June 2020 Sucks! But We Now Have A Cat 5 House!

 
  June has been terrible for our wargaming world for Kalissa and I. In May, our house had roof damage from a storm that caused leaks in our kitchen and our game room. These means that we have had little gaming this month in general. It took a few weeks for our insurance to fix said problem. Now, when they did the job at hand, they did a pretty good job. If things work out, we should have a home game, despite the Covid-19 second wave. At this point, I just want to contract the damn thing to get it over with. However, that still will not stop the cancelling of all of the conventions I would have been going to. All I know it that I am going to outlaw any talk of 2020 after this year in the household.
    But there was a positive to Kalissa and I's life! We have gained kittens. That is four of them at the tail end of April. Last year, Kalissa was talking to her mom outside when she was greeted by a small male cat. This cat is still currently the chilliest cat I have ever met. It seems strange that he is a stray based on his behavior. Kalissa named him Nimbus; and he would show up daily. We tried to allow him into the house, but Izzy, our cat, refused to allow it. She would chase him out the door with blind rage outdoors, despite being terrified of outside. She would run inside and hide afterwards! I was calling him an "HWC", because he was definitely been fed by multiply neighbors. HWC stands for Homicidal Welfare Cat. After a rather large cat fight with several other cats, Nimbus came out on top ruling our intersection. And then, he found a girlfriend, Kalissa named Calypso, which is a Calico Cat. She has been hard to catch and have been living under our house.
    Anyway, they seemed to have gotten along great, because we now have four of their children in our house. We have two boys and two girls. The boys are named Kinko and Peach. The girls are named Jupiter and Oreo. I am sure with the pictures, you might be able to guess which ones are which. And as for Izzy, she is not a fan of this! She could dominate these Nimbus kids, but she runs when Jupiter walks up and licks her nose! Things are calming down in the household. I am aware that the kittens will be a challenge to wargaming. They, already, really want to help with my commission projects. Maybe, I can get them trained to paint?

This is Nimbus: the chilliest outdoor cat!

Jupiter and Oreo.

Oreo.

Peach.

Left to Right: Oreo, Kinko, Peach, and Jupiter.

Kinko.

Nap time!

ECW Rules: A Fun Playtest.

   Kalissa and I were invited by our friend, Eric to come playtest some ECW rules that he was developing along with another friend, Alan. I cannot remember for the life of me what they were calling the rules, but we were told by Eric that we were to play and try to break the game. These would be the first rules that I know off that Eric would be publishing. Alan has quite and few rules out there in the wargaming world with Ancients and Medieval Era, so there is a pretty good chance of seeing these published. Plus, we were told we could get the rules free!
   The game that we were playtesting was based on the Battle of Aberdeen in 1646 during the Scottish Civil War. I am not very familiar with this time period, but I figured that we were playing this based on our game was played in Aberdeen, NC. The rules were made to be fairly simple. Morale was based on a color system using casualty markers. Each unit shot or hit in melee changes color of their casualty as more damage is taken. Green is good. Red is nearly dead. Each unit had a captain that could burn of a hit of damage to reduce the effects. Also, the overall commander had a number of coins that could be used at nearly anytime to do special actions. These coins were a "one time" use for the whole game, which opening up some possibilities. As far as we could tell for the first good, it is a fun game. We did not get to finish it, because a lot of playtest questions came up about different rules and answers that can stream line the game for easier play. We will try out more of these rules later. I am sure.

AAR: What A Tanker: A Demo Game

      This is another round of playing "What A Tanker" being played as a demonstration game. I originally brought this game to one of our local hobby shops, Hit Point Hobbies. I thought there were more people going to play, but I just introduced the game to one player. That is not a bad thing, but this game is best played with more players. However, we both had two tanks instead. The Soviet T-34/85's hit most of the time, but never seemed to do any damage. It ended up being chase game. I tried to out run the Germans, but I still lost both tanks. Still, I was able to showcase the rules with 15 mm terrain that is more like my 28mm. We had fun!

AAR: Bolt Action: Germans Vs. French (Infantry Only)

    Before the previous post of a desert slap fight game, I had played another Bolt Action game against a gentlemen named Michael who ran his Bulgarians. In that first game against each other, I slightly maybe completely destroyed most of his units. We had fun, but that seemed a little bad for a first encounter. This seemed a mix of good rolls, bad rolls and my list with two Panzer IV's in a re-inforced platoon. Since there was slight complaint about vehicles, this game a week later, I decided to live on the edge and run German Fallschrimjaegers without any vehicles. And he brought French with a bunch of artillery. Part of this game was to show you can still play this game with no real problems running just infantry. Actually, playing infantry only tends to be a rare occasion.
     So how did this game play out, since I did not take too many pictures. Well, I almost won the game if it was not for a turn seven. Our game ended in a Draw based on last turn assaults. It was a very violent game that had a lot of tension. Of this was in a fun way. The game play was that tense, it stopped several by-passers to stop an watch for Turn Four until the end. This is also why I forgot to photograph most of the game. I am sure other people photographed it. I will have to find out who has what. If I do, I will have to post the full game story.