AAR: Congo: The Lion Sleeps Tonight!

        For a third time playing a game, I decided to play the African Kingdom faction that I destroyed Kalissa with. I figured it would be an uphill battle, but there where no hills in this game. Instead, I got to face off with a new player named Chris who had recently moved into the area. He would be playing the British Expedition Force. Since he had never played the rules either, we did not play into a scenario. However, it all honesty, the faction I was running might fair better in an actual scenario.
     So my plan of attack was straight forward using as much terrain as possible. I did not even avoid the dangerous terrain, because I had just painted a bunch of animals. My mini-goal was to have someone somewhere die from an animal attack. Chris was aware of this, too, so he also ran into some dangerous terrain. As far as the game went, I was able to charge in and kill a unit of Ruga Rugas, which was all I could do for the rest of the game. I tried some suicide attacks that was successful at killing my own units. I tried to flee, but my wife informed me that I cannot just run off the board. I will have to look where that was written. However, I did manage to draw out a lion from he sleep. It was rather underwhelming, since I killed him with no problem. And that was how this game was turning. It was fast, becoming a PAD game (Prolonged Active Death). I ended the game after everyone with a weapon was killed.
    What I learned from the faction I was playing is that I would not have ran the list I was using. Of course, this is more based on the lack of more figures for this game and that it is the list the Northstar Miniatures provided when you buy. I think I would have switched out my Fanatical Warriors and my Scouts for more Married Warriors. The Fanatical Warriors without shooting weapons screwed over a couple of good opportunities. The Forrest Tribe in the near future, should be interesting.

AAR: Lord of the Rings: Battle Companies: Bogging Down!

    At our local Hobbytown, USA, it has been scheduled that a vast majority of us gamers play Lord of the Rings: Battle Companies on Thursday nights. The narrative campaign that I had mentioned in an earlier post is still going on. However, my wife, Kalissa has been going more that I have. I have been scheduled to work nearly every Thursday night, so these latest two games are what I played the last Thursday. Though, the narrative campaign was still being played, I decided not to play the Elves that I started with. Instead, I brought one of my other Battle Companies: my Mordor Orcs. At this point, they are nearly all Warg Riders. I like their speed and flexibility. And to boot, I brought my evil swamp board. Afterall, why only use a board once!
      So what I discovered is that my own board did not work well against me. Plus, I have come to an interesting conclusion when it comes to Battle Companies as a whole: I cannot use specialty rules in my forces! As luck would have it, almost everyone I have turned into a Hero with all of these "Bad Ass" rules dies first in a shooting phase. I have one Warg Rider with a bow that can shoot without movement penalties, with a 3+ hit that can reroll hits to kill. I do not know how good any of that is, because he died first in both games! This is a complaint, but that is only because, no one is playing a normal Lord of the Rings game. I think I could do more damage with regular troops that heroes running every where. I, also, would have rather not had a population cap, because I could have had a rather large army to use at this point.
     Anyway, here are some pictures of my demise. The first game, I lost everyone without killing anyone. "Flawless Victory!" from Mortal Combat was what I heard. The second game, I did much better. I killed three people before losing.

AAR: Congo: First Games on Safari

      It only took a year after buying the Congo rules for Kalissa and I to get figures for this game. I am pretty sure there are a lot of people who buy rule sets and forget to get miniatures for them. However, one of the things that Kalissa and I do before heading off to whatever convention we are going to is to make a list of games we have that we need stuff for. Kalissa had been telling me how easy and fun this game was, so we bought quite a few things for it. A side comment for us during these games was how we can keep up with all of the rules and games, since we play a lot of different games. I think we have been playing so many other game types that they are easy to understand at this point.
    Anyway, I went through and paint nearly everything we got for this game. What is lacking is the Forrest Tribe faction and animals. However, that will not take too much longer. Since the introduction of Games Workshop's Contrast Paints, I have sped through nearly everything we bought from Historicon 2019, which was about 200 figures in about three days. It will be another day just because of work and a commission project as well. So we just brought mainly what we had.
    Kalissa and I played to games of just killing each other. Since I had never played the rule before, I wanted to see how it played out. These rules come with campaigns, so that might be a fun to try for in the near future. As for the games, I chose to play the White Man Expedition Force against the African Kingdom. I found that the rules were fairly easy. We spent very little time looking over rules. I did find that I was rolling very well. Both games were victories for me. The second one was almost a flawless victory! I only had one casualty. The next time we play this, what to switch sides to see how well I do. Anyway, below are the game pictures as usual. Enjoy!