Catawba Gamers Action @ Parker, Banner, Kent & Wayne Store

 Hi Kids, Last Saturday was the monthly historical gameday for the Catawba Gamers group, this time Brian brought out his 1:72 Napoleonics for some 200 year old replays!  The Frogs are on the left, all Imperial Guard (!), the good guys (Russians) were on the right.  From that unbiased remark I'm sure you all know which side I was on! To win the Frogs had to capture the hill under the rules, while the Pre-Commies had to capture the bridge near the table edge. Rules: Black Powder.

 A close up of the Frog starting positions. The Young Guard in the foreground was rated as inexperienced.

 The Good Guys!  My Russians are on the left, Patrick's are on the right.

 As soon as the dice allow, the Prussians enter from the south edge.  Gary rolled on at the first opportunity, making a huge difference in the game! "Old Forwards" lived up to the name!

 The Russians advance towards the town while the Frog Cavalry climbs the hill, after fighting off two units of Russian Dragoons.

 In a brief interlude, I sneak over to the other tables and spot an Early War FOW game, using those massive T-35's!

 And massive numbers of T-26's too!  The best of both worlds!  There was also a game of "Song of Drums and Shakos" going on, and a few 40k'ers!  And about 30 Magic gamers.  WoooooHoooooo!

 Meanwhile, the action is getting tense! The Frogs have taken the hill, and the Russian main force has been encircled from that flank!  It's temporary, as the Russians detach some units and shoot the Frog cav down. In the distance the Prussian threat draws near!

 After a double blunder command roll, two Russian units fall back a full move! the Frog Old Guard closes in!  Skirmishers out!

 The Prussians swing up from the south at full speed!

 Prussian Cav take the bridge!  The Old Guard arty takes an interest, but its too little too late! The Russian side wins big!

 The after dinner game was the best rules ever written, God's Chosen Ruleset: "Disposable Heroes" in 15mm!  Yes, we all know its not the One True Scale, but ya can't have everything!  A german delaying action in the hedgerows of Normandy.  About 4 squads of US infantry try to push through 2 squads of Huns.  Naturally, the Huns had some machine guns and suitcases full of ammo!

The US players all swarm over the wide open spaces on one side of the map, trying to stay in cover but moving forward as fast as their little 15mm legs can carry them!  Although both sides lost about the same (12 guys) the US players managed to carry the day, the Huns are just too thin and the board too large for them to swing other defenders to the decisive point!

A great day was had by all!  The Catawba Gamers meet every third Saturday of the month at the "Parker, Banner, Kent & Wayne" store in Cornelius NC, and post on their yahoogroup what games will be set up. More games, more gamers, more better! So why aren't the rest of you kids turning up?

South Dakota Grudge Match! Flames of War CLT vs. RDU!

Hi Kids,  Ok, ok, I know two Flames of War groups based in North Carolina (Charlotte and Raleigh) have absolutely nothing to due with South Dakota, but ever since I first heard that term (South Dakota Grudge Match) I just can't resist using it whenever I get a chance!  Anyway, on with the story:  The CLT lads and the RDU kids decided it would be fun to set up a meet on Neutral Ground to have some fun and meet some new opponents.  High Point NC is roughly halfway between and had a store (Gaming Underground, or Underground Games, I can never remember) with lots of table space, and so it was on!
RDU had 8 guys turn up, CLT had 4 until two of us Winston-Salem gaming pariahs showed up to join the CLT side.  The plan was to have 1:1 games in the morning and after lunch play a big honkin' game of Total War with CLT vs. RDU.  Each player made a late war 1750 pt. army for the single games and modified it to 1000 pt. for the Total War game. Since RDU had a two player advantage each CLT player got extra points to make up the difference; 8000 pt. per side. Here are some shots of the 1:1 games.  A lot of them are from my game and the games near me. I didn't have time to wonder around and take pictures of everything since I was busy getting stomped!

 Here is a shot of my beginning forces, five ISU-122's and two 100mm ATG's (Proxy!).  Everything else was a scattered delayed reserve.  Bummer, I know.  Turn one, here comes the Luftwaffe!  Yeah, that was a bummer too! I don't even remember the last time I played late war, and I made the fatal error of loading up with Tiger killers!  Unfortunately Rate of Fire 1 just doesn't put enough hate mail down range to crush normal armies. I brought a plastic spoon to a gunfight! ISU-122's are Old Glory and the 203mm tracked guns are also available from them, but from a different manufacturer.

 The Finns charge across the table!  If you want to win, employ a Finn! Two T-34's pop their tops with 122mm hits!

 One of the CLT lads brought some Big Guns, too!

 It's Panthers-a-go-go! on the table next door!  Special rules about flank shots and bad luck with the dice lead to the Panthers destroying about 75% of the Russian army they faced.

 Meanwhile on my table my heavies are getting systematically crushed by the Finns.  My CO never did get a single hit, even while stationary!  Bummer!

 Some of my reserves arrive in the corner, three JS-2's!  They manage to blow the infantry to atoms!

 But meanwhile over on the objective its a different story!

 Some madman from RDU brought Cav!  I think they were Hungarians.

 Man, those are some Big Guns!

 I knew there'd be some Tigers around here somewhere!  One RDU army had 4 of the wee beasties.

 Some hardcore ammo carrier brought nothing but arty! Eye-yi-yi...

 Getting ready for the Total War game, a 6x20 foot table!

 My lads are set up!  Once again they would basically do nothing the entire game, blasting massive shells everywhere except towards the enemy!  Then again, the enemy wasn't foolish enough to come out of hiding anywhere near them...

 A tiny bit of the grand battery in the center of the RDU position.  I thought this kind of set up went out of style after the First World War, but by golly it was ugly being on the receiving end of all those muzzles! It's a wonder the table didn't collapse!

 The center of the CLT deployment, nowhere near as intimidating!

 Turn One, Shot One, One Dead ISU-122!  Aw crap!  Arty with AT5 barrages? Gee whiz! And I didn't even get a turn yet!

 The horsemen arrive in our deployment zone, turn two!  Things are heading south in a hurry!

 But one of the CLT (W-S auxillary) guys had a mean infantry list!  Soviet Combat Sappers!  Trashing tanks, ATG's, infantry, cavalry; they spank everybody one at a time or all at once!  None Shall Pass!

And with that it was all over.  In all the excitement some of us didn't get a third turn, but the CLT side was getting crushed so comprehensively I really don't think it would have made any difference if we had.  The objectives were still pretty close, RDU being ahead by one, but the CLT armies were so badly hammered we packed everything up and called it a day!

 

Maybe I should've gone with the T34/85 list...

 

 

Barbarosa!!!!! No, not the Willie Nelson movie. Although its worth seeing.

Hi Kids, Around here we've been talking about Barbarosa for the past couple years. I'm intending to build some forces for 25mm Disposable Heroes games, and some 15mm stuff for Flames of War too.  If it's good enough for one scale, its good enough for two!  I decided to go whole hog and get some big honkin' units for the smaller scale, especially when I discovered The Warstore carries Zvezda kits! These BT-5's were only about $3.60 each!  Only about 5 parts so they go together in a freakin' snap! I didn't bother checking the unit sizes in FOW Barbarosa, so instead of maxing out at 16 tanks I only ordered 15.  Oh well.  Guess I'll be ordering at least two more, one to be #16 and another to be the HQ tank.

 Here we have a shot of the first batch of BT-5's!  Although Commie tanks tend to be green, I'm a sucker for camo.  And in this scale it's a snap!  I'm undecided whether I should paint the tanks a steel or grey color.  Usually I do but that's a lot of work.

With this many tanks in one unit I decided to at least make an attempt to avoid confusion and number the damn things.  I ordered some Soviet AFV numbers from I-94 Enterprizes. For $3 you can get two sheets loaded with numbers. I think they look pretty good! Highly recommended!  I only had one misbehave, flip over and become unusable.  In the future, if I ever build another BT-5 unit, (unlikely since they are about 1000 points for this many) I will put the decal on the flat part of the turret side. And these kits have only been lurking in the Basement for about a month or two!

So what does everybody think?  Should I paint the tracks or leave them black?

Massive Awesome Game of World Of Tanks!

Hi Kids,  The Chuckster's been at it again!  This time he went all medieval on his tier 3 opponents with the second best tank ever made, the T-127!  If you've gotta be commie, be a T-127!  It's a crab!  It's a hoss!  The horrifying thing to know is even with this SPECTACULAR score his team still managed to loose the game!  I mean Damn!  What's a tanker gotta do to pull out a win?

Just lookit all those medals!  Eight in one game!  Seven kills! What was the rest of my team doing?  Eye-yi-yi.....

I am a bad man!

And it's all the more surprising cause I really suck at this game!

Oh yeah, the Chuckster's a typical wargamer, all right!

Hi Kids,  How can you tell the Chuckster's a hardcore gaming fool?  Its easy, and here's the proof.  You know how people find stuff in the pockets of their winter coats when they wear them after hanging in the closet all year?  Most people find lint, spare change, maybe a $10 bill...
What's the Chuckster find in the coat he hasn't worn in 5 or 10 years?  You guessed it, Miniatures!

The Basement of Heaped Miniatures is getting sneakier by freakin' minute!  Hell, I don't even remember ever buying these guys, much less ever intending to build a Slayer Dwarf army for W$Fantasy.  In fact, of all the armies dwarves are probably the least likely I would ever build.  I haven't even played W$Fantasy in 5 years. It's a long story, but back in 3rd ed for about 10 years solid I lost to dwarves all the time.  I could go into further detail (such as my opponent taking 80 troops with magic seeking arrows ("just to see what would happen" sez he), 5-10 siege machines (aka cannon, bolt throwers, catapults, organ guns etc), or how he demanded that all armies be separated by 36" instead of the legally intended 24," ("because it makes more sense for the troops to have room to deploy" sez he), or even how we had to insert "initiative rolls" to see which army went first each turn (guess who was stuck in no-man's land for an extra turn?).

But maybe that would just be crying over spilt milk....

How did we get on this topic anyway?  Oh, that's right! I found these slayer dwarf command figs in my coat pocket!  Wooooo Hooooooo!!!

Snow in North Carolina!

Hi Kids,  Yes!  Once again we have snow in the ole hometown!  This is the view at 9am as I head out to work.   Why am I going to work on a day when all the normal people are hanging out at home?  Because if a job's worth doing, its worth dying for! And Yes!  I was the only one to show up. Although to be honest, it really wasn't that big a deal.  Within a mile of the house the major roads were already 100% clear.

Kind of a bummer, really.