Barrage 2018, Tamil Indians vs. Medieval Hungarians - ADLG AAR

My final game at Barrage was against Walt and his Medieval Hungarians. 

Like Bill, Walt decided to dismount his knights as the game started. He also decided to deploy heavily to his left, which would effectively leave one of my commands out of the fight.

The fighting started on the right in the forest, where Walts line of light infantry decided to charge into my command. For some reason, I decided to fight in the forest, knowing that my medium infantry and elephants would be at a disadvantage, while Walt's light infantry wouldn't. This resulted in a quagmire that bogged that command down in the difficult ground for the rest of the game.

The rest of the game didn't go well either - with Walt's commands interpenetrating and nudging each other all over the place, it was difficult to keep track of who was in command of what.

Ultimately, Walt managed to force my army to break, although his own army was just a couple of lost cohesion points away from breaking as well.

Overall, I placed 5th out of ten players. The Tamil force was interesting, if a little boring - there's no real tactical depth to the force. I missed the speed and maneuverability of light horse and real cavalry, and I may build a force with them for the next tournament I go to. Maybe I should expand my Avar?

Barrage 2018, Tamil Indians vs. Medieval Germans - ADLG AAR

My second game at Barrage was against Bill and his Medieval Germans. 

Unlike Joe, Bill decided to dismount what cavalry he could at the start of the game. 

However, since this mean most of his units were heavy infantry, I technically had a "faster" army, and I managed to reach the middle of the battlefield first. 

This meant that when combat came, I was able to claim the top of the hill on the left, which gave me a height advantage in combat. 

While my right flank ponderously swung around, the other two commands were having a decent go of it thanks to some hot dice, and I was able to liberally spread cohesion damaged against Bill's army. 

This time, the Indians managed to hang on in the scrum, and enough of Bill's units routed for me to score a victory.

Barrage 2018, Tamil Indians vs. Nikephorian Byzantines - ADLG AAR

This past weekend I travelled down to Maryland to take part in a 15mm L'Art de la Guerre tournament at Barrage 2018.

I had been furiously working on a Tamil Indian force, thinking I'd been in the Ancients bracket of the tournament (the split being between pre- and post-1000 CE lists). 

However, I was surprised to discover I had been placed in the post-1000 bracket!

That didn't affect my overall strategy much, however. With Elephants, Impetuous infantry, and Ordinary commanders, my army would simply march across the table and hope to roll high on the dice when in combat. 

My first opponent was Joe, who brought Nikephorian Byzantines. 

Despite all the elephants on the table, he elected to keep his units mounted, which allowed him to rapidly re-deployed his knights and heavy cavalry away from one of my commands. 

With all the shooting available to his army, I decided to push my units into combat as quickly as possible. The first round went decently for me, with the Elephants and Impact/Impetus Medium Swordsmen causing cohesion lost across Joe's line of infantry. 

Unfortunately, the dice then swung completely in the other direction, and I saw most of the two commands in combat simply evaporate, leaving Joe with the win. 

Kayfabe and Throwing Shade - Warhammer Underworlds and Rumbleslam AARs

While Sam couldn't make it this past weekend, John and I decided to put a couple games on the table that John had finished painting the miniatures for, but hasn't had the opportunity to play yet. 

The first game was Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. I had actually bought the starter earlier this year, but ended up selling it since no one else seemed to be interested. It's really a shame, since while I'm cold on Age of Sigmar, Underworlds turned out to be a fun, fast-paced, and tactically complex game.

John and I ended up playing three games. I lost the first, as I sent my warband in piecemeal. While Steelheart's Champions are stronger than the members of Garrek's Reavers in one-on-one combats, John was able to gang up on my fighters and tear them apart.

Realizing my error, I spent the next two games keeping the Champions closer together, playing a defensive game. With this strategy, I managed to win both games.

Warhammer Underworlds has actually piqued my interest, and I may purchase the new starter.

The second game we tried out was Rumbleslam, which John essentially owns everything for thanks to his participation in the kickstarter.

I chose to play as the Cryptborn Nightmares, while John used the Heavy Pounders.

Since I couldn't find a PDF of the rules online (c'mon, TTCombat - it's 2018, get with the times!), John and I had to take our time trying to learn the game as we played.

The first turn mostly saw both teams moving across the ring, positioning themselves for the next turn. My werewolf, however, managed to successfully activate his Crowd Pleaser ability, and leapt to the nearest empty turnbuckle.

The second turn saw most of the action. My werewolf leapt down from the turnbuckle onto the ogre, who in turn went off the ropes to slam into the werewolf. While the big guys fought it out, the smaller members of the team skirmished in the corner, with one of John's halflings and my zombie knocked out for the count.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time, but the two rounds was enough to get a taste of Rumbleslam's rules, and it left me wanting more. We used grappling, off-the-rope, and turnbuckle attacks, but neither of us managed to use any lifting or throwing rules. Maybe next time.

Fort Night - Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis AAR

Like I said in the recent Sekigahara post, I've been on a bit of a tear recently in regards to board games. While they haven't replaced my miniature wargaming hobby, they're a great supplement, offering experiences unlike those of pushing little toy soldiers across the table. 

GMT Games has been my focus recently, since they offer a wide variety of themes and designers that cater to a vast swathe of player types - everything from dense, multi-hour games that cover entire wars, to short, intense games that can be enjoyed in just a half hour.

The newly released Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis falls in the later category. Sam and I managed to play our first game in about an hour, but that was mostly due to having to explain the game rules and a mid-game break to talk to a few drop-ins. I'm sure that playing time will decrease drastically when we break it out again.

Fort Sumter is, as the box shows, a card-driven game in which two players take the roles of the Unionists and Secessionists in the last few moment of peace before the outbreak of the Civil War. Both sides wish to control various aspects of the United States - Secessionist, Political, Public, and Armaments - without escalating too quickly and creating public sympathy for the other side.

You can check out the game's BoardGameGeek page for better reviews than I can offer.

However, I do have to mention the rulebook and playbook for the game. The rulebook is concise - only 8 pages long, and one of those pages is the cover and table of contents - but it's colorful and easy to read.

The playbook, on the other hand, is fantastic. It presents the first round of the game in a step-by-step instructional guide, with little boxes offering reasoning for each action taken, and then also covers the "Final Crisis" round, which differs in structure to the preceding three rounds, but is as vital, if not more so, for victory.

It then presents a short history of the Secession Crisis, along with citations of events, people, and places to each of the 48 strategy cards. These strategy cards are then covered in depth. Finally, the playbook ends with design notes and strategy tips.

I should note that Sekigahara also has a Historical and Design Notes section of its rulebook, although it's not as in depth. If this is the norm for games from GMT (again, these are my only two experiences with their products), then I look forward to buying and learning more! It goes a long way in adding to the theme of the game.

The board at the start of the game begins nice and orderly, with neither playing having any Political Capital tokens on the table. As each round progresses, however, more tokens are removed from the Crisis Track, and the friction between the Unionists and Secessionists escalates.

Doing so is detrimental, as it allows the player who hasn't breached further into the Crisis Track to either influence the board with the Peace Commissoner token (who prevents the addition or removal of tokens from the space on the board where it has been placed) or even the loss of a Victory Point for reaching the Final Crisis stage too early.

For our first game, Sam chose to play as the Secessionists, while I was the Unionists.

Interestingly, the deck of Strategy Cards is actually asymmetrical. Both sides have equal opportunities to take the Political and Armaments spaces; however, the Secessionists are weighted towards the Secessions spaces (duh) and the Unionists are weighted towards the Public Opinion spaces. Control isn't guaranteed, but it's an uphill fight to control these spaces without the proper events on cards.

While I had intended to take pictures after the end of each round, the game was so quick-paced that I only remembered at the end of the third round, so I held off until the end of the game instead.

I took an early lead in the first round by controlling the Political Crisis Dimension and completing my objective, but I'll attribute that to the fact that I had read the rules, and Sam had only my explanation before starting the game to go off of. The second round was more evenly matched, and Sam prevented me from scoring my objective in the third round.

Neither of us broke into the Final Crisis area of the Crisis Track, and we solidified our control of the Crisis Dimensions we could influence. Sam controlled the Secession and Armaments dimensions, scoring 3 points for the additional possession of Fort Sumter. I controlled the Political and Public Opinion dimensions, and scored 3 points as well, as I had a bonus point for ending the game with three or more tokens in my Token Pool than in Sam's.

The final score was 9-8, with the Unionists eking out a victory, representing the Union starting with a slight advantage in the upcoming conflict.

Like Sekigahara, this was a fun, flavorful game with the added bonus of being quick. I plan to bring it to the upcoming South Jersey Gamers Association meeting and hopefully get another game or two in.

The concept of fast playing, card-driven games of influence placement to represent rising tensions could work in so many other places, so I'm hoping to see GMT's stable of Lunchtime Games grow. The next title looks to be Flashpoint: South China Sea, which pits the United States against China's incursions into the global shipping lanes in the aforementioned area. I'm tempted to get in on the P500.