First game of Open Combat

I played my first game of Open Combat yesterday. It was a blast! The plan was to play in my office after hours against my friend Jocke, but he could not make it so instead I played a solo game, taking time to document the whole affair.

First of all, a word from our sponsors:

Ok, so neither Belhaven nor The Dicebaglady actually gave me these things, but they have great products that are essential for a good gaming experience.

I used the excellent Opencombat Warband spreadsheet that can be found on the Second Thunder Forums to create rosters for my warbands. Thank you, Branflayk, whoever you are.

The game is about a small group of Gondorian bailiffs going out into the woods to do some enforced tax collecting. There are three bailiffs and five peasants, each group making up a 100 p warband.

 As can be seen, I have taken pictures of my minis and added to the roster, making it easy to tell who is who, an important factor in Open Combat as it is a skirmish game where each figure is a character with specific traits and abilities.

The table was set up using some stone walls, trees and patches of rough ground. The bailiffs need to collect the cattle, marked by the grey counters, and bring them back off the table. The peasants need to stop this.

At the start of the game, the bailiffs arrive far left. Beltic and Corey are guarding the cattle in the pen. Aldin, Deogol and Eamon have arrived in the nick of time!

The first Turn sees very little action but some interesting tactics. The bailiffs move straight for their target. Beltic and Corey, seeing that the bailiffs have a bow, realise that there is no point in trying to hide and instead rush out. Aldin, the leader of the peasant band, sends Deogol and Eamon on a flanking move around the Rough Ground and runs forward to back up his men.

The second turns starts with the Head bailiff Aubert rushing forward with his Sergeant Bertin while Rifleman (ok, Archerman) Colas looses two arrows at the only clear target, Aldin. Aldin is hit once, losing a point of Fortitude. The peasants move cautiously forward to position themselves for the charge. (while doing this editing, I realise that Aldin has a shield that should have saved him from losing Fortitude to a Minor Hit with a bow)

Coals fires once at Eamon, forcing him back, and then moves further away. Bertin goes straight for Beltic and whacks him a good one (boxcars!). Beltic loses 2 Fortitude and is Forced Back. Bertin decides to follow up, intent on finishing the job. Aubert goes straight for poor Corey. The difference between a trained man-at-arms and an armed peasant becomes brutally obvious. ATK 8 vs DEF 3 means three dice. 6, 6, 5! 0 Fortitude left and poor Corey goes down as if struck by lightning. He is now out of the game but I will leave him where he fell for clarity.

Deogol and Eamon run towards the action. Aldin runs straight at Aubert, achieving a Force Back, while Beltic manages an Impasse against Bertin.

Turn four and Bertin hacks away at Beltic, forcing him back. Aubert attacks Aldin, another Force Back. Colas shoots at Deogol. Two hits but the shield takes one. (this time I remembered) Lose 1 Fortitude.
Deogol and Eamon rush towards Colas but to not engage him. Aldin hits Aubert for 1 Fortitude and drives him back. His follow-up blow misses. Even poor Beltic manages to make a difference, hitting Bertin for 1 point and forcing him back but he does not follow up.

Turn 5. Colas shoots twice at Deogol at point blank an still only manages a Force Back. Beltic survives another attack but is Forced Back. Aubert strikes twice at Aldin. Two solid hits drops him to the ground with 0 Fortitude.

Eamon goes for broke with a might swing at Colas...and misses in a spectacular fashion! Our first Terrible Miss sees the peasants lose Initiative at a very, very bad time...



Turns 6. A quick calculation shows that the peasants have 12 points of Renown left and can be considered Broken. The survivors all surrender. The next scenario could well include a jail break to free Aldin...if he survives.

I have no idea if I played this right. I suddenly realised that I forgot to use Leader Re-rolls, but as no-one got to use them the game remained fair.

In conclusion, this was great fun and I am glad that I backed the Kickstarter and will be getting a nice hard-cover book after the summer.

Red Star and Perry

For the benefit of anyone intending to make conversions using the Red Star range and Perry miniatures here is a quick thing I threw together. It is a Red Star head with Bigeard Cap on a body from the Perry plastic Desert Rats box.

I leave it up to the reader to decide what works size-wise and what can be done by a bit more work on the neck joint, but this will at least show you the size Red Star with Perry.

I have done another head swap on a figure from the Perry plastics box. This is a Warlord Celt head used to make an LRDG trooper.

1st section of Perry Desert Rats

I tried to get at least a section each of Brits and DAK ready for GothCon. That did not happen, due to work and the oncoming flu that also ate most of my GothCon experience, but I did finish one section and here they are. The goal here is a full British platoon and at least a section of DAK.

These are intended for CoC with the Section Leader on a hex base for easy ID.

Second squad of Martians

The second Martian squad is finished. The bases are just flat grey for the moment. Since they are essentially board game pieces, I will do all the bases in a style that fits the gaming mat once all the minis are painted.
This makes 20 regular Martian Grunts and finishes that part of my Martian forces. I also have 5 Martian Marines, 5 Martian Stealth Troopers, about a dozen Science Troops including a big-ass ant and half a dozen Martian characters, a Flying Saucer and a Giant Stompy Robot. For the humans we are looking at ten soldiers, a dozen heroes, some allied aliens and the Novas Vira gang.

The dream is still to finish the whole lot before Dungeon Saga is delivered, but we'll have to see about that.

You can't see it in this picture, but they have a white stripe on their nitrogen tanks to distinguish them from 1st squad. And in case someone wonders, their helmets were attached using super glue and no misting occurred.

How kine of you!

These lovely animals are from Warbases and I bought them to serve as either loot or table dressing for the Dux Gondorum campaign. I have some boars that will serve as semi-domestic pigs as well, but these are not painted yet.
The paint job on these is quick and dirty:block paint, a drybrush and a dark wash because let's face it, no matter how cool highland cattle are, they will never be the centre piece of an army so a quick job will have to do. Now I need to dig out my wattle fence and get that painted as well, or else they will just wander off the table.

GothCon 2015, we hardly knew ye

The last two years we have been going to the eminent gaming convention GothCon. Last year Laffe and I ran Chain of Command in NWE 1944. This time we opted for Chain of Command but in the desert. We had the toys, the tools and the talent. Only one minor problem:one of us also had the flu. To illustrate the situation:below are all the photos I took over a three day gaming convention.

 The hotel. Great place.

 View from the room. Yes, that is a boardgame café across the road!

 A guy with a cool T-shirt.

 Our favourite sushi place.

 The mug my better half gave me for use while gaming.

 The setup for the first game.

 Our info and display table.

A patrol phase in progress.

That was it. I spent more time taking naps than I did running games. Our involvement was still a success thanks to the efforts of the other three lads: Laffe, Koen and Jocke.

I really, really hope I stay healthy next year, especially since I have promised to run and First Indo-China War game. 

Bank Holiday Painting

It has been far too long since I updated. A lot of fun stuff, such as GothCon and some less fun stuff, such as the flu, has happened since then. I will talk more about GothCon later. The flu, well, the less said the better, to be honest,

Friday May 1 was a public holiday in Sweden and I celebrated by painting miniatures. I finished Claus von Richthofen for Dust and an MG42 gunner for my WW2 winter project. I also did five Martians but they will show up once I finish the rest of their squad.

First, Claus. I am not really happy with the way his splittertarn trousers turned out, the edges of the pattern are too soft and the pattern itself is not quite right, but he will have to do. I'd rather go on to all the other wonderful figures I have waiting than redo one in the hope of getting it better.

An MG42 gunner from CP Models. Not really happy with the way he turned out either, but he has been sitting on my desk for a year, it was time to get him finished and moved on. Same here, I have tons of lovely minis, including a Schwimmwagen in the pipeline.