Traveller5 and Star Wars Edge of the Empire

I have been continuing the preparation of both the American and German forces for my 15mm D-Day games for Flames of War and as far as gaming goes I played a game of X-Wing Miniatures Game from Fantasy Flight Games.

But the bulk of this post is going to be something a little different. I purchased two rpg games recently namely Traveller5 and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire and though I have yet to read them cover to cover I will give a first impressions of both games being a long time player of Traveller since the original black box set and a Star Wars fan in general with some gaming experience going back to the West End Games edition.

First though modelling and games. Work continues on the German forces with the painting of a German 10.5 battery and I pulled out the airbrush again to put some camo on my StuG's and Tiger tanks. For the US I put together a spotter plane and will next finish off the bases for the infantry. I am trying to get enough paint on the figures that I don't mind putting them on the table! Pictures to follow next time. As far as getting in more D-Day games it may be early fall just judging by everyone's summer schedule but we will try to get at least one in before that.

The X-Wing game was another nail biter of a game. I played against Tristan and commanded the forces of order(The Empire) against the rebel scum. I had 2 TIE's, an Advanced TIE and a Firespray-31 against 2 X-Wings and a Y-Wing. This was a 100pt engagement and we played a straight up fight to the death. We closed quickly and after a good bit of dogfighting the Empire saved the galaxy from anarchy. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the fight but it was a good game, I lost 2 TIE's and the others were both heavily damaged before the last rebel was blasted.

So the rpg games, I have played rpg's quite a long time though I don't play that frequently now but I do collect quite a few(ask my wife) mostly because I like reading the backgrounds and the game mechanics, it's what I like to read to relax, sort of like reading a novel.

First up, being the order I bought them, is the Star Wars Edge of the Empire game by Fantasy Flight Games. 

Initial impression: a very nice looking book, high quality full colour paper and binding, nice art work, table of contents and index. The book reads well, I haven't read it cover to cover but I have skimmed enough that I could easily play the game. The book is laid out well and logically so that you can read from page 1 to 443 or jump around a bit like I do and still understand the flow of the game. The game is backed up on FFG's website with downloadable character sheets and a few other things and the GM screen is out as well. One downside is that is uses custom dice so you either have to buy them, download the dice roller app or use regular dice with the numbers representing the different effects-and I don't think that would work very well.

Now for Traveller5.

The book is huge at 656 pages and seems to have everything in it. It is well bound and printed on high quality white paper with black print. I liked the cover as it looks like the traditional Traveller covers but my wife said it looks like a math text. Ok, so I was excited to see this book but I am a little disappointed. There is a table of contents but no index-656 pages with no index, come on. The art varies from some nice clean drawings to art that has been used since the 80's and is showing the age(and a robot drawing that looks like it belongs in a steampunk book not a hard sci-fi game). It doesn't read well and is broken up with pages of charts, acronyms galore which you have to keep finding the meaning for and some which are just plain dumb and/or unnecessary. The core game mechanics seem good and solid but there seems to be a lot of stuff put in because...well just because. I also can't find some things like character sheets on line or downloadable world map pages which would be very useful. I really like the world building chapter and the ability to build anything with the chapters GunMaker, ArmorMaker and VehicleMaker but would have liked to have seen a better section on predesigned guns, armor and ships.

Now I know FFG had more money to sink into this but it is not the physical quality of the book I am put off by which is top notch it's the lack of clear organization. I want to like Traveller5 but I am excited to play Star Wars and Traveller5...well I will make up a character, build a world and maybe, just maybe give it a try with some people that love Traveller.

D-Day Begins

The D-Day preparations continue but enough has been done to start the fight!

I played a Flames of War game with my son Tristan. This was unrelated to D-Day and was more to get Tristan re-acquainted with the rules and also his first full size battle at 1500pts.

And he did quite well. He played a US armoured company from the book Blood, Guts and Glory while I used a Panzergrenadier company. He managed to hold up one flank and push onto the objective on the other flank for the win.

The other FOW game I played was for the world wide D-Day campaign, Operation Overlord, being run by WWPD (What Would Patton Do).

Here I commanded a Grenadier company against a US airborne company commanded by Chet and Tristan in the Seize and Hold scenario. Having never played the scenario before I made a few tactical errors in set up. The game played quite long as the fighting bogged down over an objective around some bocage. After a few turns of some high attrition assaults the US were able to push the Germans away from the objective for the win.

Other games I played were a few games of Forbidden Island and a game of X-Wing. We managed to win the co-op game of Forbidden Island while I lost the X-Wing game to Shawn though the game was quite tight with only one ship left on the board at the end. Some rule errors were made during the game though and a rematch is in order!

A few pictures of the first FOW battle followed by a short battle report of the airborne landing.

The US armoured company.

German Panzergrenadiers

End of turn 1. The StuGs and Shermans at the top of the picture ended up trading shots all game without destroying a single vehicle.

From the POV of the US M10's on the ridge, 1 Panther goes up.

The P-47 harasses the Panthers in the town.

And another Panther gone.

The StuGs and Shermans still slugging it out.

Near the end, the P-47 has taken out the infantry on the objective and the US armoured platoon moves in for the win.

 D-Day Battle Report.

The US airborne forces using the full Easy Company rules.

The German Grenadier company.

The battlefield with Carentan on the right.

Turn 2. US has entered with1 platoon occupying the lower field and 2 platoons coming through the bocage on the upper right. The Germans occupy the town with 3 grenadier platoons and some AA guns. The objectives are in the white building near the centre of the board and the other 1 is in the bocage by the tree line.

The US approach the town and take some fire, it is still dark. The red die is marking the platoon that fired giving away their position.

The US are nearing the objective in the bocage, no German reserves have come in yet.

The 1st of the German reserves come in behind the advancing paras who turn around. Meanwhile more US glider troops show up near the Germans. Note: here is one of my big set up errors. I had the mortar platoon held in reserve thinking they would be coming in on my side of the board and then read the reserve rule for the scenario and realized I had no side of the board and they would come in on a random location.

The beginning of the contest for the objective. The Germans move out of the town to stop the paras from controlling the objective.

Finally my reserves are all in. The Tigers are trying to double time it to get into the fight before it is too late while the P-47 tries bombing them. My AA guns cover their advance.

More Germans are thrown in as the HMG platoon moves into position.

After fighting off numerous assaults from the airborne the Germans are getting too thin.

And finally they have had enough! The US wins a Major Victory.

Game Weekends Galore

I have been gaming, planing and painting, oh my!

It started with a road trip with Tristan and Chet to one end of the province. We headed out Saturday morning and drove to Yarmouth, NS. where our friends Julian and Ian live. They usually make the trip this way so it was good to travel to their location this time.

We arrived around lunch time and Julian kindly fed us. We chatted a bit, and then played some games. Tristan, Ian and I played a three player game of Malifaux while Chet and Julian played a few games of X-Wing.

The Malifaux game went well. We used the multi-player variant from Wyrd Chronicles, Wyrd Miniatures' e-zine. I deployed in the center and on turn 2 or 3 made the fatal mistake of becoming fixated on one opponent and ignored Ian which he capitalized on. After that I was just trying to hold on for a few VP's. So lesson learned and I would be willing to give multi-player Malifaux another go though I think we would have to play on a 4 foot board instead of the 3 foot board we had played on. At 3 feet we were all just too close together right from the start.

After that we had supper and then pulled out Zombicide in which we were all killed, in fact I was killed twice. The first time was so early into the game though that I just started over.(no one wanted me to touch their dice, I don't get it.)

Later on in the evening we played a game of Fiasco which was fun but hampered by the fact that none of us had played it before and we started playing quite late, which interfered with the old creative juices.

Sunday we just chatted, had breakfast and headed home. So thanks Julian and Meaghan for their hospitality.

As soon as I get the pictures off my phone I will post them.

Next up is my 3rd Annual Malifaux weekend which I am doing some prep for though not as much as I probably should. Once again this will be a tournament format weekend and it looks like we will have 8-10 players.

The weekend after that is my friends annual Cottage Con weekend which is a fun weekend of boardgames.

In the meantime I am putting together another western frontier building for Malifaux plus playing a few practice games with Tristan. We also played a game of Dust Strategy board game. We have played that enough now that we are going to try some optional rules I printed off from a forum and one I came up with myself. So we will see how that goes. And on a similar theme I decided to paint my walkers from Dust Tactics/Warfare. I had painted the soldiers awhile but had not painted the walkers till now. I just painted them up with a very basic scheme and some weathering so they will look decent on the game table. I also had a fortuitous encounter in a game store with a chap who plays with a regular Dust group twice a month so I might try to get in for a game soon.

That's about it for now must get back to some prep work I guess.

The Malifaux jail under construction.

The interior, with two cells.

A game using the Terraclips, this time a 3 story building.

Top floor.

2nd floor.

The basement.

Seamus and crew enter the basement.The game ended in a tie.

Masking a camo pattern for Dust Axis walkers.

The camo sprayed, details to be added.

Allied walkers painted.

More Allied walkers.

A closer shot.

The Axis walkers.

Light Axis walkers

Light walker variants.

 

I've Been Pretty Slack

I have been pretty slack lately getting the blog out and it's not that I haven't been gaming it's just that I haven't felt like sitting at the computer to blog.

As a matter of fact I can't really remember which games I have played but I think it would include Star Wars LCG, Pandemic, Munchkin, Infinity, Malifaux, X-Wing and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. And this weekend myself, a friend and my son are taking a road trip to do a few days gaming at another friends house. Again some Malifaux and who knows what else will be brought out to play.

So here is the score sheet for the games I remember:

1. Pandemic-lost, players were me, my oldest son and my wife, Tristan and Michelle.

2. Infinty-lost, this was a 200pt game vs. Tristan. We switched armies from what we had been playing and I think I need to get use to playing PanO after playing Haq for the last little while.

3. Munchkin-win, players were me, Tristan and Michelle. The game was a little more ruthless now that we know how to play.

4. Malifaux- a big loss, I played my friend Chet and he destroyed me, that comes from not playing in such along time and not using a familiar crew!

5. X-Wing, 2 loses, Tristan and I took on Chet and Alex. The first game was a refresher and we lost. The second game was a lot of fun though we lost again.

6.Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay-win win. Hey it's a rpg, to play is to win! I DM'd the game and I think everyone had fun and it ended very Warhammer like, the players lived but...

Well that's about it, so here are some pictures.

The Infinity table.

A lower view giving a better view of some of the different elevations.

A PanO fusilier looking down the table.

A elevated walkway. Haq getting into position.

PanO soldier dropped.

2nd X-Wing game.

Tristan and I maneuver into position. Unfortunately my squad leader miscalculated and ran into an asteroid and then enemy fire, bye, bye squad leader. 

The rebels starting off.

A Christmas Game Weekend, HOHOHO

Hi, a few weekends ago I invited some friends over for a weekend of games. This seems to becoming another annual event alongside the Malifaux weekend I hold in the spring and consists of mostly the same group of people.

So, for this weekend I had in attendance, Pierre, Eric, Julian, Ian, Shawn and Chet as well as my oldest son, Tristan. This weekend had no particular game theme so people brought over board games and a few miniature games.

We kicked off the games  with a 3 player game of Force on Force playing the 1st scenario out of the Road to Baghdad scenario book. I, as the USMC was pitted against Eric and Pierre during the Iraq war in 2003. This was, I think, the most enjoyable game I have played of Force on Force yet and I will post a full battle report later this week.

While that was going on Shawn pulled out his game of Dungeon Command and battled it out with Tristan.

Soon Chet arrived and we had a 4 player game of X-Wing which was a lot of fun and was similar to Wings of Glory which I have played a fair bit.

Then Ian and Julian arrived and yet more games of Dungeon Command were played with the day ending(or the next day beginning!) in a titanic 6 player game of X-Wing with(if I remember correctly) 48 ships on the table. A glorious day for the Empire!

The next day people had to head home but we played some more Dungeon Command and a game of Zombicide with the players that were available.

Of course throughout the weekend there was time filled in with some good conversations, food and a few drinks.

It was great seeing everyone, some I see only a few times a year, some more frequently but I think everyone had a good time with lots of games played and a few rematches demanded. And Chet, the rebel scum will never defeat the might of the Empire.

Force on Force turn 1. The Marines have driven through the fence.

Near the end, things went bad for the USMC, "the friction of war"

My first X-Wing game. Chet and Eric trying to take down the Empire...not today!

A close up. The game is fun and fast and because it is Fantasy Flight Games it has lots of counters.

Shawn and Tristan with Dungeon Command, Tristan really liked this game.

A 4 player game. Shawn and Julian shown with Tristan and Ian out of the frame.

The game continues.

Craft time! Chet spent a fair bit of time trying to put a paper model of the Millennium Falcon together.

The big battle, the forces of order. We had a chart to track damage etc. so the table wouldn't get cluttered with counters.

The forces of anarchy.

The Rebel scum, Tristan, Chet and Julian.

The Empire, me, Ian and Shawn.

The forces close.

...and clash.

The mayhem continues.

...and continues...

...and continues till around 3:00am

The next day. Zombicide, somewhat fitting.

And the last game. A 4 player Dungeon Command.

The End.