Hammered and Slammed

Went to visit my friend Mark and played a bunch of games. One of our goals was to play a couple of Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible games.  The first day we kicked off with a smaller, intro game of two Slammer's detachments: a blower and a light combat car group versus a couple of Division Legere detachments (medium and light tanks, plus mechanized infantry) and a couple of local militia units.  the objective for the Slammers is to capture the crossroads in town, the defenders have to repulse the Slammers.

Peaceful Oyster Vally, not for long...

 The Valley Militia hold the city center against the onrush of off-world mercenaries

 Supertanks!  The Slammers roll in

 With a Phalanx of Combat Cars in Support (Slammers are Ainsty models painted by Mark)

 View from the militia positions

 The Combat Cars draw first blood, gunning down a buzz-bomb team

 Quickly followed by another

 And more

 Slammers gut the militia and surge forwards

Division Legere is tasked with holding back the Slammers, they begin pouring troops onto the battle area

 Undeterred the Blowers grind forwards

 More Legere forces enter

 And finally tanks arrive

 Legere armour ready to teach the Slammers a lesson

Or perhaps not, Slammers fillet the Legere tanks

 While only losing the skirts of one blower

 Slammers pound on the Legere APCs

 While the combat cars continue the job on the Legere light tanks

 A lucky shot from the light tanks takes out one Combat Car

 The combat cars also managed to clear the key buildings of infantry

 The Slammers take the win!  They caapture all objectives and break the Legere unit completely

Well fought Mark!

Wow, while that was very one sided, it was fun and completely fitting with the books.  This was a great chance to refresh out memories of the rules and play with some new toys. 

OK, onto the next game - Pandora's Cargo.

The rare and elusive lesser wargamer

A mega X-wing with the boy...

The 'goodies' lined up on one side, their job was to protect the shuttle

 Are there enough ships?

 Maybe not, the 'Baddies' line up

 And the carnage begins

I stepped back and let him have at it.  Getting photos was tough.  Eventually the shuttle barely squeaked through, the 'baddies' nearly pulled it off.

40K Imperial Guard Sentinel

Quick update.  Calvin and I played more X-wing and Armour is progressing nicely.

Meanwhile... ...one day while rummaging in the bits box I was inspired to build a 40K Imperial Guard Sentinel (in 15mm).

The legs are from Khurasan's walker/loader, the hip is an antenna base (GZG) the body and gun are from a manned gun platform from GZG.  I'm using Ozidial army figs for my Guard as they have the right look and feel to me.  As I recall though, the Guard really need support firepower, hence the Sentinel, it will fit right in with the Rogue Trader/40K set.

Where did that summer go...

Wow, busy summer this year.  Spring and summer I like to get outside a lot and this year was no exception as we had big changes in the garden; we built a large vegetable patch a new raised bed and dug out 12 small trees.  The Boys are growing like weeds, my little one (2 1/2) started riding his walking bike while my oldest (4 1/2) graduated to a pedal bike with no training wheels.  Work has been v.v.busy as the Biotech I work in went public.  Meanwhile, it took me off to collaborators in India, conferences in Rhode Island, Boston and Spain.  In addition, we managed to keep some science going by publishing a couple of decent papers.

On a gaming front, things are ticking along.  We have been having a lot of fun playing a highly simplified game of X-wing with the standard box set.  Then I remembered I had bought a job-lot of Star Wars micromachines years ago.  Now we are setting up to play X-wing with Y-, B- and A-wings against TIE Interceptors, Bombers and Advanced forms.  I even dug out my old Action fleet stuff so we can progress to some of the bigger ships eventually.  Other games we've been playing include Ninja vs. Ninja from Out of the Box Publishing (http://www.otb-games.com/games/engaging-games/ninja-versus-ninja/).  A really fun family game which is great for the boys to play too.  We've dabble with Pirate Vs. Pirate from the same folks, but its a three player game so is a bit more cumbersome to play.

Painting slowed over the summer, I hope to get it back up to speed soon as I start prep for next year's East Coast GZG Con (http://www.warpfish.com/gzgecc/gzgecc17/index.shtml).  I've got a couple of thoughts, one is I'm kind of tempted to play a StarWars skirmish gaming with Calvin this summer was been fun, but no firm plan yet.

And on the mini arms race...   ...Mark came up early in summer and we played Hammer's Slammers.  We both had a lot of fun, afterwards Mark jump-started his plan to collect for this game, and he started with the Slammers.   All of my tanks/afvs are light-medium types, so the Slammers tanks would mince mine.  To balance a game against the Slammers I moved some of my bigger  Old Crow tanks up the paint queue.  I now have nearly ready something that, while they will still get a pasting from the Slammers, may stand a better chance of scratching those monster tanks.  Anyway, I hope to find out soon.

A River Runs Through It

A quick game to refamiliarise myself with the rules for Hammer's Slammers The Crucible

A simple 'meeting' engagement of two equal forces: 2 Med tanks, 2 Light Tanks, 3 APCs (2xTU infantry per) and 1x Command (1TU infantry). 

The objective is to capture a commanding fire position to cover the river.  Once side has terrain obstacles, the other has more ground to cover.
(an aside, I got tired of all the shaky camera shots so I just bought myself a small tripod - I'm trying it out for the first time in this game)

 The Plains

 With the river running through it

 View along the farm track

 Commonwealth (CW) group of two detachments (Brigade Models kit)

 The Free Foreign Legion (FFL) Group of Two detachments (GZG kit)

 CW deploy from the fields, hampered by needing to cross hedges

 While FFL have a lot of ground to cover

 ACVs on patrol

 Ready and...

 Dash forwards

 FFL reach the river, tanks in the lead

 CW has a slower time (failing terrain rolls)

 Tanks lead for the CW

 FFL MICVs on a flank run

 CW charge straight intending to debus infantry as close to the river as possible

 View from the other side

 FFL score hits, immobilizing a CW tank

 In return the CW brew up FFL armour

 And closer

 CW tanks surge forwards, FFL infantry react

 Getting into Buzzbomb range

 Closer...

 CW pound the FFL armour

 Knocking out a MBT

 In return the FFL disable a MICV and kill a TU of infantry

 Meanwhile the FFL infantry unleash a highly effective barrage of buzzbombs, wiping out the light CW tanks

 Mmm, game in the balance

 FFL take a daring leap and go for the CW command vehicle, hoping to decapitate the unit and end their resistance

 The FFL tank ends up staring down the barrel at the immobilized CW tank

 CW MICVs deploy infantry and retreat (almost, the command vehicle fails to clear the hedge)

 FFL MICVs advance to engage

 CW armour falls back to cover the command unit

 FFL infantry advance on the river

 The FFL fare badly, with poor shooting and damage rolls, only knocking out the weapon on the command MICV

 The light FFL tank does nothing, however, all the massed MICV fire first knocks out the CW gun, then disables the tank

 The CW infantry unleash buzzbombs, destroying the FFL tank  (Mmm, perhaps a 'lessons learned' here...)

 Carnage!

 With the loss of their main armour the FFL fall back to regroup

 The CW move up to consolidate their posiiton

FFL infantry move back for pick-up by MICVs

Conclusion, the Commonwealth sneaked a minor win here, just.   Its been a while since I played these rules and TBH, the last time I did it I felt I was making a lot of mistakes.  This time I tried a simpler game and it was a lot of fun.  It was fast, decisive and easily handled a coupe of platoons plus infantry.  I think I'll be playing more of this soon.

On a photographic note, I'm not sure about the tripod.  Its better for low-light, but I think it would be better for close in action rather then these distance shots.  Maybe its the difference between infantry skirmishes and tanks that's throwing me off; I guess the answer is  to practice more.