Painting Update - WWII, Mythic Americas, Romans, Warmaster

It's been a long time since I've had any posts about what I've been painting between games, so here's an update!

I wanted to add a little more armor to my 28mm Late War Germans, so I picked up a Marder III from Warlord Games. 

I also finished the monstrous Ayar for my Aztec warband in Mythic Americas. This Monstrosity is a Mythic Americas original, formed from the shattered soul of one of the legendary Ayar brothers after having been captured by the Aztecs and sacrificed. Now an Aztec High Priest can call upon the Ayar to aid them in battle. 

I've been working on a Second Punic Wars project as well. Josh was kind enough to supply me with a fully 3d-printed set of miniatures. As Josh will be commanding the Carthaginians, I took over the Romans. 

Here's a unit of Velites. We're using Hail Caesar for the rules, and DBx basing. So two bases for small units. 

Here's the Hastati. Regular sized units will be four bases. 

The Principes are close in style to the Hastati. The white feathers on the helmets will help distinguish them from the front, and from behind the chainmail armor also makes them stand out. 

The Triarii are the most visibly distinct, with feather and crests on their helmets, and their long spears. 

Hail Caesar calls for a 2:2:1 proportion of Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, so that's what the two Roman legions will be formed from.

And finally, the commander 

I have another battlegroup of Romans to paint up (probably with blue shields), along with a battlegroup of allied Italians and a cavalry battlegroup. 

What currently on the table is a Daemons of Chaos army for Warmaster. I received these minis from another Black Gate Miniatures kickstarter, and I wanted to take them to a tournament. The upcoming event at Historicon was the perfect excuse to start working on them.

This is a brigade of three Daemon Hordes and a Daemon Swarm. The demonic infantry are generic looking (they would work for any 10mm demonic force, rather than something specific to the Warhammer Fantasy world), so I've used a color palette that should tie them in to the main four factions of Chaos. 

Ambush in the Jungle, Part 2 - Bolt Action AAR

With only a few turns left, Sam, Dick, and I returned to John's place to finish his Palau scenario that was covered in last week's post. 

We had ended on turn 10, which only gave the Americans (Sam and Dick) 5 turns left to move their units off the table. The Marines needed to get 5 units off for a Marginal Victory, 6 units for a Minor Victory, and 7 units for a Major Victory. 

This far along in the game, the battered American forces were finally approaching the Japanese table edge and close to escaping. So John and I had to throw the last of our reserves into the fight to try and halt their advance. 

The Marine squads were still deadly, as long as a random Exceptional Damage roll didn't take out their flamethrowers or bazookas.

With the Ha-Go cleared out, the Marines in the center rushed into the unoccupied bunker to get out of sight of the Japanese mountain gun. 

The Ka-Mi, however, was still holding up the fastest route for the Marines to make it to the exit point. 

It didn't take long for the Americans to get a bazooka into position and brew up the Ka-Mi after avoiding a poorly aimed Japanese sniper shot. 

The last of the Japanese reinforcements appeared to try and hold up a reconstituted Marine squad. However, both sides only managed to do a single casualty to each other. 

With no more ambuhes left to stop the Americans, John and I could only watch as sections of the last defensive line were overrun by Marine assaults. 

With the Ka-Mi gone, Sam and Dick were scrambling to push their remaining units as fast as possible down the road. 

In the center, both sides had their infantry fail an Order test and go Down, leaving the jungle oddly quiet for a moment.

And the Marines got their first unit off the table!

However, another unit was wiped out entirely. But if Sam and Dick decided to reconstitute the squad, it would have pushed them to turn 15, leaving them no time to score more victory points.  

Multiple Marine units converged on the same small area, hoping to double time to safety. 

After another failed Order test, one of the last Japanese infantry squads went down. This left them as a perfect target for a close assault, with the Marines handily routing the enemy squad. The Americans left the table the next turn, scoring another victory point. 

Disaster struck in turn 15 for the Americans! The lead infantry squad failed its Order test and went down, directly in the path of a jeep filled with the platoon's command team, as well as the two remaining Shermans. 

While the Americans were able to randomly roll up a 16th turn, it was only enough time to get the Jeep and the command team off the table to score a third victory point. The two Shermans were left in the lurch, unable to move off the table by the game's end. 

This left the Americans with only three victory points. Had the infantry squad not halted the column's progress, the Americans would have scored five victory points; enough to claim a Marginal Victory. 

Without scoring the tanks, victory went to the Japanese. 

Overall, the players enjoyed the game. It would work well as a 4-6 player event game. The Americans were frustrated at times with how the Japanese could suddenly appear so close to them, but the massive 15-man Marine squads were well equipped to survive the slog (barring a lucky Japanese mortar round). 

It was the tanks that the Americans had to worry more about. With only a d6 of movement through the jungle, the Shermans mostly stuck to the roads. This left them vulnerable to anti-tank teams, guns, and hidden tanks. The underpowered guns of the Ha-Go and Ka-Mi might not have been too threatening, but they could still cause pins and potentially hold up the American advance.

The Japanese played entirely statically in this scenario. Once a squad deploys, there was little chance of it being able to move before being wiped out by an American unit, or taking out its target if the American unit was weak enough (or ran out of luck with an anti-tank attack). Being able to ambush from only 6" away helped offset this, and having every unit deployed behind heavy cover usually meant they could stick around for a turn or two if the Marines flamethrowers missed. 

Hopefully we worked some of the kinks out, since this would work well as a club game. 

Ambush in the Jungle, Part 1 - Bolt Action AAR

This past weekend, John hosted a game of Bolt Action to play out a Palau Campaign based scenario he's been working on for a while now. 

The game saw a platoon of US Marines escorting a platoon of Shermans through a dense jungle. The American forces had to get across the table and exit the opposite edge in 15 turns or less. The more units that made it across in that time, the more points they scored. 

Arrayed against the Marines was a couple platoons of dug-in and camouflaged Japanese. The Japanese were so well disguised, in fact, that they could ambush any moving American unit from just 6" away! 

This meant that the Marines could potentially be ambushed anywhere on the board. 

The areas not delineated by the road also counted as dense jungle, so the infantry could only move 6" each turn and the tanks had to roll a d6 to determine how far they could move. 

Sam and Dick were controlling the Americans, and moved out with the infantry in front of the tanks.

Until they were fired up, the American infantry units were represented by a single model because they were huge; 15 men strong, with an accompanying flamethrower and bazooka team!

They could also "reconstitute" when they reached 6 men or less, allowing the Marine units to return back to full strength. Doing so, however, cost the Americans a turn per unit. 

John and I controlled the Japanese. We started our defense with a machine-gun nest opening fire down a road. The team was quickly knocked out with some return fire from the lead Sherman tank.

In previous versions of this scenario, the Japanese appeared without any covering, which meant that they were usually blown away in the next turn. By fiving them fortifications, the Japanese infantry could better hold up the Marines. 

Of course, two 15-strong Marine squads with their own flamethrowers and bazookas still made short work of the ambushing Japanese!

I was also doing my best to position my ambushes so they wouldn't come under fire from the Shermans, while still delaying the American advance. 

I got lucky and managed to get a side-shot from an anti-tank gun into one of the Shermans, destroying it. 

Unlike the Marine squads, once destroyed the Shermans were done for.

Another machine-gun bunker made trouble for the Americans advancing through the center of the battlefield. 

For the moment, Sam's Marines were unopposed, apart from having to deal with the Japanese mortars that harassed the Americans throughout the game. 

Dick's units were having a lot more trouble. While the anti-tank gun was quickly destroyed, more Japanese infantry units appeared to hold back the remaining Sherman's escorting Marines. 

And to threaten the other Sherman (that had taken a right at the fork instead of a left), I ambushed with my Ha-Go light tank. The Ha-Go's low-velocity gun had little chance to damage the Sherman, but it had enough punch to pin the American tank when it hit. 

Another MMG bunker popped up in front of one of Sam's advancing unit that had mad it the furthest, but it was quickly silenced by the Marines' firepower. 

Speaking off, the Japanese defense on their far right side fell apart, especially with the last Sherman in support. 

Rather than sitting back and trying to damage the dug-in Ha-Go from range, Dick sent the Sherman charging in to get a shot from as close as possible, confident that the light tank's gun couldn't harm the Detroit-forged armor. 

With the last bunker gone, Sam's infantry suddenly found themselves in a sea of calm, and close to discovering one of the Japanese's two mortars. 

Dick wasn't going to find any similar respite, however. As his other Sherman advanced, it found itself being fired upon by another dug-in light Japanese tank; a Ka-Mi!

This tank's crew must have been a little better, as they managed to hit the Sherman and stun its crew. 

The Ha-Go didn't have a chance to respond, as it was destroyed by a close range 75mm round. 

After about 4 hours, we had played through 8 total turns. As the Americans had reconstituted two Marine squads, that put them at 10 turns, leaving them only 5 more turns to push through the Japanese defenders.

While the Americans had learned to be cautious - the Japanese could only ambush them while moving! - their oversized and well-equipped squads had enough firepower to wipe out any Japanese unit in a single turn with a little luck. But will they have enough time to complete their objective before the clock runs out?

We'll pick the game up again soon to see it to its conclusion.

Rolling Start - Bolt Action AAR

This month's SJGA was another small affair, but saw the start of the club's three game Polish Campaign.

As per the chart I developed way back in the campaign's planning, the first game used the "Point Defense" scenario in the Bolt Action rulebook. 

The Polish players had a single 1,250 point platoon that needed to defend three locations. The German players had two 750 platoons that would need to capture those locations. Whoever controlled at least two of the three objectives by the end of the game would be the winner. 

The Poles had deployed their defenses in depth, with multiple hidden units and a variety of armored vehicles defending the village outskirts. They placed their objectives in the fancy building in the bottom left of the above image, in the church, and on the road leading out of town. 

The Polish forces had also set down pre-determined mortar points. While the German players could see where they had been laid out, a few of them were dummy tokens. 

While formidable, the rolling preparatory bombardment that the Germans had managed to place at least a pin or two on most of the deployed Polish units, and even destroyed their armored car outright. 

The Germans were a largely foot-slogging force, with only a single Panzer 38(t), a MMG-armed motorcycle, and a truck for mechanized elements. This meant that they had to trudge across the table to reach the Polish lines, taking fire the entire way. 

There were four factors that ended up assisting the Germans. 

First, with Polish howitzer and German tank on opposite sides of the battlefield, the Poles had nothing to threaten the 38(t) with. They could try to engage it close combat, but that meant passing a tank feat morale check and then trying to damage it without dedicated anti-tank grenades. And the supporting German infantry had plenty of LMGs to keep the tank clear. 

Second, the Germans had two platoons in reserve that were outflanking up the table. While it was a gamble as they had to take a command check to deploy onto the table, one platoon ended up positioned perfectly to capture an objective as soon as it came onto the table.

Third, the Poles seemed reluctant to divert from their pre-planned mortar targets. While most of the German units were constantly moving, a random mortar hit might had been enough to change how the game's result. 

Fourth, plain dumb luck. Had the Germans not had a randomly decided seventh turn, then the game would have ended with the Poles in control of two of the three objectives. Instead, the Germans had just enough time to get a fresh squad of infantry into the church, which was then able to hold against a couple Polish attacks.

With the Germans managing to claim victory at the last second, the next game will see the Germans attempting to push further into the Polish lines with the "Envelopment" scenario.

Tanks for the Game! - BattleTech: Alpha Strike AAR

I recently got a chance to finally play BattleTech: Alpha Strike with a gaming buddy, Russ, from my old gaming group.

It was a pretty simple set up between two mercenary companies, his Commandos and my Lancers. He had seven mechs in two lances, while I had four mechs and four tanks. Russ' pilots were all in older mechs but had Skill values of 2's and 3's, while my machines were newer with less experienced mechwarriors and crew (mostly Skill 4). 

We played on a hex map, which made some of the measuring easier. Each hex counts as 2", so a mech with a 12" could move 6 hexes or sprint 9 hexes. Firing ranges were similarly halved.

The main engagement happened up on the map's plateau between our main Mech lances. Russ' lance consisted of a Thunderbolt, Catapult, Shadow Hawk, and Commando, all with veteran or elite mechwarriors. My lance was heavier, with an Awesome, Thunderbolt, Wolverine, and Phoenix Hawk, but the pilots weren't as good. 

Down near the water, Russ' second lance, with a Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, and Wasp facing off against my tank Lance, with a Manticore, two Bulldogs, and an SRM Carrier. 

One of the Bulldogs ended up as the game's first casualty, destroyed from concentrated fire. 

Russ new the SRM carrier was the most dangerous target in the tank lance (able to hit a target for 6 points of damage!), so it also had to go. First the crew were stunned from a critical hit, then the tank brewed up.

Russ had done up some fantastic wreck markers to show where mechs and tanks were after their destruction. 

With two tanks down, Russ diverted a Shadow Hawk to hopefully put the tonnage equation in his favor. Both sides were stripping armor, but concentrated fire from my forces' Awesome, Thunderbolt and Wolverine knocked out Russ' second Shadow Hawk. 

Meanwhile, my tanks were in full retreat. While most of their weapons were on their turrets, the tanks would lose valuable damage points if the mechs were able to get behind them. 

Up in the hills, the mechs jockeyed for positions, slagging armor and venting heat. The Commandos could land hits more reliably, but the new machines of the Lancers could take those hits and do more damage when they managed to land a blow.  

Fully backed into a corner of the battlefield, the tanks managed to get their first kill, knocking out the Wasp that had gambled on a close range attack.

The Lancer's Wolverine was knocked out by the combined attacks of the Commandos' Thunderbolt and Commando. In return, the damaged Phoenix Hawk landed a close-range attack that brought down the second Shadow Hawk. 

The Wolverine, Bulldog, and Manticore continued their dance along the lakeside. 

Somehow, the Lancers' Thunderbolt was able to weather the combined attack of its Commando counterpart. It likely would have been destroyed if the Commandos' Catapult hadn't pushed its heat too far and been forced to shutdown. 

The Catapult was back up, but the Commandos Thunderbolt was finally put down by the Lancers. 

Tired of the Phoenix Hawk that had been flitting around the battlefield, Russ send the Lone Commandos, erm... Commando, which ended the Phoenix Hawk's flight. 

And the dance between mechs and tanks finally ended with the Commandos Wolverine falling to the Manticore and Bulldog. 

After losing the Catapult as well, Russ and I agreed that his lone Commando wasn't likely to stand up long against the remaining Lancer forces, and we called the game there. 

As I reflected on after the game, had we played this using the Classic BattleTech rules, this would have been a day long affair, if not longer. Instead, we managed to play a tense, exciting game in just a couple hours. The Alpha Strike rules still feel like BattleTech, but allow for larger, combined arms games in a smaller timeframe. I'm looking forward to playing more, with a few alterations (like variable damage, pilot dice, and hexless battlefields).