically linked scenarios. The rulebook starts with a surprisingly comprehensive history of the second world war. Briefly, Hitler is assassinated, Himmler takes over, builds bunkers for the Thrird Reich to hole up in, Allies nuke Germany, build a wall round it to keep people either in or out, nuclear winter for a few years, radiation levels start to dissipate, Third Reich reappear, Mutants appear, chaos ensues.  Three factions are available in the game, each scenario dictating who fights whom; The Third Reich, NATO (with added Russians) and The Black Hand (the mutants from the nuclear wasteland.)

It has a random sequence of platoon activations mixed in with some, normally random, events; not all your units are guaranteed an action every turn, there's a nice balancing mechanic which essentially means most of your units will probably activate each turn.

The core combat mechanics is fairly familiar (stat + 2D6 +/- modifiers to beat a target number,) but with an interesting twist.  Each unit has three states, shaken, reduced, dead.  Attacks can reduce this piecemeal or with one powerful attack.  Although this can make the game a little dicey, it's still suitably difficult to kill something in one shot - a good thing.

Now, this isn't really the type of game I usually would go for, (I usually go for a bit more bling on my boardgames) but the theme and execution here really drew me in.  The board is both large wonderfully detailed, especially considering it's of a nuclear wasteland.  There are plenty of units available for each faction, including aircraft, artillery and the occasional nuclear mutant, and each unit acts appropriately to it's type, digging infantry out of urban areas is suitably sloggy.

I've had a loan of this copy for a couple weeks now and have played through about half the scenarios. Almost all appear well balanced, although the smaller games suffer from flukey dice rolls (looking at you Mr Brown.)  We're planning to run one of the three player scenarios soon, all three factions are fighting to control the crashed alien spaceship, what part of that doesn't sound fun.  Frustratingly for me, the first print run of the game itself is currently out of print, although the author is taking preorders for an expansion.

Heartily recommended.

Btw, If anyone knows where I could get a copy or if you have a copy for trade, please get in touch using the link on the right.

Things I'm No Good At #4 Photography

It's taken a bit of time for me to get round to it, but I've managed to go through some of the photos I took in Spain.  Oddly, my Father's house is in easy travelling distance of at least five castles, all of them Moorish in origin.  Northwest of Murcia, this region was apparantly the main route to the Spanish interior during the Caliphate and Reconquest, hence all the castles.

Sadly, much like singing, dancing and golf, I am absolutely useless at taking pictures.  And that lack of ability is not, much like singing, dancing and golf, due to lack of any effort on my part.  I've tried, but I simply don't that abstract ability to pick out a view and the skill to take a decent shot of it!

Anyway, here are the best of the pics; Petrer, Sax and Biar castles in all their vaguely in-focus glory.

Still here. . .

. . . Just not been up to posting anything lately.  Apologies for the long absence friends.  Life has been fairly stressful lately and that, coupled by a wee break to Spain, hasn't had me in the frame of mind for blogging or painting lately.

Things haven't actually turned the corner yet, but I'm at the point now where there's not much to actually do, just a case of waiting for things to happen.  Realising that, I'm actively working to get into a settled routine and resume doing the things that make me happy.  That sounds a bit flakey, I know, but hey, that's how I've been feeling lately.

Still a bit of gaming going on.  Had a few games of Netrunner this week; still my favourite game full stop at the moment, just wish I was a bit better at it!  Also had another outing for Dreadball the week before. Still oodles of fun, but I want to try another team for variety; robots, bugs or rats.  Can't decide.

Naturally, some retail therapy has been needed lately and I picked up two boxes from Fantasy Flight Games; the Elder Signs expansion; Unseen Forces and the new Star Wars RPG beginner box.  The RPG looks very entertaining, it's based on the WFB system (which I've never played) and has a ingenious dice pool system.  The artwork and writing are top notch too.

Frustratingly, I've not tried out the Unseen Forces yet.  The box FFG have used for the expansion is slightly too small for the cards Elder Sign uses, meaning that the large cards are all bent out of shape.  They've spent the last two days under a pile of the heaviest books I have, trying to straighten them out.  Still, reading the rule sheet, the expansions seems to add a welcome degree of difficulty to Elder Sign and the new Blessed and Cursed dice seem fun.

After moving house last month, I've managed to create a little space for modelling and painting.  No painting done yet, but I have managed to finish basing my 28mm Viking warband for Saga (wow, reading back I'd planned to have these finished in May.)  Hopefully I'll get these undercoated over the weekend, providing the rain eases up.

Lastly, we're finally getting to try out In Her Majesty's Name at the club next week.  Sholto has been beavering away creating factions for us to use.  Looking forward to it, pics if I can take anything decent.

A Quick Update

Hello peeps.  Sorry for the recent inactivity on the TMFT, but things have been fairly busy lately and not left a lot of time for blogging!  Short story; being single for the first time in sixteen years is taking some getting used to!

First things first, a big thank you to Tamsin for her recent giveaway.  Her generosity means I've now another nine spaceships from GZG added to the painting pile.

This week, we finally managed to squeeze in a couple games of Dreadball.  I'd delegated painting the box set to Adam from the club.  He'd obviously thoroughly preparing himself for the task as they've, as yet, no actual paint on them.  I'm sure he'll do a great job though. . . . . . eventually.

To the game itself.  I'd had a read through of the rules before we played, but couldn't honestly remember much at all. Adam guided me through the first game and, although we made a fair few mistakes, were impressed enough to have another game.  The core mechanic is success based dice rolls (aim to roll more successes than your opponent) as opposed to rolling a higher dice score than your opponent.  There are several skills and stats you roll against, usually with three dice, but with a lot of modifiers.  A bit confusing at first, but once you get the mechanic, the game becomes massively enjoyable.

It's generally a good sign of a game when halfway through your first play, you're already thinking "I'm going to buy this and this next week."   We played one game each with the two starter teams, but both games generally dissolved into the Orx player thumping the humans at every opportunity.  Great fun.

I also sat in on a game of Bolt Action, hosted by Tom and a couple others (whose names escape me just now.)  I've read the rules and have a couple of the supplements, but haven't gotten it to the table myself yet.  My biggest concern was the random activation sequence (blindly drawing dice from a bag,) in that I worried that tactical decisions would be overruled by unlucky dice draws.  Based on the game I saw, that doesn't seem to be a concern.  I've some 28mm Soviets in storage so I'll try and get a few painted up in time for a game.

Lastly, away to Spain for a week next week.  The old man has taken pity on me and paid for a wee break there (it helps that he owns a house there.)  Nothing planned except some reading and relaxing, but I do fancy a day trip to Cartagena for a wander round the Roman ruins.  So, if nothing appears here for another week or so, you can assume my pasty Scottish skin is getting gently roasted by the sun!  Have a good week everyone.

Dunnottar Castle

So there's been a fair but of upheaval in my personal life recently, as a result I've moved back out to my home town, Stonehaven.  This, coupled with the (for NE Scotland) great weather, means I've been spending a fair bit of time outdoors.

One of my favourite haunts when I was younger was the cliff side walk from Stonehaven to Dunnottar castle.  Sticking out on it's rocky promontory, Dunnottar is one of Scotland's iconic castles.  And, like all our best castles, it's ruined and, hence, not covered in ghastly modern restorations of nineteenth century additions.

The site itself has been occupied for thousands of years in some form or other, while the castle itself has a proud heritage of being sacked by many notable peoples from our isles history.  Although it looks magnificent, the pictures I took don't convey just how exposed to the elements it is here, the wind was ferocious.  This was on a nice day too!  Quick personal anecdote: my first proper girlfriend and I once did the "dance with no pants" in the castle here - I think I was much more adventurous back in the day!

Infuriatingly, the local council have marked the cliff path as closed due to erosion.  Despite being a little concerned about the path, I headed round with the expectation to be forced back.  It turns out a two-foot wide trench in the path, caused by some falling rocks, was the only damage on the whole trail - oh, and it was on the flattest bit of the path, nowhere near the cliff at all.  Talking to the attendant at the castle, it turns out that the council decided to close the whole path due to health and safety worries, rather than take a little effort to repair the path.   This country...

Wooot! I Am The Weiner!

Big props to Tamsin over at Wargaming Girl for, this week, running a prize draw in honour of 100,000 views on her blog.  And thanks to that prize draw, I've won a wee spending spree at Ground Zero Games.  Cheers again, Tamsin!

The only thing for me to decide is what to actually get.  I used GZG almost exclusively for my light infantry sci-fi force and these guys can always use some more support options.  Alternatively, they do have some alien opponents (again from GZG) who could do with filling their ranks out a bit.  The final option is, of course, more spaceships.  Choices choices!