ADLG in Estella, Spain

One of our old club members is from Spain and came over for a visit a few months ago.

He came over for a FoGR competition and we got talking and he mentioned that is club was having an ADLG competition and invited us over.

So, we took him up on his offer.

Six of us from the CWLC took a couple of days off and we made a long weekend of it.

Estella is a small town near Pamploma, so, we got to cram a bit of being a tourist in along with ADLG, tapas and Rioja.

This was my first solo ADLG competition and I was going in with low expectations.

The period was any army to the following periods: Classic, Rome, Dark Ages and America.

I brought my Later Hindu Indians as I had just finished painting them up and I've always wanted an Elephant army.

My to my surprise and to my club mates, I came third place!

I managed to break all five of my opponents, but lost my army in three of the games.

ADLG has an interesting scoring system where if you don't get a result (win or lost) you don't get many points.  You get lots of points for killing bases or causing wounds which worked well for me as I broke all of my opponents.

Game 1 vs Tamil Indians

Mutual Destruction!

A bit of Elephant action, we had 10 elephants on the table

Rather than hiding, the Hindus advance!

The Indians collide, both sides taking a lot of damage.  We got some Elephant rampage going on

Game 2 vs Early Imperial Romans

Big win to me

Forgot to take photos.  :-(

Game 3 vs Byzantine army

Mutal Destruction!

I found after the game I had just broken France's number 6 ranked ADLG player.

The Elephants move in while getting surrounded by light horse.

Cav are good, Elephants trump!

The club put on a dinner for all the participants.  Spanish food isn't the best for a vegetarian like me.

For the carnivore, this is what they got.

The closest I will ever get to eating pork.  Now, where is that red wine, I need a drink!

Game 4 vs Romans
Big win

The Indians win their first initiative and decide to come charging down at the legionnaires.  I thought it would be better to get stuck in first before the very scary blade equipped legionaries made me into kebabs.

Game 5 vs Selucids
Mutual destruction

My elephants saved the day.  My opponent broke me and was one point off breaking.  One of my elephants was killed and went for a rampage over one of his bowmen who was up a steep hill, causing him to break as well.  Revenge!

The results

Raf of 409
Federice (who I broke in game 2) 385
Me on 346

Madaxeman podcasts - What keeps rules systems interesting?

Very scary, I'm on a podcast!

Tim of Madaxeman fame has started doing podcasting and I'm on a few of them.

http://madaxeman.podbean.com

Most recently, we did one on the way to Derby, discussing what keeps a rules set interesting.

We recorded it twice as the first 1 hour session didn't record.

Interesting chat, we discussed why we think FoGAM and to some degree FoGR feel like they have  had their day.

So, what does keep a rules system interesting?  

For me, its' the army lists and trying different things.

FoGAM went stale for me after a few years as the medieval armies that I love were pretty useless at comps and after a while became all soo "samey".

FoGR has a lot more life in it, the army lists are very different and there are lots of different combinations that you can come up with.

the rules have proven to be very solid and only really needed a few tweaks but I think the current reaction to mass mounted armies has thrown the balance too far in favour of foot.

 I'm going to try ADLG in 2017 for a few comps to take a break from FoGR.

I've just recently painted up an Hindu Indian army and looking forward to having elephants on the table

Blucher - Austrians vs Early War French

Last night I got to give my almost finished Austrians a run against Geoff's French.

All the figures are from Lancashire Models except the generals who are from Old Glory.

Lancashire figures aren't the greatest, but they are priced very well and it paints up OK.

I've painted my using a lot of Army Painter base coats and dipping, which works well for my style painting.

The Austrians didn't do too well though, Geoff is very good at the pre battle map system, Scharnhorst.  This left me in the position of having to completely break him to have a chance.

Anyhow, I got my new toys on the table and it was all good.


Turn 3

Geoff has redeployed his troops behind the river while waiting on his flank march to arrive.

I'm  pushing towards the BUA to get some points.

The French line

The Austrians advance supported by artillery.

The Landwehr advance to the forest where it's safe.

The Austrians engage the BUA defenders while trying to keep their left flank intact after the flank march arrived.

It looks good from here, but the Austrian shooting is ineffective.  I think I managed to cause one hit in all the shooting.....

Horizons War - Tyranids vs Humans

Tim and I got Horizons War out on the table and got some 6mm big robot action.

I brought my Tyranids and Tim had a mixed force of 15mm GZG, 6mm moderns and scratch built models.

We went for a 20 point game, no scenario.

Let's see how good my cheat sheet is.

My force comprised of three big bio Titans (2 x P4 and 1 x P3 mechs) and a bunch of bio vehicles and infantry.

Tim had a similar force.

We didn't try any of the deep deployment rules or anything fancy, this was Tim's first game.

Nice decent sized table with lots of terrain to hide behind.

Tim's reactor getting ready to explode (it had a flickering tea light inside, very cool effect)

Here comes some Bio goodness.

The Bio Titan shoots and misses.

Tim's missile mech does a lot better, forcing me to run away.

Some Genestealers charge in and get mauled very heavily.  We discover that close combat is brutal.

The teeth action from the Genestealers make short work of the human's power armour.

Bio Titan scurrying away  after realising a six to one combat isn't good.

A Bio Titan engages a smaller mech in close combat.

Last heard from the mech "Do not put that tentacle there!"

The Titan is being surrounded and slowly killed.

End result a win to the humans.  I lost most of my right hand flank Tim's forces were mauled but still fighting.

Horizons War is pretty good.  It's very quick and gives you a good game.  With the model count quite low, you can set up an army for a reasonable amount.

I can see some models from Drop Zone Commander being purchased.

Now, let's look at the Bio rules that Robey has come out with.

Full Thrust - NSL vs ESU

Tamsin and I got Full Thrust back on the table for our yearly dose of space goodness.

Tamsin brought her ESU fleet and I had my trusty NSL.

I finally pulled my finger out and named all of my ships.  Makes life much easier.

Tamsin suggested we use the Gruntz activation cards to spice up the shooting.  Rather than being able to choose who fired first, using the Gruntz cards, you assigned each a card.  The card value would then determine who shot first.

This made life rather interesting in a few duels.

We each had 2500 points, no more than 50% of which could be in capitals.

I was soon to learn the power of the ESU class four laser.....

We each set up, I split up into two squadrons, Tamsin just a line of ESU brawlers.

The ESU advance. Some how, the Russians were faster than the NSL.

The NSL squadron based on Ferdinand  III super dreadnought moves to engage

Tamsin's brawlers move in.  Shortly afterwards I discoved that Russians do make big guns.

My Maria class battleship lost all of it's armour and two rows of damage, not to mention multiple systems just from one shot.

I hate the exploding dice mechanic when it's happening to me....

:-)

The fleets moving into knife fighting range.

My pulse torpedoes fail to hit anything!

This is going to hurt!

The end result was a narrow win to the NSL.

I managed to destroy most of the ESU capital ships but most of my fleet was only suitable for scrap metal.

Blucher - Austrians

Curse new rules that are fun to play!

I've gotten into Blucher for my Napoleonic fix and decided to build a 2nd army.

As I seem to have a preference for Germans, I went with the Imperial Austrians as my 2nd army.

I picked up the bulk of the army at Salute this year and have been busy painting it.

Here are some of the first units

Veteran Infantry

Cuirassiers

Sub General

Commander in Chief

Worlds - Belgium 2016

The Worlds are being held this year in Belgium, in a town called Charleroi, just south of Brussels.

I put my hand up to run the FoGR comp and managed to get 10 players.

I was hoping for a lot more, but with the Worlds was down on numbers, I was happy to get the comp running.

We had players from Belgium, UK, France, Germany and a South African

The Worlds had a FoGR and FoGAM comp in one hall running over three days and in the other hall an ADLG and X-Wing two day comp.

I didn't get much time to see the other events, we had just a 30 min break between games and I had to do the draw.  It wasn't the best time to find out that your iPad can't do sorts, which meant doing the draw by hand. (Face plant)

One nice thing about playing in a sports hall, they had cheap beer and table service.  That helped a lot with the 30 degree heat.....

The end results was I got 2nd place!  This makes up for the horrible run I had a Britcon coming third last.


I supplied some extra trophies and got to bring one home.

First place was a 25mm Gustavus Adolphus on horseback.