POST-APOCOLYPTIC CAMPAIGN 3

 Having had their arses kicked by the Wasteland Androids, Colin's party decided to make an adjustment to the route of their journey (they ran away so they now had to go the long way around!).

Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures of Game 2, suffice to say it ended with the leader and another fighter down and the rest of the party making a hasty exit as the metallic killers closed in. The leader survived, wandering into camp the next day, but had lost all his kit. On the plus side, they had managed to loot a gun, a stack of energy cells and a plasma grenade as they scarpered!

They now had to cross an area of dense jungle-like vegetation. The party will enter from the North (top edge) and need to exit from the South edge.

A simple task, but there are distractions along the way.

On either side of the table are some interesting containers, is it worth the delay to check these out?

However, something is lurking in the undergrowth....

....not all the plants are rooted to the ground, and regard the interlopers with murderous intent!

The party cautiously move forward.

The plant leader opens fire with an assault rifle.

The party dodge for cover in the undergrowth as two of their guns broke in quick succession (poor maintenance) when they tried to return fire. The party gunsmith will be very busy tonight repairing those!

More plants start advancing into the fray. The tall plant moving down the path had a kinetic energy absorbtion mutation, very disconcerting for Colin's champion when she rushed up to close range and empties the magazine of her smg into the creature, with no effect!

Seeing an opportunity, Colin threw his can of herbicide catching the plant leader and two others in the blast. The effect was disappointing, it only knocked the two plants off their feet and had no effect on the leader at all. But it destroyed the vegetation around them so that they were no longer in cover, allowing Colin's mutant sharpshooter to aid and take the leader down with his assault rifle. In fact the mutant proved to be deadly in this game (after a poor performance against the androids) taking out three more plants with carefully placed shots.

Without the leader's bonus the plants were now only activating on 5s or 6s, allowing Colin to run rings around them. His party were able to loot two of the containers, gaining much needed food, a needler pistol and another grenade.  

Colin almost blew it at this point. With a clear path to escape down in front of him, he momentarily turned to go for the third container. But he realised that it was too far away and there were still quite a few plants, including some undisclosed ambushers, between him and the container, so decided to retreat (as I was bound to get lucky on my activations at some point).

But that delay was enough for me to activate one of the ambushers, who was fast moving (for a vegetable) and leapt on the simian hybrid bringing up the tail of the party!

As they struggled I was also able to get a monster plant (with really big teeth!) to start to close in.

In the nick of time, Colin's mutant moved back and between them killed the ambusher, allowing the party to leg it of the table before my big beastie could get into contact!

A great game, with a lot of fun a laughter. 

The party are back on track, next time they face the storms of The Radioactive Desert!

New VSF Steam Tanks

 I recently expanded my collection of VSF armoured steam contraptions with three new purchases.

Two are from Black Pyramid, a medium landship and a heavy landship from their Tea Wars range https://www.blackpyramid.co.uk/collections/the-tea-wars-vehicles

                                     

The Medium Landship. All these models arrived just two days before I had a planned VSF battle with Colin and Henry, so I rushed to get them assembled and painted with a base coat so that I could get them om the table. the result meant I neglected to take any photos of the assembly or pre-painted stages!

The Heavy Landship. These are big pieces of resin but quite light, I do not know if Black Pyramid have some sort of hollow moulding they use, or else use some kind of lightweight resin. They come in 4 pieces, the main body, two track sections and the main gun.

Each tank comes with a selection of guns, described as eather weapons. Unfortunately, given they are presumably steam-powered machines, they do not have a smoke stack. But Black Pyramid do have a kit that includes two different smoke stacks, so I picked up one of those as well. I then added assorted machineguns from the bits box.

Like I said, these are big beasts. Shown here alongside an Ironclad medium steam tank.

On Ebay I also picked up an old PMC steam tractor. This range used to be sold on Ebay years ago but disappeared and I wish I had been into VSF back then and bought some. The moulds have ended up with Minifigs and the range is listed on the website, but everything is marked Out of Stock or Out of Production. http://www.miniaturefigurines.co.uk/Catalogue.aspx?ScaleID=15&CategoryID=61&SubCategoryID=310

 

Now some pictures of the vehicles with their final paint jobs and weathering.

I really like the Black Pyramid landships, quick to assemble, enough detail but overly fiddly to paint (I am a wargamer, not a precision modeler!). I will pick up a couple more and add a bit more stuff from the bits box. It is a shame that the old PMC range is no longer available, because i would certainly pick up a few more from the range if it were.

Post-Apocalyptic Campaign 1

 Colin and I have finally managed to start our campaign using the wonderful Mutants and Death Ray Guns rules by Ganesha Games. 

The first game was a simple scenario, crossing from one edge to the opposite side of the board.

Here is the table layout, Colin will be entering from the centre of the nearest edge.

Unfortunately the area was full of irradiated zombies, eager to chow down on Colin's gang. I placed these using a random deployment to reflect their lack of planning. Additionally there were pools of toxic waste scattered around than might periodically emit clouds of poisonous gas. Plus, the tall rock (to the right of the large pool in the photo) was actually a nest of  radioactive bugs!

The zombies after their first move. Yup, no-one activated!

As Colin's gang advanced one of then got too close to the nest, fortunately only 3 bugs reacted and emerged.

Whilst Colin got distracted shooting at the bugs, some of the zombies closed into melee. The zombies proved harder to kill with gunfire, as they required a head shot for a kill (ie could only be killed with an aimed shot).

Whilst Colin got distracted by the classic wargamers mistake of "Kill everything in sight", other zombies started moving closer. Don't lose sight of the objective, in this case escape!

One of the pools suddenly produced a cloud of poisonous gas (zombies and bugs were immune).

To trigger the gas we rolled a d6 for each pool at the end of a turn, on a roll of 1 gas appeared, effecting anyone within Short range of the pool. In each following turn we rolled again, this time the gas dispersed on 6 in the first turn, 5 or 6 in the second etc. However another roll of 1 would cause the gas cloud to expand to Medium range. A third roll of 1 would expand it to Long range!

Colin's sharpshooter hung back, so that when a zombie was pushed back out of contact, he could take the shot and blew what was left of the creatures brains out!

Remembering his actual objective, Colin broke off from melee, using the tall rock as a screen to slow the zombies down, as they went one way around the rock, he dodged around the other side.

Some lucky activations meant that he was able to get his entire band off-table without loss. Once there, they found some edible plants to replenish their rations. They also picked up a ragged old knapsack which turned out to have a still functioning frag grenade in it.

On to Scenario Two. Expect the radioactive bug to make a reappearance sometime soon!

VSF 1899 Balkans War 2

 We managed to get together for a second game set in the 1899 Great Steam War in the Balkans, using a VSF variation of The Men Who Would Be Kings. On this occaision neither side had any infantry support, except for a field gun and a couple of machingun units.  Otherwise both the Greek and Ottoman forces were entirely foreign supplied (and manned?) high tech equipment.

I had just bought two new steam tank models from Black Pyramid (and they are big! compared with the Ironclad tanks) which i had only had time to paint with a basecoat before the game. I shall weather them up before the next one.

A Turkish steam tank advances supported by a unit of German-made steam robots. An electric cannon gives fire support whilst Turkish machineguns set up in the scrub.

Another view of the Krupps steam robots and the electric gun.

Three light one-man walkers move forward. On the left is an Ottomen design armed with a deadly electric gun. the two other walkers are a Austrian design, mounting a machinegun and flamethrower each!

A heavy steam tank, armed with an electric gun and two machineguns advances, whilst a Turkish field gun unlimbers on the hill.

On the Greek side a heavy tank, medium tank and light walker (all British-made) use the ridge in the centre of the battlefield to screen their advance.

A French-designed armoured car boldly drives down the road to scout beyond the ridgeline. This would prove costly as it became the only visible target for the field gun and three electric guns, Opps! It was swiftly reduced to a battered metal box with no gun and the speed of a child's pedal car!!!

On the far flank a Greek field gun and machinegun set up "supported" by a second armoured car. This armoured car would remain in support for much of the battle as it's was constantly bogged down in the rough terrain (wheeled vehicles are fast, but risk getting stuck when moving off-road).

Three Enfield one-man steam walkers shelter behind a hill prior to their advance. Once again these small walkers would suffer heavy damage attempting to close with the \Turkish forces and all would be knocked out. (Perhaps the Greek commanders will realise that even armoured "cavalry" suffer charging across open ground in the face of modern weapons).

After much maneuvering, the Austrian walkers got into range with their flamethrowers. The Greek tank caught fire and was swiftly abandoned by it's crew.

 

Almost the end. The Turkish tanks advanced to get a clearfield of fire at the last Greek tank.

Endgame with only one tank and an armoured car left operation on the Greek side their commanders quit the field whilst they still had something to withdrawl! An outstanding Turkish victory this time.

We had a lot of laughs, and fine tuned some of the rule ammendments, particularly on fire weapons.

Close Quarter Battles Campaign - starting Act 4

 After a couple of months where life got in the way of gaming, we finally began Act 4 in the Close Quarter Battles Campaign book.

The lay out for the first part of Act 4. We just need to kill the big hairy beasties and take posession of the bridge.

After fighting our way past assorted cultists and rioting mobs!

The bridge guards.

Things started very badly, Lanroth, with the bow, couldn't roll higher than a 2 when shooting and failed activations left him very exposed at the end of the first turn! Things got even worse by turn 3, Lanroth was injured and two rolls of 1 meant that Sarmand had lost his magic for the rest of the game and a bowstring had snapped!

Things started to improve from then. The arrival of a couple of random Iron Pikes (city guard) distracted some of the rioting mobs (in fact the guardsmen slowly cut their way through almost a dozen rioteers by the end of the game, taking some pressure of off us!). Heimir (our nutty swordsman) started to pass activations and began slicing and dicing his way down the street. 

We experienced one of those cimematic moments that Sellswords produces from time to time. Several games back Sarmand had picked up a spare sword and just slung it on his back. Why? There is no bonus in Sellswords and a second sword. The reason was revealed! Rolling three passes when attacking a Saamu gladiator, Sarmand then rolled a 2 for his first attack, allowing the Saamu to grap the sword and wrench it out of Sarmand's grasp and cast it away into the water trough. We imagined the beast raising his axe with the gloating leer common to the best Hollywood villans, when Sarmand drew this spare sword and ran the beast through the chest!

Eventually we managed to take the bridge with all three characters still alive, in part due to the stirling work of the Iron Pikes.

VSF 1899 Balkans War

In the later part of the nineteenth century the Great Powers of Europe vied with one another to utilise the new technologies to create increasingly sophisticated weapons of war. Great Britain, France and Russia all developed weapons based on the technology of steam, whereas Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire depended more on the power of electricity, expanding on the pioneering research of Victor Frankenstein. All parties were keen to test their new weapons in earnest, but at the same time reluctant to commit to all-out war against another major power in Europe.

 1n 1899, the outbreak of war in the Balkans gave them the opportunity they were seeking. Each Great Power reinforced their allies in the region with new technology and military “advisors” to train in their use (and often operate the weapons as well). Britain and France supported Greece, Russia supported Bulgaria and Germany and Austro-Hungary threw their weight behind the Ottoman Empire. The ancient regions of Thrace and Macedonia became the testing grounds for the latest war machines.

 Here is a report on a typical engagement in Western Thrace.

An early casualty, a severely damaged the Ottoman armoured car makes a slow withdrawal. To the right is an Ottoman one-man walker with and electric lightning cannon, to the left Krupps Steam Automatons advance through the wood.

A slightly blurry view of the battlefield.

The left flank of the Ottoman force.

And the right flank, beyond the picture, another regular infantry unit anchors the line. 

THe centre of the Greek line, Enfield Steam Walkers advance, supported by Greek infantry. A French-made armoured car has bogged down by the road (the armoured car was to be unable to move for most of the game!).

The Greek left flank.

And their right. The Cretan Gendames have already suffered casualties from accurate rifle fire from an Ottoman infantry unit.

The Enfield walkers suffer from heavy fire from electric weapons and the Ottoman field gun. All are damaged and have their MMGs disabled. The drivers decide to charge the enemy (more of a gentle trot by now) as one of them bursts into flames.

A second walker is knocked out.

As the last walker arroaches the Ottoman line the Ottoman walker (now also damaged), intercepts the charge.

The two machines batter away at each other until the Ottoman driver is victorious, but was almost immediatly struck by a shell from the Greek field gun and destroyed!

Whilst the Ottomans held the upper hand in the centre, their flanks were being whittled away.

The last stand of the surviving Ottoman forces, the tank just visible at the top of the picture had failed to move for the entire game and only fired twice!

An overview of the end. The Greeks had two intact infantry units poised to swing around into the surviving Ottomans' flamk. At this point the Turkish commander order a withdrawal.