Southeast Asian Temple, Part 2 - Assembly

    Craft wood pieces from Hobby Lobby or Michaels make up a lot of the materials for my temples

So, having purchased most of what I need for these first three temples, I began assembling them that same night. The first step was to take the dowel and slice it into columns. I used my craft saw and did my best to cut it straight and level, though I'm sure it wasn't always successful. Each column was 2 inches tall. It was then capped by a wooden wooden spindle. The spindles needed the bottom peg portion sliced off, and then needed in turn capped by a small "furniture button."

I used tacky glue to assemble the pieces, one step at a time. The button went on the spindle first, then those two were glued atop the columns. I used blue tack to temporarily hold the columns in place, first. The larger finials, which would be the central roof stupa, were glued to wooden disks.

    Wooden knob pieces glued onto the paper mache boxes help create some of the decoration

Next, I began decorating the rectangular temples. I used the small furniture buttons to create a ring of projections along the top edge of one of the rectangular temples. There is a bare, unembossed portion of the cardboard box which the lid would normally cover. Although it was simple and easy to blue tack them to the box, it should give it a more intricate and exotic look. For the second rectangular temple, I went back to Hobby Lobby and bought a package of 18 "Artistic Mouldings" made of bass wood (I believe). I chose one of the narrower ones and cut it into 4 pieces that I could glue along the bare portion of the box. I will eventually have to shave the corners down, though, to make the columns fit snugly.

    Wooden trim pieces also make for great decorations

I also began decorating the round stupa. I decided to go with alternating furniture button and wheely-gear-like beads I have leftover from another purchase. While at Hobby Lobby, I picked up a round plywood base for the stupa to go on, too.

    Various beads and wooden pieces are inexpensive and can be combined to create realistic decorations

These purchases added $5.36 to the supply costs. However, I am using only one of 18 mouldings, so I should realistically divided that cost out among several projects! Total so far, $19.67.

Stay tuned...more to come!

Southeast Asian Temple, Part 1 - The materials

    The main frame of the temples come from inexpensive paper mache boxes from craft stores

 

So, the only thing keeping my 28mm Pulp project from seeing the table is...well, a table! More specifically, I need terrain for various European archeologists and Indiana Jones wannabees to explore. Sure, I could put them on a regular gaming table of woods, hills, ordinary buildings and such. But considering how much time I spent painting the figs, I may as well wait until I have a suitable canvas to roll them out onto!

I have American, German, British, and French archeological teams all set to explore the hidden temples of Southeast Asia. So, what will the first terrain pieces I'll build for this project? Well, temples, of course! So, the picture below is one I took in 2003 when I visited Myanmar and the temples at Bagan. This is the look I'm trying to recreate. These Buddhist/Hindu temples should look exotic on the tabletop. I can put them on the plains of Bagan or in the jungles, like Cambodia's famous Angkor Wat, and they shouldn't look out of place.
 

Since Pagan has about 3,000 temples in an area the size of the county I live in, I will need a number of them to make the tabletop look right. So, that means one thing: scratch-building. I stopped by Hobby Lobby, a discount craft store here in the U.S., on the way home from work. I cruised the aisles looking for ideas on how to make a few smaller temples to start off with.

I found the boxes below for a little over $1 each. They are made of very stiff cardboard that I think should hold up to paint and the wear and tear of the tabletop well. The thing that attracted me to them was the design embossed on the surface. It could represent bas relief carvings on the temples and make decorating most of their surface as simple as a good dry brush to bring out the design. I intend to add a decorative molding or something along the top, too. The roofs will be separate to make gaming with them on the table easier. I'll construct those out of styrene or bass wood -- I haven't decided which, yet.

    Another source of materials is the variously-shaped packages of birch wood pieces from craft stores

I intend to add columns at each of the four corners, and a bell-shaped stupa tower to the roof. I perused Hobby Lobby's selection of craft wood pieces. I decided to go with a thick dowel for the column's length, and top it with a couple pieces to represent the decorate bell-shaped capitals. I snagged packages of wooden spindles, finials and "furniture buttons." These should all fit together well enough (I hope) to give the feel of Bagan's temples. I'm not modeling after any one building, but rather just going for the general look. 

I was disappointed I couldn't any decorative bass or balsa wood trim pieces at Hobby Lobby, Jo Ann Fabrics, or the local Hobbyland. I know I've seen them carried in those stores before. I wanted to line the top edge of the temple with one to represent the fancy stone carving on the temples. I haven't given up, though. I have another idea or two how to recreate it without too much time, effort, expense. Speaking of expense, so far I have spent $14.31 in materials for what will be two small rectangular temples and one round stupa. Stay tuned for more updates on this project!

Board games at Allen's

So, it is not miniatures, but four of us got together on our usual Sunday gaming evening for some board games. Our group readily substitutes in a board game evening when no one has anything prepared miniatures-wise for our entertainment. We hadn't been to Allen's for gaming in awhile, so it was nice to show up and relax there. It used to be our "go-to" spot when his children were younger and his wife worked evenings.

We began the evening with a game of Pandemic. I've always loved this cooperative game, and to this day, can still count on one hand the number of times we've won. We still play the "introductory level" version (read = easiest), and still don't win all that often. This time was one of the exceptions, and we b-a-r-e-l-y squeaked out a victory. If it had taken one player's turn longer, we would not have cured the last disease in time. I played the "Scientist" role, and oddly enough, cured no diseases. I kept drawing event cards or a variety and others were better at doubling or tripling up. So, I fed them the cards and they cured the diseases. It worked out, and we won...though I think Joel will insist we step it up to the next difficulty level when we break out this game again...!

In honor of the nostalgic location for our game, we broke out the venerable, old Empire Builder train game as a follow up. Mike S had never played it before, and was interested in giving it a whirl. Joel advised we play the "fast" version, but Allen was having none of that. It had been so long since we'd played it, we'd forgotten how long of a game it actually was. Needless to say, 11:30 pm rolled around and nobody had attained the $250 million victory conditions. We counted up our profits, and they declared me the winner since I had the most by a fairly comfortable margin. My routes between the southeast (New Orleans/Atlanta/Savannah) and the Canadian border were lucrative and seemed to come up often enough to cash in. Throw in my lines to the New York area and I always seemed to have two decent train loads on board.

I really want to get back in the groove of running some miniatures games, myself. The last couple years I've been a slacker and not staged much for the guys. I'm painting a decent amount, and building a lot of terrain, but I don't seem to be running much for the Sunday night guys. Hopefully, the reduced workload at school will allow me to do that soon. Stay tuned, and we'll see...!

Ambush the Caravan!

    

So, in honor of getting his basement gaming area cleaned up again and ready to host, my friend Keith ran an impromptu fantasy miniatures battle scenario this past Sunday. The rules were Song of Blades and Heroes -- one of our favorites. They provide for a quick game. The flow is unpredictable and player decisions have a big impact on the course of the battle.

Keith's scenario has a supply column of dwarves escorting a dissembled artillery piece needed to reduce an orc fortress passing through a narrow valley. For warbands composed of goblins, orcs, and uruk-hai have combined to block its progress. Allen, Mike S and myself were the Orcs, while Keith, Joel, and Steve V were the dwarves. We set up to hit the dwarves from all four sides, but ran into some snags along the way.

Our first problem was that both of the forces on the opposite side of the road from where my uruk-hai set up suffered horrible activation rolls and ended up stalled. Allen's "Hee-Hee" goblins received their nickname from the giggles that their leader received from the pack when he ordered them to advance. The mass of them hung back, only to expose their leader to dwarven crossbows. Mike S's Orcs gave my uruk-hai a head fake, leading the charge on the front of the caravan, only to hang back and lob long-range arrows at the dwarves.

 

My force and Allen's other Orc warband crashed into the dwarves and had some initial success. However, as no second wave hit, the dwarves shifted troop reinforcements over and outmanned us at the point of attack. Allen's Orcs were running back across the hill and my uruk-hai were edging backwards when we finally called it.

Thanks for running the game, Keith...it was fun to return to the basement abode...!

28mm Dark Ages mounted warriors finally finished!

So this unhappy few, this mounted half dozen, have been sitting partially-painted on my desk for a month, now. I was pretty far along with them when I made the decision to do my French & Indian War clifftops that you see in the previous post (Ohio Frontier Aflame at Advance the Colors 2013). The cliffs so consumed my time that these guys ended up just sitting on my desk.

 

However, with ATC 2013 and a successful series of games run there concluded, I was ready to finish them off. I picked up most of these figures from a flea market vendor selling 28mm Foundry incredibly cheap. They were meant to be able to be used as generic mounted warriors for my Dark Age Britain skirmishes. So, I wanted them to be equally usable for mounted Vikings, Britons, Picts, Saxons -- you name it. Two of the figures were not Foundry, and are Alternative Armies figures I've had sitting in my box for years. I knew one day I'd progress beyond just foot figures in my games to include mounted ones. 

 

The real reason they made it to the forefront is I plan to run a skirmish campaign for my Sunday night gaming group. They have all chosen one of six factions -- Saxon, Briton, Pict, Dal Riatan Scot, Danish Viking and Norse Viking. Each faction has a "special ability," and the Briton one is to be able to substitute a percentage of their force as mounted. Thus, no games could be run until I have the mounted figures ready for it...! 

 

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how these guys turned out. Some I like better than others, of course. All of the shields and the one banner are hand painted (as you can probably tell..!). I particularly like how the horses turned out. I have a page I downloaded from the internet long ago which illustrates different breeds of horses. I decided that since these are in 28mm, I need to do more than paint a generic brown horse, gray one, etc. I think it makes the horses' coloring look much more realistic.

 

Next up are seven 28mm provincial troops for my French & Indian War games. I was inspired by how well my games went at ATC 2013 last weekend. My new format for running big scenarios worked like a dream. The only drawback was that meant I am using up pretty much all my miniatures in an 8 player game. If I have any dreams of increasing the number of players, that means I need more figures. I know, I know. What a horrible dilemma for a miniature wargamer...! So, I dug through my unpainted stuff and cleaned and primed a batch up. I expect I will also be putting in another order with Conquest Miniatures -- who makes the Indians I use. I love their figures to death. They are reasonably priced, gorgeously done, and have very active poses.

 

Also in the planning stages are buildings for my 28mm Pulp games. I want to set my scenarios in southeast Asia, with Indiana Jones wannabees digging through ruins like those at Bagan, Angkor, Borobudur, etc. 

 

Ohio Frontier Aflame at Advance the Colors 2013

A number of years back, I decided it was time to upgrade my presentation of my miniatures games. Well-painted figures are only half the battle, so to speak. To give it the full visual appeal, you need nice terrain, too. I've felt pretty good about my progress from felt to flock to scratch-built terrain pieces. Over the last several years, I regular receive a "thumbs up" from players and bystanders for how my games look. I had never been a "showpiece" game, though. The flagship convention of our historical miniatures group, HMGS Great Lakes, recently provided me with that opportunity. Our convention is held each September at the Heritage Center of Clark County in Springfield, OH. The center is a museum that has a few ballrooms that give us enough space for our games. Each year, the events coordinator selects one game that will make good "eye candy" to place in the lobby, as visitors to the museum come in and out throughout our show. This year, when a' three-day recreation of the Battle of Gettysburg was scratched, I offered to create a sprawling French & Indian War game. A big part of that war was fought in or around our state of Ohio, saw we thought it would be an appropriate showcase for visitors to see our hobby.

The rules that I use are in the final stages of publication. They are a variant of the Ganesha Games "Song of Drums & Shakos" adapted for this period. One problem with the rules set, though, is that the more players a game has, the slower it can move. I typically could take only six players per game, and even with that few, sweated out the down time if players moved or deliberated on their actions slowly. After my last convention game (a Viking raid using a similar rules set from Ganesha), I pondered a way to incorporate more players and yet speed up the game. I finally hit upon an idea. Why not line up four or more linked 1-on-1 matchups to create one game tied together by scenario? In other words, there is one board broken up (in this case by rivers) into 4 quadrants. Players can send reinforcements to neighboring allies, if they desire. Additionally, each side of four players would allocate their troops to the quadrants as they saw fit. Finally, the scenario victory points each player earns from their skirmish are totaled up for the side to determine a winner. What would make this game go much faster than my 6-player scenarios would be that each quadrant would do their turns completely independently of the other. Once your opponent's turn is done, you take yours. Back and forth, with you being constantly involved via the opposed die rolls the system uses.

So, my idea was to recreate four typical types of skirmishes that occurred during the French & Indian War. The sides were divided into a "French allied" side, and a "British allied" one. They included a settler family rushing to an English fort as Indians are on the warpath in the woods around them, a French supply wagon being ambushed by Mohawk Indians, the aftermath of a raid by French courier de bois on a Seneca village, and a clifftop battle between Hurons escorting captives from the raided village being intercepted by Seneca warriors. The last skirmish was inspired by the climactic scene of the movie "The Last of the Mohicans." It also involved me scratch-building the cliffs, which took about 3 weeks of steady work. I was incredibly happy with how the cliffs turned out. They received compliments all convention long, as did my "showpiece" game itself. In fact, the game itself was a hit as well. It filled up all three runnings. All the players said they enjoyed the format and didn't feel the division by quadrant felt artificial or restricting. Those who had played my games previously felt it was a better game done this way. Of course, this means I can keep expanding, if I wish. I can just as easily make this even larger to accommodate 10, 12, or even more players. The one hitch is I had nearly every figure I own on the tabletop, and I'd have to paint (and perhaps even buy...?) more. Darn! A justification to expand my collection...oh horrors! The (not) worst thing a gamer ever hates to encounter...!!!

Here are some pictures and explanation of the game and scenario, "Ohio Frontier Aflame!"

The Interrupted Raid

    An aerial view of the cliffs and Seneca village, along with the woods that covered most of the 12 foot long board

    French Courier de Bois linger too long after raiding a Seneca village

 

    In the woods outside the village, the Seneca hunting party shows up, alerted that their village has been raided and eager for revenge!

Clifftop Rescue

Huron Indians have raided and taken captives from a Seneca village. The captives will be valuable adoptees into the tribe. The Seneca have used secret paths to race to the rescue of their people. The two forces meet on a ridge and battle for the captives..

    Huron raiders take a short cut across the shale cliffs, leading their captives towards their villages to be adopted into the tribe

    Behind the Huron, Seneca braves pursue the Huron kidnappers onto the cliffs...

Another party of Seneca take secret paths to cut off the Huron as they descend the cliffs

 

"Merde! Ambush...!"

French regular and provincial soldiers are escorting a wagon load of supplies to one of their forts. A scout returns breathless, having spotted a Mohawk ambush ahead. Orders ring out in French and eyes nervously scan the trees. Meanwhile, dark forms move through the woods towards the wagon train...
 

An out-of-breath Canadian scout hurries to the French supply wagon, shouting news of a Mohawk ambush he'd spotted

 

"Hurry! To the Fort...!"

Indians are on the warpath and a family of English settlers is desperately fleeing to the local fort with their belongings. They have to run a gauntlet of Fox Indians who have drawn a noose around the fort. The English can spare only so many men to rescue the family -- the walls must stay manned!

    A party of English settlers hurry towards the safety of a fort, hearing the noise of Indians on the warpath in the woods around them

    The gates of the fort open and a file of English soldiers march out to meet and escort in the anxious family

A special thanks to Steve Verdoliva, who provided me with two 6'x4' game mats to string together for my scenario. More than half of the trees I used were also borrowed from him, as well as the river sections that divided the table into quadrants. Keith Finn provided me with the English blockhouse, palisade walls, and log cabin. I intend on purchasing my own French & Indian War stockade soon. So, next time I will have one of my own to put onto the table. Without the help of these two friends from my regular Sunday night gaming group, there is no way I could have staged the game.

    Convention Math: A 12' long table plus 8 gamers having fun = one happy GM!

The three runnings of the game all turned out differently. Friday night's game was an overwhelming French allied victory, while Saturday afternoon saw the British win huge. The rubber match on Saturday evening (which I actually got to play in due to someone who had signed up being a "no-show"), was much closer. Despite the British allies getting handily defeated in the "Interrupted Raid" and "Clifftop Rescue," the Mohawk player racked up so many points in the supply wagon ambush it was a close game. All of the players said they had fun. Many  were eager to purchase the rules, and urged me to let them know when they were available. The best thing of all was that the format was a success. Now I can apply it to other games using the Ganesha Games "Song of Blades" engine.

My first foray as a "showpiece" was a satisfying one. I look forward to building on this to stage ever bigger and grander games...!

Starting Fresh!

So, I've valiantly resisted a blog and held onto designing my own website for more than a decade. However, like Alexander the Great in India, it is finally time to admit defeat. The Sea Monkey web composer I've been using on my Lead Legionaries website has gone wonky, and it becoming more and more work. I have posts disappearing, titles resizing themselves, and other pranks being played upon me by the internet gremlins. It is time to retire my trusty old Bukephalos and use a new, sleeker internet steed. Hopefully, this website will be that conveyance.

Welcome aboard, and if you get time, be sure to visit my old website at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mikedemanagames/index.html

Blast from the Past: Battle of El Obeid, Q&P AAR

As my Earthlink-based gaming website will disappear one day, I am reposting fun AARs onto this blog. Here is a Colonial battle from December of 2009. It is set during the Mahdist rebellion in which a discredited Pasha Hicks invades the Darfur region of The Sudan. We use my friend Tom's For Queen and Planet rules. He is the author of this battle report.

The battle for El Obeid swirls around an Ansar strong point

On Sunday we played a scenario of Queen and Planet that was semi-historical. Early in the Mahdist revolution, a mercenary named Pasha Hicks (a discredited British officer) was sent into the Darfur region with 8000 penal and 'conscripted' police troops. They were guided by what were suspected Ansar sympathizers that lead them around in the wilderness until their food and water was exhausted. They were then surrounded by about three to four times their number of Ansar and in a battle that lasted over three days were killed, virtually to the last man.

My wing of the Anglo-Egyptian relief force advances

In our semi-historical recreation, I assumed that their guides were loyal/competent and were able to guide them through the wilderness and avoid the Mahdist forces operating against them. They arrived at the capital of Western Sudan, El Obeid, and gave battle to a force of Ansar just slightly weaker than they were. Our battle consisted of about 2900 British-lead Egyptians and 2800 Mahdists in a struggle on the outskirts of El Obeid. Joel and Mike lead the Egyptians and Allen and Keith commanded the Ansars.

Joel's command leads the assault on the Ansar-held town

The Ansar deployed hidded in the buildings, slums and orchards of El Obeid and the Egyptians marched forward to recapture the city. As the battle developed it was clear that the two Egyptian commands had Shiek Keith's single command in a bit of a 'pinch.' Shiek Allen rather leisurely (but brilliantly) redeployed to assist his commander in chief. The Ansar had deployed a battery of old brass cannon on the roof of the most forward home and since this home had been designated by the Egyptian CinC (Joel) as the initial objective to sieze both Colonal Mike's command and General Joel's command quickly closed in on it. Unable to removed the cannon from the rooftop. CinC Keith decided to support his forward position by pushing his Jehadia infantry forward to support the cannon.The home and the battery quickly became the focus of the entire battle with the Egyptians twice storming the building and attacking the battery on the roof only to be driven away by extremely well timed counterattacks from Sheik Allen's redeploying command.

Our "high water" mark - the charge of Hick's Own Cavalry penetrates into El Obeid

In a final outpouring of bloodshed both CinC generals were killed or routed and with casualties on both sides at 50% or higher and with both commanders fallen, the Egyptian and Ansar armies broke and fled the field.

Successful Ansar counterattack drives the relief force back from its hold on the town

I was trying out some new thoughts/rules on urban warfare and most things seem to work well except close combat vs units in buildings. It didn't seem reasonable to give overlaps against units inside buildings, but it also didn't make sense to give hard cover to them either. Thoughts on how best to handle hand to hand with one unit inside a building and the other attacking from outside would be appreciated.

Blast from the Past: Europeans Try to Protect Retreating Column,Q&P AAR

The action is fast and furious as the allies try to hold off the advance of a Chinese/Cephlapod force to save a column of civilians

My Earthlink-hosted gaming website is disappearing, so I am in the process of salvaging some AARs from there and reposting them on my blog. Here's another one using Tom Graves' For Queen and Planet Colonial/Victorian Sci-Fi rules. 

No, it hasn't been four months since we've gamed on Sunday night. It's been that long since I updated this part of the website, though! Time was mostly the reason I hadn't gotten around to it. The guys had written entertaining reports of the gaming action. I had pictures of some of the evenings, though the troubles with my camera contributed to the sporadic updating. Also, I was worried about space -- since Earthlink gives me only so many megabytes for storage for this website. With learning how to "hotlink" -- which means storing the photos elsewhere but linking them here so they appear part of the page -- that concern should also be one of the past.

The introduction below was written by the GM, Tom Graves:

A Chinese and Cephlapod force on the march

Sunday evening we met to try the new rules for Queen and Planet VSF. These included, the joker card inserted into the action deck to represent all uncontrolled movement in the game (warband charges, damaged machines, positional instability of water and air craft, also movement of CinC between units). Also, the modified morale rules to limit units that will require a morale check from taking offensive action without making the check.
 
There was a black smoke projector on board, which required wind rules, but it never was able to fire on the enemy because the Chinese and Allies troops were so intermixed (I'm not sure the Cephlapods would have been as careful of Chinese casualties as Joel played them, but that was good for us).
 
I liked the joker card very much, it made the warband charge that much more uncertain for both sides. The ability of the warband to charge as many as three times in a turn gives them the leg up they need against the firing superiority of the colonial troops, so that is still working well. The positional uncertainty of the flyers was also interesting as I found them much more reasonable in their (in)ability to just hover around and shoot things. Now they are more "strafing-like."

Russian machine gun company and rifles momentarily check the Chinese/Cephlapod advance

The set up for the game was that the Sino-Cephlapod alliance is in pursuit of a column of retreating civilians. The Colonial allies are tasked with securing the route of escape and holding against the onslaught. The idea comes from the scene in the most recent War of the Worlds where the American armored brigade hopelessly engages the Martians in an attempt to allow the civilians to escape. This battle was quite a bit more balanced than the movie!
 
An 'impassable' river bisects the board with only a single bridge crossing it. Two villages are along the road that runs from West to East toward the safety of a port and the evacuation ships. Ceplapods, Imperial Chinese, and Boxers are pursuing from the west and the Colonial Allies are deployed hidden to try to defend the line of retreat (represented by a supply wagon marking tail end charlie of the refugees).

Chinese forces close in on the west village

Each Command (3 Sino-Cephlapod and 3 Allied) had a special ability of some sort (The imperials knew of a ford across the river, the Italians had minefields, etc). Joel had the Cephlapods, Keith the Imperials, I had the Boxer command, Allen had British and half of the Russians and Mike had Italians and half of the Russians. So, of course the Russian command were sacrificed at the point of the spear! However, they acquited themselves very well, and absorbed an enormous amount of Chinese punishment before being forced to withdraw across the bridge. 

Mike's "death trap" was never completely sprung, but it held up my Boxer command as I probed for a solution. We played six of the expected 12 turns necessary to complete the scenario. It is hard to tell what the result would have been. The Boxers overran the West Village, but it looked near impossible to have secured the bridge by the turn 8 deadline. Each side had one command destroyed, one crippled, and one about half dead by the end of the game. It definitely could have gone either way. 

The gallant Russian guard battalion makes a stand in the center of the west village

And here is Joel's, always humorous take on the action:
The European Powers relief force had collected the threatened civilians and were working on a slow, methodical  evacuation. The Allies dug in to provide full cover for their citizens return to safety.  The Boxers were on the massed on the right flank of the Imperial Chinese, the Celphalods on the left and back slightly.  

The battle opened with a Russian machine gun raking an advancing Imperial Chinese unit, then the Boxers took a slower, caution advance on the village.  The Cephalods seemed fascinated at the hilariously primitive Sikorsky flier.   After two turn their side bets were much more important than the battle in the village & wheat fields.  The Italians had  hoped on a crossfire to stop the Boxers, but the Russians, to their right were pressed and wavered.  

The allies are slowly shoved out of the west village by the Boxer assault

Then the sound of gongs, firecrackers and bugles signaled the Imperial Chinese & Boxers to charge on village.  The Cephalods were still betting that the Sikorsky flier would/wouldn't crash any minute now. The Italians pulled back in order, then the Russians ran passed and the Cephalods were disappointed the Sikorsky flier, wobbled & dipped but survived the entire battle.  Once the British finished their tea & biscuits they were ready for any fight.

Blast from the Past: Haitan Food Riots, Wars of Insurgency AAR

So, as my Earthlink-based gaming website is on its way into internet oblivion, I've decided to re-post some of the AARs here on my Lead Legionaries blog. This is one from when we were regularly playtesting my modern Africa rules, Wars of Insurgency. No photos this time, but some may enjoy it anyway!

Haitian Food Riots

So, with the digital camera at the repair shop, no pictures of our modern warfare session at Joel's this past Sunday. Here's our host's account of the game he ran:

• Some called it "Bizzaro world"

• Shots fired at UN troop. They immediately "arrest" a pig on suspicion. The pig squeals. National Police loot (secure?) NGO rice bound for the poor of Haiti.

Joel's report:

It was my attempt at simulating the Haitian Food Riots of 2008, with Mike's Wars of Insurgency rules. The government players were Keith, with two squads National Police, and Zeke, with one squad of Brazilian U.N. troops. The well-armed mobs were Mike, Steve V and Allen. The government troops set up in the middle of the board, while the wild mob surged over two edges.
 

The government kept the initiative, but had trouble finding enough good cover. Keith took cover in a warehouse and the cheap 'No-tell Motel.' Zeke was on the road when shots rang out and took the nearest cover he could find. The Brazilians took cover in a pig sty and dealt with Allen by giving well-aimed fire we expect from the UN troops. Keith's squad in the Notell Motel suffered a terrible toll in a crossfire from Mike and Steve. 

The mobs broke into warehouses and grabbed anything of value. Keith retaliated by effectively dropping flash grenades into the mob in the street and stairwell. The mob moved back. Then, tragedy struck as the UN came under fire and three soldiers from Brazil were killed (the paperwork hasn't stopped yet). The mob was declared the victor and ruled the field that day.
 

Meanwhile...somewhere in dusty hot Really, really, bad.....
 

Afterward a few of us stuck around for a quick comparison glimpse at Firepower modern fire skirmish rules. A British foot patrol (Allen) was ambushed by Sheik Kover (Keith), mujaheddin leader. The mujaheddin draw first blood and Pvt. Kilkenny, S.A.S., dies a gruesome death. After initial panic and shock, the British strike back by dispatching Ali, then Muhammed, and finally AliAliMuhammed. The mujaheddin quickly withdraw...