Necromunda Campaign 2: Game 3

 

After the last, rather disastrous, game I needed to rebuild my gang and get it back up to strength. In the campaign game most fighters who ‘die’ in the game tend to miss the next game, each fighter that is taken out during the game has to roll on an injuries table, very few results are beneficial, most result in missing the next game or worse, ability losses…. In the campaign that we are playing in you are allowed to challenge that cycle’s GM once every 2 games either to have a quick game getting out early to rebuild your gang or to push your luck and try to get a win.

I was going for the former option. I was going to play until the earliest opportunity to quit came up then flee the battlefield, I told J this, so he wasn’t expecting a long game- he had already thought as much and has arranged another game for the evening.

For a bit of a change we played on a different set of boards made up of tight corridors; the scenario was a simple one too, I just had to defile a shrine belong to his Cawdor gang.

I set up as close as I could, I wanted to get a few shots in for dignity’s sake if nothing else but the dice really favoured me. J’s men dropped quite quickly or else ran around on fire due to my flamer whilst my guys stayed on their feet. His leader tried to sneak up on mine to take him out in close combat but some judicious card play and a melta blast put paid to that.

Although I never came close to the shrine objective it ended up taking me a full 7 turns to lose the game. So much so that J didn’t have time for his other game.

It was a pretty tense game, I wasn’t having it easy, and didn’t expect to, so tried to give as good as I got. It was a close fought game, helped that I managed to redirect some of J’s reinforcements but most importantly it was great fun.

Even though I lost (a tactical decision if you will) it set me up nicely for the next campaign game.

Cheers,

Pete.

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From the Shed: US Rangers and Special Operations Forces.

I’ve just finished up some quick US Speical Operation Forces types.

First up we have 4 men armed with MP7 Personal Defence Weapons (the fancy new name for SMGs that fire modern body armour defeating ammunition), great for clearing buildings .

We have a 2 man command team for the Rangers: a soldier with a map and a radioman. Useful for bringing in off- table assests.

Finally a pair of snipers manning the huge .50 Barrett sniper rifle. Witha massive range (and massive weight to go with it) it is an immensly powerful weapon.

Again Elhiem figures were the manufacturer of these figures; can’t wait to get them into a game of Black Ops or similar soon. All of the figures were painted in the latest multicam cammo pattern uniforms.

 

Gifts from Gamers.

One of the best things about being a gamer is the real sense of community that there is, one of the best things about the internet is that it connects people together who share interests but otherwise wouldn’t meet due to geographical separation. Thanks to the generosity of two bloggers I’ve got some more goodies to play with.

 

Man of Tin was kind enough me a sheet of stickers that I was unable to locate in my home town. These will be turned into signs for Zombie apocalypse games as soon as I’ve stocked back up on plasticard.

Maenoferren generously gave me some bits that he has made with his 3D printer that he has no use for.

 

I had some spare foamcore and an MDF base lying around so knocked up this quick compound with the two houses.

I also put some paint on the Sci Fi terrain bits, specifically the chemical tank too.

These sorts of gestures really are the best and both brightened my day immeasurably when they arrived- many thanks to both bloggers, It is something I fully intend to pay forward.

 

As an aside the quality of the prints is really good, far better than the stuff I bought from Shapeways some years ago. So good in fact that I’m going to save up for my own printer- I really think it will be the future of the hobby (amongst other things) so it will be good to get in early for once I think.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Necromunda Campaign 2: Games 1 and 2.

The next Necromunda campaign has started at the club, I decided to build on what I learnt from the previous campaign and run a Van Saar gang again. I decided to go with a completely new gang rather than bring anyone over from the last one so it is a case of good- bye Tech Noir, hello Korova… Based upon how the previous games went down I decided to buy more hard hitting short ranged weapons, lasguns are cheap and I could get a lot of gangers with them but I struggled to covert the hits I got with them into damage given the low weapon strength. Also, anything with the blaze trait is worth taking so my gang has both a hand flamer and a standard flamer in it. Having been on the receiving end of flame- based weapons many times myself I wanted to dish it back out this time.

This time there are 9 of us in the campaign so it will take longer to play out, I expect it will last almost until xmas time. Each cycle I’ll be paired off with another gang to fight out that cycle’s scenario; every other cycle you will be allowed to fight a challenge game, useful to build your gang back up if you need to after a defeat. The difference between this campaign and the last one is that each cycle a different player will take the lead and decide upon the scenario everyone will play, this stops one person just running the whole thing and missing out on the chance to run a gang too.

Game 1:

Mark was the first up to decide the scenario and given the campaign was kicking off just after Easter he came up with an appropriate game: an egg hunt. The board was set up with three clusters of xenos eggs which we were to collect for the cash as a researcher wants them. Obviously, it wouldn’t be as straight forward as that. Every time a figure approached within 2” of the egg cluster they had a 50/50 chance of getting an egg or of being attacked (1-6 attacks of low strength), this also applied to everyone within the 2” radius too.

I was drawn against Jonathan for my first match again, he was running House Cawdor this campaign rather than the Goliaths he ran last time. In the rules Cawdor gangers are cheap, very cheap so even his starting gang had 16 gangers against my 10. I fully expected to be on the receiving end of a lot of autogun hits this game.

Fortunately, my opponent got greedy and thought with his massive gang he would be able to grab a large amount of eggs… this didn’t work out well. Whilst his gangers collected 12 eggs or so far more were felled by their attacks, I think 10 in all. Accordingly, I stood back and shot him up as he ran to the eggs, right at the end of the end of the game I rushed forward a few of my well armoured gangers to grab a few eggs, after seeing the unarmoured Cawdor fall like flies I learnt from this and sent the heavies to grab them.

With all these losses the Cawdor gang bottled and gave me the win, picking up a nice bone shrine territory. I spent my earnings of a pair of extra gangers and awaited the next game.

 

Game 2:

Now it was the turn of Jonathan to be the arbitrator of the campaign, his scenario was for one gang to be tasked with escorting a group of pilgrims through the hive whilst another gang attacked them.

I was drawn against Joe and his Ork Venators gang, you may remember was my nemesis in the last campaign, we randomly determined who the attacker would be and who would escort the pilgrims. I drew the short straw and had to escort the party of 5 religious zealots from one edge of the board to the others. The game started badly when Joe played a tactics card and sent my Leader home, missing the fight completely.

I set up either side of the pilgrims with a pair of lasgun armed gangers above on a walkway to provide some covering fire, Joe then set up very close in ambush positions, which made me little nervous as I knew he be going straight into close combat which isn’t a Van Saar specialty.

The first turn was little short of a massacre with his gangers outshooting me and slaughtering me in the melee combats. The second turn was worse, and all my best gangers and champions were down, so when I ended the turn with only 3 men of the starting 9 still standing I voluntarily bottled as it was the sensible thing to do.

Interestingly when the other gamers were played the defender escorting the pilgrims only won once, with the longest game only go 3 turns… The scenario in all honesty needed some fine tuning but at least it was unfair to everyone.

With so few gangers I quickly arranged a challenge game with Jonathan to rebuild my gang….

Cheers,

 

Pete.

From the Shed: Russian Airborne Armour.

Following on from my post on VDV Air Assault Brigades I’ve done some light armour to give them some support.

First up we have the ASU85: a light self propelled gun on the PT76 chassis, designed to give the VDV some anti- tank support. It was a replacement for the much earlier ASU57. At the time of its introduction its 85mm gun (based on the WW2 tank gun) was barely adequate for the task by the 1980s when it was still in service it would have been useless at its intended role. Still any soft skins or light armoured cars would be vulnerable to its gun.

Next we have the little known 2S25 Sprut SD, the replacement to the ASU85. Mounting the usual Russian 125mm smoothbore gun it can fire all the same ammo as an MBT but from a lightly armoured chassis based on the BMD3. Given the ammo types it can fire it makes up a pretty potent support vehicle for the modern day VDV.

Although not an airborne vehicle I painted up a few PT76 amphibious tanks. Developed after WW2 as a recce vehicle it is fully amphibious, accordingly it means it is not very well armed or armoured. Kept in service untill surprisingly recently in has seen combat in the Middle East, Vietnam, India, Africa and even Chechnya.

All models are 1/300th (6mm) scale and are from Heroics and Ros.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

 

Partizan Wargames Show.

Yesterday (Sunday) Paul and I headed down the A1 to Newark Showground for the first of the Partizan shows of the year. We like to go to the local wargames shows to spread the word about Pennine Megagames and hopefully attract more players. Whilst Newark is not really part of the Pennines it is pretty close to Sheffield; hopefully we’ll get more gamers to the games we run there.

The game we took with us was Stalingrad: Block by Block, a mini game born out of two previous games. Given I had a very nice 6 foot by 4 foot map of Stalingrad from my Case Blue game that didn’t get used I thought it would be a good excuse to use it. Paul is running a game in September, Hold the Line, based on the invasion of Poland; the mechanisms of which he used for last years Czech Mate game. I thought to myself it would be nice idea to run a game with his mechanisms based around the city fight.

Paul was kind enough to give me the polystyrene cubes and stickers needed so I got to work and knocked up what was needed. We ran the scenario as a participation game, so players could try out the mechanisms in advance to give them a taste of what to expect if they attend out events.

The game proved very popular with the attendees of the show, lots of people were asking questions and taking photos, so much so that the two of us were hard pressed to run the game and chat to everyone at the same time at one point… We were the only none toy soldier based game there so we stood out as doing something a little different. Paul game design was described as ‘inspirational’ and I was pleased to see several people bring their friends over to show them saying ‘This is the game I was telling you about, I’ve played one and it was really good’.

The game should get a few more run outs this years and there are a few tweaks I want to it, some of the rules need tightening and it would be nice to come up with a set of scenarios for the board that are suitable from anywhere from 2 to 6 players so we can be more flexible about the size of game we can run in the day. It would be nice to be able to give people a taste of the layers of command that the megagames have, one of their stand out features for me, but it is difficult to do in small scale for obvious reasons. I have some ideas of how to do it but it will need more work.

I managed to do a little bit of shopping for myself (oddly no books) and managed to chat to some gaming friends I hadn’t seen in years. The newer venue for Partizan is much better than the stygian gloom of the old one too. All in all a great day and both Paul and I agreed it was the best reception Pennine Megagames has had at a show.

I’m quite looking forward to the next show for us which will be the Phalanx show at St. Helens in June.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

VDV Air Assault Brigade in 5core: Brigade Commander.

During the Cold War the Soviet Union raised extensive parachute forces: the Vozdushno-Desantnya Voyska (VDV). Whilst the Airborne Division were under the command of high level HQs and would have been used for strategic and operational missions their smaller cousins the Air Assault Brigades were under the command of the Ground Forces so would get more tactical missions to undertake; because of this I thought they’d be an interesting force to field in our 6mm games of Nordic Weasel’s 5core: Brigade Commander.

Three- quarters of the Brigade lined up. 50mm square bases for companies, 30mm square bases for platoon sized attachments.

One of the things that would have hampered the Soviet Union’s deployment of its VDV was the lack of sufficient lift capacity, especially at the strategic/ operational level. At the tactical level insertion by helicopter would have been more common but even so the number of heavy- lift helicopters to move vehicles was limited. The non- mechanised companies could be para dropped of they could be flown in by helicopter. The engineers in the brigade were trained to make landing strips for aircraft out of West German roads (doubtless these would have been recce’d in advance) to bring in heavier vehicles.

The HQ company stand, three Heavy Companies and two recce  attachments in close up. All vehicles and figures are from Heroics and Ros.

Below is my interpretation of the brigade. Sources differ as to whether there are 2 Heavy battalions or one either way there are four battalions.

 

HQ coy

AT company, BRDM3- can be fielded as 3 AT attachments.

2 or 3 Air Assault Battalions:3 companies of Infantry (limited AT).

1 or 2 Heavy Air Assault Battalion: 3 companies of Mechanised Infantry, BMDs (Advanced AT).

Attachments:

1 light Recce, BRDM or GAZ jeep.

2 AA, ZSU 23/2s on BTRDs

3 Engineers, GAZ jeeps.

3 Mortar, 120mm.

1 AT, 85mm ATG

 

For my collection I’ve got far more attachments than I actually need, this is primarily to have some variation in what I can field.

 

Three Engineer attachments.

Three SO120 mortars (a breech loading 120mm mortar on the BMD APC chassis).

AGS17 Plamya automatic grenade launcher attachments.

The BRDM based ATGMs which act as the anti- tank attachments.

A MMG attachment.

 

I’ve come up with a couple of scenarios to use with the unit that reflect the sort of tactical missions they’d have been given. The first is a landing to capture a bridge and then hold it against a counter attack until relieved, the second is to attack into NATO rear areas to take out a HQ. I’ll post some game reports when I’ve played them.

I may yet expand my collection to be able to field a regiment from a fully fledged Airborne Division later on.

Cheers,

 

Pete.