Barn Storming - Fistful of Lead AAR

Carl and I got together these weekend with the intent to put on our spurs, don our ten gallon hats, and head out into the West with a couple games of Fistful of Lead. 

The first game was fairly simple - a head-on clash between our two gangs of roughs. While I had an advantage in numbers, Carl's bandidos were equipped with rifles, out-ranging my pistol-wielding men.

After all the cards had fell on the first turn, both gangs had advanced towards the center of town.

The air was soon filled with lead. Brazenly, my gang attempted to surround the bandidos, who were hoping to get into the cover of the barn after their leader had kicked the door open.

Both sides took casualties, as a pinned rough in my gang ran for the hills, while a bandido fell, blood staining the front of his shirt.

Led by an Army officer gone rogue, the roughs continued to poor lead into the barn, with the bandido leader falling to the ground.

Two of the roughs tried rushing the barn door, hoping to get at the remaining bandido. One caught a bullet in the stomach and was killed. The other took advantage of the situation to unload his pistol into the prone enemy.

The last remaining bandido was dispatched from a distance.

As it turned out, the rifles weren't much help when the fighting was so close against the weight of fire and advantage in numbers of the roughs,

It was only after the dirt and blood had settled, however, that the roughs realized that the bandido leader was still alive. They recognized her from a wanted poster in the nearby saloon, and after securing her with some rope, the gang retreated to the abandoned fort to decide on what to do next...

Bowing Out - Shadow War: Armageddon AAR

The group gathered on Wednesday for more games on the war-torn world of Armageddon. 

The first game was against Mike and his Grey Knights in the Raid scenario. The Grey Knights would be defending against Harlequins, who would need to destroy the entrance to a bunker before reinforcements could arrive. 

The Harlequins rushed the two Grey Knights that had deployed, with both falling in close combat to the xenos. The bunker entrance fell soon after. The Grey Knight reinforcements didn't arrive until late in the game, but were unable to stop the Harlequins from retreating off the table and winning the game. 

The second game was against Pat and his Imperial Guard, who had managed to Ambush the Harlequins.

Unfortunately, the guard had split up, leaving a convenient group of three troopers vulnerable to the Harlequin's speed. The xenos ran out of cover, their prismatic blur keeping the worse of the enemy's fire at bay. A single round of close combat was enough to down all three of the guardsmen, forcing a bottle check and ending the game.

Finally, I faced off against John and his Chaos. This was a straight Kill Team Fight, as John wanted to see just how nasty a full force of Harlequins could be.

The answer? Very, very nasty. Despite the Chaos Marines essentially hunkering down at the opposite end of the table, that didn't prevent at least two of the Harlequins from getting into close combat. The final tally end the end of the game saw three Harlequins and seven Chaos Space Marines taken out of the game, with Chaos bottling.

So, I've decided to drop the Harlequins. They're simply too powerful for the league, and even increasing their invulnerable save to 5+ doesn't change the fact that they're difficult to hit at range, and are absolute monsters in both shooting and close combat. I picked up a couple boxes of Ork boyz to make a new, hopefully fairer, kill team.

Arachnophobia - Gruntz AAR

While I'm still waiting for my VTOLs to arrive, Gary was kind enough to let me borrow his DEVGRU and USA forces to use in Gruntz against his Prang. 

Our game once again on the eye-searing Prang homeworld. We used a scenario in which the humans would need to defend three objectives as reinforcements came onto the board, while the Prang would need to destroy those objectives in six turns. As the defender, I placed two objectives on both flanks of my table side, while Gary placed his objective behind the rocky formation in the center.

The humans started with their infantry and snipers prone, and three spider tanks. The Prang had their entire force on the table - a collection of slow, heavily armored tanks and APCs, and a massive dropship.

The Prang started by double-timing across the table. 

The humans got a single ATM armored car to arrive. Then the spider tanks emerged out of cover and opened fire, scoring solid hits against the lead Prang vehicles.

The Prang returned fire, scoring some hits. An APC speed towards the objective on the human's left side of the table, disgorging a Prang infantry squad into cover.

The humans received another reinforcement as a heavy wheeled APC rolled onto the table. Their second salvo ripped into the Prang forces, destroying a tank and two APCs.

The Prang pushed on, using their dropship full of warbots to get behind one of the humans' spider tanks and let rip with its weaponry. The humans tried to focus fire on the dropship, but between the damaged systems on the spider tanks and the dropship's micro-CIWS, most of the fire was ineffective. 

With the clock counting down on the scenario, Gary raced his dropship further into the human lines, approaching the objective on the right side of the table. The spider tank in the middle of the table finally fell to Prang plasma weaponry.

Unfortunately, further reinforcements and concentrated fire brought the dropship down, along with the warbots. Another APC was destroyed, and the armored wheeled APC used its Gatling gun to mow down the remaining Prang infantry by the left objective.

The Prang moved in for one last push, with their infantry mortars decimating one of the defending human infantry squads. But there simply weren't enough Prang units remaining to make much of  a difference. The humans finished the game by taking out the Prang mobile artillery unit.

The VP count at the end of the game gave the humans a solid win, thanks in large part to the spider tanks. They're extremely mobile, relatively hard to damage, and pack enough firepower to do some major damage on their own. The Prang vehicles might have been more heavily armored, but enough concentrated fire from the humans was usually enough to get through the aliens' defenses.

Rumble in the Hive - Shadow War: Armageddon AAR

Some of the local 40k players have started up a Shadow War: Armageddon league at Stomping Grounds as they wait for the new edition to drop. As I'm always interested in campaign-based skirmish games, I decided to pick up a box of Harlequins and join in. The initial game night went well, with the Harlequins winning both games and adding more bodies to their kill team (as an elite force, they can only have six permanent members, whereas most factions have ten, and others can go up to fifteen or twenty).

This last Saturday I had a chance for a couple more games. The first was against Andy's Tau, in the Kill Team fight. The objective was to force the other kill team to either bottle (fail a leadership test after losing 25% of their numbers) or voluntarily retreat.

With the Tau setting up a firing line in the cover of the building at the lower left in the above picture, the Harlequins spent most of the game running between cover to encircle the building. After the Tau's sniper was downed by a neuro disrupter, Andy decided to retreat, rather than let the Harlequins get into close combat.

The second game, against Shawn's Dark Eldar, was the Scavenge scenario, where both sides had to collect d6 loot tokens (we rolled five) as a monster lurked around the outskirts of the board.

The Dark Eldar fared better against the Harlequins, as the Wyches gained a 4+ invulnerable save in close combat. However, the high Weapon Skill and Attacks that the Harlequins possess meant they won combat again and again. Eventually, the Dark Eldar bottled, dispersing back into the ruins.

From the four games I've played, it seems that Harlequins might be somewhat overpowered, at least in the early game of the campaign. Since this league should last awhile, I'm curious as to whether increased body- and skill-count in the other kill teams will offset the inherent advantages that the Harlequins start with. In the meantime, we'll likely be increasing the Harlequins invulnerable save to 5+, as they're difficult to hit in the first place.

Painting Update - FIW, Pirates, Horizon Wars

Let's go to the painting desk for an update. 

I finally got around to finishing the French Wilderness Force for Muskets & Tomahawks. Part of the force is made up of a Canadian Officer and Canadian Miltia.

Another unit of Canadian Militia is also included, but these are Coureur de Bois - woodsmen and trappers who have gone native. And speaking of native, a small unit of French-allied Indians rounds out the force.

I made a slight mistake when talking about the British Force. It turns out the unit size restrictions in Muskets & Tomahawks only allows a Ranger unit to be eight men at max, so the six so-called "militia" are actually rangers as well, to make two units of eight.

And now that all the irregular forces are done, it may be time to start looking for some regular troops to fill out the conflict.

I also painted up some pirates for Blood & Plunder. While I like the rules, and the miniatures look great, I wasn't so enamored with the idea of painting up the same four miniatures for each unit in the game. So I've been shopping around and buying up Wargames Foundry Pirates where I can find them.

While I haven't had the chance to play Horizon Wars recently, I've finished painting up the last of the UMC forces. The above are medium Gladius mechs from Immediate Force Solutions, a private military company that exclusively fields mechs.

Rounding out the UMC is Fujikawa-Shaw Investment Retrieval LLC, which uses its airdrop capable light Zephyr and medium Squall mechs alongside airborne infantry, artillery, and recon units.