New Gladiator Insanity

Anyone who has followed my gaming exploits already knows that nothing is sacred, and that I am capable of any foolishness.  This includes raiding the kids toy boxes in search of cool stuff to game with.  Well this time, I have found the ultimate loot.  Gladiators in 1:20 scale!  Put these bad boys on a Hotz mat with 4" hexes and you got some great arena combat action.

This Roman Centurion was disgraced in an action along the Rhine and has found himself in the arena!

One of his legionaires was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well.

A Greek warrior who refused to join the Pax Romana.

A regular at the arena in Capua.

This Minotaur fell alseep on the job one day and woke up in the arena.

A beast man from the darkest regions of Africa.  A Lanista must have a paid a lot for this one.

Tiger man is sure to be a crowd pleaser as well.

Could Croc man be the ultimate fighting machine?

Rhino man looks like he could be good in a punch up as well.

I bet Ram man can perform an admirable shield bash!

Of course with all these heavy weights in the arena, there will be need of some vultures very soon.

Ludis Gladatorius

What I can't believe is that Blogger finally let me upload pictures again.  I can tell you that not being able to upload photos to the page is a real bummer.  I'm still on a hellish work schedule and will probably be so throughout this month so there won't be any big games for a little while longer.  The good news is that I still find time to get some sort of gaming in, and the great group of guys we have has been reliable and a lot of fun.  This past weekend we played Crossfire, Iliad, and Ludis Gladatorius by EM4.  This is the prepainted set of miniatures that comes with some simple rules and dice etc..  Ready to play out of the box.  Mike had picked it up and so I finally had a chance to try it out.  I must say we all had a lot of fun!  Here's some piccies.  This is a great game for trash talking.

Team fight with both sides taking a quick breather.  I think I was playing the lad in the baby blues.  My memory is a bit foggy because there was beer involved.

One of my rare moments of glory.  Right before Mike came back to kick me arse.

Add caption

Not a lot of honor in this group.  They never mind ganging up on some unfortunate contestant.

And this is what usually happens.

In the end, there can only be one.  This time around the Emperor was not in a merciful mood.

Game like Crazy!

Our gaming group has been going like mad dogs!  We have regularly had 6 to 8 players, all of them with easy going dispositions, which means I have been in gaming nirvana.  The down side is I have been spending all my free time gaming instead of blogging, but heck, gotta get it while you can, right?
Here are some pics from recent games.

My kids Stormtroopers splattering some of my bugs in Chain Reaction by THW.

Don't ask about the Duros explorer, it is a long story.

My German Recon doing some spotting in an early Russian front battle.  We are playing the Axis & Allies minis rules.  Hey don't laugh!  It is actually quite fun and plays with no brain fatigue.

Here's my pesky Luftwaffe BF-110 who was flitting around terrorizing Jil's Russian conscripts all day.

My PzIV stands off to try to dislodge Russian infantry.  You gotta respect infantry in this game.  If you get to close you will pay for sure!  The infantry aspect to this game is one of the things I like most about it.  Even if the infantry cannot hurt you directly, it still manages to dictate movement and battle flow by just being present.  They take and hold ground, and hold it, and hold it, and hold it!

Here's a real classic.  As a German player, this is something you have nightmares about.  This was a hidden unit game and when that T-34 appeared out of nowhere to confront my piddly Panzerjager I and PzIV, I was not feeling the love.  Miraculously the T-34 wasn't shooting well and I found a way to eventually smoke it.  However, you see that hidden unit marker by the house?  It turned out to be another T-34! DOH!  The day got rougher after this and I never managed to neutralize the other T-34.  In the end the game was pretty much a draw.

This pic was from a Spanish Civil War game that we played Wednesday night.  The Republican forces with their Russian armor would probably have had their way with us except for a little help from the Luftwaffe in the form of a JU87.  This turned out to be a drawn game as well.  Both sides pretty much fizzled out to the point where they bogged down.

Web Magazine Article

I did a little article for a new web gaming magazine about Two Hour Wargames.  You guys know I never get tired of talking about THW!

http://www.wix.com/roleplayuniversezine/roleplayuniverse#!miniwargames

My New Blog

I finally decided to post another blog page to deal with our WoW campaigns.  Any of you flyers out there can check it out.
http://wingsofwarcampaigns.blogspot.com/

Cheap Reinforcements

I was milling around town with the kids the other day and ran across an Axis & Allies starter set on sale.  I decided to check it out and see what the possibilities of using the minis for other games might be.  I was actually pleasantly surprised.  I lined them up against some FoW minis I own and the footprint is about the same.  The weakest offering here is the Sherman, which is not as tall as the FoW counterpart, and the sculpt is not as nice as the others.  However, the rest of the vehicles are quite nice and a quick wash will make them ready to roll.  The American infantry is pretty good and I would use them as is, but I think the Germans need a small touch up.
But then, the plot thickens...  I'm the sort of guy who will try anything, at least once.  They were sitting there so I read the rules one evening before bed and then tried a solo game the next evening.  Some of you are going to laugh, but I must say the game is not horrible.  In fact I actually thought it was quite interesting and very simple.  I especially like the way that infantry are handled and the games are very smooth.  My friend Jil came over the other night and we gave it a whirl and had a lot of fun.  In fact, it was good enough that he was cursing the fact that he traded away a complete set he had that he had never played.
I am a big fan of games that are fun and easy to play, so long as there is enough flavor to feel right, and I think this crazy game does do that.  Anyway, food for thought!

Dabbling in Flames of War

Once again I'm behind on my posting but I have been gaming plenty.  This time it was my friend George who was nice enough to run a game of Flames of War for me.  All I had to do was play!  And life is good again..  Flames of War is one of the games I sort of missed out on.  Every time I saw it played there were wheel to wheel Tiger tanks and that sort of turned me off.  Playing this game with George turned out to be a lot of fun with reasonable forces on the table.  All in all the system is not perfect, but not bad at all.  Fairly smooth to run and easy to play.

Some of my Shermies making contact with the enemy.

I opted to go with an overload one flank strategy and here are my Stuarts and armored infantry making a break across the river.  Unfortunately I found some hidden AT guns which made mush of my Stuarts.

So things came to a screeching halt with my infantry bailing out and looking for cover.

Meanwhile, my Shermans were supporting this assault but there were lots of sneaky Krauts holding them up.  Note the Stugs hiding in the distance.

The overall situation.  Looks kinda bad.  And my artillery was not doing squat as usual.

George's Stugs just waiting for the right moment to counter attack.

I was really getting bogged down and the situation was getting worse by the die roll.

Then George started bringing his lads over from the non-engaged side.  Time for something drastic!

I finally opted for the all out assault with my Shermans driving straight into the buildings.  Those German infantry were really pissing me off and I figured if I couldn't hit them, maybe I could simply run the over.  Plus, if successful, this would give me the added bonus of getting his Stugs in a cross fire at close range.

Well what can I say!  I finally had a little luck.

IABSM Weekend Bliss

Well, I think this is a record for me on delinquent posting.  My work is killing me and I have not wanted to sit down and blog lately.  But I'm still gaming plenty!  A choice between slacking on gaming or blogging is no choice at all.
We had a great gaming day this weekend as Brian W. was gracious enough to come down and run a IABSM (I Ain't Been Shot Mum by Too Fat Lardies) scenario for us.  I walked out of the house with absolutely nothing to carry, and all I had to do was show up and enjoy someone else running a game for a change.  Life is good!  Here are some snaps from the action.  WW2, Eastern front, 1941.
I am a big fan of TFL but have not had much opprtunity to play the WW2 game.  I had a lot of fun.

The German players brought a motorized column up in too tight an area and I was thinking "oh baby".  But then my lousy dice rolling kicked in and I missed my chance.

But then my lousy dice rolling kicked in and I missed my chance.  Here is one of my 45mm AT guns missing the easy target as usual.

So then the Germans decided it was time to dismount and they headed for cover!

I kept dreaming about an artillery strike but it was not in the cards.  The deck hates me!

And so the opportunity quickly fades.

The German armor shows up.

My partners T26's begin the armor duel with the Panzers, and we get off to a rough start.

But his hidden AT gun goes into action and starts to give the Panzers some payback!

Meanwhile, in the woods the infantry battle is heating up.

Due to an incredible stroke of luck on my mortar fire deviation, we begin to hammer the German infantry in the woods relentlessly.  This was one of those incredible events in IABSM which is hard to duplicate.

Three turns in a row, I roll a dead hit on my artillery deviation, which put three squads in the artillery fire effect each time!  It is best to spread out a little in this game!

Just as we thought things were going ok, the inevitable happened.  A JU-87 showed up and began terrorizing Mark's armor platoon, as well as everone else in the area.

Then the pesky Germans decided to try a blitz flank attack with their mechanized units.

At the same time they made a heavy push in the center.

One of our Russian platoons was completely wiped out but the heroic big man survived to fall back and fight another time.  You can spot him to the left, giving the Germans the bird!

But then things simply got worse.   A German assault engineer with a flame thrower pushes another Russian platoon back from the building, and killing our beloved hero in the process.

The situation on the Russian left is critical.

My Russians on the right are still hanging tough, but too many Germans have been freed up to reinforce the assault.  It is just a matter of time.

My last bid for glory!  My Commisar goes berserk and charges an MG-34 single handedly, and wins!  And then unbelievably he duplicates this same feat again in a moment later!

But during this time the Germans have put even more pressure on the left and the Panzers are moving in to mop up.

The Russian left is finished, and so is the game in the next couple of turns.