Kill Team

Several years ago I played through the PC game ‘Dawn of War 2’ (2009, Relic Entertainment) and said to my friend at the time that ‘if Warhammer 40,000 was this much fun I’d still be playing it’ as it featured the low level infantry battles rather than the bloated, win at all costs, 100s of troops crammed onto a tiny table mess it became as it moved further away from its ‘Rogue Trader’ days…

… Roll on a few years and I get back into Necromunda on something of a nostaligia trip and to fulfil my love of skirmish games. GW then go and release ‘Kill Team’ allowing skirmish games to be played in the wider 40,000 universe, Brian bought the starter set and we played a few games. Whilst it share some similarities with Necromunda it is a different game but has delivered on a version of 40k that I want to play.

As a result I’ve assembled a few kill teams and got some scenery together. Given a team is 6-15 models it appeals to the fickle collector in me (I currently have 4 different teams in various stages of construction…)

Games are nice and short and have a small footprint allowing them to be easily fitted in an evening, even allowing a couple to be played in an evening. With this in mind I’ve plans for a narrative campaign brewing. The online tool Battle Scribe makes creating and managing your Kill Teams a breeze too.

Better still everyone seems to have been getting involved too- either digging out old models or buying new ones. My girl friend has been collecting some teams too, it has been really nice helping her with her painting. The local to her games shop ran a tournament that we both entered a bit back too.

Next: my tournament kill team.

Cheers,

Pete.

8 year anniversary and an Update.

My WordPress app informed me today that it is my 8th year of running this blog so I thought it would be a suitable time for an update as things have been a bit quite round here.

 

Firstly I’m in a new relationship with a wonderful lady, a gamer too. Secondly it looks like PhD plan ‘D’ is coming to fruition (I don’t want to jinx anyything yet by giving out more details), more on that later hopefully.

 

I’ve been getting a bit of gaming in that will be featured on the blog in due course. Both my GF and I have really got into GW’s Kill Team recently, my adventures in 6mm continue and I managed to play a megagame this year after missing two in a row due to illness. The Necromunda campaign is continuing but I’ve got behind on my game write ups. All a case of watch this space.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

My First Matrix game. The Peninsular War 1808-1809.

Although I’ve read about them since the 1990s, and have reviewed books on them here I hadn’t managed to actually play one until quite recently.

Fortunately Tim invited me down to Sheffield to play in a game he was running, naturally I jumped at the chance. Although the period in question, Napoleonics, isn’t one I’m quite clue up on I thought I should be able to manage OK- besides my friend Jerry said he’d support me and team up.

For the uninitiated a matrix game is a game where by the players make arguments on the likely hood of how successful what they want to do will be (the original iteration of the game had a matrix of prompts to choose from hence the name). An umpire then decides the odds and you roll to see if it it is successful or not. The system, invented by Chris Engle, has been much developed over the years and is a go to tool for professional gamers. The scenario Tim had decided to run was an old one dating back to 1992, as such the system relied on the player stating and action with an intended outcome and three supporting reasons why it should happen, players were given prompt cards to help them think up supporting argument, we had to use one a turn ideally.

I was given the role of Gen. Moore, who started in England and basically had to stop Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) doing well. With a full set of players, 2 British, 2 Spanish, 3 French, and month long turns we covered a big chunk of game time.

 

As I was familiar with the basic concepts I flatter myself that I picked it up fairly quickly. Most of my arguments consisted of trying to stymie Wellesley rather than doing much fighting of my own and carefully trying to manoeuvre my forces to walk in at the last moment to take Madrid. This would have worked apart from an abysmal dice throw which resulted in me getting lost on the way….

All in all I really enjoyed the game- I can see the potential of the concept but also I can see how some people that I had spoken to previously didn’t like it. The game relies entirely on the skill, knowledge and judgement of the umpire; in this regard it is more akin to a tabletop RPG rather than a standard wargame. This means someone like me who only really has a rudimentary knowledge of the Peninsular War can take part in a way that I’d find difficult in a more conventional wargame. There are other versions of the game and more info can be found here, here and here.

Tim has done his own write up of the game here and Martin, another of the players has done his here.

I left the game thinking up my own scenarios and I hope to be able to have another crack at a Matrix game soon.

Cheers,

Pete.

Progress Report- 3rd Quarter 2019.

With a big positive change in real life this has been a low output quarter.

 

I painted 8 28mm and 14 20mm figures and read 18 books.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.