The Last Hills

On Sunday we played our first test-game-of-Future-War-Commander-by-Skype. I'd created a scenario based in a Frank Chadwick article in the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society about forty years ago!

Gus and John commanded elements of the armed forces of LSP (Pynchan) Inc - the corporate government a planet in the Third Imperium (the setting of the Traveller RPG).  Andy and Mark represented to revolutionaries closing in on the capital and on the verge of winning the planet-wide civil war.

As so often with these games, I was too busy trying to keep things moving to take photographs but here are a few.

I set the table up as a desert area with a small settlement and artificially irrigated fields in the centre. There were a few low ridges (marked by lines of gravel), a steep hill, and a steep-sided gully. 

The game was fairly slow as we were feeling our way into the rules.  I think we managed about three turns in four hours. 

Inevitably the built-up area was the focus of the fighting. Below we can see mercenary infantry passing the condenser unit adjacent to the crop-fields. 

The rebels' light combat walkers proved to be unfortunately vulnerable to fire from the government's relatively low-tech tracked tanks...

The picture below shows Government infantry at the front edge of the village.  At that point they had just destroyed a rebel recce unit which had got too close.

I'd made sure I gave all of the players two HQ units and the Government side had a Forward Air Controller. Of course both sides had a CO too. The opinion of the players was that the game had been slow as a result.

We're going to give the system another go, probably with smaller forces. 

Back to Future War Commander

It looks like we've had enough of Lion Rampant for a bit - one of my players finds the activation system particularly frustrating.  I've been casting around for other games to play virtually.  I've rejected Maurice (not well adapted to multiplayer and too difficult to keep track of who's holding what card) Dux Britanniarum and Pulp Alley (also card driven). Infamy Infamy is coming soon but I'll not be ready to run it straight away.  

I've had a (very) few 6mm sci-fi models in my collection for years and I only played Future War Commander a couple of times. I have an idea for a ladder campaign so I thought I'd dust off the rules and have a play, solo, to refamiliarise myself with them.

  

Here we see some mercenary forces in action against government troops on the planet Pyncharn. 

The rules are sufficiently similar to Cold War Commander that it wasn't too much of a struggle to get the hang of them. As with CWC they can bog down into a static firefight but, experience shows, it's the side that manoeuvres successfully that wins in those circumstances.

In this case the mercenaries managed to get round onto the flanks of the government forces and force them to retreat.

I'll run a test game with my four players next and see how that goes before committing to the campaign idea.

Every Man a Valuev

Among the stuff I bought at Triples was a couple of strips of Soviet artillery crew to go with the 180mm gun I need for a forthcoming game. I generally like Scotia's micro models and I'm sad to have to criticise them for a dodgy job but I feel obliged to warn you off these models.

The picture shows the Scotia figures (left) against part of a strip of Heroics and Ros WW2 German infantry (right).

As you can see, these guys are tall; about 7.5mm tall. This makes them 2.25m (or about 7'4") tall in real life. That's a little bit bigger than the bizarre-looking and famously hulking heavyweight boxer Nikolai Valuev.

To be honest, the sculpting isn't that great either - some of the proportions are just plain wrong. The figure holding binoculars is 6mm elbow to elbow but slightly less than 4mm tall at the waist.

Sorry, Scotia, these guys aren't going to find their way into my Soviet army. They may get painted up as some kind of sci fi troops for Future War Commander.

Grav Tank

This 1/300th scale model has been sitting unpainted in a drawer for about fifteen years.

No idea who the manufacturer was. Now that I've bought Future War Commander I'm looking to recruit some suitable toys. I picked up some plastic Games Workshop Epic space marines today and ill be basing them shortly.

The model is based on my standard artist's mounting board textured with sand. It's raised above the base by being glued to a 1/76th scale Panzer III wheel.