A busy week, but games too!

Well, I had much to do this week, between digging a long ditch for my dad (literally) and possibly getting a summer job teaching remedial English (the only thing that may disqualify me is that while I am a grad student, I am not a grad student in the English department....but I write better than 3/4 of them anyways) I was able to get two nights of games in at the Crazy Squirrel.

Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of Tuesday night's Samurai game. We played a Warmaster variant, using Brent and David A.'s armies. There were five of us playing, three were my opponents and one was my erstwhile ally (he showed up very late while I was facing two people).

In this variation of the popular game, each side gets a pool of dice which they allocate to seven or eight categories. They roll for each category separately, with 4's and up being successes, with the goal of having more successes than one's opponent. The degree of success then correlates to advantages or potential advantages during the game.

Where I got lucky was with terrain placement. We dropped seven pieces of terrain, with my going first and last. My opponent, Ron, placed a forest right in front of my two small hills, after I placed a forest in front of his one hill on his right...my hills were also on my right and across from them, about 40cm away were two impassible and LOS blocking woods. Since I also won the terrain category roll, I was able to add, delete, or move a terrain piece. Yes, you guessed it, I moved the forest in front of my hills to right next to Ron's hill...leaving him two small gaps of about 10cm of open ground between the impassible terrain on his left and the hill flanked by two forests on his right. I figured this would bottleneck his army...and as it turned out, I was right.

As nifty as the set up was for me, execution of my plan went awry on my first turn...as I blew my second command roll for my Elite Samurai cavalry which was brigaded with my two elite samurai infantry on my far right, which also had my general and sub-general with them to give extra umph in combat. I had left the rest of my army in a single line, archers on the hills, arquebusiers on my far left, with two units of Ronin warriors, Ronin arquebusiers, and a unit of light archers. I figured to cross my elites from my right to my left, in front of my hills, and let my archers do their thing using initiative. As the Ronin automatically attack using initiative, I figured I really did not need to command anything but my elites. Except, after I got in one move, I rolled a fecking 11, needing a 10 or less...leaving my nice tight unit of elites out in the open, in front of elite arquebusiers (who hit on a 3+), which I had intended to charge.

Alas, I end up losing a stand of my elite cav to those enemy gunners...and my battleplan went to hell.

The elite force ended up doing a 180 and went after three units of commoners, because to go forward was to get beat down by a lot of shootie gits. However, I did tell of my household troops and sub-general to deal with that mass of enemy coming in at my center, but who were out of range of my bowmen. My household troops bore in...and after several crappy rolls, they were beaten (due to enemy support bonuses) and were pushed back. Where they were immediately rushed by two units of spearmen and then flank charged by Ron's (Now under the command of Matt as Dave A. had shown up and Ron matched up against him with new units). Elite cavalry.

I was ready to throw in the towel at this point...my household troops were surrounded on three sides and I had nothing heavy to deal with any breakthrough moves.... Until Matt had a turn of crappy rolls. Out of 30 attacks against me... I took less than five hits, meaning I did not even lose a stand, dishing back more casualties against the enemy to my front...only to lose due to his damn support bonus. On their 2nd round of attacks, I did lose a stand (down to 1 stand and the sub-general) as the elite cavalry were the only ones to follow up, due to the limited space. I wiffed on my own attacks, leaving myself in a very very vulnerable position. His deadly cavalry within charge range of all my crappy troops.

On my far right, my elites were grinding away at the commoners, losing stands and killing stands..it was slow going due to my lousy rolls (but I did get a Yahtzee by rolling five 2s for saving throws...needing a 4+).

On my next turn, I pulled back the remnants of my household samurai and my sub-general and prayed that combined archery fire would do SOMETHING to the incoming meatgrinder of his cavalry. More bad rolls and I end up doing two hits....out of nearly 10 rolls. Luckily, he rolled a 6 for effect and was confused....I believe this saved me.

On my far left, the advancing samurai and my ronin went head to head...with my ronin ultimately dying, but only after taking out 2/3 of his own household troops. On my far right, my elites had finally ground down two units and smashed a third...but due to my bad rolls, it took two of my turns and one of his to eliminate it.

At this point, I only needed to kill 2.5 more of his stands to break his army, so I threw my second ronin unit and my sub-general in at 2 units of samurai. A bit of back and forth, and I killed three stands...but MVP of the game was my sub-general as not only did he lead the unit which did the kills I needed to win, but he also survived 8 attacks, 5 hits...of which I saved 1.....leaving him alive and causing Neil to shake his hand in fury... (it was THIS close!!!!)

To top it off. The Crazy Squirrel had a prize give away to anyone playing miniature games in the store that night, but you had to be present to win...and I won....this:

 

On Thursday night, we played Flames of War (only the second time I've played it, and the first with the new edition of the rules). The scenario was 1942ish North Africa and I selected to play on the German side.

 This is the city... or village rather...and you can see, apart from some unflattering visions of folks in the background ( I did not see the bum in the lens when snapping the pic of minis!) one can plainly discern the British forces as deployed. Each side deployed four of nine platoons (or equivalents) with the rest to come on as reinforcements.

 A fuzzy picture of six Bren Gun carriers...some artillery, and infantry.

 One of my two 88mm guns, the other is barely visible at the top of the frame, also in the orchard. They did very little all game....but helped in the very last turn!

 The German center and far right. The 88s on the hill killed one of the British artillery pieces on our first turn, and our own artillery did for a second gun.

A better view of my position. You can see my infantry prepare to leapfrog to the small copse to their front. Which then eventually became their graveyard....ehh.

 Um... for recon forces, these Bren Gun carriers are a bit....yellow? Which brings to mind one thing that I found very annoying with these rules... you cannot do anything to a unit that runs from cover to cover, while it is on the bounce. No reaction fire, not "overwatch" nothing but watching a swarm of vehicles scuttling around as though they were crabs on the beach, hiding from the sun.

 The Brit infantry on their far left, and a mobile AA gun.

 The mobile AA next to Ron's hands, by the hill, had just backed up after having an 88mm round sizzle through the air right by it.

 David A.'s PzIV rushing up to take a shot at another artillery piece, but missing.

Ah ha! The enemy artillery observer is spotted on the hill....but he quickly digs in and becomes worthless to shoot at.

 The view from my position...and a Brit aeroplane coming in for a bombing run; it misses.

Brent's gun carriers prove to be a suicidal nuisance. And his infantry, behind that cover, just plinked away at my infantry in the copse. You can see in the top picture that the gun carriers parked in front of  my position to bang away at my boys. I ended up destroying one and causing the crew of other to bail out.

The gun carriers end up taking out an artillery piece and an 88mm gun.

 "Here ya go! suck on this, ya git! As the joyous gun carrier crew are about to hear the heavenly choir from a front row seat!

 The gun carrier crew get back in...at the same time my infantry are obliterated by artillery. I lose five out of the size stands right there.

 Oh great...Shermans enter on my left front...and shoot at my 88s, but miss.

Our far right...another fecking fecker of a fecking gun carrier (thanks Fran for the word!) about to kill another 88.

 I made him bail again! But his commander came over to play..doing very much of nothing as my lads had gone to ground.

 You can see the remnants here...their C.O. and then the 2IC...all huddled behind the biggest rock they could find.

 "Zip! Zip!" Goes my two 88s and two Shermans brew up...no contest.

Their first wave of reinforcements come on the table...to face off against a PzIV, which then takes out two of them...the third being bogged down in soft sand.

And the very last turn, due to time, our first group of reinforcements enter the table on my left, and flank the surviving Sherman, whose crew quickly join their mates in Valhalla....as it was shot at by 2 PzIVs and 3 PzIIIJs.

Nice game... for a change...:)