Author: bucksurdu

There was a recent post on TMP about whether people have experimented with painting figures in other than color.  That reminded me of these figures I painted some years ago.  At the time, I had grand plans of doing a whole game in black and white except for the camera crew to give the game that old movie look.  I was even going to make the scenery as flats like on a movie set.  These five figures are as far as I got.

Greg, Chris, Geoff, Don, and I constituted the HAWKs expeditionary force to Nashcon in Franklin, TN, this past weekend.  Our adventure began Thursday afternoon, when everyone converged on Rally Point Surdu to pack the rental minivan with terrain, drinks, snacks, and HAWKs.

As a group we ran six games at Nashcon.  In order to fit all the terrain and figures for this many games into a minivan with five gamers, we had to be quite clever about planning.  This meant re-using terrain between games.  We ran three games on the same jungle terrain (two WWII Pacific theater skirmish games and a Dr. Who game), two on the same Paris 1814 terrain (Paris 1814 and a fantasy battle), and one with its own terrain (British march from Concord to Lexington).

We set off a little before noon, stopped outside Lexington for the night, and arrived about 1000 on Friday — plenty of time to set up out first games, go get Chinese food for lunch, and return to start our games on time.

Don and I used the same terrain to run two WWII skirmish games.  Don used Battleground WWII by Easy Eight for an American raid on a Japanese radio outpost.  The raiding force consisted of Marine raiders and Army paratroopers.  Despite heavy casualties, the American seized the compound.  Then I ran a Combat Patrol(TM) game featuring a Japanese counter attack to recapture the facility.

While Don was running his Battleground game, I played in Bob Duncan’s excellent Spanish American War naval game, using his Gunboat Diplomacy rules.  Below are a few pictures of this game.  Bob scratch built all of the ships in this game.  It was fun, but we Germans were soundly defeated.

Below are some pictures from my Combat Patrol (TM) game.  The players seemed to catch on to the unique mechanics of Combat Patrol(TM) without much difficulty.  The game went well.  We started where Don’s Battleground game left off.  The Americans had just seized the radio facility and had not consolidated on the objective when the Japanese counter attacked with a platoon of infantry and a Chi-Ha tank.  The Chi-Ha quickly suppressed the airborne bazooka team, but the Marine bazooka team was able to get off a good shot that brewed up the tank.  Two squads of Japanese were being chewed up by an understrength Marine squad in the jungle, but then the Japanese launched a very effective banzai charge that nearly wiped out the Marines.  A funny movement (for me as GM) arrived when one of the Japanese players called for mortars on some airborne troops.  Then the player who called for the mortars decided to charge the Americans — in the blast radius of the mortars he had himself called.  When the mortar shells landed, the only figures in the blast zone were the Japanese who had called for the mortars in the first place.  About half the Japanese squad caught in the burst radius was wounded or incapacitated.  In the end, it was determined that the Japanese were unable to recapture the facility, despite having inflicted many casualties on the Americans.  I think the game went well, and the players seemed to enjoy it.

While I was running this Combat Patrol (TM) game, Geoff played in a terrific looking pirate game.  The guy running the game had purchased these fully rigged models.  Then he told me he floated them in a tub of water and dye to find the waterlines.  He then used a Dremmel to cut off the bottoms.  The result was fantastic.  According to Geoff, the game was a lot of fun.

Below are three shots of other games at Nashcon that caught my eye.

Saturday Greg, Chris and I ran two Look, Sarge, No Charts games.  The first used Fate of Battle and was the Napoleonic battle of the defense of Paris in 1814.  Russians and Prussians advanced to take  the heights around Paris.  The second game used Bear Yourselves Valiantly.  It was a replay of the Paris game.  The Russians and Prussians were replaced by humans, dwarves, giant ants and swarms of other creatures.  The French were replaced by elves.  The Russians and Prussians were unable to get over the heights and into the outskirts of Paris.  On the other hand, the “allies” were able to breach the elven defenders and get into the outskirts of their capital.  I think the players enjoyed the games.  As usual after a turn or two, we game masters had little to do as the players were doing everything themselves.  We just had to call off activation cards and answer questions.

Saturday evening, Geoff, Chris, and I played in Greg’s Dr. Who game along with several other folks.  The scenario involved a group of developers that were turning the site of Don’s and my WWII games from Friday into a luxury hotel on a jungle island.  While doing so, they run into Japanese who do not know the war is over as well as a Dalek in the jungle.  Hilarity ensued.  I had Duke Morrison from my various Pulp games, and I eeked out a victory over Boss Ebenezer McSneed (Geoff) and the Doctor.

 As usual, the HAWKs Expeditionary Force enjoyed Nashcon.  We thank the convention organizers for running this excellent event.

 

Since I was in England for business the weekend before Partizan, I stayed an extra couple of days to attend my first UK gaming show and also run two participation games of Combat Patrol.  Bottom line:  I had a terrific time!

My trip to Partizan began Saturday morning at the King’s Cross train station in central London.  75 minutes later, I was in Newark on Trent at the Newark Northgate train station.

I left my mammoth suitcase with suits and other business attire in my London hotel and just travelled with a small overnight bag.  An hour’s walk from the train station brought me to my hotel.

The Grange Hotel in Newark was very nice.  The woman running the hotel was extremely helpful.  The hotel was clean and well appointed.  The included breakfast the next morning was excellent!  The room was small, but it had a private bathroom with a shower, and it came with free internet.  I relaxed in my room for an hour before walking to the Newark showgrounds.  I was supposed to meet Chris and his wife there at 1600 to help set up their booth, so that we would be ready Sunday morning when the convention began.

Partizan was held at the George Stephenson exhibition hall at the Newark showgrounds.  It was a very nice venue.  I thought it was going to be a 2 mile walk to the showgrounds from my hotel.  The GPS on my phone, however took me on a circuitous route, across areas of busy highway traffic with no pedestrian walkways, and to the wrong side of the grounds.  I had to then set out cross country to get to the open gate to the showgrounds.  I left at 1400, thinking I would grab something light for lunch along the way and still arrive early.  I passed no food opportunities, and it took me a full two hours to get there.  Still, it was a good walk, and I enjoyed it.

I helped Chris set up the terrain for our Combat Patrol participation games while his wife, Ann, laid out the booth.  This was my first chance to see the Sally 4th buildings in person, and I think they are very nice.  I bought one to bring home and assemble.  They have photorealistic sheets to apply to the buildings.  These give a very nice look and also hide the exposed tabs on the MDF buildings.

After setting up for the show the next morning, Chris, Ann, and I had curry, and then they dropped me off at my hotel where I watched an episode of Foyle’s War and went to bed.

The next morning, I had a full English breakfast and walked around the hotel’s traditional garden while waiting for my cab to take me back to the convention.  I highly recommend The Grange.

Below are three wide views of the Stephenson hall during setup Sunday morning and later in the day.  Partizan ran from 1000 until 1600 on Sunday.  It was a very short event that was very fun, but it didn’t give folks time to play in more than one participation event and also do any shopping.  It was over before I knew it.

The food during the convention was different than what we would be accustomed to in the US.  Instead of hotdogs, meatball subs, and the like, the caterer had pasties, curry, sausage rolls, and other more traditional food.  They also had a beef burger (a.k.a. hamburger), cheese burger, chili chips (fries), and cheesy chips (again, fries).  I was pretty busy and didn’t try any of the food.  At one point Ann offered me a salmon and cream cheese sandwich on a roll that hit the spot and tided me over until dinner.

Combat Patrol Participation Games at Partizan

A major reason for me to attend the show was to promote Combat Patrol.  Chris has been a huge advocate for the rules in the UK.  He provided all the figures and terrain — in fact crashing to paint a platoon of American armored infantry in the ten days leading up to the event.  Participation games are relatively rare at UK shows, where the focus has traditionally been on the trade stands (vendor booths) and clubs running demonstration games.  Partizan is trying to make a large number of participation games their trademark feature.  There was an area off to one side, labelled the “Participation Zone,” where a number of game masters set up games.  Also, in the UK, since participation games are rare, it is also uncommon for folks to sign up for a participation event before the show.  For the Combat Patrol game, however, we had three people signed up ahead of time.  The down side of this informal approach was that it appeared a number of the participation games did not take place.  They were set up, and GMs were standing by, but there didn’t seem to be a set start time, so I think many of the GMs never got a quorum at any one time to begin.

I ran two participation games.  The first was supposed to begin at 1000, but a lot of folks wanted to get into Partizan and do a quick sweep of the vendors before starting a game — including me — so we didn’t begin until 1100.  The first game involved German infantry trying to dislodge American paras from a French village at D+2.  The second game had the Germans occupying the town and a unit of American armored infantry with halftracks trying to push them out.  The scenarios were more about showcasing the rules and letting folks give them a go than about a carefully crafted and balanced story.

We had four players in the first game, and we had three players in the second game.  In some cases the players were folks who had already purchased and read the rules but thought the participation game would be a good jump start.  In other cases, the players had seen the Web discussions and wanted to give them a try.  I have to say that I was happy to see a number of folks buy sets of the cards and rules as a result of these games.

The Sally 4th booth was right on the edge of the Participation Zone.  Ann was doing a brisk business much of the day selling the excellent Sally 4th terrain products and the equally excellent Combat Patrol game.

While I was using half the table for the participation games, Chris was on the other end of the table collaring passers by.  When people walked up, he would give them a few-minute briefing on the rules and demonstrate small arms fire resolution.  This was a very good model, because it enabled Chris to reach those folks who weren’t able to devote three hours of a six-hour convention to playing a game.  Apparently the concept that really resonated with many of the Brits was the idea that the figure hit by a shot is randomized across those figures in the target area, preventing someone from sniping at the forward observer, key weapon, etc.

This is a shot of the first game of the day.  I got too busy to take any good pictures of the second game.  All of the players took the game in the spirit in which it was intended.  They were playing the game to win, but they were also interested in just trying out the rules.  They were friendly and amicable.  Before the second game, while I was explaining the rules to four players, one of them mumbled an obscenity under his breath and just walked away.  Apparently there was something about Combat Patrol that elicited a visceral response.  It was actually good that he chose to walk away before the game so that he didn’t ruin it for the others, but it was a little surprising — to me and to the other players.

A highlight for me came in the second game when I had moved over to walk a player through his first go at combat resolution.  We flipped some cards and went through the process.  Afterward he looked at me and said, “That was…”  I thought he was going to say “bad,” “complicated,” “odd,” or something negative.  Instead he said, “… really simple.”  The look on his face told me that he had had the Combat Patrol epiphany!  He and his buddy ended up buying copies of the game, and he joined the Yahoo Group before I got back to the US.

Other Random Photos

Below are additional pictures and some musings about Partizan.  I wasn’t careful to note the periods, clubs, rules, etc. for these games as I was taking the pictures.  I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing there were about 16-20 demonstration games and a like number of participation games at Partizan.

This game caught my eye.  It was a demonstration game, and most of the day it seemed to have just two guys playing with each other.  The figures are made from full sized clothespins and some horse silhouettes cut from MDF or thin plywood.

Recently there was a bit of a kerfuffle at Cold Wars in the US about perhaps sending someone to a UK show to figure out how to bring up the aesthetic standard of games at Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS) East shows.  I saw some terrific looking games at Partizan as well as some not so pleasing games.  On balance, I thought the aesthetic standard was about the same on both sides of the pond.  Those games put on by clubs as demonstration events were generally to a pretty high standard.

I think the thing that surprised me most about a UK show was how demonstration events were conducted.  My concept of a demonstration event is what we did as a club several years ago at Ft. McHenry.  We had five or six of us playing a War of 1812 game in a small room near the flag pole.  We had some posters on easels to describe what we were doing.  We had two of our club members hovering nearby to explain what was going on to interested people, answer questions, and encourage people to try the game for a turn or two.  When someone was interested, one of our folks handed over his command and then acted as coach/mentor to that person until he was ready to depart.  At that time, the club member would resume control.  For the demonstration events at Partizan, my impression was that it was largely guys in a club playing a game together, but in a public forum.  I saw very little interaction between the demonstrators and the passing gamers.  I stopped at several tables to take a photo or two, but no one stopped playing their game to see if I had questions or to explain what they were doing.  I supposed I could have interrupted them to ask questions, but that seemed somewhat awkward.  I didn’t want to be the rude Yank interrupting everyone’s fun.

I have always felt that naval games are at a distinct aesthetic disadvantage compared to land games, because there is relatively little you can do to provide points of interest on the table.  This game was interesting from the sheer number of ships on the table.  This game and the large game behind it were both demonstration games.  You can also see that the vendors were arrayed around the gaming area, which is something I really like.  A reason I have come to enjoy the smaller regional conventions in the US in the past few years is that  I like this model of the vendors being interleaved with games.  Players can pop over and ogle between turns, and vendors have something of interest to observe when their booth is not full of customers.  It somehow seems more collegial to me.

 

I thought the terrain in this participation game was particularly effective.  Having grown up near Detroit when the winters were harsh and long, I can say that deep winter can feel gray like this.

Below are a few random shots of demonstration games.

In summary, I had a terrific time at Partizan and thank the organizers for putting on the show.  UK shows are along a different model than US shows.  Given that I was there as much to sell my own product as I was to just participate, I found six hours too short.  I hit the vendors as a commando raid, but didn’t really get to browse and see if something jumped out at me.  Chris and his wife were tremendously helpful and friendly, as were most of the vendors and participants.  As someone who enjoys pub food, I found the selection of food items interesting and different.  The George Stephenson center was very well lit, and the high ceilings seemed to mitigate the game floor noise that we experience at many conference venues in US shows.  I would definitely return if my schedule and resources permitted.

For me Partizan was a tremendous experience.

A number of people have agreed to develop supplements for Combat Patrol(TM).  Supplements in active development are Napoleonic Wars, The Falklands, several British colonial periods, and modern Afghanistan and Iraq.  Several of the supplements have elements common to each other.  For instance, several of these periods require rules for close formations and cavalry.  To help ensure that these supplements are consistent with each other and the intent of the base rules, I hosted a play test day in my gaming room.  We had initially hoped to get in three games, but ended up only running two.

Everyone converged on the “war room” at 0900, but we spent the better part of two hours just talking about Duncan’s Napoleonic supplement, how to deal with closed order troops, cavalry, charging, etc.  It was a good session and set the stage for a successful play test.

I have found that a play test event like this needs to be a small group of the right folks who are okay with changing the rules on the fly, can offer suggestions that remain in keeping with the tone and intent of the base rules, understand the desire for simplicity and consistency, etc.  In this case I only invited those folks who were interested in writing a Combat Patrol(TM) supplement.  To me it was important that I got everyone on the same sheet of music.

Our intent with this supplement — and all of them really — is to change as little as possible from the base WWII rules.  There needs to be a compelling reason to make a change or addition for period feel.  Otherwise, we want to make sure that supplements are as consistent with the base rules and with each other as possible.

Our intent was to test as many aspects of Duncan’s supplement as possible.  One of the reasons to select a play test group carefully, is that you also need folks who won’t get too wrapped around the axel about trying to win the game or scenario anachronisms.  In the case of the photo (above), we used Mexican lancers as part of the British force, because those are the only lancers Duncan had in 28mm, and we wanted to test the lancer modifiers to the basic melee rules.

In order to test a wide swath of the rules, we had lancers, regular infantry, Rifles, hussars, etc.  The scenario involved a small British detachment defending the house at the top of the picture with the rest of the British riding to their rescue as the French try to seize it.

In advance of Chris’ farmhouse defenders, Chris had deployed a section of infantry in open order in the woods to slow down Zeb’s French.  Zeb advanced slowly through the woods in formed lines, while Chris spread out in open order.  Eventually Chris was driven from the woods.  One of his soldiers was left behind accidentally as most of the section fled the woods and ran toward the farm yard.  Once the “rear guard” was out of command radius, be became “pinned,” and Chris couldn’t extract him, but the figure, who we dubbed “Crazy Jenkins” held of several of Zeb’s attacks for several turns, slowing the French advance.

As a major focus of this play test session was to test the cavalry rules, Zeb and I conspired to create a cavalry battle in the center of the table.  Unfortunately as my lancers advanced and deployed, Zeb activated first and charged my lancers with his hussars.  As luck would have it, he was able to gain impetus and I was caught stationary.  The results were ugly for me.

Duncan’s intent was for these melees to become confused fur balls that would take a turn to two to resolve.  Our thinking is that much of the confusion of a melee is generally abstracted away at higher levels of abstraction, but we want this to be explicit in Combat Patrol(TM): Napoleonic Wars.  You can see elements to three cavalry units in this picture:  Zeb’s French hussars are in the center and left, my lancers are in the center, and my hussars are toward the bottom.

Slowly my numerical advantage over Zeb begin to tell, and he collected a lot of morale markers (the pile of green chips).  His cavalry scattered, and I moved to reorganize my cavalry and work around the exposed flank of the French infantry.

I attacked this French infantry unit on the flank and rear, but the French passed their Reaction check and were allowed to face their second rank to the rear.  The results were ugly for my cavalry.  While we still need to tinker with the modifiers to melee a bit, in general, the new rules for close order vs. open order, cavalry in melee, and cavalry vs. infantry seem to work well.  We are still thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of being in close order.

Duncan has come up with a mechanic that I like for cavalry.  There is no charge bonus, per se.  Cavalry must spend the last four inches of its move going straight ahead in order to receive an impetus bonus in the melee.  Remember:  this is a skirmish game, not a tactical game.  In my “charge” around flank of Duncan’s infantry, I did not have impetus, which hurt me in the subsequent melee.  I think it worked pretty well.

I had smashed my cavalry against Zeb’s cavalry and Duncan’s infantry, and Duncan and Zeb still had two untouched sections of infantry.  Chris was is sad shape in the farm yard with Zeb’s battered by still good infantry closing on him.  At this point, we had accomplished our play test goals and had a clear winner, so we called the game and set up our second play test.

The second game was a play test of Greg’s Falklands supplement.  After we cleaned up I realized that I didn’t take any pictures.  Greg has ordered a platoon each of British and Argentinians for the Falklands, but for this play test we used his UNIT troopers from his Dr. Who games for British and my WWII US for Argentinians.  The terrain was mostly barren and rocky.  We used Top Malo as the play test scenario.  As the Falklands war is much more like WWII than the Napoleonic Wars are, there were fewer optional rules to test.  We tested the new weapons for the Falklands, and we tested rules for night fighting.  According to Greg’s research the Argentinians had better night vision than the British, but the British employed them better.  Greg’s rules seemed to reflect this well.  By this time, Zeb had had to leave, so we had the four member of our club with the most notoriously cold dice facing each other in the dark.  In the real battle the British set the Top Malo house afire with M72 LAWs, but Chris and I got “out of ammunition” results with most of our sections when we tried to use our LAWs, meaning that we ran out of them.  With the Argentinians having better night vision, and our LAWs depleted, we had no choice but to advance to close range across largely open ground.  The results were predictable.  Greg and Duncan soundly defeated us; although, Chris made excellent use of his M203 grenade launchers to soften them up.  Sorry I don’t have any pictures to show, but with all the surrogates for figures and terrain, it wouldn’t have looked very Falklands-like to purists.

It was a successful day.  I think we’ll have the Napoleonic supplement ready to share with a slightly wider group of play testers in a few weeks.  Greg and I need to think a little more about night fighting, but the basic concept we employed seemed to be okay.  I hope to schedule another play test day to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan and perhaps another Falklands or Napoleonic test.  We had hoped to have The Falklands done before Salute, but the real world has gotten in the way.

After a few weeks of coordination, I am excited to announce that I have teamed with Sally 4th to make Combat Patrol(TM): WWII more easily available in the UK and Europe.

Sally 4th is the maker of quality wargaming terrain, including their photo textured buildings.

 Potential customers in the UK and Europe complained that the price of shipping one set of cards nearly exceeded the price of the set of cards.  Chris Abbey at Sally 4th kindly reached out, and after a little back and forth, we determined that we could make the game available with a UK printer through his Web site for about the same price as they are available from DriveThru Cards but without the high cross-ocean shipping charges.

Lest there be any confusion, the rules remain available through DriveThru as well as Sally 4th.  I am very happy with the support and service from DriveThru, and they produce the kind of high-quality, professional cards I wanted for Combat Patrol.  Sally 4th will provide the same service and quality on their side of the ocean.

Potential UK and European customers, please check out Sally 4th’s Web site and order your copy of Combat Patrol(TM).

As has been our tradition since 2008, I hosted a New Year’s Eve gaming event at my house for members of the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers.  We began at about 3:30 in the afternoon with a 14-player GASLIGHT free-for-all set in Egypt.  My New Year’s Eve pulp games typically feature Duke Morrison and his buddies (“Wrench” Web, “Boats” Morgan, and “Struts” McPherson), often trying to rescue Gianna Nannini or her genius scientist father, Dr. Serafini Nannini.  This year was the same, with the added bonus of Indiana Jones, Salla, Short Round, and Marion hunting for artifacts.  A hapless archaeologist had uncovered several valuable and mystical artifacts in a remote pyramid near two Egyptian desert towns.  Once news leaked out, Nazis, Duke, Indy, Russians, Turks, Indians, Highlanders, Australians, mercenaries, and Arabs all converged on the area with competing goals of either capturing the artifacts or ensuring they stayed in the valley.  In addition, Sergeants Cutter, MacChensey, and Ballentine leading a group of Indian infantry sought to rescue the colonel’s daughter.  The sailors and others also heard a rumor of a lost keg of rum being hidden in one of the towns and had an objective of capturing this rare and valuable shipboard commodity.  A renegade group of French Legionaries had the mission of blowing up the platypus idol (Why?  How cares?  It was fun.).  Finally, a secret Papal group, the Order of the Blessed Crucifix, had the mission to retain possession of a religious relic with mystical properties.

You can imagine that with all these competing missions the game was a wild and woolly affair, just the kind of light hearted romp you want on New Year’s Eve.

The first two turns didn’t see a lot of shooting.  I deliberately set groups with competing goals far enough apart that they needed to move a little first.  One player with two units (cultists and Indians) got the missions of his two forces confused, so the cultists began firing erroneously on the Germans defending their flying wing on turn 2.  It did make for a lot of excitement.  The German defenders included a handler for a pack of guard raptors.  These quickly made a snack of a group of US soldiers, but then the cultists began blazing away at the remaining German defenders.

There were two towns on the table, an “older” one (made of Miniature Building Authority buildings) and a newer one (made from Crescent Root buildings).  The newer town didn’t see a lot of action.  The Order of the Blessed Crucifix (OBC) brothers were hidden in one of the buildings.  After a brief skirmish between a group of Arabs and the OBC, the Arabs got bloodied and decided to focus on other objectives.  The Americans who started in the village headed for the German flying wing.  The Gestapo (right of the picture above) bypassed the town to try to kill or capture Duke Morrison.

There were four groups of Nazis, each with slightly different but not opposing missions.  The Nazi cavalry with submachine guns entered the older town, battled for a while, then went to help the She Wolves maintain control of three of the four artifacts they had “acquired” from the archeologist.

A group, calling themselves (inappropriately) the Girly Girls, had the mission to settle and old (romantic?) score with Duke Morrison.  I say “inappropriately,” because the group was composed of tough-as-nails women like Lara Croft.  They decided to steal a truck in order to get to Duke’s entourage more quickly.  This began a major kerfuffle in the village that eventually involved Arabs, Nazis, Indians, and the “Sergeants Three.”  The Girly Girls eventually sped out of town with a truck.  Later in the game, they made it to Duke Morrison, but by then the Gestapo had incapacitated him, and the Russians were dragging his body off the table.

Meanwhile the French Foreign Legionaries and their Wild Bunch mercenaries made their way toward the platypus idol.  They stole one truck easily enough, but then they got greedy and tried to steal a second one.  They thought a Model T on the table had just a single Arab driver and attacked it, only to discover it was full of Arab soldiers.  In the ensuring melee, all of the Legionaries attacking the car were killed.

While this was going on, the She Wolves easily “acquired” three of the four artifacts from the archeologist, but then inherited the pyramid’s curse and were attacked by a mummy.  Despite his excellent Save number, the mummy was eventually vanquished.  He took down two She Wolves and two U.S. soldiers before turning into dust.  The She Wolves then spent the rest of the game holding out against enraged dock workers (commanded by “Boats” Morgan) and U.S. soldiers (commanded by “Crusty” Philpott).  Toward the end of the game, the Nazis on raptors provided reinforcements for the She Wolves, Arabs fired at everyone, and the Foreign Legion showed up to plant explosives on the platypus idol.

Duke Morrison began the game in a building with a truck parked next to it.  The cards didn’t come up in Duke’s favor, so he immediately had to fight a group of Arabs who were trying to steal the truck.  While Duke knocked off many of the Arabs, eventually one drove off with the truck.  His victory was short lived, because the Wild Bunch jumped on it and eventually killed the driver and hijacked the truck themselves.  The Foreign Legion used this truck to transport themselves and their explosives to the platypus idol to complete their mission.

So, how did all the carnage end?  Duke Morrison was incapacitated with the Russians and Girly Rights fighting over his limp body.  Indy, Salla, and Short Round were eaten by Nazi guard raptors while Marion fled into an oasis to hide.  The Cultists retained control of Gianna Nannini in the oasis near the flying wing and were preparing to sacrifice her.  Someone had crushed one of the artifacts by driving a truck over it.  Most of the Arabs were dead, as were the majority of the Nazis, sailors, and soldiers.  The Indians rescued the colonel’s daughter.  The Highlanders and Australians had mopped up the remaining defenders around the flying wing and had it firmly in their control.  The Golden Skull, a mysterious Nazi leader, was dead.  The French successfully blew up the platypus idol, but the explosion killed most of the remaining Legionaries.  The big winners (with 30 victory points) were the OBC, who held onto their religious artifact and did enough damage early in the game to the Arabs in the new village so that no one thought to attack them the rest of the game.  The U.S. soldiers (aligned with Duke Morrison) were the big losers, with negative 57 victory points.

The game was a hoot.  It lasted just over three hours, with everyone fully engaged throughout.  We had one player who had never even seen tabletop miniatures before, but he seemed to have an excellent time.

After putting away the pulp figures, Kurt ran another GASLIGHT game on the same terrain.  Traditionally New Year’s Eve gaming sessions have included a Santa Claus game.  This year Kurt ran a game that featured Santa, his Elves, Moonraiser’s Marauders (misfit toys who parachute in with umbrellas), Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius, teddy bears, and others launching a raid on the stronghold of the evil goblins who have repeatedly attacked the North Pole in previous years.

The Santa forces had launched their raid to rescue a bunch of snowball throwing kids and carolers who had been captured by the Goblins.  I was a goblin defender and held on reasonably well, having defeated a teddy bear unit, their artillery, a bunch of elves, and most of a unit of fish-throwing penguins before losing my last goblin.  Since all the defenders had been destroyed, Kurt determined that Santa and his forces could search all the buildings and free the prisoners at their leisure, so the game was a resounding victory for Santa.

We finished the evening with a game of Five Year Mission (a cooperative Star Trek dice and card game) and a strange game of Red Dragon Inn.  We play this game frequently, but this time, a couple of players had a lot of gambling cards while most of us did not.  After two rounds of gambling, and before I even took my first turn, only four of the original 12 players were still in the game.  Tank (with the beard in the picture below) eventually bested my daughter to win the game.

As is also HAWKs tradition, soon after midnight we old fogies poop out.  By 1 AM everyone had gone home, ahead of the bar-closing traffic.  It was a fun evening and a nice way to ring in the new year while avoiding crowds and slobbering drunks.

 

 

As is the HAWKs holiday custom, Duncan hosted a game at his house last night.  He has been hosting a game sometime on or about Christmas and/or New Year’s Eve, depending on how the holidays fall in the week for some years.  This year he chose to use Combat Patrol for a semi-reprise of one of his WWI 28mm scenarios.

In the scenario, we Germans had gained a small foothold across the canal (to the right of the picture above), and our mission was to expand that hold and push the British off the table.  There wasn’t enough time to actually push every Brit off the table, but Duncan said capturing the bridge pictured, the church in the background, and the other buildings around the courtyard would be evidence that we were achieving our mission.  While we initially outnumbered the British, we expected them to be reinforced at some point in the game.

Duncan’s figures were mounted for another system and were mostly mounted in pairs.  This occasionally created some issues tracking wounds and figuring out how to represent some morale effects, but in general it worked fine.  The buildings were a mix of manufacturers, including Grand Manor, Old Glory, and Miniature Building Authority.  I think the table was very nice.  As with all games involving a large number of buildings, there was some effort involved with getting figures in an out of the various floors of the buildings.

In Combat Patrol (which was written for World War II) squads are generally broken into two or three teams (depending on the country), which are the atomic unit of the game.  Duncan treated each early WWI squad as the atomic element.  I was a little worried at first that letting then men fire at the same time would either slow the game and/or prove too deadly to one side if the other got advantageous activation card draws early in the game.  The Combat Patrol mechanics didn’t seem to bog down with those large atomic elements, and the dense terrain with lots of protection seemed to mitigate the deadliness of fire.  In general, I’d say the rules worked fine for this historical period.

In addition to a platoon of infantry, I was assigned a Minenwerfer.  I only got to fire it twice, because of difficulty of my spotter being able to see targets and the slow reload time.  My first shot did some damage to British infantry ahead of Geoff’s advance, but it drifted a bit and caught some of Geoff’s men in the blast as well.  The second shot took the roof off a building in the courtyard, doing a lot of damage to Don’s men inside, but not before Don took out one of my advancing squads (to be described later).

The onus was on the Germans to advance, so while Geoff engaged Rob in a bloody firefight, I advanced through the alley and into the courtyard of a British held building.  In the next couple of activations, I pushed into the first floor.  The doorway was defended by just Rob’s platoon leader as most of the men in the building were on the upper floors where they had better fields of fire.  I eventually captured the first two floors and was ready to assault the third floor when we ended the game.  Aided by Geoff softening up Rob before I got there, I only lost half a squad in taking the building.

Meanwhile, Dave advanced his platoon across the canal at the German-held foot bridge and moved into position to pass me and continue the advance.

I know there was a LOT of activity on the other side of the table, but I was focused on my side.  I know that Kurt’s field gun and machine-gun silenced the British gun.  Also Eric eventually got some good long-range shots against our company commander who was observing the fight from a rubbled building, forcing him to seek cover.  Eventually the reinforcements arrived from that end of the table.  They didn’t have a major impact on the game, because the German attack was pretty well spent by the time they arrived.

We needed to keep advancing toward the church.  While I was busing in hand-to-hand combat with Rob, Geoff advanced two of his squads up the alley to the right of the picture (above).  That had me advancing up the street in the center of the pictures.  I thought that Dave and Kurt had silenced the British in the building on the other side of the courtyard, because I didn’t see any fire coming out of it.  Not so.  As I advanced up the street, I was cut apart by Don.  I eventually lost four men and accrued eight morale markers.  On my second morale check, the remainder of my elite squad of pioneers ran off the table.

In retaliation, I dropped a minenwerfer shell on Don’s building.  It took out the roof and wounded many of his men on the top floor.  About this time, it was getting late and all of us old guys were getting tired, so we called the game a convincing British victory.

Combat Patrol worked really well for early WWI, with a few scenario-specific and period-specific modifications that Duncan made to give it an earlier feel.  For instance in the basic rules for WWII, any infantryman can re-man a machine-gun, but we thought that in 1914, not all infantryman would have been trained on this new-fangled weapon.  Also, he used the larger squads, which gave the units a bit of an unwieldy feel compared to the more nimble teams of WWII.  The game was a success and great fun.