Star Wars, Robotech, WWII Oh My!

The last while I have been getting in a fair bit of role playing games with Vampire the Masquerade, Star Wars Edge of the Empire, Dragon Age and Call of Cthulhu and seeing as I don't think anyone wants to read about these exploits suffice it to say that the games have been fun and the fact that I am a player in 2 and a gm of 2 has been keeping my free time fairly full.

The last few weeks or so though I have been getting in some board and miniature games. I started playing in an Imperial assault campaign which isn't going so well for us Rebels at the moment but I am sure things will turn around in the next few games.

My friend Chet came over recently and I tried a game of Armada, Fantasy Flight Games miniature game of large ship combat in the Star Wars universe as well as a game of Battlegroup a WWII miniature game.

Armada was fun but the game needs more variety in units which are due out soon anyways and that will make the play more interesting.

Battlegroup was a fairly quick game to play adding a few twists to a core of some fairly standard rules so there is nothing to throw you off. I liked the way friction of battle starts to wear down your effectiveness and that when firing you can choose to fire to pin or kill.

I have also got in some painting finishing off some figures for Batman the Miniature gane and Robotech RPG Tactics.

I am looking forward to our annual Free Comic Book Day outing in a few weeks as well as a board game weekend at a friend's cottage known as CottageCon and the second annual CottageQuest, a rpg weekend.

Armada Game

My Star Destroyer closes in as the TIE's engage.

The fur ball in the middle.

I quickly took care of one of the Rebel ships and now the other closes in.

Being harassed by the CR-90 and the last of the X-Wings. Shortly after this the X-Wings were destroyed but I flew off the edge of the board ending the game in defeat. 

Battlegroup

The Terrain.

Chet deep in thought! I had a more officers giving me more orders most of the time.

My troops had just been glued on bases about 30min before the game and were not painted. I am not sure what Chet's excuse was! 

Troop eye view. The game was very, very close. We were both about within a turn of causing each other to retreat but I broke first.

Batman the Miniature Game

Making bricks for the bases.

Applying the basing materials.

Batman

Talia Al-Ghul.

Ninjas

 Robotech RPG Tactics

Battlepods

One Veritech, 3 modes.

Imperial Assault, game 1.

Near the end as my Wookie breaks in but is ultimately blocked from achieving success.

Mid way as we storm the Imperial base.

Early game as we advance on the door.

Painting and Game Prep

I have been cracking out the paints and working on a variety of different miniatures for some vastly different games.

I finally decided to start on the Robotech miniatures. I find having to paint 3 Veritech models to represent 1 miniature a bit of a pain but it is also what makes them so cool so I guess I shouldn't complain unless they come out with a scale transforming Veritech! I also found to my surprise that I like painting up the Zentradi. It's nice to paint the high contrast colours though this may change by the time I paint 20 or so of them!

The Zentraedi and a UEDF Veritech in all three modes.

I am also starting to paint up some more miniatures for Muskets and Tomahawks which shouldn't be that hard as they are all units that I have painted before and I am now just expanding on the base units.  So more British infantry coming up.

British reinforcements.

I have also cracked into The Batman Miniature Game miniatures. These are nicely detailed 35mm scale miniatures that are sculpted in a more true proportions than most miniatures. The only problem I have found with painting them is that the details are quite fine and hard to pick out sometimes. So there will be a bit of a learning curve with these.

The League of Shadows and Batman with some of Gotham's finest.

League of Shadows assembled!

The Ninjas. Joints filled with green stuff.

Talia al Ghul, Ras al Ghul, and Bane.

Batman and police.

Talia finished.

As far as gaming goes I got in a game of Firefly the Boardgame with the Blue Sun expansion. It was a quick 2 player game with my son using the downloaded introduction story card. The game was very quick, probably less than an hour so I think I won't be using that story card any more unless I am introducing a new player. I never even got a picture of this in progress as it happened so fast!

I also played a game of Pokemon(I know!) with my youngest son. He was enthusiastic to play but after I won the game he hasn't played again. It was my first game of Pokemon and I didn't realize how hard it is to battle a evolved Pokemon, so I won't do that if there is another game in the future.

Pokemon with rules!

On the RPG front I ran another session of Dragon Age introducing a new player. My long time friend Pat is joining in via Google Hangouts from Ontario while my son has bowed out for now. Everyone seems to have enjoyed the session.

Next week I will be continuing my Star Wars Edge of the Empire game starting the session off with a starship chase and heading into the finale of the adventure.

And we will probably be starting the Vampire game next month. My character is made and I ordered the b&w POD(print on demand) book which arrived very quickly. 

Until next time then.

Post A Game of Thrones Boardgame and Sentinel Tactics Miniatures

So we played the Boardgame A Game of Thrones and it went, well not so good!

The game rules and turn flow were pretty easy to pick up and the game played pretty smoothly but it was definitely a learning game as far as strategy goes. I played House Baratheon situated in the middle on the east coast and without some alliances I think the houses in the middle will have a hard time winning meanwhile Stark in the North was pretty much left alone to spread out. Next time I think alliances will have to be made in the south and Stark will need to be checked early on. We shall see!

Both these pics are near the end of the game. I am the yellow pieces near the bottom of the picture. After a brief expansion I am being pushed back.

And finally not much left of Baratheon. Stark has expanded all through the north for the win.

I also finished painting up my Sentinel Tactics miniatures and for boardgame pieces I think they turned out pretty good.

The good guys.

Citizens(the bad guys!)

Baron Blade, bad guy.

The rest of the evil Citizens.

Omitron-V

Next up is the Star Wars Edge of the Empire session on the weekend.

RPG's and Some Miniature Painting

I have been putting my hobby time into getting some painting done as well as some roleplaying though no miniature games on since last blog.

We had a character making session for Vampire the Masquerade (20th Anniversary Edition). Shawn is once again being the GM while most of the other players I have never played with before other than my wife Michelle and this is her first game she has played in quite a few years other than the odd session I ran with her and my son.

I ran another session of Star Wars Edge of the Empire continuing the Beyond the Rim adventure from FFG. The players should be finished in 2 to 3 sessions and then we will see what comes next!

I also ran another session of Dragon Age and will be running another one soon. I have decided to increase the experience awards so the characters can level up a little quicker allowing me to tell a story in a reasonable amount of time considering how often we play which is only about once a month. I am going to start to weave in a larger story arc with this adventure and now I have Set 3 so I can tell a full story, if it lasts that long.

I have primed some figures for Muskets & Tomahawks to start to bring my British force up to 400 points from 200.

The other painting I have been doing lately is painting up the figures for Sentinel Tactics. We played this game for my birthday gathering and I think the look will be improved with painted figures for the next time we play.

Tonight Tristan and I are off to play a 6 player game of FFG's A Game of Thrones Boardgame. This is the first time any of us have played so it should be lots of fun.

Muskets & Tomahawks...Finally.

Having painted up some figures to try out the rules"Muskets & Tomahawks" some time ago I haven't had the opportunity to get the figures to the table. That changed when I recently got a game in against Eric. 

So having scheduled the game I quickly did a basing session because until I had some sort of gaming deadline it was hard to get motivated to get that done. So with the bases done the day before the game I headed to Eric's to fight out a French & Indian War scenario.

The based forces ready to go. Eric had painted up some French so it turned out all he needed was one of my Native units for the battle.

 

The board set up and initial setup. The Wolf figures represent hidden units while the stone walls mark the edge of the playing surface.

The British Regulars marching down the road flanked by two hidden units, one Rangers and the other Natives.

The French.

As the game progressed the Regular units faced off against each other with the help of my Rangers on the left flank while on the right my Natives tried to tie up two other French units, one native and one Canadian Militia.

The French allied Natives close in while my Rangers maneuver to block them.

The overall picture of the battle at this point with the Canadian Militia in retreat on the right.

I was a little pressed for time so I forget to take more pictures as the battle progressed but the game finished with only a few of my Rangers left alive from my entire force, having secured the right flank of my British Regulars while all that remained of the French force were a few of their Regular infantry. The game was a draw though Eric pulled out a marginal win by accomplishing a side mission for his officer while I did not fulfill mine. His officer was an old campaigner whose mission was just to survive and my officer had lost the faith of his men and thus had to singlehandedly kill 3 enemy figures, he managed 2 before getting cut down!

The game was quick to learn and quick to play while also being fun. The card activation mechanic seemed to give a good feel for the capabilities of the different styles of units represented such as the Native and regular soldiers while keeping the game flowing well and throwing in the unpredictability of which unit would be activated next.

We will probably get in another game of this fairly soon and I will try to get pictures of the full game.