Fire In The Lake right down to the wire

Played a cracking game of this excellent game with my Dad.
Playing the ‘short’ scenario but it went right to very last card in deck as it was last Coup card.
Any earlier revealing of this Coup card and it would have been a win for Dad with VC as they were at -10, NVA at -6 with Yanks at -5 and ARVN at -11.
However I got lucky with last two action cards as both had US then ARVN as first and second eligible so I was able to pass on one card (as VC and NVA both ineligible) then use last card denying VC and NVA any actions.
After some head scratching I managed to restore a couple of areas to COIN control (+2 for ARVN) then set two areas with Active Opposition to Neutral pushing VC total further down (judicious use of US Airlift and Train followed by ARVN limited Train and accompanying Pacify actions)
Further Pacify actions in Coup round with only 1 area falling to Agitation  saw ARVN increase VPs and VC degrade theirs enough for me to win (using 2 player victory conditions)
Great game with a lot of swings of fortune and in the end a fortuitous last 3 cards for COIN factions.

Hoping to play a 4 player game this weekend which should be very interesting

Ulster Wargames Society a wee visit

Managed a trip to Ulster Wargames Society today (now that I have Saturdays free) first visit in several years.

Some number of gamers there (10 ?) but 3 nice games ongoing.

A Crossfire WW2 game with very nice British and German 25mm kit from Dave ('the' Dave Pentland), Alan and Cameron.
Very posh with laser pointer and iPad Pro :-)

A Field Of Glory III Samurai civil war (the 2 Daves) with 1000 points a side.
A set I have but not played (a familiar tale).



And a very nice 28mm French-Indian War game using Sharps Practice (2nd Edition I think?) run by Billy with 4 players.

Nice catching up with some old acquaintances and I had a go at Sharps Practice which being from TFL stable had some elements of CofC and IABSM but with FIW flavour.

Like the system and great fun especially when an Indian commander suffered a 'sprained ankle' (not something I have seen in many wargames !)




Field of Glory 

Crossfire game

Sharps Practice 

Some rather spiffing Redskins

Colonial Twilight

Game of Colonial Twilight today with Stephen.
His first time with game and COIN system but was very easy to teach the mechanics although deliberating over and explaining options takes a while.
He took FLM and I the French.
We played the Full War scenario but it ended on 3rd Propaganda card as FLN had 31 vps
French suffered as 1st propaganda card took a full 11 cards to appear.
FLN then got a very good event card Peace Talks which stops FLN attacks but more importantly also French Assaults.
He also got Taleb the Bomb Maker which allows Terror attacks in the 3 cities for no Resource spend.
Once he got FLN pieces in then he could continually inflict terror and Neutralise city thereby reducing my VPs.
Without assault very tough to combat.
FLN also managed to get all their Bases on board
Think French need to utilise Garrison action more than I did but tough to do all you want of course.

Great game this so many options and decisions to make every turn.

More board wargaming

Played several board wargames this week (to detriment of figure painting !).











Couple of solo (rule learning) run throughs of Colonial Twilight (playing this one face to face on Wednesday) and Commands & Colors Napoleonic (which I have had for awhile but never blooded).

Also played Hitlers Third Reich and Undaunted Normandy with my Dad.

Two games of HTR that both turned out as Allied wins pretty quickly with Fall Of Berlin and failed recapture attempts.
Love the speed of play of this wee gem.

Then a full 4 scenarios of Undaunted played with Machine Guns and Mortars both making appearances.
Another very slick game system with just enough WW2 flavour to bring us back to it.
Nothing approaching depth of other tactical games but very fast playing and pure fun.

L'Art De La Guerre two more encounters

Played another double header at Stephens today using L'Art De La Guerre again.

This time I fielded Galatians (trying out an Paionian Ally) and Sassanids once more.

Stephen used Classical Indian and Maurikian Byzantine respectively.

Two more excellent games although my dice rolling with Galatians had me screaming blue murder as in two rounds of combat I managed to roll 9 x 1 !!!!!!
No troops can win with this sort of rolling.
I really must try To The Strongest as no bloody wee 6-sided feckers involved, although no doubt I will find cards hate me to :-)


Much better balanced rolls in second game although Stephen just always seems to roll high on the key combats as ever.

This set so playable and well written we wondered how we ever managed to toil through DBMM/DBMM never mind 7th Edition, obviously youthful minds were a great aid !

Fire In The Lake and Undaunted Normandy played !

Managed a game of both Fire In The Lake (short scenario) and Undaunted Normandy (initial scenario) with my Dad tonight.

Fire In The Lake was its usual exciting self although for first time I used the NVA/VC combo narrowly losing with NVA being 1 VP behind US at game end.

Found the NVA hard to work out how best to use as whilst they can field lots of troops these can be swept away pretty handily by US/ARVN that Airlift then Assault (plus Dad acquired a pretty potent M48 capability event that killed off an extra 2 NVA per assault !).

VC more akin to FLN in Colonial Twilight.

Great stuff again

Then we had a quick run out with Undaunted Normandy which was extremely easy to teach.

Yanks lost as I neglected to use Hunker Down and suffered from some very good Kraut shooting that removed a Scout and a Rifle team ie half my force and seen my deck therefore overloaded with Fog Of War cards.

What a fun quick playing game which we shall play more of.

Undaunted Normandy arrives

This new title arrived today and I managed a quick solo try with first scenario.

First impression is it is a very light, quick playing game but with more depth than at first appears.

Totally Infantry-centric with no AFVs or Artillery (just Mortars) but this suits the theme and premise.

Hope to get it into ‘proper’ action soon.

Washingtons War....more retirement fun

Playing through a solo game of this update to the original CDG 'We The People' (one of many games that have not seen light of day but which I hope to rectify now I have more time).
Some interesting changes and seems slicker process overall, although I do sort of miss the originals' Battle Cards.

As usual with GMT very nice components including a mounted map board (always a bonus for me).

Must get a head to head/Vassal with this.