A Year in Gaming - 2017

As promised last year, I'm taking a look back at the games I played in 2017.

First off, here's the list of games I tracked for this year:

Games Played in 2017

• All Quiet on the Martian Front - 1 
• Arena Rex - 2 
• Blood & Plunder - 1 
• Blood Bowl - 22 
• Congo - 2 
• Empire of the Dead - 5 
• Fistful of Lead - 6 
• Gruntz - 2 
• Guild Ball - 3 
• L'Art de la Guerre - 13 
• Men of Company B - 1 
• Muskets & Tomahawks - 1 
• Open Combat - 2 
• Retro Raygun - 2 
• Saga - 6 
• Shadow War: Armageddon - 14 
• Strange Aeons - 5 
• Test of Honour - 3 
• Warhammer 40,000 - 3 
• Warhammer: Diskwars - 1 
• Warmaster Revolution - 1 
• Wrath of Kings - 1

97 games in total, and like last year, that's not counting the various board games and role-playing games I played over the year.

The tally's not quite as high as last year, although I can chalk that up to playing less than a tenth of the amount of Guild Ball compared to last year. Those tournaments add up!

Let's take a look back at the all the games I featured on the blog:

All Quiet on the Martian Front

Arena Rex

Blood & Plunder

Blood Bowl

Congo

Empire of the Dead

Fistful of Lead

Gruntz

L'Art de la Guerre

Men of Company B

Muskets & Tomahawks

Open Combat

Retro Raygun

Saga

Shadow War: Armageddon

Strange Aeons

Test of Honour

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer: Diskwars

Warmaster Revolution

Wrath of Kings

Here's to another year of gaming in 2018!

2017 6x6 Challenge - Retrospective

Earlier this year I announced that I would be taking part in the 6x6 Challenge proposed by Alan over on The Stronghold Rebuilt.

I was a fan of the idea, and submitted a list of six games that I hoped to play at least six times over the course of the year.

Those games were:

1. Arena Rex - 1
2. Blood Bowl - Completed
3. Blucher - 0
4. Fistful of Lead - Completed
5. Saga - Completed
6. Strange Aeons - 5

So, how did I do?

Well, not too bad, but not great, either. I completed three of the six games, and came very close to completing a fourth entry on the list. Some of that was due to a move in early November for a new job, displacing me from my regular gaming group.

Let's take a look at each of the games.

Arena Rex

I had expected to see more Arena Rex this year, but my games played fell flat. I'm still looking forward to getting this out on the table in 2018, especially since I have the entirety of the Ludus Magnus faction painted and ready. 

Blood Bowl

The first of my completed games for the 6x6 challenge! I owe some thanks to Games Workshop, as their re-release of Blood Bowl generated enough interest for me to participate in not one, but two leagues. The Baltimork Reavers came close to taking the championship in the first league, and the Zharr-Angkor Immortals are performing fairly well at the moment.

Blucher

Ah, Blucher. Another game I had such high hopes for. Unfortunately, the rapid pace of changing games with my old group meant that I could never find the time to get this game on the table, especially since I would need to be the one explaining the rules and providing the terrain and units. 

I may attempt to play this in 2018, especially with the New Jersey Wargamers Association. 

Fistful of Lead

Another success! I owe it to Carl and his collection of Wild West terrain and miniatures, along with Gary, Russ, Kevyn, and everyone else who decided to play games of cowboys and banditos. Fistful of Lead is a fantastic ruleset, and I'd like to play more games of it during 2018.

Saga

The last successful entry in my 2017 6x6 Challenge was the entirety of the Age of the Wolf campaign played between Kevyn's Vikings and my Norse. Although the Vikings had a rough start, Kevyn rallied brilliantly and ultimately crushed the Norman warlord by the end of the campaign.

Strange Aeons

Ah, so close! Strange Aeons was another game that was being fueled by a campaign between Kevyn and me. Unfortunately, due to scheduling problems, we never managed to get our last game in, leaving this entry incomplete. 

So, that's 2017's challenge! It seems that Alan's not planning to run the challenge in 2018. That's a shame, but I appreciate the effort Alan put in to tally and link the games from various sources.

Chaos Dwarves vs. Humans, League Game - Blood Bowl AAR

My opponent for this match was Jolene, who entered the league late with her Human team. As such, her Team Value was far less than mine. But the difference in Petty Cash allowed her to fire the legendary Griff Oberwald for her team. 

Jolene won the toss off and elected to receive in the first half.

While I did managed to stop Jolene's drive and recover the ball, the resulting scrum caught up the slow moving Chaos Dwarves, and the first half ended with neither team managing to score.

The second half opened with the Humans kicking. I sent the ball up the pitch with the two Bull Centaurs, who managed to reach the endzone and score a touchdown. 

Unfortunately, I let my guard down, thinking that Jolene couldn't make it through my defense to score in the remaining turns left. She (and Griff) proved otherwise. Though I managed to knock down the famous Star Player with a charge from a Bull Centaur, an escorting - and unmarked - Lineman caught the dropped ball and ran it in for a turn 16 touchdown, ending the game in a tie. 

This Is My Swamp! - Test of Honour AAR

Last week saw the proper start of the local Test of Honour campaign. Four players were able to attend. After declaring whether we were for the Emperor or supported Tokugawa's bid for power, and rolling our territories, we set up our games and played. 

My opponent was Kai and Lord Edo, who supported the Emperor. Lord Jiro led my warband for Tokugawa. Our terrain was a swamp, with the darker area acting as rough terrain.

I thought this would push the fighting in the center of the table, but Kai had other plans.

Our warbands, entering from the opposite ends of the road, made slow progress in the first turn.

Both of Kai's samurai decided to try something tricky, and decided to get their feet dirty in the muck.

I had to shift my spear ashigaru to face the oncoming samurai, who could easily wipe out the commoners on their own. I did manage to score a light wound with a musket-armed ashigaru.

With blades flashing, Jiro and Edo engaged in combat. The fight ended as quickly as it had begun, with Edo falling to the muck and Jiro triumphant. But there was still Edo's second-in-command, who retreated after seeing his lord cut down.

As the ashigaru engaged below, the two remaining samurai exchanged blows atop the rocky outcropping.

It was Jiro that emerged victorious, and Edo's remaining followers fled the field of battle without a samurai to direct them.

Chaos Dwarves vs. Orcs, League Game - Blood Bowl AAR

My next league opponent was Harley and his Orc team.

The Orcs took up a long line and kicked off. A poor scatter roll meant that one of my Bull Centaurs was just given the ball.

While the Orcs focused on the scrum in the middle of the pitch, the Bull Centaur ball carrier and a Hobgoblin scrambled up the side and managed to score a touchdown with a quick hand off.

The teams set back up, with the Chaos Dwarves kicking.

The Orc drive came close to scoring, but was foiled by a charging Bull Centaur.

The Chaos Dwarves managed a decent reversal, grabbing the ball and making a break for the endzone, scoring another touchdown and ending the first half.

The teams set back up for the second half, with the Orcs receiving.

Harley decided to try out the time-honored play of throwing a ball carrying goblin past the line of scrimmage.

Which ended with both an expected result (the goblin going down) and and unexpected result (taking a Bull Centaur with him!)

Both teams scrambled to pick up the dropped ball, with the Chaos Dwarves eventually managing to get possession.

Another drive from the Bull Centaur managed a third touchdown on the last turn, ending the game 3-0 to the Chaos Dwarves.

A Matter of Honor - Test of Honour AAR

One of the local shops in the area I've recently moved to has begun hosting a weekly Test of Honour night. Estactic that I would get a chance to bring out the Perry miniatures I'd been working on. 

The initial night saw six players using 12 point warbands in teams of two. I teamed up with Sam, Bill with Jolene, and Kai with Harley. The objective was simple - the side with the last samurai standing would be the victor. 

The table was fairly open, with one side starting across a fast moving river that needed a successful Test of Agility to be crossed.

The warbands continued to maneuver. The samurai, having three actions to the commoner's on, were able to quickly leave their ashigaru behind - a strategy that, I quickly learned, would not have good results.

My samurai was the first to be killed, after jumping into the maw of the mixed warbands of the Bill and Jolene. Sam decided to retreat for the moment, after narrowly avoiding attacks from all three of the Kai's and Harley's samurai.

As Sam managed to chop down Kai's Samurai, I was forced to sit back and wait, unable to draw any commoner tokens necessary to activate my ashigaru.

Finally, Sam's samurai was cut down after attempting to rescue my forces, and our commoners fled the table. The battle petered out between the two remaining sides of the battle, their warriors too tired to go charging across the field to attempt a renewed assault.

The group had a fun time, and this big opening battle helped us learn the rules of the game. While it did have the time-tested problem of playing a three-sided game (one side will always end up in a two front war, and we all know how that turns out) and Test of Honour's token based activation kind of breaks down when you've got six players individually adding in and drawing out, I'm looking forward to starting up a campaign.