Recruits Spring 2012 - Pt 4 (FNG Vietnam BatRep)

During the 3rd Session of the convention (Saturday afternoon) I joined in a game of Tow Hour Wargames FNG, hosted by Darby Eckles, the writer of the rules, and a THW contributing developer.

The game a based on a mission by a US Army platoon (run by the players), to go into a village that is under imminent threat of attack by Communist Forces (run by THW's Reaction System). They had to convince the locals to leave their homes and come under the safety of US Army protection.

The US forces entered the table in platoon strength from the NW and moved towards the village.

Unconcerned, the villagers went about their business.

Us forces started to round up the locals and talk to them.

Most were easily convinced to come along, although some balked, and had to be man handled by the soldiers.  One man broke and ran, only to be tackled to the ground.  he was treated as a possible enemy combatant.  The whole time this was going one PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) were being generated and resolved.  The first two turned out to be nothing.  The third one, though was a 3 man scouting party.

They opened fire on a fire team talking to some villagers in a rubber tree stand; killing one soldier and one civilian.  At that point, all civilians, who had been against leaving the area had a change of heart, and took no more convincing..  The other half of the squad maneuvered to the trees and engaged the enemy, with an M-60 and a couple of M-79s.

There were a couple of out of ammo rolls for the US soldiers; in the end, though, the three VC were quickly killed.

The US forces set up a cordon to the east, along some rice paddies, by a river.  As they moved into position, another PEF was resolved as a mortar attack.  It landed well short of any troops and didn't pose a threat.

At this point my camera ran out of juice, and there are no picks of the game in the gallery for the convention.  So here's a rundown of what transpired.  No more threats came from the direction the scouts had come from.  A platoon of NVA regulars appeared from the NW; the direction US forces had come from.  This put them to the rear of the US forces.  The US commander scrambled to realign the units.  Good fortune would have it that another US squad arrived from the SW, to add to US firepower.

Shots were exchanged with the US forces come out on the better end.  There was an exciting incident where a US soldier crossed the river under fire to get some villagers and bring them back.  One to the villagers went to ground when they came under more fire, and the second one was swept away by the river.  The US solder re0entered the water and rescued the man from certain drowning.

The Communist soldiers were still a threat, killing another soldier, and wounding several others.  Still, the US had the upper hand.  At this point the silent auction was ending, and people's attention started to wander.  The session was drawing to a close, so Darby called the game.  Tallying up the points, the US forces won a handy victory by saving most of the villagers; despite sereval KIAs and WIAs.

It was a fun game.  I am biased, though, as I am a THW fan.  Darby complained that he had forgotten some of his terrain, and some of the villager figs weren't finished.  It didn't detract fromt eh experience, in the least.  Everyone ahd a good time, and at least one player decided to go with FNG for his upcoming Vietnam project.

Dolph and his "Little Friend"

Dolph is a beast of a man.  His motto is, "There is no problem so big that it can't be fixed with the proper application of violence, or high explosives."  To that end, he's found a gun that fits his motto and personality..."his little friend".

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Dolph is another repurposed Heroclix miniature.  He's one of the Punisher incarnations.  I simply love this fig, despite the fact that it is HUGE.  As you can see below, he towers over 25mm scaled figs, even with the added height of a slotta bases.  He'd fit in great with large HorrorClix Zombies and Heroic 28mm minis, but would still be a mountain of a man on the table.

Recruits Spring 2012 - Pt 3 (The Games)

This time around, you get to see some of the games to be had at Spring Recruits, 2012.  There was a lot to do, as always.  For every picture here, there are 10's of others I missed.  There were a multitude of game to be played, spanning many genres.

The were Ancients in various forms from 54mm Gladiator combat to mass combat board games. 

Jay Allen, a long time TMP poster ran several games of Command and Color: Ancients.  I played a game against him, and found the game to be very enjoyable.  They have table top rules, and Jay said he's going to try to put together a 6mm game; hopefully next fall, or the following spring.

Moving up in time, there were several Napoleonic games, in various scales; some of the quite big affairs.

There were some other period pieces that were impressive, in their shear size.  The first was a 1/32nd scale FIW game with a block house as the center piece.

Posted From the Recruits Web Site

The other was a 28mm pirate game that took up its own room.  The people running the game were in costume, and there were a  total of 19 players in it.  The is the second time they've run the game at Recruits, and just WOW!

Posted from the Recruits Web Site.

Posted from the Recruits Web Site.

Next there was an impressive WWI; which was used to advertise the National WWI Museum, which is in Kansas City.  If you are a history buff, make a trip to KC to visit this museum.  I have traveled the world, and been to a lot of military/war museums.  This one is top shelf; you won't be disappointed.

Posted from the Recruits Web Site.

There was also a 1/72nd scale Dogfight game that was impressive, as well.

 There were several WWII games, as well; including a HUGE Stalingrad game and a Flames Of War Tourney.

 

For the modern era, there was an FNG game hosted by Darby Eckles, one of Two Hour Wargames prolific writers/developers that I played.  I'll have a BatRep up on it, next time I make a Recruits post. As posted last time, there was also a Ambush Alley game being run by Shawn Carpenter.

Science Fiction was well represented, too.  There was the ubiquitous WH40K tourney, that showcased some well finished forces, and some not so well ones, too, and some nice tables.

There were several space combat games, as well.  To my mind, I am seeing more and more of these at Recruits every year.  It seems mass space combat is picking up interest locally.

Like I said, I missed a ton of pictures on the weekend, so I would suggest going to the Recruits site and trolling around the gallery to see more of the fun that was had.

Next time around I'll post some pics of the eye candy some of the commercial vendors had, which I haven't posted, yet.  Til next time, keep your dice smoking and gaming happy.

Recruits Spring 2012 - Pt 2 (Ambush Alley Batrep)

The  first session of Spring Recruits 2012 was on Friday March 30th.   I spent a couple of minutes wandering around, then settled in at Ambush Alley's table.  Shawn and Peggy had brought a great setup, and Shawn was running a simple game; the Marines would be attacking the Insurgents and Jihadis in Fallujah.  We were only using the infantry rules, as this was a convention game.

Shawn explained the situation and pointed out features on the table.  The Marines would be coming from the bottom of the picture, and had to reach the cross street at the top. One of the highlights on the table were some proto-types of AA's new/upcoming 20mm buildings.  They are a sight to see; loaded with detail and looking like the real thing.

The Marines (played by Conventioneers) had an infantry platoon, without any support.  Their task, as stated earlier, was to advance up the table, and make it to the Phase Line at the other end.

The only problem was that the way was blocked by some very fanatical and heavy armed bad guys.  They were a mix of insurgents and foreign Jihadis (played by Shawn)

The Marines sent two squads up the main street, using fire and maneuver to cover the advance;one squad on over watch as the other moved.  The Third Squad would hook right and move up the alley.  Their goal to enter a high rise apartment building in order to fire down on attacking insurgents, so the other two squads could cross the major intersection in the middle of the map.

 The first movement took place 1st Squad had an insurgent team stumble in to their path.  The over watch squad lit them up.

As one squad moved into a building to over watch, the other squad split it's fire teams to both sides of the street.  The fire team on the left took up position behind a pickup.

This fire team became the focal point of insurgent attacks on the next turn.  There was some fierce fire back and forth...

In the end, all four marines went down; wounded or killed.

The next several turns were spent trying to get to the fire team to render aid and recover the wounded, and/or dead..  Several more Marines were wounded and a couple were killed in the process.  One of the highlights was a Predator missile attack, thanks to an FOW card that was drawn.  It landed squarely on a building that held 5-7 Jihadis, who were causing much havoc.  It didn't kill them all; it did take them out of action, allow the Marines to make it to the downed fire team.

While this was going on, the third squad had quietly maneuvered up the alley on the right and was poised to get into position, covering the main intersection.  The bright point of all the maneuvering by all three squads was that they had effectively negated the insurgent's "Out Of Contact" movement, so no bad guys were going to pop up behind them.  With Third Squad in position, the Marines would be able to rain fire down on all the insurgents, as well.  Third squad took up position in the tall building...

The Marines knew it would be like kicking a hornets nest; they didn't realize how bad it was going to be though.  The foreign Jihadis at the far right of the above photo drew an improved position FOW card, the insurgents in the street caddy corner to the Marines had drawn a Fanatical FOW card the turn before, and the insurgents in the courtyard, just popped up out of no where.  The result for the fire team (run by me) were not favorable.

The other fire team (run by my son) managed to render aid the next turn, and my fire team only lost one KIA.  he managed to light some bud guys up; not really making a dent in their forces, though.  At this point, the session was drawing to a close, so we wrapped the game up.  The Marines didn't make it to their objective, with Shawn explaining that in the real battle, after day 1, the Marines would have just dropped  a JDAM on the bad guy clusters we went up against.

All in all, it was enjoyable; as it always is when playing one of AA's convention games.  They always have a good looking table and excellent minis.  Add that to the fact that the AA rules, all of them, as extremely fun to play, and its a sure fire winner, every time.

Gnoblar Trappers

These figs were part of the group of unpainted Ogre Kingdom Gnoblars I bought at Recruits a couple of weeks ago.  I posted all 42 figs (8 metal, 32 plastic) for sale, trying to get $$$ for the 2012 Fifty Cent Mini Challenge.  The whole group didn't sell, so I decided to paint up some of them and see what I could do that way.  Here's the results of my efforts:

I kind of like these little guys.  If I did fantasy skirmishes, or warband type games, I would definitely use them.  The four figs on the front row have tons of character, and the detail on all eight is nice.

Recruits Spring 2012 - Pt 1

I finally managed to find all the cables and power packs for the cameras.  My family managed to scatter them around the house and couldn't seem to remember where they were.  Anyway, I got the photos from Spring Recruits downloaded and edited.  So here is the first of a multi part report on the convention.

I am going to start off by high lighting a couple of companies/games that I think are just phenomenal  The first on is DGS Games, who were showing their upcoming game "Freeblades".  The game is a fantasy skirmish game, using what one of the developers described as 32mm.  Here are the current warband boxed sets the company has developed so far; these painted by the esteem-able Pat Chambers.

You might think that is a weird scale to develop a game in; there is a method to their madness. the figs are very life like in the dimensions. They actually fit nicely with the current Heroic 28mm miniatures that are out there.  Here's another example:

I didn't play the game; though I did peek in from time to time, over the weekend.  It looked like it flowed well, and the people I saw playing seemed to really enjoy it.  If the game is as good as the figures, I think DGS will do well with it.

The second company I'd like to share is a company named :Laser Dream Works.

These guys had some nicely panted minis.  That's not what drew one's attention to their table.  They had some beautiful, and I mean beautiful 28mm ships kits.  These are laser cut wood and must be seen to believe.

The one that will probably cause me to part with some hard earned cash was the Viking Longboat.

You can see from the photo above the amount of detail that goes into these kits.

That's it for today.  I'll get some more info post, in the form of a couple of battle reports and some eye candy.  Take care, and happy gaming.