Monday, May 28, 2012

2nd Punic War FOG Campaign (2)

Saturday we got together to kick off the Punic Wars campaign that my friend Mike is running. To the left you can see my friend Charlie (Hannibal of Carthage) pondering his initial moves. We're using the very good board game Hannibal - Rome and Carthage as the campaign rules and Field of Glory as the tabletop rules. Charlie did a good job of invading northern Italy including giving one Roman army a beating by joining up two of his Carthaginian armies to beat back my Romans when they tried to push back.

When a third Carthaginian army invaded in the South I sent a Roman army to deal with him there. Eventually Hannibal came south to meet me for our initial battle. The tabletop forces are close to each other in points (within 10%) with the Carthaginian army being slightly less points, but with larger battle groups and superior quantities and quality of cavalry. The initial Roman plan was to fight between a steep hill on the left and some broken ground on the right. When our right flank appeared to look in danger of being overwhelmed I sounded the command for a general advance across the line.

In response to our advance the Carthaginians pounced on our right flank where it was exposed, re-directing their cavalry to the center. This is where we are when we called the first day of gaming (see the last photo). Not pictured are one Roman legion and one Roman cavalry unit that have fled the battle. For Carthage they have one unit of elephants that are heading to the rear in rout, one cavalry unit they hope to rally and two units that are fragmented that may recover.  Important points on each side. the Carthaginians have one cavalry unit that is surrounded and close to breaking from losses and one unit of spearmen that is in close combat and close to breaking. For the Romans they have an exposed and vulnerable left flank that is being threatened to be overrun from enemy cavalry and the still exposed right side of their main battle line. In the center the Romans have recently taken some hard losses which may also make that a problem area if any more losses are sustained.

This game is still undecided. We will be finishing it in a future gaming session. The campaign, is looking like it will generate a lot of good fun games.






Sunday, May 27, 2012

Road Warrior

Many of my friends know that in addition to wargaming my other two hobbies are flying R/C airplanes (gliders mostly) and camping with my wife in our RV motor home. Often I combine my RV hobby with either of the other two, particularly going to RC contests and trade shows. I've also taken the RV to Historicon a couple of times before they moved it too far away. Gettysburg and other Civil War national parks are favorite destinations as well.

Since 2005 Lori and I have been seeing the USA in our 2005 Four Winds Hurricane (similar to this one). We bought it new in order to be sure that as new RV owners we had something we could count on even if it was an entry level Class A motor home. After seven years we felt we knew enough about what our long-term needs are in an RV and have decided to pull the trigger on an upgrade to what we hope will be our long-term RV, possibly our forever RV. It's shown above, a 2007 Winnebago Voyage that we're purchasing used. We signed the papers today and will hopefully pick it up in time to use it for our trip to Lancaster, PA in June to attend the CAMS-Polecat-Soaring Circuits 2K12 ALES Open Soar.

If you're a fellow RV geek, here's the inside poop on the new ride: http://media.gowinnebago.com/models/globalElements/brochure/previous-models/2007/winnebago/07-Voyage-bro.pdf

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

May Game Night 2012

Last Friday night was our monthly club game night. To the left you can see my friend Charlie giving me the highly coveted 'Sirius Cup'. This is a small travelling trophy that we'll be using to commemorate the winner of our series of Field of Glory round-robin games. I'm not sure how I deserved the cup with Charlie, Mike and I all ending up 2-1. Maybe they awarded it to me for hosting the games, or maybe there were tie breakers for battle groups destroyed involved. We're all smiling because it's all in good fun. Hopefully after our Punic War campaign we can have another round of games and I can pass the cup off to the next winner.

 There were three great games run at game night. I played in Charlie's American Civil War game. The rules were the Carnage & Glory computer moderated rules. The scenario was the battle of First Winchester 25 May, 1862. Kevin and I were the attacking Union force and opposing us were the two Johns shown to the left. The combat arm of choice in this game was artillery on both sides. The confederate batteries punished Kevin's attacking infantry to great effectiveness. My batteries were able to send a union battery and one infantry regiment to the rear with canister fire before the Union re-deployed on the reverse slope of their hill. At the time the game was called the Union still controlled both of their objective hills and had given our rebs enough casualties to insure a victory. The more I play C&G the more I like it. Charlie ran a great game.


The other two games were John C's Incas vs Spanish and Gordon's WWII air game using the new 15mm pre-painted planes from Axis & Allies shown below.


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Terrain Bases

A couple weeks ago I posted about these terrain bases in my post labeled "Laser Day with G-Dog". The intention was for Gordon to sell them at his store, Adler Hobby and for me to have production versions ready for the Huzzah! convention. Among all the home repairs I've been doing I was able to get these packaged up in time and Gordon was nice enough to stop by and pick them up. I just received an email from Gordon from the convention that these were a huge hit and he sold out of them at the convention!

It looks like I'll be making more of these for him and may put them up for sale on my website as well. We'll also look into doing a set usable for linear terrain like walls and bocage. This set was meant for aera terrain with removable items on it like trees, brush, rocks, etc. You can see from the photo below the parts that come in the set. This is designed for people without the tools (or desire or time) to create the 1/8" thick plywood pieces themselves. Just pop these out, attach terrain parts to the smaller bases, paint and flock.