New Years Eve Update

And with that the last week of 2014 is behind us. We are on the cusp of a new and exciting future. What wonders will 2015 hold? I think “more of the same, but slightly different” is a pretty good bet. Not too much has happened over the last week. I have done some FoW terrain work though, had a game of Infinity and considered an old hobby…

Flames of War Terrain

On Boxing Day I cracked open my new hot wire cutter and got to work carving out some ridges and a hill from one of the sheets of XPS (Extruded Polystyrene) foam I picked up from Bunnings the other month.

I’m not sure how clear the images above are – I probably should have taken the photographs on the floor (the tiles in my hall and kitchen/living area are dark grey). I’m pretty pleased with the results. Now all that needs done is sand and rocks to be glued on and then to paint them. I shan’t bother gluing them to MDF, though I might find that to be advisable. Trial and error, here we come!

Infinity Game

So I don’t have an image of the table for the game, unfrotunately, but I played a singled 300pts game, JSA VS Nomads on Sunday against a mate. I’d been hassling him to make some time for a game for ages, so it was great we could all head around another mate’s place (the Tohaa player I usually VS) and get a game in.

The mission was Emergency Transmission – there are 6 consoles in a circle around the central point of the table at a distance from the centre. In the very centre of the table is a single antenna. Objectives are to connect to consoles, send the transmission from the antenna (which can only be done if you’ve activated two consoles) and then hold the antenna. I had first turn and deployed first. My force was split into two groups of six: Group 1 was a kempeitai (chain of command), domaru butai (Lt), tokusetsu eisei, keisotsu butai (HMG), raiden seitobutai (hidden deployment) and oniwaban (hidden deployment). Group two was two aragoto senkenbutai (one a hacker, the other Asuka), a linked team of three keisotsu butai (two forward observers and a light GL) and a ninja (hidden deployment). I’m not sure my mate’s full list, but there was a TAG, a hellcat and a mobile brigada on the field, plus some Nomad line troops and other things.

My first turn my bikers, being impetuous, gunned up my left flank. His hacker tried to hack my hacker, but ended up frying his own brain and passing to unconcious. I then moved in and activated the left console on the centre line. My Keisotsu then activated a second console on my starting line. Asuka zipped up and opened up with her assault pistol on two enemies, downing a medic. My HMG then popped a line trooper. I should point out at this point that the Mobile Brigada missed a total of three ARO shots with his multirifle in this turn: two on the bikes, one on the HMG (if I recall correctly). This becomes a bit of a thing for him. The final thing to happen this turn was the kempeitai getting himself taken down while trying to make it to the central antenna – this did not please me, he was only unconcious though.

Mate’s first turn the Hellcat came on and turned Asuka’s body into a bullet cushion. His sniper then popped my HMG (just). His TAG laid surpression down on my right flank (we were playing N2, not N3). He then spent three orders (all the rolls were bad, so bad) to activate a console with his last specialist.

My second turn and I used all my available orders for group one (reduced to two with the HMG and kempeitai being unconcious and the other two miniatures being in hidden deployment) to move my Domaru Butai up and try pull off a long shot speculative E/M grenade on the TAG. It failed, no surprises. I then went rambo with my hacker. She gunned through the centre of the field, avoiding or saving against a couple of AROs. She then hacked the mobile brigada, immobilising him, then shot at him and wounded him, then went into close combat and shanked him. This put the Nomads in loss of Lt. His turn two and he used his two orders to pop my hacker with his sniper. I was disappointed because I wanted to hack his TAG, but I’d already won, so I wasn’t bothered.

My turn three and I tried to E/M the TAG again, and failed. I revealed the Raiden ‘just cos’ and then spent my remaining orders (all group 2) on lobbing speculative light GL fire over a wall at his sniper (failed), then his last specialist (failed) then his last specialist again (crit, killed her). My mate used his last turn to pop my Raiden with his sniper.

In the end I had connected to more consoles that he had (2VPs) and completed one of my classified objectives (hacking one, 1VP) to be 3VPs to his 0. Victory to the JSA!

It was a pretty fun game, though the dice were against my mate pretty big. I learnt an important lesson about placing camo markers rather than using hidden deployment too. I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time.

The Old Hobby

We all start somewhere, and like (probably) most of us out there I began with Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. While clearing out a case to transport my Infinity on Sunday I ended up setting up my Blood Angels army on one of my cardtables.

Looks nice set up like that. Too bad GW are pricks and I find their game wanting! Still, it was nice to reflect on hobby years gone by and see an old force set out in all its glory.

The Painting Pile

So that brings us to the end of this update and the end of 2014. To finish, I’d like to share the following image:

This is my pile of Infinity blisters and boxes that require painting – plus two more minitures which I’d already got ready for painting and have now started on (AP HMG line kazak and dozer engineer with MUL control device). That’ll probably keep me busy for a good two or three months I reckon! I hope to get the Flames of War terrain done/done-ish this weekend though, so perhaps an update on that next week?

Until then, enjoy the last fleeting moments of the year that has been and don’t get yourself on the front page of the paper. Happy New Wargaming Year!

Christmas Eve Update

This post should be read while listening to “School’s Out”, which I had playing in my head when my manager told me the office was closed as of midday and we were all to get out by 1pm because it’s Christmas eve, dammit, and we’ll be doing the same again next Wednesday for New Year’s Eve.

I’ve been a bit delayed in posting this update with work and the lead up to Christmas (which is at mine this year), but things got done last week/the weekend. First, I knocked off my two tankhunters (Adhesive Launcher and AP HMG); then I put together another four shipping containers, and later painted them; finally, I had a few games against a mate who is just getting into Infinity. They weren’t really the best games, but he is learning and only has the Operaiton Icestorm contents to game with, so his force composition choices are severely limited. That said, we had some fun and got to try things out. So read on and feast your eyes on all the pretty pictures!

Oh, quick addendum: I also picked up the Infinity N3 rulebook yesterday (after only putting my name down for it Saturday) and got the pre-order mini to boot (not my intention). Very much looking forward to the rest of the unit profiles to come out so I can get my JSA on N3 style.

Tankhunters

If you were to ask me “Hey, why did you choose Ariadna as your second force?” (yes, they are actually my second force, Japanese Sectorial Army are my first force, I now own the whole JSA range, half of which perhaps needs painting. You will see these in the future times), my answer would be spoken swiftly and with confidence “Tankhunters”. I saw the Tankhunter autocannon model and went “I must own this”. So it should come as no surprise that it was one of the first Ariadna miniatures I purchased after getting the starter set (actually it was the first if I recall correctly). I’m thinking of getting more. More autocannons. MOAR!

The four images above are the Tankhunter with adhesive launcher (ADHL). I glued the AP Rifle he also comes with to his backpack, buuuut I’m a bit too lazy to green stuff a gunsling for it. You should know the colour scheme by now: we’ve camo pattern on the white uniform, though I’ve done the inverted pattern on the helmet too in this case. I’m happy enough with the result.

And then in the above four images we have the Tankhunter with AP HMG. Ariadna do so love their AP HMGs, and I note that the N3 profiles have made all the AP HMG miniatures cheaper points wise – especially the Veteran Kazak AP HMG, who has dropped from 61 points to 47 (if I recall correctly). I can’t remember what the Tankhunter one is pointed at now, but I know he is cheaper too. Again, I like how the model turned out. Another welcome addition to my forces.

Battle Time

 

I played a total of three games against a mate of mine who is new to Infinity. We played the first two games on the above battlefield, though in the second game I did tweak the angling of the building in the right on the left hand image to cut down the nasty field of fire a particular spot (which was within the deployment zone) down. My mate only has the Operation Icestorm miniatures, so his force selection was very limited and this was certainly a handicap – though it didn’t stop him tabling me the first game.

First game was Ariadna V Pano. I had first turn and deployed first. His sniper was in a very nasty spot that had vantage over basically the whole field and all approaches – not something you want when the miniature in question already has high ballistic skill (14?) and is armed with a multisniper rifle. Combined with my poor choices for my hidden deployments this lead to me losing everything but my Veteran Kazak Lt, Tankhunter with ADHL and (still camoed) Chasseur with ADHL by the end of his turn 2. Not so good.

Second game was Ariadna V Nomads and I tweaked the building as mentioned above to limit the arc of fire to allow movement up that flank of the board via sticking to the right (of the left image) of the building. It still offered excellent vantage over the field though. Just as with the first game, I was going first, deploying first and on the same side (the side with the single building). This time, however, he placed his sniper (an Intruder I think?) on the second storey of the building on the other side of the field. The mission was supplies. I moved up and grabbed the box on (my) right side. In the Nomad turn the Line Kazak that achieved that was fragged by the Mobile Brigada and then the Nomads grabbed the supplies on the other side of the field. In my turn 2, however, my Vet Kazak moved up and wasted the Mobile Brigada (two hits, one crit, both saves failed). My Foxtrot Ranger then followed up with a speculative grenade onto the roof of the building to take out the sniper. Finally the tankhunter and chassuer appeared, and with the other Line Kazak moving up, all three opened up on the Nomad on the supplies – the two ADHLs missed, but the rifle scored one hit and the save was failed. Nomads were put into full retreat – we agreed to call it a win for Ariadna at that point, there was no point to play the third turn.

The third game was played on the above table. The idea was to have a container yard in the centre in which CQC madness could take place, some very open areas around the field, but with cover that could be jumped between through use of cautious movement. It didn’t quite work out like that, but there was some fun melee.

The game was JSA V Pano. Again, I deployed first and had first time, we rolled annihilation for the mission – which suited the Pano best too. I had set up a HMG on top the building on the (back) left of the left image – the sniper was directly opposite on the (front) left building. My mate made the mistake of not starting prone and tried in vain to shoot back at the overwhelming fire power of the HMG. With the sniper dead, I moved up my Domaru Butai through the centre of the field, my Kempeitai up the right a bit, and turned my keisotsu on the left flank around to make sure I could ARO any pesky airborne deployment.

His turn, he tried to take the HMG out from the opposite corner of the field – I chose to dodge and succeeded in getting myself to ground to avoid further shooting. My next turn I moved my Domaru up further, commenting “this is probably a stupid idea, but I really want to see this in action”. Basically I had only just learnt the true close combat nastiness that is a Domaru Butai. He has CC 19, and is berserk – which adds +9 to his CC ability. Any stat over 20 simply increases your critical range by the amount you are over 20, i.e. 28 means 20-8 is your critical range, so any result of 12 to 20 inclusive is a critical hit. Anyway, I dodged into combat, but failed to crit in CC or wound in CC (he saved – the fight was against an Orc Troop). I chose to leave things as they were to force him to spend an order on the CC in his active turn, and revealed a TO camo marker and moved up (my Oniwaban). I also popped my HMG and managed to wound his Knight of Some-Place-Starting-With-M.

His turn and the AD came in – right behind my HMH, which turned around in response. The two Keisotsu I had watching out for the airdrop opened up and managed to kill the target – which was good, but also bad. It was bad because the next order saw the Knight and Fusilier shoot my HMG in the back of the head. In CC my Domaru crit the Orc Troop (which might have actually meant instant death because Heavy Infantry are vulnerable to E/M? I’ll need to check this), immbolising him. My Domaru was also hit and failed to save.

My next turn, the Domaru (now being impetuous) killed the Orc Troop and moved up to take on the Knight, the Oniwaban went for the Fusilier. The Oniwaban cut the Fusilier in half in two orders (he passed his first save), but the Domaru Butai landed himself on the Knight’s AP CCW – though the Knight himself suffered a fatal blow from the berserk and frenzied Domaru.

So although it was pretty one sided, it had some great close combat, which I’ve not had the chance to get into in Infinity before.

More Containers

Finally we have the shipping containers. They are shipping containers. What more is there to say? Oh, I know, the image is somewhat over saturated. So that gives me six shipping containers all painted and good to be used (not that not being painted stopped that as you can see from the images above).

And that rounds out the last week. I’m not sure when my next update will be, or what it will be about – actually I lie, playing some Infinity this Sunday, so it will likely be within the next week and be all about that. Flames of War terrain is also on my agenda of things to do and post about though. I also need to read the N3 rules. And the 5th Ed Dungeon Master’s Guide. And start writing a new D&D Campaign. And maybe I should eat, sleep and go to work somewhere in there too.

The real world is for suckers, amirite? Until next time, have a great Christmas, a happy new year and don’t end up on the front page of the paper!

This Post is Just a Wall of Text

I am afraid there will be no pretty pictures in this post. It is just a general update and some random musings. Things covered are what I did today, thoughts on Flames of War and thoughts on D&D 5e.

Things I Did Today

I finished drawing up my North Africa buildings, walls, another shipping container and four tech crates. The latter two items are all cut out and ready for assembly and painting too. In addition, I cut out three bits of MDF for some scrub patches for my North Africa battlefield.

The bad news is, none of these things are likely to get done this weekend, because I’m at my parent’s for lunch tomorrow (my uncle is over from Victoria). This is somewhat disappointing, but I’ve been going pretty hard on the hobby things, so an easy weekend is not unwelcome.

Other things to report here are that now that I have finally acquired a hot wire cutter, I hope to get some hills going soon. With this now in my possession, I think I might focus on getting the scrub, some rocky ground and a few hills done. That will be the quickest route to a small North Africa battlefield – I’ve really wanted to see my DAK in action 😀

Some Thoughts on Flames of War/WWII Gaming

I like Flames of War, but I haven’t played many games – only about half a dozen in the (over) three and a half years I have been building FoW forces. This disappoints me, I’d like to play more and get a better feel for the game. Luckily a mate who lives nearby is doing a North Africa force with me, so once I’ve the terrain together I’m hoping we can play often enough (i’d be happy with a game every 4-8weeks.

There are, however, some things I’ve noticed in the few games of FoW I’ve played, things that I didn’t have at the forefront of my mind, but when I stumbled on a couple of “Why I don’t like FoW” blog posts the other day, lept into my conscious. The primary criticisms focus on the game being a too much “Napoleonics but WWII”, the issue with distances (those arty pieces you have on the field realistically could be shooting from two-three tables away) and the wheel-to-wheel tanks issue (something I especially had noticed having Soviet forces).

All of these criticisms resonated with me. The first is interesting, because that is certainly what I consider Warhammer 40k to be – Napoleonics in spaaaaaace(!). I feel that it is less the case in FoW, but personally I fear it is really a systemic issue with “you go, I go” wargames. The “always your turn” mechanic that Infinity employs, or the order dice system of Bolt Action are excellent developments for tabletop gaming and, personally, I think greater deployment of these mechanisms or new incarnations of these sorts of ideas will really enrich wargaming further. As for the other two points, well, they are what they are. That all said, I’ve still had very enjoyable games of FoW, but it has left me wanting something more.

The result of this is that I hope to, in the new year, give I Ain’t Been Shot Mum! a go. The ideas behind the rules really intrigue me and I read good things, so I’d love to test it out myself. The best part is, of course, they don’t cost an arm and a leg!

Thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

Although my WordPress is a dedication to my passion for wargaming, I also enjoy tabletop RPGs – as you can see from an earlier post with our Pathfinder character models. Next year I will be running a D&D 5e campaign, and mate of mine might do the same. I’ve only just got the books and read through the first part of the Player’s Handbook, but I’ve some thoughts and observations I want to share.

The overarching comment is that I am really impressed with what Wizards of the Coast have produced. I think it really streamlines the game (bear in mind I am coming from 3.5e/Pathfinder and have no experience of 4e) and puts a great emphasis on roleplay.

Compared with 3.5e I notice a couple of quite significant changes that could be considered to cut down your choice and the customisation options for your character (this isn’t quite accurate, but I’ll get to that). The first is that prestige classes are now built into classes as “archetypes”. So instead of getting the feats you need, putting the necessary points into the right skills and getting to whatever level for the base attack bonus and saving throws you might need, it is all something that is unlocked normally through class progression. The good thing is this makes things a lot more straightforward and creates an inbuilt mechanism through which players decide how they want to specialise their character’s class. The bad, I feel, is that you can’t do whacky things where you’re playing a class that wouldn’t ordinarily prestige into something, but you do it anyway because you’re a high speed, low drag, T1 operator.

The second thing is that feats are now an optional thing. At the DM’s discretion players can take a feat when normally they would get +1 on an ability score (these are now built into the class tables and vary from class to class). The feat list is significantly shorter now too – although this is just the PBH, I’m sure more will pop up. So feats take a much, much less prominent place in character customisation and will force players’ to make the choice between a better stat, or a feat.

Balancing this out, players can now take backgrounds at character creation that give players an excellent guides on how their character manifests itself in the game – this is a great benefit for new players, unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs, but also handy for more experienced players. These backgrounds also have real ingame impact through bonuses on particular skills and so forth. Through this mechanism, and a much more detailed description chapter, the character creation system now has an inbuilt system of backstory creation and roleplay prompts, great for players of all levels of experience to guide their roleplay to ensure continuity.

The simplification of the class system, while a the same time adding much greater depth within each class (choices are often involved, e.g. fighter combat styles), set starting gear (starting gold and purchasing gear is opitional) and the greatly improved description chapter all mean that getting into the game, regardless of experience, is quicker and easier than ever. The focus also shifts to roleplay and interactions, rather than pouring over tomes to min/max your feat and skill combinations and so on. Oh, also, multiclassing no longer makes you a god. This a very welcome change.

The End

Anyway, this has been a bit of scatter brain post, but I hope you found something interesting in it. I’ll make sure to have lots of nice pictures next post (which may not be Friday because work Christmas lunch, which might turn into drinking to more than I usually do these days, i.e. more than a glass or two of wine).

The Friday Post – 12th of December, 2014

This week we have a 7th Foxtrot Ranger with a grenade launcher and… not much else. Actually I have drawn up some Flames of War buildings for North Africa and will draw up some tech coffins and another shipping container too. I’m hoping to have the Infinity related things done this weekend and the FoW buildings done next weekend, however Christmas is fast approaching and I’m hosting my parents and grandparents (my siblings being overseas or at work or both) and I’ve a lot that needs to be done around home. So chances are that terrain will be it before Boxing Day. Maybe I’ll get another miniature or two done before then too, but housework is likely to raini on my wargaming parade for the next fortnight.

Foxtrot Ranger

He is here to show the rest of the Ariadna forces that it’s not just the women who can be tough as nails and be light on clothes but painted up in snow camo. I decided to camo up his face and arms like the way Corvus Belli displays the model. I think it worked out ok, infact I’m pretty pleased with him and I am looking forward to shooting grenades all over the place sometime soon.

Just some more shots, rear and right side.

My tankhunters and Dozer Engineer came in earlier in the week, so I’ve picked them up and they’ll likely be next on the list of models to be painted. The rest of my order should be in within the next week, given the supplier has them all in stock.

Right now though, sleep. Might post something over the weekend, likely won’t because I’ve things going on. Till the future times, enjoy.

Success on a Sunday – Now with 100% more Painted Infinity Terrain

Actually that is a lie, it is infinite percent more painted Infinity terrain (100% of nothing being nothing). That hardly matters though because I did it. I had my doubts after I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I thought I would. It’s a fairly standard thing really: you settle on a hobby project, get started, plan things out, think “ok, this will take this unit of time” – surprise! everything ends up taking much longer! Not today, son, not this day: the building I was working on is battle ready.

There are details I still want to add, but in terms of the building’s functionality on the field, it is good to go. Yesterday I started on the doors, did some painting work on the roads and assembled the roof. The roof turned out really well, although it fits a tight, and there are small gaps at the foot of the slope, these aren’t issues that detracts from the table. Today I finished the doors and then got painting, doing the shipping container I made, the exterior of the building and finishing the road pieces. I’m very pleased with my work and look forward to using on the battlefield!

The End Result

Here we have a couple of shots, including wonderful backgrounds of my garage-cum-hobby room, complete with Flames of War terrain on the shelves. I can’t recall how noticeable it was in the work in progress shots, but I decided to cut a couple of strips of 3mm MDF and glue them to the back of the base to fix the over hang of the stairway wall. I used wood putty to fill the gap between these strips and the base that resulted from my skill with the jigsaw (or lack thereof) and smooth the end result over. I also used a small strip of 3mm MDF to fix the bit where the stairs meet the first floor, which I had accidentally cut out.

The doors and roof both involve two layers of cardboard (from a box of Wheeties) in between which cut up pieces of plastic from the blister packs I’ve painted recently. The middle skylight piece has a little bit of paint along one edge, I might see if I can’t fix that with a small amount of Windex on a paper tower or something at some point. The only other significant blemish is where the wall from the stairway joins the building: there is about a 4mm gap or so. I overlooked this while doing the gap filling on the first floor overhang bits (with Green Stuff). Not sure what I am going to do about this. I might just leave it and not bother, it isn’t overly problematic, but it is a pretty significant gap.

I should’ve taken a picture of it on its own, but the shipping container came out really good. It’s just a couple of coats of Terracotta colour craft paint with some dodgy written kanji on it to pass as some fictitious company logo. Simple, easy, quick as you like and looks nice on the table. As for the roads, my (lack) of jigsaw skills were really the main issue with them. They’ve painted up well – no I’m not fussed the road markings are all that clean, straight and smooth. The road surface is also dirty, which is intentional. The sand on the side is painted just the way the table is: Beasty Brown equivalent followed by desert yellow equivalent followed by bonewhite equivalent.

The Table

As you may recall, the building, road pieces and shipping container are to fit into a whole Operation Firestorm inspired desert board. As you can see above, that is what progress looks like. Progress is beautiful.

A weekend to be proud of! Now to the week, where I will ponder what to make next and paint up a model (or maybe two, but unlikely). Until next time.

The It’s-Friday-Elsewhere-(But-Not-Here) Post – 6th of December, 2014

Word. Just a quick update, not too much went on this week. I’ve done the smallest amount of work more on my building and road surfaces. The roads won’t take much to finish, but the building still requires the roof to be assembled, then I need to paint the exterior and the roof, after which I will do the details. I’m not 100% I can get it done this weekend, but worst case scenario is that everything is painted, but it lacks details. Also doors. Need to do the doors. They count as details, though that’s not what I was thinking when I typed “details”. True story.

Things that have occurred in the past week: played a game last Sunday – the most intense game of Infinity I’ve played yet; and I painted my Chasseur with adhesive launcher.

Chasseur

Nothing all that special here. She’s a Chasseur. She’s armed with an adhesive launcher. Standard snow camo colour scheme – Dead White with German Grey ‘C’ and ‘S’ shapes randomly placed, in the curve of which is painted Stonewall Grey, and then thin(ish sometimes) Black splinters that break the German Grey lines (and sometimes I put in white space to break it up). She’s showing a lot of flesh. Entirely practical colour scheme. I see no problems with this. I’m also looking forward to deploying her in the future.

Operation Unknown Congress

Courtesy of http://www.ftrain.com/cgi-bin/l_operation.cgi?num_ops=20 the above name was generated for the battle.

Above we have the battlefield (the quality of the images leaves a bit to be desired, sorry about that), shot on the left is the view from the Tohaa side, shot on the right is the Japanese Sectorial Army (JSA, my force) side. We usually do a real clustercluck of scenery. I mean a real clustercluck. On a recommendation, however, and following on from the discussion on the Infinity Australia page on Facebook about terrain density, we limited ourselves to six buildings. My road pieces run right through the middle of the field (I’d just finished gluing the sand, it was yet to be sealed), which worked wonderfully for the mission we rolled (Supply, is that what it’s called? Three tech coffins across the centre line, 1p for each supply box held at the end of the game, 3pts for having more than your opponent, 2pts if your opponent has none, 1pt for each of two classified objectives).

200pt lists each (well, 203 and 204 in the end for JSA and Tohaa respectively). Despite all the games against Tohaa, I’m still ignorant of their unit names etc. But my list was: Asuka (Lt), Oniwaban (hidden deployment), Ninja w/ multisniper (also hidden deployment), Raiden w/ heavy rocket launcher (also also hidden deployment), Kempeitai w/ boarding shotgun and Chain of Command, Tokusetsu Eisei and a Keisotsu Butai with a medkit.

I was acting first and decided to focus my efforts on the left of field (to me, so in the left image that is the closest side to the camera), moving up my Keisotsu to open the tech coffin (represented by the unpainted console) and grab the supplies while the Kempeitai moved up to support from behind the planter. Tohaa turn one, triad on the left lost (unconscious) a member running through the open to the Kempeitai, but the Kempeitai was taken down (unconscious) an order later. My raiden popped up (top of the building the left corner of my deployment, the two storey square one), but missed the spitfire inside the building opposite. A Tohaa sniper then popped up on the other side of the field and took a shot, but missed, then shot again next order. We worked things out that I couldn’t hit because I was at -12 for reasons I’m not sure of, because in hindsight I think it should’ve been -9. Anyway, Raiden lived and went prone. With the Tohaa sniper recamoing with the last order.

My next active turn I moved my Eisetsu Butai up and secured another supply box on the far right. My Raiden popped his head up and fragged the spitfire this time. Tohaa active turn and my Eisetsu went down (unconscious) to the second spitfire (behind the shipping crates in the Tohaa side on my right flank) and although my Ninja (who appeared on top the building opposite the crates) hit with DA ammunition, both wounds were saved and the model volunteered to fail his guts rolls and go behind the crates. Next the Tohaa sniper appeared and shot at the Raiden, who went down (unconscious), but my Ninja took out the sniper (dead) in his ARO. Next the Tohaa remote tried to make its way to heal the unconscious triad member, but was taken out by the Ninja. Unfortunately the Spitfire came to bear of the Ninja and ended his good run via some dark magicks (primarily a bad roll for me) and he died outright. Some other things happened next, but I made my mate realise he’d used too many orders, so we wound back the clock and the ninja’s death was the end of his active turn.

My third active turn and I had two orders, plus Lt and was approximately stuff all points off full retreat (less than 10). I used all my orders on Asuka to gun it to the supply box by the unconscious Eisei, grab it, and gun it to behind the footbridge on my side (where my Oniwaban was in hidden deployment). Though the spitfire had an ARO, it missed. Tohaa active turn and the spitfire fails again thanks to bad rolling and a successful dodge from Asuka. Then in came the airborne deployment, which landed successfully. Asuka turned, and then when she was shot at, she used her flamethrower. Unfortunately she went down (dead) and was unable to kill her adversary. But my mate had run out of orders, with his last leaving him a short move away from the supply box (which he’d need a short skill to pick up anyways) and the Oniwaban appeared right next to him at the end anyway (but failed to strike him down).

Aftermath: neither of us completed either of our classified objectives. I held one supply box (1pt), had more than my opponent (3pts) and my opponent had none (2pts). End count: JSA 6 vs Tohaa 0.

The result reads as though I trounced my mate, but I did anything but. The game was intense till the end and on a real knife edge the whole way. The open field allowed our snipers to shine and put real uncertainty around crossing the open. We agreed the thing that lost it for my mate was sitting back and trying to set up the cover over the tech coffins without making the offensive moves to secure them (his plan was to let me open the coffins then swoop in and steal). It was an awesome game though, and we decided not to do another, but teach another mate the basics so he could get right into things when his Operation Icestorm box arrived.

All in all, a great weekend. Anyway, hobby things aren’t going to get done if I keep typing on here, and I still need to do some gardening and it is already almost midday. Gotta get on it son! Enjoy the weekend!