Games, Books and Film(ing)

Once again, little has been accomplished. I have yet to get the second game of Force on Force in because of scheduling issues with players(including me), in the summer that is always a problem but of course in the winter there is usually a storm to mess up a game weekend! Oh well what can you do.

I did get in a game of Warmachine using my 25 pts of Cygnar vs. a Menoth force and this was a lot more fun than I was expecting. Jumping up from a battle box to a small force added a lot of depth to the game and I didn't feel completely overwhelmed despite having not played in quite awhile. I was kept in the game by Shawn's bad dice rolls when I had left Stryker vulnerable for a few turns before I could get him back to safety but overall I felt that I had a good handle on the game and could have won but the hour was late and I attempted a do or die move and ended up dieing. But the game was fun non the less. I took some good photos but still I am not sure how to get them off my phone, some time I will actually have to see how that is done.

I have been painting up the rest of my insurgents for FoF but this is mainly for extra's we may need or if I want a game without Eric around who has all the non US forces. After they are finished, probably this week, I will move on to my USMC and the 1/1200 Napoleonic ships I have left including some for Eric.

On a slightly different note a good friend of mine  had sent me a copy of some old AD&D books that I had previously sold, no doubt to pay rent when I was much younger,  which was a nice trip down memory lane thinking of gaming all night with chips and 2L bottles of pop.

I also played a short session of WHFRP, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with my oldest son and someone I can't mention which went pretty well and was fun to do, we will probably continue the story at some point.

My F1 2010 career is going well. I recently picked up the Logitech steering wheel and peddles and though I don't know if my lap times are any better it certainly is fun. I finished season 1 of a 3 season career placing better than the team's expectations(but less than mine) but got beat out by my chosen rival. Now I am starting season 2 with a win but I always seem to do well on the first track, it may be down hill from here!

And just as a side "cool" note, they were filming a mini-series right in front of my house. I came home and Pierce Brosnan was standing on my front yard. They filmed for 2 and a bit days and it was very cool to watch the process. So when "Bag of Bones" by Stephen King comes on TV there will be one scene in which I can say "that's my house". Unfortunately I had to take down our Canadian flag for the filming as it was supposed to be Maine.

The original covers for AD&D. Pat sent me the Player's book and Deities & Demigods.

My steering wheel arrangement for F1 2010 for PS3.

My house lit up for filming with a fake full moon.

The film crew, my lawn is on the left side of the road, Pierce is in there somewhere.

Force on Force Trial Game

Well I actually got the first game of FoF in. We had four players altogether including me.  And how did it go you ask...well it took a few turns to get the flow of the game and we made numerous mistakes along the way so although we did get the feel for the game I think we are going to do a replay fairly soon now that we have a better understanding of the rules. When we do that game I will do a proper after action report. Suffice it to say on this run through the US Army dealt a crippling blow to the Insurgents in Fallujah  though they did not reach their final objective by games end. I think the replay will be a lot harder on the US Forces when we do the reactions correctly.

I found the rules reasonably ok to read and they are fairly well indexed but sometimes the rules wording seems a little unclear though all questions are quickly answered on the forums either by the game designers themselves or any number of helpful members. They have recently put up a detailed turn example which was really useful too. I think these rules will be a lot of fun and quick to play once we get the hang of them which I don't think will take too long. Eric and I both went out and bought more d8 so we'll be ready.

I also managed to pick up a copy of the next scenario book for FoF with scenarios from Afghanistan called Enduring Freedom.

As long as we like the rules we are going to start the USMC scenarios from Road to Baghdad so there will be yet more figure painting in my near future!

I haven't played any other games and I missed the Superstore games night last month but I should be able to make the next one and I should be getting a  game with Shawn this week.

So hopefully I will get in a few games before the next blog. Oh, I almost forgot I have been making up some characters for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, WHFRP, for a super secret game group.(let's just say I don't have to leave the house to play but I have been sworn to secrecy so...shhhh).

The start positions, US Army still to enter.

The US Army enters the board.

The players, plus 1. Shawn(my Malifaux opponent) kept on trying to cast spells!

The hand of doom.

The US has advanced near the objectives and most of the Insurgents are down.

Game Prioritizing

So I've come back from a week of camping with the family and for obvious reasons have not gotten a lot of gaming in but probably more than I should have.

Before I headed out I managed to get together with Shawn and played a couple of board games. We played a game of Monsterpocalypse which was fun but it took me about half the game to get the swing of it and I think it would take some time to get all the unit interactions worked out and I am not sure I liked it enough to invest the time. The same night we played a game of Dust Tactics which is a very quick game to play but suffers from a lack of depth in game play, at least with the units that come in the starter box. I suspect it will be better with a mix of more units. Fantasy Flight is coming out with a miniature set of rules for Dust called Dust Warfare written by Andy Chambers which should be worth checking out.

My son Tristan and I played a game of Space Hulk which was a lot of fun with my last Terminator being dragged to his death just before completing the mission.

While camping my son and I played Ascension which was another fun game(and easy to transport).

Eric and I had a discussion about which miniature games we would like to keep in a regular game play rotation. To meet this criteria we wanted a game we can play in about 4 hours and the rules should provide a good feel of the period but not require to much time to master the rules while the tactics we don't mind spending the time to work out.

So this is the list we came up with

Historical:
Trafalgar- 1/1200 Napoleonic Naval
Lasalle- 15mm Napoleonic
Flames of War- 15mm WWII
Disposable Heroes- 28mm WWII skirmish
Force on Force- 20mm Modern skirmish

SF/Fantasy:
Infinity- SF skirmish
Malifaux- Fantasy skirmish
Warmachine- Fantasy skirmish

Of course being a war gamer there are others that will be played but maybe not as frequently.

Next game up should be Force on Force and I will probably do up a full fledged battle report as this will be are first game of this system. Hopefully we will be playing this within a couple of weeks so that should be in the next entry.