Saturday 31 December 2016

On the fifth day of Gamesmas the silly season gave unto me..

Frostgrave!

The silly game, well not silly per se, more a game we treat with all silliness. The mechanics of this great little game lend it towards quick, bloody and brutal game play and that is something we like.

December 31 is my birthday, so as a treat, most of the other Regimenteers came around and we had a BBQ and a campaign day for Frostgrave. As you will see from the tables, it was more Thawgrave.

Pelarel, Pooch, McZermof, Scotty and Jr, Tibby and McBeth the younger all turned up and cracked into three games of drinking, dice rolling and mayhem.

The 12' table with four 3'x3' playing surfaces.

This camp bear turned up behind the lines and sashayed through the battlefield murdering mooks a couple of times

Wandering monsters were a bane of my games. 

Pooch and McBeth the Younger
A great day was had by all and lots of meat was consumed! Pity Tank Engine missed this one ....

Happy New Year!

Friday 23 December 2016

For the fourth game of Gamesmas we played....

One Page Kill Team (or OPKT for short)!

I, like many of the Regiment played a lot of GW games in the past, but due to a variety of factors we have all stopped playing them in favour of the myriad of historical, fantasy and sci fi games we currently play.

And of course that list is ever expanding, but, never quite extends back into GW products.

For McZ and I, we both had a lot of old GW products, especially Space Marines lying around. So when he found the glorious One Page Kill Team rules on the internet (they are here), we both decided that for our silly Christmas project, we would paint up some Space Marines and play some OPKT!

I chose Loyalists, and since we were doing this for nostalgia's sake, I decided to paint them as Ultramarines. McZ, being the evil character that he is, went with Chaos Space Marines! Since we were painting only a few models, we both decided to challenge ourselves a bit with the painting- McZ decided on Slanneshi marines, so got to paint glorious pink, whereas I decided to remove one of my usual painting steps- ink washes- and instead paint the marines using highlights alone.

We were both really happy with how the forces ended up, and I am sure we will do a better series of photos on them soon.

I say soon, because lets get back to the matter at hand- Games!

So OPKT. What can I say about it? Well. It is simple, fast, bloody and effective. You can easily use your toys and play games, in fact we played probably 4 or 5 games within an hour and a half! And that included a "big game" at the end.

My Ultra-smurfs take up positions ready to engage the enemy

The enemy has a motorbike!

Scout with heavy bolter. Looking awesome.

Chaos lord vs Sergeant. Surprisingly, Sergeant won!


Assault marine looking awesome. He then got shot by a noise marine, fell off the tower and died. HA.

Suprise- daemonette! The scout promptly turned around and turned her into pink-ish mist with the heavy bolter

This was my Big Game force, 250 points of Smurfs, including a Space Wizard!

The Chaos 250 points, including a big bad terminator with an autocannon!

This is the terminator. Not pictured is the remnants of my army in little pieces after the terminator annihilated them.

And this is a chaos marine, looking good.
So there you have it, check out OPKT- it is a simple, effective game!

Pooch

Wednesday 14 December 2016

For the third game of Gamesmas, Slugfest Games gave to me...

...Red Dragon Inn.

Twas a quiet night for mid-week nerdery for the Magpies with many of the magpies off doing, well, all sorts of stuff that was apparently more fun that sitting around talking BS in a dining room of a weeknight.

And so it was, that after reliving some of the glories of our Flames of War games last weekend, drinking some coffee and a wee Abelour 12, we settled on a silly game of Red Dragon Inn. This delightful little game revolves around our party of fearless adventurers, sitting around in the pub after a hard day's dungeoneering dividing up the loot. And getting pissed. And the person still standing after the party is smashed wins all the gold.

The first round was a glorious victory for Pelarel, as he played Fiona the Volatile. Fiona was fortunate she was wearing so much armour as she was frequently and unpleasantly accosted by Scotty's Fleck the Bard who was trying very hard to, well, it's hard to know but at one point his lute was nearly put somewhere quite unpleasant. Suffice to say that Zot the Wizard (and Pooky, the Beast of Caerbannog!) and Eve the Illusionist kind of wizarded each other out of the game on the sidelines!

In our second round, Gerki the sneak, ably played by Tank Engine tried very hard to relieve the party of all their funds through various nefarious gambles, but Deirdre the Priestess and Dimli the Dwarf plied him with drink while Gog the Half-orge frequently sat on him, in between dishing out group hugs and crushing Deirdre's tiny feet with his so-called dancing. In the end, it came down to Gog's desperate attempts to resist Dimli's ability to drink him under the table as an unhurt Gog was finally felled by alcohol alone!
Drinking the Inn dry! 

If you've not played Red Dragon Inn, it's a great little game that plays well for anywhere up to about six players. It can play with more but it can get a bit unwieldy - although when it does kick off, boy oh boy do those drinking contests end badly for a lot of people! There are lots of fun interactions as players try to steal, cheat and inebriate their fellow adventurers - it definitely doesn't pay to get too far ahead, that's for sure!

Sunday 11 December 2016

Remember December 2016

A while back, the Regiment team received a very special package from Mavis and Phil Garden. Nick's parents had sent us a lovely silver memorial trophy that they wanted to donate to the club and use for something that they could have as a representation of Nick.



It took us a while to think of a suitable event or similar that we could use the trophy for as we had already had one made for the World War Two competition for ValleyCon. Inspiration struck though, and I came up with the idea of having a themed, one day Flames of War competition.

The day was held on the last meeting of the club year and we called it 'Remember December'. It was also decided that we would do this each year, but the game played could change. This year was a 1000 point Mid War competition themed for Italy 1943. Everyone was creating their lists with the rule 'Be Like Nick. Don't Be A Dick'. With that in mind, most lists were not dicky. Some, however, took Tigers. :P

We had a great turn out for the day with 18 players and we were fortunate enough to have an even split of Axis and Allies meaning that all three rounds did not have any blue on blue matches. At the end of the 3 rounds, Mr Bailey had come out as the clear winner (even if he did have a Tiger and therefore was a dick) with three wins and the maximum 3000 points for the point break. Scoring was 3 points for a win, 0 for a loss and an accumulation of points values of enemy platoons destroyed.


Win Score Points Score Place
Bede Bailey 9 3000 1
Che Tibby 9 1940 2
Tom Leamy 6 2000 3
Damien Tyson 6 1825 4
Chris Pooch 6 1800 5
Simon McBeth 6 1687 6
John Fletcher 6 1420 7
Mark Stanton 6 1390 8
Warren Hart 6 1215 9
Scott Avery 3 1620 10
Bob Pearce 3 870 11
Andrew Sheppard 3 705 12
Alex McEwen 3 285 13
Tony Bates 3 250 14
Jamie Steer 3 205 15
Russell Briant 3 0 16
Richard Steer 0 415 17
Chris Otton 0 270 18

Three Highlights for me:

My first game against Shep. I had first turn, ambushed with my Shermans and killed Sheps only platoon on table (we were both two platoon tank companies) forcing him to take and fail a Company Morale test at the start of his turn one!

Post action. 6 Shermans lit up three PzIII's with stabilised fire. 
Shep (hands on hips) contemplates what a game looks like when it goes longer than half a turn!


Highlight number two: Jamie Steer's excellent smoke trails for his Nebelwerfers

As they say in German 'Woosh'.
Highlight number three. Shep's destruction of one table in spectacular, and fortunately non damaging, fashion

Oops!
 All in all it was a great day and I thank those that helped set it up. Next year we'll do it again!

Saturday 10 December 2016

Lofty wiped his brow

Lofty wiped his brow, the sweat and grit scraping muddy lines on his forehead. The Italian landscape was quiet, without the sound of the 25pdrs dropping shells on the Germans in small village ahead the birds had started chirping cautiously, and only the trudge of the platoon’s boots or the jangle of gear marked the passing of the New Zealanders.

“The makeup is looking good there Lofty.” remarked Patterson.

“Might have that career in theatre after all.” he replied with a chuckle.

Corporal Smithers called a halt and the platoon gathered forward around Sergeant Ballbriquer. The Sarge wasn’t exactly what you’d call imposing. A small man with a bad moustache and skinny limbs, he had a reputation for hard-arsedness you’d expect from a Hollywood stereotype of the rank. He drew himself up to his full 5’8” and addressed the platoon.

“Right you useless buggers. Our mission today is to recon the village over this small hill.” He indicated a hill ahead where an AT section was man-handling six-pounders up to a ridge.

“We’re moving to the right of that hill to support the gunnys. There’s Vickers teams moving the left, and to their left is 18 Platoon. They get the job of investigating reports on there being a Tiger in the vicinity. So if you’re wanting to bitch about a bit of stabby stabby, spare a thought for those poor bastards.”

He leaned his helmet back and nodded to the Lieutenant. The Company CO stepped forward, “Right! 19 Platoon! The Staghounds have gone forward, and we expect them to scout past a series of hedges to the north of us. Reports are that Jerry is in a tree line past some wheat fields. Stick with your corporals, the Vickers will be laying down suppressing fire, and those six pounders will keep any tanks at bay.

“Remember! There is no armoured support and no arty in this Army List! So we’re digging the bastards out ourselves the old fashioned way!”

Lofty and Patterson exchanged grim smiles. They knew “the old fashioned way” meant Lieutenant Chopper shooting numerous Germans in the face with slightly battered Webley. In the past two battles they’d fought a German company to a standstill while under fire from Pak38s and an outflank by some determined Stugs, and assaulted a platoon of Panzer IVs with sticky bombs after different section of six pounders had been badly mauled by the panzer’s 75s. Casualties in the platoon has been light so far, but you can only push your luck so hard – if it weren’t for the timely intervention of a Staghound platoon in the last battle, the platoon would have machine-gunned to pieces before they could dig in.


The platoon set out at a fast walk, glancing over their shoulders to the gunners grunting and swearing under the weight of their guns and ammunition. The ridge wasn’t huge, but the Italian soil was deep and the rain recent. The platoon hoped the covering fire would be ready in time.

The men flinched as the report of heavy guns started up. An explosion sounded and the beginnings of a fuel fire rose quickly into the sky, the rattle of ammunition cooking off cracked across the landscape, and Corporal Smithers picked up the pace. Lofty and Paterson increased the speed of their walk to a light jog along with the rest of their section, and the platoon advanced quickly towards the hubbub. More smoke could be seen rising, and the heavy guns were silent.

“Might be the Stags bought it…” muttered Lofty.

*             *             *

Platoon 18 was making good time. They’d set out into some kind of a walled garden, and were advancing quickly under cover some tall trees. Their mission was to seize a stone villa on the edge of the unnamed town ahead, and scout out a Tiger reported to be in the vicinity. They had seventeen pdrs to their left flank, but the gunners were struggling to set up lines of fire into the town, with too many tall hedges and tree-lines preventing visibility. The unit reported possibly seeing their prey near the villa, but they suspected it moved quickly to escape their shells.

The walled garden ended abruptly and the platoon drew up close. Through a gap to their right Private Billings saw smoke pouring up and over some high hedges.

“That’ll be what those reports were!” He shouted to the remainder of this section.

“Stow it Private…” hushed his Lance Corporal, “There’s Jerry about.”

Along the wall from Billings the Second Lieutenant pointed to a Sergeant, who gathered a squad around him. The first man went up and over the wall, followed quickly by 4 others. Billings could hear their boots clattering across the cobblestones, a shattered window, and he glanced around through the gap to see the last of the group entering the villa.

“Clear!” came the call, and two more groups of infantry scrambled over the wall and galloped over to the safety of the stone building.

“So where is Jerry…” muttered the Lance Corporal.

*             *             *

Having met no Germans as they advanced at pace around the flank of the ridge 19 Platoon was making good time. They were coming up on the billowing smoke of what was probably the last position of the Staghounds, when the heard the THUMP of a very big gun indeed.

“Tiger!” Patterson said, and the platoon dropped to its haunches involuntarily. A gout of earth flew up in the air near the ridgeline, and the tracer of vehicle machine-guns could be seen spraying what might be the gunners.

“Move!!” shouted Sergeant Ballbriquer, “If we’re stuck the open the bastard will be on top of us!”
The platoon surged ahead. Lofty, noticing the Vickers crews setting up on a hedgerow to their left, prayed silently they’d be able to dig in before Jerry noticed any of the Kiwis.

Lofty and Patterson sprinted up to a hedge ahead of them, and glanced around through the gate. The black smoke gathering about the burning Staghounds had been joined by a light grey smoke from a smouldering wheat field, and looked for all the world like decent cover. They could see that another hedge ran forward past the three Staghounds, and obscured the line of sight to the forest that was their destination.

Corporal Smithers galloped past them towards what looked to be the only Staghound not ablaze, closely followed by the rest of the section. Lofty and Patterson hoisted their Lee Enfields and followed ducking low in case of snipers or machine guns, and came up on Smithers checking over what looked to be a recon crewman.

“What’s your name son?!” Smithers demanded, shaking the crewman out of his stupor. “What happened to your unit?”

The crewman looked up, “G-g-Garden…” He stammered, “Jerry opened up on us from the hedgeline across the fields…

“It was just so quick… We’d barely made it into the cover of these hedges, then they opened up… We forgot to measure how close they were… our bad… they might have been within 20cm… then… then we failed our reccie roll… damn Jerries cleaned us up… I bailed, but the others…”

Smithers looked across at two infantrymen, “You two! He barked, see if those damned AT are still where Garden said they were! It’s at least turn 4 so that bastards might have pulled out!”

Sergeant Ballbriquer jogged past, the remainder of the platoon in tow, “Leave him!” He bellowed to Smithers over the crackle of the burning Staghounds, “We need to keep the pressure on!”

*             *             *

Private Billings glanced round the cover the wall, just enough to see the unmistakeable outline of the big cat. The 88 thundered, and Billings followed the line of fire to the 6 pounders he knew were covering the platoon from the ridge to their right.

“Kitty-Cat!!” He shouted along to the Second Lieutenant, who turned and pointed to the platoon PIAT team. They bounded up and over the wall with their heavy gear, and under the cover of the villa dived through one of the smashed windows.

Billings saw the Second Lieutenant’s head snap round to the platoon’s left. The unmistakable sound of .303s and Mausers was coming from the direction of the seventeen pounders. The officer nodded to a Sergeant who grabbed a Corporal by his shoulder and started dragging him towards the covering wall in the direction of the firefight, the section falling in and following quickly. A glance from a trooper over the wall and the shout to the Lieutenant’s confirmed Billings’ fear, the seventeen pounders were being over-run.


“On me!” Shouted the Lieutenant, and the infantry readied their rifles. Behind then, in a pause between the rattle of the Tiger’s machine guns, Billings thought he heard the muffled ‘clunk’ of the PIAT being fired, but a reply from the 88 suggested that the Tiger was still operational.

“We have a Tiger to take down!!” The Second Lieutenant bellowed, “Ready sticky bombs!!”

Leaving the dozen men with the Sergeant to cover their rear against the approaching German infantry, the remainder of the platoon surged out towards the isolated Tiger, sitting over-confidently in the plaza of the town. It opened up with its machine guns against the charging infantry, but there was no stopping them. One group of infantry rolled a 1 and disappeared in a ball of fire, but the remainder surged up and onto the heavy tank.

“My God…” gasped Billings, “He’s not going to!”

The Second Lieutenant was unwrapping the most deadly sticky bomb Billings had ever heard of. A weapon so lethal only a maniac would use.

The turd of an apple cider hangover…

*             *             *
  
Lofty fell in behind Corporal Smithers as they halted behind a large hedge. They’d seen the trees above the hedge as they’d approached, so they that if any Germans were about, they couldn’t be far away. The two scouts had established that the AT unit had withdrawn after destroying Garden’s Staghounds, so Lofty felt secure that they wouldn’t be outflanked just yet.

Lieutenant Chopper pulled his moustache and pointed to two men, “Under the hedge! We have Jerry out there somewhere!”

The unlucky troopers dropped to their bellies and began crawling into the hedge. Meanwhile, the clatter of the Vickers heavy machine guns could be heard to the platoon’s left.

 “Sounds like the MGs finally finished digging their holes!” said Patterson and the men around him laughed.

One of the troopers scuttled back and reported to Lieutenant Chopper. Lofty knew it couldn’t be good, because the Chopper took out his Webley and smiled at it, the devil incarnate. Pretty soon word came down the line for the platoon to start crawling under and through the hedge.

*             *             *

18 Platoon had fallen back from the shit-smeared Tiger and into the walled garden, still gasping from the effort of taking the big cat down.

“They’re coming!” someone bellowed, and Billings climbed up to fire his .303 into a line of a German infantry.


The Germans were over the wall before Billings knew it, and the world dissolved into a slow-motion picture of blades and blood. They’d poured fire into them from the wall, and the rest of 18 Platoon supported from the closer windows of the villa, but the bastard Germans has passed all their infantry saves. 18 Platoon was losing men rapidly, and they looked like they were for it until the Second Lieutenant, standing like the Rock of Gibraltar itself called ‘British Bulldog!’ and the Kiwis lifted themselves for one last effort. The tide turned onto the Germans, and before they knew it the Kiwis has pushed their enemy to the far end of the garden.

A grunt from a German lying prone on the ground resulted in a large hole from a .303, and the Second Lieutenant calling the remainder of the platoon back into the garden from the villa.
“This is it men…” he said to the platoon survivors, “time to finish them off!”

18 Platoon charged through the trees onto the remaining three bases of Germans.

*             *             *

Lofty was charging across the short distance from the hedge to the tree line when he heard the screaming from the town to their left. A sound of terror so chilling he almost stopped in his tracks.

“NEEEEEEEEIN!!!! DER GESTANK!! DER GESTANK!”

The fire from the Vickers was abating, ragged cheering was carried on the wind from the 6 pounder crews on the ridgeline, and Lieutenant Chopper had thrown himself into the undergrowth. Firing was gathering pace, with Mausers, MP40s and Lee Enfields crackling among the treeline. A German appeared in his line of sight, and Lofty dropped to one knee to fire his rifle from the shoulder. The German fell in a bloodied mess as Patterson left past Lofty to bayonet another. The platoon was surging forward into the German lines and the enemy was falling back through the trees, ragged firing failing to keep the Kiwis at bay.

As the Germans fled 19 Platoon slowed and gathered together, advancing more cautiously through the trees towards what looked to be a treeline, and beyond it a stone wall. Sergeant Ballbriquer sent a small section forward, and the platoon followed shortly behind, crouching low to make the most of the hard cover.


Lieutenant Chopper, wiping blood (and possibly entrails), from his moustache popped his head over the wall. The answer of ricocheting bullets suggested the Germans weren’t demoralised just yet. He grinned.

"Sergeant!" the Lieutenant yelled down the line, "who did we lose in the firefight?!"

"The redshirts! PIAT and 2" mortar team!" replied Sergeant BallBriquer.

"No surprises there!" shouted a infantryman, to a rumble of grim laughter from the platoon. Lieutenant Chopper climbed into a low crouch behind the wall.

“MEN!!” He shouted, “ARE YOU READY?! One last push and we’ll be onto the objective! There’s at least two heavy machine guns out there! There are MP40s and riflemen!”

He grinned again.

“BUT YOU’LL BE FINE! DO YOU KNOW WHY?!”

The infantrymen glanced confused at one another as Lieutenant Chopper stood and prepared to leap over the wall and assault the Germans, who Lofty could now see were hiding in the ruins of a stone villa across the street.

“YOU’LL BE FINE BECAUSE YOU KNOW POOCH CAN’T ROLL FIVE 4s ON 18 DICE!!”

Wednesday 7 December 2016

For the first game of Gamesmas Modiphius gave to me....

the Infinity RPG! 

For our first game of Gamesmas this year, we bring you the soon-to-be published Infinity RPG from Modiphius and Corvus Belli. Pelarel has backed the Kickstarter and since we definitely enjoyed our last outing (especially Tank and his flame-thrower!), this latest canned mini-adventure was too much to pass up. 

I feel like maybe at this point I should say, if you are on the Kickstarter and haven't played this yet, spoilers! 

Dramatis Personae

Pelarel as the Evil Bonespurs
Scotty as the Nomad Reverend Moira
Tank as the Yu-Jing Bosozuko
McBeth as the Haqqislam Assassin Fiday
McZermof as the Pan Oceania Father Knight of Santiago
Pooch as the Ariadna Dog Warrior

<Flashback>

Investigating the death of a famous Arista on one of the Galactic Circulars, the O12 agents have tracked a gang dealing in a Silk derivative back to their starship having shaken down one of their dealers and made more than a few Circular travellers more than a little uncomfortable, especially that guy in the Tiki Bar. 

<Enter cast>

We rejoin our intrepid band of O12 agents as they sneak their way up the docking umbilical toward the cargo ship crewed by the evil, drug dealing Bonespurs. 
Our Bosozuko used his excellent palm implant to disable the security system, our Moira confirmed that there was nothing to worry about so the Assassin Fiday confidently broke open the door to the star ship. This is about where we learned that Tank and Scotty both rolled....not so well as an automatic sentry gun (the drone you can see in the distance) opened up on our lightest of light troopers. Some spectacular John Woo-style action from the Bosozuko shredded the sentry gun but not before giving both of them a bit to worry about.  

We paused briefly in the hub of the star ship to bring forward the wall of meat and armour (viz the Father Knight and the Dog Warrior) and after some clever hacking by the Moira to give us a sense of who was on the ship and where they were (they were carefully counted by the Father Knight), we cracked on. 

The two Bonespurs guarding the armoury went down in a hail of Combirifle and Chain Colt (woot!) fire and the two in the Ready Room on the top deck were pink-misted by the Dog and the Knight. We bounced into the cargo hold in zero G to deal to the last of the Bonespurs.  

This is the point where the O12 team started to fully understand how the Momentum system works and the pink misting got....even worse as the Hassassin's Graze Blade delivered a ludicrous amount of damage to one o the poor Bonespur mooks. In the last cargo pod we found the drugs lab and the Moira turned off the gravity in the lab since that seemed like it'd be funny. She attempted to turn it back on but without much success.

The Dog Warrior and the Father Knight introduced the Bonespur guards to Teseum blades (yep. Pink mist.) while the Hassassin and Bosozuko used their crafty stun weapons to capture the Haqqislam Heisenberg who was making the Nitrocaine substance before we delivered him to the onboard security and posed for Maya pictures.

<Roll credits> 

So Infinity RPG is still cool. We'd done a really good job giving the GM loads of heat in our last session and as a result, we copped it pretty badly in the start of this game. Once we got the basics of the Momentum mechanic down though, the tables were evened pretty smartly. We all agreed that our playing with the online character builder was getting us characters that worked better than the ones that were created for the scenario and we're definitely looking forward to getting properly stuck into 

So welcome to Gamesmas 2016. This year the Regiment will be playing:
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Flames of War
  • Bolt Action
  • Frostgrave
  • And some other things yet to be revealed......! 

Friday 2 December 2016

Sneak preview

So I know I promised a sneak preview of something that Pooch and I are working on for Gamesmas like two weeks ago and I've finally got here:

Jumpy stabby skull man?

Gamesmas begins soon!!