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.

Britcon 2016

Off to Britcon for the FoGR competition.

There are a lot of very good players with hard foot armies, so, it's going to be interesting.

I couldn't decide what army to bring so brought my army from last year.  I don't have a good feeling this year......

The Challenge 2016 Results

Woot!

I got third place.

It was a smaller pool this year, quite a few players have changed rules systems or were busy, but we still got a good competition running.

It's finally time for me to retire my 30 Years Germans, I've been using them at quite a few comps and they are getting a bit boring.

The players were

Campaign 2016 Results

The Central London Mediocre team returns victorious from Campaign, making up for their horrible run last year!

Dave and I took first place in our periods as well!

Was good to see a few new players, especially Izzy who is just 12 getting her first 25-0!

I didn't take many photos as the games were on a tight schedule (3 hours each) plus a quick turn around between games. 

It was fun to get the 25mm figures on the table and stomp around.  The tight ECW theme did allow for several variations on each army, so, you never really knew what you were going to face.

Game 4,

Paul's Parliamentarians advance across the table.

 Game 5, Chris's Royalists advance.

Chris owns one of the Cigar Battle Box cloths so, we used that as well.  It gives the table quite a nice look and takes away from the usual dull green or carpet sheets we usually use.  Very temping to buy......

 

Campaign 2016

We are off to Campaign 2016 this weekend.

Tim, Dave A and I are back as Central London Mediocre and I'll be in the 25mm period this time.

Lets see if I can do better than last year.....

here are the periods

he usual current restrictions on Artillery (1 gun per 6 infantry BG bases; no fire into flank zones on deployment) and superior/average troop mix (No more superior/elite bases than average/poor for both Foot and Horse BG's) will apply.

Period 1:25mm 700pts - The English English Civil War (1641-1646) : - Early ECW Royalist, ECW Parliamentarian, Later ECW Royalist, New Model Army.

• 40mm MUs for Movement, Command Distances and Shooting, 

• 1 inch MUs for Terrain, Deployment and Threatened Flank Sectors

Period 2: 15mm 800pts - Armies, Allies and enemies of France 1485-1529 – Maximillian Imperial, Trastamara Spanish, Italian States, Italian Wars Venetian, Italian Wars French, Early Henrician English, Scottish, Swiss.

Period 3: 15mm 800pts – The Battle for India 1500 – 1625: - Muslim Indian, Hindu Indian (except Sinhalese), Rajputs, Mughal, Colonial Portuguese with compulsory Hindu Allies (3 BG's minimum). (i) All lists must feature at least 1BG of Elephants 

The runners and riders have been posted.  I'm a bit surprised by the other choices in the 25mm period, maybe I didn't choose the right army....