Moderns at Mark D's

Last Friday, Bob, Ralph and I travelled up to Mark D's place to play test his game for the upcoming Huzzah! convention in Portland, ME. The game is an adaptation of one of the recent Bolt Action tournament scenarios. Mark has adapted it for his Bolt Action Moderns adaptation. Mark and I played the insurgents, Ralph and Bob played the French led establishment forces.

With only four players Mark randomly selected partial commands for each side. Both sides ended up with a lot of the vehicles and armor and light on infantry. The French side got the worst of this with only one full squad of grunts, but all the toys: Cobra helicopter, two armored cars and two machine gun trucks. They also got a mortar and an HQ squad.

We received a technical with an auto-cannon on it. A second towed auto cannon, two heavy MGs and five squads of infantry.

This game was fun, fast paced and lots of stuff got 'blown up'. The infantry on both sides have plenty of firepower to deal with the vehicles. In the end the game was won by the French thanks to a heroic charge by their Lieutenant in the last turn. Somehow he survived taking incoming fire from no less than six of our squads/weapons. Hollywood material for sure! Look for Mark's game at Huzzah! - it's going to be a good one.

Northern Conspiracy 2016 Symposium

Last Friday night our club got together for our semi-annual symposium. This is the one night a year that we put down the figures and dice, and have presentations on various subjects. Each time we do this it's a rewarding evening. This year was no exception.

We started off with a presentation from Earl's father. Mr. Richards gave us a wonderful talk about his military service during World War II in the Navy Armed Guard. Serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific, Mr. Richards told us numerous excellent stories about his service, both combat and non-combat related.

Mike followed with a presentation on the rise and fall of Mare Nostrum - the Roman domination of the Mediterranean ocean. Mike's discussion compared the popular conclusions about the fall of Rome to a more modern interpretation. After seeing Mike's presentation I'm inclined to side with his conclusion that the more modern studies may have it right.

Following Mike all of the members participated in a round table discussion about military service, both personal experiences as well as several members discussing family members' service.  John brought in reconnaissance photos his father took while flying B-24s in Europe as well as a silk 'escape' map which was something I've never seen in person, even in a museum, let alone be able to handle. Ralph and Ed told stories about being in armour between Vietnam and the Cold War, Phil discussed his Grandfather's service in WWI and I told a couple of stories about my Grandfather's adventurers being a 'scrounge' when not on active duty.

On a personal note, sorry about the lack of posts lately. I was down with pneumonia for 3 weeks. I'm on the mend now and hopefully back to normal!