Northern Conspiracy July 2019 Game Night

This past Friday was our Club's monthly game night. Being the 75th anniversary of D-day it was decided to do a D-Day theme night. It seems that it was an EXCELLENT idea as attendance was very good.

I played in Mark D's Cruel Seas game which re-created the German attack on the southern screen of the Allied armada. I was put on the Allied team and was assigned the task of piloting the target ships, mainly to eliminate the possibility of me running more ships aground (see my prior two X-wing posts). My command consisted of a landing craft gun boat, a control craft, an armored trawler and a tanker. The landing craft gun boat ended up being a VERY capable ship.

Mike and Art filled out the allies taking our PT boats and Fast 'D' boats. Ross and Chris took the Germans each with a larger craft and a fist full of German Fast 'E' boats.

Early on long-range torpedo shots FILLED the seas. While most of these were dodged, a few would bear fruit later in the game.

My Landing Craft Gunboat took some long-range pot shots with its 4.7" guns and scored some lucky critical hits on the German destroyer neutralizing it for a couple of turns. I kept pouring on the firepower and Mike eventually finished off the crippled boat with a torpedo from his D-boats.

In the center Ross' E-boats took out one of Mike's D-boats with gunnery, while Art exacted revenge doing similarly to one of Ross' E-boats with his American PT boats. In the end the sinking of the German destroyer sealed the engagement for the allies.

Dick and Greg teamed up to host a beautiful looking game of Chain of Command. The battle was the classic capturing of the outskirts of Carentan features in the HBO Series 'Band of Brothers' episode 3 of the same name.

According to Dick this one was in the balance right up to the end when the Germans pulled off some gutsy defense blunting the Airborne defense in the building complex.

Filling out the trio of land, sea and air, Phil ran a game of Bandits High in the air over the invasion. As this game was coming to a crescendo I was busy dodging torpedoes in my game and unfortunately didn't get any good photos of the furball  at the end.

Another Shameless Plug

I've listed a bunch of lots of un-painted 15mm WWII figures on Ebay. Time to clear out some of my 'dead lead' that I don't think I'll ever get to now that my eyes are going and I'm mostly painting 28mm for WWII.

Please check out the auctions here. I've also included some teaser photos in this post.

More 'Deadeye Jedi' X-wing Games

Friday we played some more X-wing 2.0. First game pitted Rob and Bob against Ralph, with Charlie and I facing off. I played Darth Vader and a cluster of Tie Fighters against Charlie's four X-wing list that includes a couple of Red squadron aces. Charlie jousted my four Ties with two X-wings, which I foolishly accepted thinking I had the upper hand. The engagement lost me a tie instantly and another a turn later. The rest of the game was clean-up for Charlie. I never touched him! Well played, he even kept away from Vader mostly making him irrelevant.

Game two Charlie and Ralph teamed up with Charlie's four X-wing list, each taking a blue squadron pilot and one of the better pilots. I brought an Imperial Aces list with Vader, Soontir Fel and Whisper.

I was pretty sure this list required far more skill than I posses, but I managed to not mess too many things up. Ralph and Charlie out-played me early with a quick turn on Vader and Soontir which forced me into hard decisions barrel rolling out of some arcs, but insuring I'd be going spelunking over some asteroids the following turn. I got lucky with my evades and mostly got out unscathed.

Following my rock adventure, I was able to use the Aces' maneuverability to my advantage. K-turning over the rocks ahead I was able to eliminate one of Charlie's X-wings. I think Ralph and Charlie mostly expected me to turn out. The trip over the rock cost me a health on Soontir and Vader, but was worth it for the surprise factor. Following this, Ralph's Wedge made an aggressive move K-turning over a debris cloud (maybe it was a sloop? not sure), double stressing him. With Whisper on his six, that made him a primary target for Whisper who took him out in a couple turns before he cleared all the stress.

On the other table in the second game, Bob's four fang fighter squadron Took on Rob's YT-2400 Outrider and two X-wing list. Bob jousted the YT-2400 and chewed through it in a single turn pumping out 11 damage in total. Fangs do love to joust! Rob's remaining X-wings made it close in the end taking out a fang for revenge.

Fun night again with X-wing 2.0. Next game might be a larger group on my 'big table' that can handle up to four separate games simultaneously.

Not miniature related, but on Saturday I did a little woodworking for a charity auction that's at a conference my wife will be attending in a couple weeks. This bottle opener and wine stopper set are turned from an interesting wood - the root of a fruit apple tree. I recovered this root and some of the branch wood from a storm damaged apple tree that blew down on a friend's property.