Tuesday 27 September 2016

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.....





Thursday 22 September 2016

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.

Thursday 8 September 2016

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.