Battle Chronicler

     Just heard about this program on the latest "View From the Veranda."  It is called Battle Chronicler and it looks like a tasty program for creating graphic displays for your battle reports.  I would love to use it but they don't offer a version for the Mac.  Boo hoo!

WARMACHINE Mosh Pit

     Another day of WARMACHINE Friday this time hosted at Mi Casa.  It was the second time that we got to use my custom made 4' by 4' board and it looked great.  The combatants in this battle were Khador led by Vlad and Cygnar led by Haley.
     Khador consisted off Vlad, six Iron Fang Pikemen with Officer and Standard Bearer, Greylord Ternions, four Mechanics, Man-O-War Kovnik and three 'Jacks: Juggernaut, Spriggan and Marauder.  Cygnar brought Haley, full unit of Sword Knights with Officer and Standard Bearer, three Storm Lances, three Storm Smiths and three 'Jacks:  Stormclad and two Lancers.
     The Mosh Pit scenario requires that an army must hold the center circle (diameter 16") with no opposing models within the circle beginning at the end of the third turn.  Khador deployed first.  Spriggin on left flank, Marauder and Kovnik on the right and the rest a hard little knot in the middle.  Cygnar deployed the Storm Lances on their left flank along with a Storm Smith and Lancer.  Right flank consisted of another Storm Smith and Lancer.  The rest of the army with spread out in the middle.
     First turn saw Khador moving forward in shield wall being covered with blizzards from the Greylords.  Flanking 'Jacks either ran or charged forward.  Cygnar's turn saw them moving forward also and ranging out on their left flank with the Storm Lances with a big hunk of impassable terrain between them and the bulk of the Khador army.  An arcane shield spell was cast on the Storm Blades as they moved up the middle.
     Second turn and the Khador army tried to surge forward.  Vlad went first and popped his feat and cast signs and portents for what I thought would be some good melee.  Kovnik successfully attempted to drive his Marauder and added an extra die on attack.  Juggernaut moved to intercept and harry the Storm Lances.  Spriggen moved forward and sent off a couple of grenades, one taking out a Storm Smith on the right flank and put a serious hurt on the Lancer on the left (with boosted damage.)  Iron Fangs moved forward in their knot, Greylords threw more blizzards on the Iron Fangs.  Mechanics just stayed behind the Iron Fang wall with Vlad.  The Marauder was last and I thought it was going to be great.  It was probably ten inches away from the Lancer on the right flank and I thought I was going to charge in and combo slam him away.  Wrong!  I didn't realize that Vlads feat only affected those 'Jacks in his battlegroup and since the Marauder was marshaled by the Kovnik I was screwed.  All it could do was move forward eight inches and look menacing.  Cygnar continued the dance by moving up the Storm Smith on the left flank and disrupt the Spriggin.  The accompanying Lancer moved back behind an obstruction.  Haley moved through some woods and popped her feat, giving every model in her control area another attack as well as arcing chain lighting through the Lancer on their right flank.  The lightning hit the Spriggin easily but caused no damage and then arced into the Iron Fangs and another five models.  Paul had some terrible damage rolls and I think only managed to kill one Pikeman.   The Lancer on the right moved into melee with the Marauder, doing some cortex damage with the shock shield as well as giving a poke with his spear.  The middle Storm Smith tried to blast an Iron Fang but missed.  The Stormclad charged at the Marauder and did significant damage with that giant sword and pimp slapped it with the open fist.  The Storm Blades received the assault order and charged at the Iron Fangs.  Only one of them got into melee with the disrupted Spriggin but the assault order allows them to use their ranged weapons as part of a charge.  Surprisingly the Spriggin gets pretty well beat up by the storm glaives, two columns of hull damage as well as taking out the shield on the melee strike.  The rest of the storm glaive shots either missed or did no damage to the Pikeman, I think taking out one more.  More poor rolls for Paul.  The Lancers swooped around their left flank and one got to safely engage the Juggernaut with reach and did a little damage, knocking of some bolts and scraping the paint.
     Round three!  Vlad again moved up and cast signs and portents.  The Kovnik moved forward a little and blasted a Storm Lance with his shield cannon.  The Marauder did a little something to the Stormclad but not as much because of a crippled arm.  Juggernaut moved into a Storm Lance and hacked him down.  Greylords moved up and did a spray attack on some of the Storm Blades killing two of the three.  Spriggin just hammered the Storm Blade in melee with it, spitting him on his war lance.  Then the Iron Fangs charged in and decimated the remaining Storm Blades.  On Cygnars turn there wasn't much to do.  The Stormclad finished off the Marauder, leaving a pile of scrap.    The Storm Lance, I think, charged into the Juggernaut doing some more damage.    The Lancer on Cygnar's left moved forward and arced chain lighting onto Vlad, doing him three damage and then it proceeded to jump around and kill most of the mechanics.  A Greylord was taken down by a Stormsmith and the second Stormsmith took out another mechanic.

Cygnar's turn (round three)

     Round four.  Looking at the board Cygnar only had two models in the mosh pit, the last Stormblade and the Stormsmith.  From there it was rather easy to finish them off and secure the victory.

     Thoughts:  Paul, get rid of those GF9 faction dice!  Those things let you down at the critical moments!  I have been trying to play Khador simply, move forward and don't worry about losing troops.  I did have some traffic control problems in the back during the first two turns but that is to be expected when the board is crowded with terrain.  Not understanding fully how Vlad's feat worked caught me off guard.  The mechanics are a big deal.  Since MKII I have fielded them in most every list and they never let me down.  Just enough repair to keep the 'Jacks going.  The first time that the Kovnik did something and didn't die.  I like the way that 'Jack marshal works now especially with the Kovnik's drive ability.  The Iron Fangs are becoming my go to unit.  They have great survivability in shield wall and the movement to balance out the slow 'Jacks when it comes to threatening areas of the board.  Plus with the Officer and Standard Bearer they are a tough nut to crack.
     To be fair to Cygnar, the strategy was sound.  If the lightning would have been more effective on the Iron Fangs it would have been more of a game.

Dual Session--WARMACHINE & Combat Commander

     Paul and I played a game of WARMACHINE on Friday the 30th of July.  The 35 point throwdown was between Khador and Cygnar and the scenario was Break The Line.  We had decided to play fully painted armies after the introduction of MKII came out in the spring and what a great feeling to see all the models on the table with some fabulous terrain.  Allister Caine took the field against Kommandant Irusk with the goal of holding three of six quadrants on the board at the end of the third round.  Khador deployed as a hard little knot in the center of the board with Iron Fang Pikemen and a Demolition Man-O-War unit accompanied by Irusk.  On the left flank the Winter Guard and a Destroyer held vigil.  The right flank was occupied by Widowmakers and a Manhunter.

Khador at setup

     Caine set up with most of his forces spread out evenly across the front of his deployment zone.  There was two units of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages, three Hunters (!) and two Gun Mage solos, as well as the Black 13th. It looked grim for the Khador army as they had no long range weapons (just range 8" blunderbusses) besides the Destroyer.  The only hope was to move forward as fast as possible and hope to get to grips with Cygnar before they were all shot to hell.  And that is basically what happened.  

Cygnar at setup

     On the first turn all of Khador advanced.  Most with some sort of defensive buff.  Man-O-War under Iron Flesh, Iron Fangs with Shield Wall and Winter Guard with Bob and Weave.  Cygnar also moved forward but a little bit more warily, trying to use what cover they could, still pretty spread out.  Khadors big mistake was deploying the Destroyer so far from Irusk as he had to run back in order to be granted the spell of Superiority from his 'caster.  Second round saw the Widowmaker taking some shots at the Hunter on their flank, causing only one point of damage with their Sniper ability.  I thought that they would be able to benefit from their Camouflage skill but the Gun Mage unit benefitted from True Sight.  Within a turn they would be destroyed to a man, although their true purpose was to tie-up the Hunter and the Gun Mage unit.  The Gun Mages on the left flank took out a good number of Winter Guard although it would have been more if the Kovnik Joe hadn't given them the tough ability.  Additionally, some of the shots of the Hunter got through to kill off a couple of the Man-O-War unit.   Caine also arrived in the second round and activated his feat, taking shots at everyone in line of sight although that nuber was decreased significantly by a cloud effect thrown out by a member of the Black 13th.  Third round saw Cygnar taking possession of some of the zones of control, if only for their part of the turn.  Khador continued their advance forward and got into charging range of some of the Hunters and one of the Gun Mage units.  They did a good job of knocking down a 'jack and eliminating some of the Gun Mages.  After their charge they regrouped thanks to the help of the standard bearer and sat tight in Shield Wall.  The Winter Guard did a good job of knocking out some their opponents, the second Gun Mage unit.   After this round, the center was looking weak for Cygnar as well as having some fraying around the edges.  Cygnar tried a little something on their turn and then ceded the battle to Khadors overwhelming melee units.
     Thoughts on this game:  Khador did a good job on set-up in that they threatened most parts of the board equally.  Key if you want to keep your opponent from discerning your true goals.  Also learned was that units really need some sort of attachment, preferably the officer and standard bearer.  A character solo doesn't hurt either.  Both of them are used to increase the inherent abilities of the unit and make them pack a bigger punch and defend with greater acumen.  The other thing that I learned was that tier list (which Paul used) are very specialized.  They give you some good zing in specific situations but they have some very big weaknesses.  Once I engaged Cygnar in melee they were pretty much done because of the preponderance of weak melee models.  For the most part I think that a balanced list is best although that will not stop me from fielding a tier list.  They are just so "fluffy" and the story aspect of one of the things that drew me into the game in the first place.  
     
     Later on in the evening we played two games of Combat Commander.  We have been taking great delight in the scenarios in the new Normandy battlepack.  This time say the Germans opposed first by the British and second by the Canadians.  The first was a beach breakout by the British.  They were aided in their approach by well placed smoke rounds before the game started.  This and timely draws of the Recovery order allowed the first sortie to quickly leave the beach assault a bunker.  Taking the bunker involved also killing an officer and taking out an artillery piece.  Once in the bunkers and trenches the British had litte trouble finishing off the old men and boys that the Krauts chose to man their defenses.  Fortuitous weapon breakage and poor, poor defense/offense draws helped the British in their inexorable advance.

The Canadians surrounded!

     The second scenario saw elite German troops marching on an urban area held by mediocre Canadian forces.  This time the pendulum swung the way of the Germans.  The Canadians couldn't draw a decent defense card to literally save their lives.  The Germans executed a text book advance-and-flank maneuver and it was over rather quickly through surrender.
     Thoughts on these games:  When attacking it is important to have several Move and Recovery orders.  Units are more likely to be broken when moving and it is essential to get them recovered before they take more fire.  Conversely, when defending, it is critical to be able to fire to stop troops but even more critical to finish them off once they are broken.  This speaks well of fire groups that contain a mortar.  If the mortar can break some units then you can clean them up with unit or weapon fire.  Another point to remember, if you have the chance, have some Ambush actions in your hand before you try an Advance.  This allows easy clearing of enemy when you go to engage them hand-to-hand.

All Things Zombie

Opening the box on another great game.

     Paul and I broke open a new game the other day, All Things Zombie published by Lock and Load Games.  Now it might be a little misleading to say that this is a new game.  It was originally conceived as a tabletop miniatures game and was produced by Two Hour Wargames.  We got in a couple of plays of that version but the terrain production as well as the amount of zombies that must be painted made it kind of a cumbersome game.  More times than not setup was longer than the actual gameplay.  That is why I was so jazzed for this iteration of the zombie game, the hex and chit version.  This game was really easy to setup out of the box and a quick run through of the rules and we were playing in no time.  We played the cooperative mode and the zombies are still dangerous to tackle even though they are being mindlessly controlled by the rules.  We played three scenarios and each featured a different goal or victory condition.  In the first we had to search a number of buildings to find a weapon.  After the weapon was found we could escape off a board edge for victory.  The second scenario saw us trying to survive for fifteen rounds as 2-12 zombies entered the board every turn.  The last scenario had us checking out a certain number of building within twenty turns before being able to escape the board.  

Surviving the horde.

     This game is a lot of fun as you get to control a "star" and several of their friends in order to survive the zombie horde.  Each character comes with a special trait or power that can help your survival so the challenge is how to work all the characters together for the common good.  The star has some special rules that make them a little bit more durable and they can also help to motivate other characters.  The mechanics of the game works almost the same as the tabletop version of the game so if you know how to play that you will easily adapt to this.  To be totally honest I think that this version of the game is a little bit more streamlined and easy to understand, especially since the rules are laid out in a way that allows easy understanding.  Although I did notice a couple of terms that were used interchangeably that might confuse some people.

Combat Commander Plays

Assaulting from the beach.  The Americans have driven the Germans back from the left flank.

     Recently I have gotten in a couple games of Combat Commander (Normandy battlepack.)  After the assault on Pont Du Hoc gun emplacements we played a beach scenario with me playing the role of the United States.  The idea was to move inland from the beach and capture a series of communiction trenches studded with bunkers and foxholes.  The second scenario took place in the bocage country after the beach with victory coming from surrender of your opponent or exit points by moving off a designated map edge.  In both games the Americans were triumphant but only with a little bit of luck.  I can understand why some people complain that there is too much luck in the game.
     For example:  In the second match in the bocage, the Americans tried to move across a road, through bocage and into a field.  They were having no success and getting hosed down by the Germans and the casualties were mounting fast, approaching the surrender level.  During one of the defense rolls the Americans get the reinforcement event and pick the 155mm radio.  At this point the momentum radically changes and the Americans start calling fire down on the Germans with devastating effect.  Add the radio to the fact that the American's had a leader that could activate like a hero so he was calling multiple Artillery Request orders on the same turn.  The whole lynchpin of that episode was a random event card....
     Continued thoughts about Combat Commander:  1.) If you are attacking you must have a general plan.  This forces you to cycle through cards until you have what you need to put the plan into action.  For instance, if I want to move a mass of troops forward I like to have a Move order, a Recover order and maybe an Assault Fire action in my hand.  I don't like to move guys into or across enemy firelanes unless I have a Recover order in my hand because I always get gunned down.  2.) Tactical flexibility.  Like Kenny said, "You have to know when to hold 'em.."  Sometimes if you aren't getting the cards you want you must formulate a plan around what you have.  This can put your troops in a tight spot with fewer options but there are times when you just have to keep your troops moving rather than hunkering down under a withering barrage of bullets.  Hand management is huge in this game.
     I continue to find this game intriguing and coming back for more.  I think this game is getting close to surpassing WARMACHINE in plays.  I also like it because you can pull it off the shelf and get to playing and 15 minutes rather than the large setup of WARMACHINE and the transport of all the models.

Men of Iron

     Men of Iron  by GMT was the next wargame on our list.  After delving into Warriors of God I was ready for another challenge to my personal wargaming sensibilities.  Men of Iron did not disappoint.  The game started with the Flemish defending against the French.  Set-up was pre-determined by the scenario and it had a couple of small rules variation specific to the set-up, such as the French knights could be pulled down if taking a negative result while being in a ditch.  I wasn't really sure about what I was supposed to do so I ended up passing for the first couple of rounds waiting for the French to come into my troops. This was a big mistake that will be explained later.  

The beginning...

     The French finally gather the stones to come in on the Flemish.  My opponent does fairly well with his pikemen and crossbow troops and pops a hole in my defensive line.  This is the point where I should have had my reserve troops in position to plug the hole and repel the attackers.  Instead I reacted too late and then had traffic control problems in trying to bring my reserves to bear.  I also had the problem of boxing in some of my troops so that they could not move back in a retreat on negative combat results.  When you can't flee you are defeated!  Ouch!  That hurt and threatened the stability of my line.

It is the Towers fault!

     From there he tried to exploit my weakness, which he did readily and caused a lot of my troops to retire.  This has the effect of removing chits from the immediate battle and placing them next to the banner, which is in the backfield.  This effect means that the troops have to spend an activation getting back into order before they can be utilized by the commander.  I don't think that I really had a chance to rally my troops in this game so they where basically done.  As he broke through the line he shifted troops to fill in the gap and keep pressing the advantage.  It seemed like there was nothing I could do, especially since my dice rolling was horrible!  I blame it on the dice tower (along with my very poor luck.)  After that all that was left to do was exploit my turned back and weakened defense and it was all over.

The End is near!

     Thoughts: 1.) The activation of your units revolves around the leaders and their initiative value.  To activate leaders after the first requires a die roll of less than the commander's rating on a d10.  Before your opponent rolls for activation you can "seize" it my rolling under the commander's rating.  It seems like most of my "seized" initiative rolls failed, thus giving Paul a free activation with one leader.  This hurt big time as I kept on giving him initiative and a free activation from my failed seizures.  It allowed his troops to just continue to steamroller over mine.  2.) Troop placement and facing are also a big deal, allowing them to be attacked from the front, flank or rear.  When you lose the activation and someone gets a charge on your flank your dudes are going down quick!  3.) The other thing I neglected was pre-positioning my troops when I saw that he was going to make a push on one side.  I should have adjusted my troops way before he got to my line so that my reserves could be in position for a counter-attack.  This I couldn't foresee though because I wasn't sure how my troops would retreat or retire from the battle.  This is something to think about next time.  4.) The chits.  These things are small and are a little bit fiddly especially when they are under a shield wall marker.  I just couldn't remember which value troops where there so I might have neglected to get them into battle rather than a weaker complement of troops.
     This a fairly good game with a lot to think about tactic-wise.  At first, I didn't want to play again but that was just the tears of defeat clouding my thinking.  I would just want to go into the next game a little bit more deliberately than I did the first play.  Now that I know the capability of the troops types and the way that terrain works I would play differently next time.

Warriors of God

Still reeling from a great World Cup! Visions of the beautiful game still fill my head but it is time to get back to wargaming. Paul and I decided to dip our feet a little further into the shimmering depth of hex and chit gaming by pulling out Warriors of God by Multi-Man Publishing, a member of their International Game Series. This game, created by Makoto Nakajima and Adam Starkweather, is of low complexity with a play time of about 2 hours (if you are conversant in the rules.) It attempts to simulate the Hundred Years War between the French and the English. The rules are 16 pages that are clear and well laid out. It only took me an evening to read the rules and follow along with the examples before I felt as though I had a good grasp of the important concepts. The components and map are high quality and sturdy but I would still recommend using a piece of plexiglass over the map to help keep it flat so you don't upset the counters during play. The game uses a number of battle dice (d6) to determine the outcome of battle. Not a lot of die modifiers to deal with so combat was fairly straight forward and clear. The game uses an impulse system and initiative to determine who goes when. Not hard to understand at all.

To the right is an example of one turn from the game. I don't quite

remember at what turn but this photo was taken but it gives a good example of what the map territories look like and a peek at the turn chart laid out on top. In this game leaders are THE thing, without them your troops will evaporate into the hinterlands with nary a whiff back. Each game turn is equal to 10 years so you can't count on leaders being around for more than about five turns so it is helpful to continue to look ahead to see what leaders are coming up in the following turns and position your existing leaders and troops in such a way as to allow the new leaders to enter the board and take command of troops as leaders can die from old age, battle or taken from the game by being captured.

This is basically an area control game where victory points are awarded for control of territories and captured leaders. The first to 30 (or 35) points is the winner. Territories have different victory point values which are informed by the roman numerals in the territories. The roman numerals do double duty as they also indicate the number of troops that can be raised from that area. The main type of troop is standard infantry but there is also knights, gunners and longbowmen but these are restricted in number, unlike the foot soldiers. Each turn more leaders enter the board and placement of them is critical especially if you have unassigned troops on the map. Each side has their own leaders but there are also unaligned leaders that can be used by either side. The assignment of the unaligned leaders is based on who didn't have initiative as they get first choice of any new, unaligned leaders.

Movement is simple enough and easy to understand and your troops can get around the board fairly easy. Stacking is allowed and each leader can command a number of troops corresponding differing numbers of stars on the leaders chit. Basically, they vary from commanding three to nine troops. Overall pretty simple mechanics that don't take a lot of page turning to apply, whether in movement, combat or game turns.

We started the game and within the first couple of turns the French were taking great expanses of the countryside due to fantastic dice rolls. The same couldn't be said of the English as there wasn't many options for movement and some terrible dice rolling. Due to the amount of territory controlled by the French their buildup of troops was quick and efficient unlike the English. The other thing that skewed the game is that the French kept getting the initiative and that is huge when it comes down to the number of leaders and troops that you can move. Basically if you win the initiative you get to move first and last in that turn. Kind of a big deal if you have a lot of troops to move. It also allows you to react more efficiently to your opponents movements or to move troops as a feint. In addition to the French's domination of the continent they were blessed with some good combat results that rocked the English not to mention the loss of the English king and no one to pick up the royal banner among the English leaders. In the end it came down to the French king taking a bunch of troops and knights as well as another leader with his compliment of troops invading England from Normandy and wiping out the English royal line. The victory point disparity was giant.

Couple of thoughts: There is a need to really plan ahead in this game. Leaders come and go and you need to be positioned to take advantage of their deaths or capture. The English really need a foothold in the continent early in the game or there is no way they can thwart the French land-lust. The English also need to really figure out how to leverage their longbowmen as they can make a huge difference in battle. Overall a fun game and one that I would like to revisit sometime soon. For those who are looking for a historical reenactment this might not be the game for you as the low complexity doesn't really allow for much granularity and it might seem a little simple. It was good for me to play this game especially as it gives me another perspective on wargaming and a different mode of play from my previous experiences.

Can you tell who Paul was representing?