Dracula's America The Spawning Pools

 

Last Sunday we got together at Luis's to play the second game in our Dracula's America Forbidden Powers campaign. In our first game Swamp Ambush, I won but Luis really did well in the post game which is quite an important aspect of the campaign. I went with the same posse as the first game without adding any Nephilim or Guns for Hire but Luis stocked his up with some new Cultists.

In this game there were Deep Ones spawning at 5 areas in the swamp, all classed as veterans. Victory points were achieved by killing Deep Ones and Destroying their spawning pools. As is usual Luis set out a terrific table. 

Well unlike our last game I got slaughtered losing half my posse in the first 3-4 turns including my boss. Unlike the last game though I did quite well in the post game process recovering all my posse and ending up with just one extra wound. Luis played quite a good game and here is his posse for the next game already set. As you can see he has 3 veterans now which will give him a distinct advantage.

I have yet to select any new items or posse members for our next game but here is where I stand after this game.

Wish me luck in the next game, I will need it but I have lots of money to spend!

GdA-Albuera Day 2

Myself and Graham got together last Saturday to finish off our first go at GdA2. I have played maybe a dozen games of GdA in the past but have never actually went the full number of turns as recommended by the scenario. As previously noted, we decided to play the Albuera scenario from the GdA2 rulebook. We had put in a little over 2 hours and left the figures on the table.

So it was with some anticipation, we continued our game. We had 11 turns to go, you will remember that I was playing the French and Graham the Anglo-Spanish.

Game Progression

 

Unit Photos

Casualty Markers

This was a well played game and Graham was able to hold off the French and thus be victorious! This session which took about 5 hours really cemented my opinion that this is a brilliant set of rules. We were slowed down a few times in the game to check things in the rulebook as we had several multiple charges and combats in this session but I was really pleased to actually finish a game. I am quite confident that I could get most 16 turn games done now in 4-5 hours and with more experience probably to 3-4 hours. By the end of the game we were quite used to the QRS and could find things rapidly.

BattleGroup

 

Last Thursday a bunch of us got together our Club Games Night to play an alternate WWII game. Luis and his friend Jean-Philipe put on the game which featured a combined arms game between the Germans and the Soviets. Myself and David played the Germans while Korrigan and Pat played the Soviets. I do not know much about this ruleset having just played it once before. What I remember from that game is I liked how the tank rules played. Here are some photos which will be followed by a few comments about the game.

The table, the Germans started in the foreground

Jean-Philippe on the right with the Korrigan and Pat next to him. We had spectators for this game with cub member Rob on the far left.

David who played the Germans with me on the right and on the far left Michele, another spectating club member. 

The T-34 which were deadly going after a Panther

A lot of tanks were destroyed

We all had a lot of fun, Luis and Jean-Philipe put on a great game. They are an interesting set of rules as they are I think basically for company sized actions rather than platoon sized actions unlike Chain of Command. One can easily play platoon sized games with them but when you look at the scenarios in the book they seem more focused on larger games. They really handle combined arms games well. They are basically IGOUGO, and do not have the turns of fate that can happen in CoC because of double phases and CoC dice. Certainly CoC is more granular and thus realistic but both rulesets are simulations rather than games. I do have the rulebook as well as some source books and I will be keeping them. Certainly CoC will remain my first choice for platoon level WWII games but I would have no problem having another game of BattleGroup.

Général d'Armée 2- First Impressions

 

Our gaming club has been patiently waiting for the release of GdA2 for months now, with our last game almost a year ago. We made a group order of 8 rulebooks, I received them more then 2 weeks ago (Rich Clarke was great about getting the order to me in the US before the actual release date of March 4). There was a bit of a delay getting it to the club members in Montreal but they were distributed at last Thursday's Club Games Night.

Production quality looks great and you get 2 laminated QRS sheets which were certainly more readable (ie bigger print) than GdA1. Myself and Graham decided to get together at my place and have a test game last Friday. I put together the table and decided to play the Albuera 1811 scenario from the book. 

The terrain, the Anglo-Spanish force commanded by Graham were deployed in the farground, with the 2 Spanish infantry brigades starting on the table. Two English brigades were deployed in turns 2 and 3 to reflect the historical battle.  I (the French) deployed 3 brigades on the table at the start of the the game, holding my best brigade with a Bold brigadier in reserve. 

I of course was way to excited to take any photos in the first couple of turns, but as you can see above I rapidly advanced the brigade on my right flank up the hill to confront the Spanish.

3 ADC Taskings got us into our first charge. My lead unit took some damage but we were able to force the defending Spanish Brigade to Falter.

One of the British brigades moves in to confront the French.

Situation at the end of turn 5, as you can see the Anglo-Spanish have a sent a British brigade to their left flank to support the Spanish in the left centre. The 2nd British brigade is moving to the centre with the 2nd Spanish brigade on their right flank. They have yet to deploy their Spanish Cavalry.

From the French perspective, we see that the 1st French brigade on their right is engaged with 2 enemy brigades. The 2nd French brigade is advancing up the centre to confront a British brigade. Out of view in this photo but seen above is the 3rd French Brigade holding the left flank. The French still have an infantry brigade off table as well as a Cavalry brigade.

We got in 5 turns in a little over 2 hours and this is an impressive improvement over the previous version. With both of us being familiar with GdA1, we had a good sense of how the rules generally worked. I had watched the 3rd video on Lard TV just before the game and this was quite helpful as a lot of the changes are in the setup and the Command and Control aspect of the game. I made a short list of notes, and I felt quite prepared for the game. 

Aside from testing the rules, I was really focussed on reducing the number of markers on the table as well as using a much simpler and less obtrusive method to mark casualties. I had noted that Dave Brown in the demo videos, really just seemed to use 3 markers and I wanted to go with that plan. I felt we were successful in this with having to use just a Hesitant and Faltering Brigade markers as well as the Casualty marker. We will of course need further games to see how this goes.

In this our first go, the only rate limiting step was putting the troops on the table. Unfortunately there is little you can do about this and at the start Graham had to just put on 2 brigades and myself 3. This took about 10-15 minutes and really there is no way to speed this up. Certainly, the fact that we had a total of 5 brigades off table at the start did speed things up.

I am not going to go into all the details of the changes in this version but I felt without exception they were a great improvement on an already good ruleset. The new Scouting phase in the deployment part of the game was a lot of fun and definitely increased the fog of war, likewise initiative changes and ADC takings were all simplified but at the same time made the decision process more complicated. Most of all though the basic game mechanics of Charging, Movement, Firing and Combat have now almost disappeared into the background becoming much simpler and thus much quicker to resolve.

Anyway, we only had a couple of hours to play this game but did get 5 turns in. I have left the troops on the table and we hope to complete the game in the next week. A careful perusal of the rulebook over the last this weekend has revealed no errors being made. This was well worth waiting for!

Local and Main Force Viet Cong

 

I have been recently adding to my slowly growing Vietnam 28mm figure collection. I had already painted up some Rubicon VC and USMC. I put together some VC over the last month but I also had received some STL's from the Gunslinger SOG kickstarter. They printed out quite well on my resin printer, they are the same height as the Rubicon figures but slighter in build.

Main Force Viet Cong (Gunslinger SOG)

From what I have read the Main Force VC were dressed in quite a variety of uniforms, obtained from several sources, including the PAVN.

Local Force Viet Cong (Rubicon)

Went with the basic black pyjamas for this squad.

Next up some more USMC.

Quite a variety of weaponry

Now if I could only find a ruleset.