AAR: Ronin: A Test of Kalissa's Historicon 2019 Game.

       It is about the time for Historicon coming around, so Kalissa and I had to start some playtesting her game. Unfortunately, for me, I have cancelled my project for the year. I found that there was no way I would be able to pull off what I wanted in the timeframe I found I did not have. Well, I could have done it, but it would not have been to my standards. So I turned my focus on a rather smaller project with Samurai. Kalissa is going to run a Ronin game with six players. Seven, if you count the objective targets. The idea is that the local Shogun had been dishonored by some Bushi sisters, and he wants their heads. This means that there are six factions searching for these ladies in the local area. Plus, since there is a large bounty on them, greed will most likely drive these factions to kill each other in the process.
     This game is going to be a 3' x 6' board. I made the board out of two 3' x 3' post it boards to get to that size. It still has a little bit more work to go. I also have a couple more trees to make and paint the various civilians. It has been a fun quick project, so far.
    We ended up playing at Hobbytown, U.S.A.  with a couple of friends. Honestly, I think the game will play out better when the other factions are on the table, since we only used three out of the six. And having the civilians will also make the game more interesting, since you can search them to see if they are one of the Bushi. The game ended in a Draw. The Koreans and the Sohei Monks were able to capture the same amount of Bushi. There were seven of the them, but the Bushi women were able to take out the Sword School losing one of there own in the process. The game run rather smooth for it's first go round. Hopefully, we will get another test run before Historicon.

AAR: What A Tanker: Bocage Country Slugfest!

 
   It is nice when my wife is out of school for the summer, since we can pick up some random pick up games. Recently, with work and such, it have been a little difficult to running my "Mission Commission Success" games. This is were I have been contracted to make a mat for someone, and I try to play at least one game on it. The last four, this did not happen. However, I am cool with it, since some of the work I did I did not exactly have a game system I could play on it with. It was much like the Congo mats I did. In this game that we played, we were playing on a mat aimed for Napoleanics. Yeah, they had tanks! Sure!
    Randomly, we recruited other friend, Cy into a game of What A Tanker. He had played before with us, but it was in 15mm and one small 28mm game the other week. This time, we played on the much larger scale of a 5' x 9' board at our house. That size might seem a little big, but when you consider my wife rolling abilities? Yes, her Cromwells were like Farraris! It took her no time to reach across the board. Something about the incredible sixes she rolled throughout this game. Lucky, I was also rolling fairly well this particular evening! I managed to win the game in general based on some well based rolling of sixes and such. But let's be honest; I should have been normally destroyed. I think that this game would have not been my fair if not for the later time frame.

AAR: Normandy Firefight: Dutch Resistance Scouting Mission Gone Wrong.

   Kalissa and I decided to break up the Fantasy Fest we had been playing with Lord of the Rings. When you play the same game system a lot, it tends to burn you out with the game. Besides, we have lots of game systems to play. We bought out Normandy Firefight and our Lord of the Rings stuff to Hobbytown, U.S.A. to play either. It turns out, despite the many players of Lord of the Rings that showed up, they decided to watch how our game came out. I think some of the players were intrigued that you need so little when it comes to figures. We still play a lot of figures for this game being at the number of five per side. I know that we live dangerously!
    In this game, Kalissa's Dutch Resistance was to scout ahead and report any German activity. The idea was that after contact, they would send somebody back to get more reinforcements. I think in these rules, that means another figure instead on my version of 20 men. None of her people were able to do this. I had some decent luck to say the least. I should have lost my main leader when I was shot nearly point blank with a captured MG34. I lost only one guy charging that said MG, but not by the MG. A grenade I threw killed him and reduced the MG guy down to 4% health. I was able to kill three out of the five before Kalissa withdrew. I don't think we represented these rules at the fullest of our normal gaming. Normally, it would be a grenade fest. Only one was thrown the whole game and caused me to kill one of my own guys. It happens!