The American Adventure
In a voyage of discovery not seen since the last time I went to the states I took a punt and decided to ask around if anyone would want a couple of games while I was over in the US of A. Amazingly a little spark turned into a rapidly growing snowball (now there's a mixed up metaphor) and I ended up planning a mid week game in Beech Grove, Indianapolis and meeting up on the Saturday of Historicon in Lancaster, PA. I was pretty bowled over by the hospitality of all I met, from beers to lifts to offers to meet up next time people were over visiting their Aunt and a pact to meet up at Salute 2019. I'll list the exploits I remember....
Stop 1 Indiapolis
Getting a cab is the only way I can actually get around the states easily when I am out there. The last time I took a punt and got a cab to the middle of nowhere to a pop up board game Cafe night in a brewery. This turned out great and I even got a lift home for my troubles. Buoyed by this I again got in a cab to the middle of nowhere and loitered around a games shop in Beech Grove for someone I had never met and only ever seen a facebook profile picture of. Like blind dating for wargaming geeks. I had no reason to fear. Andrew Summers turned up well prepared with lovely terrain, a pre picked map layout and some brotherhood spoiling for a fight*. we rolled up Eliminate and set to with 2250pts each.
*The brotherhood, not Andrew
Refreshingly there were not piles of pathfinding knights around but there were fliers, swain's rangers and trebuchets. I've never really fought against war machines other than organ guns so was wary of them, if not a little intrigued. My tokens were on My Winged archfiend, my cavalry and Larvae. I took a standard refused flank with basusu and gargoyles on the other; whereas Andrew spread across the board his fast cavalry and fliers on the flak I had left weaker of an intricate turn by turn report hasn't come to fruition so I'll try to sumamrise what I remember happening.
The brotherhood swept through their left flank being slightly annoyed by Basusu holding up their fliers but not long enough for them to move into position. My left flank by contrast got stuck in a traffic jam behind a tortured souls regiment having a slap fest with some cavalry recounter chaff.
The artillery did a fine job of missing every shot they were having while my archfiend slowly hopped up the field using blind spots and hiding inside the minimum range of the trebuchets.
The Knights, fast cav and fliers swung round and the footmen moved up onto the objective. My efreet and Chroneas tag team where putting enough wounds on the two knight hordes to cause them bother later in the game and the martyr's prayer wielding sorceress was having trouble trying to plug all the gaps.
With the traffic jam finally resolved the molochs and cav were so far out of the game they weren't likely to make an impact so I tried to rapidly redeploy them. An almighty fight ensued in the middle with the bulk of the damage done to my side.
My archfiend finally rounded the woods at the top of the field and now threatened all the point scoring units. My other tokens were ironically stuck out of the way having been held up in the traffic jam. Swain's rangers had a last ditch attempt to try and strip the flying ability off the Archfiend which failed. At this point we amazingly had run out of time. After some discussion Andrew made the call that he thought I'd have won if we'd have got through turns 6 and possibly 7. All in all a great fun game with an amazingly welcoming and friendly opponent who even saved me the Uber home.
Stop 2 Lancaster - Historicon
Having struck up a conversation about attending Historicon with again a complete stranger I found myself getting a train to a station in the middle of nowhere to be picked up in his car. Trusting to previous experience i figured what could possibly go wrong. Chris turned up with a boot already full of goodies from the previous day's flea market, an army, sandwiches and beer. I figured at this point we'd get on great .
Having never been to a Convention the closets I could get was Games Day 96 in Birmingham. It felt a lot more random with that with a warren of rooms and seemingly endless tables of scenery and minis. There was a massive set of tables out for tournament play which soon emptied in the afternoon leaving us room to game. The variety of eras, scales and attendees was pretty mind boggling. Fighter aircraft next to Napoleonic and even some GW Necromunda .I didn't really get the chance to soak all of it up as I was really primarily there for a couple of games and the flea market but what I did see was impressive.
We finally got round to starting a game despite midway through deployment someone telling us that a vendor in the flea market had just turned up with a boat load of 90s blisters, leading to something of a mad rush. The scenario was eliminate again so my tokens ended up this time on Chroneas, the archfiend and my cavalry as I had upped from 2000pts to 2250.Stop2 Lancaster - Gaming!
Again, dreams of a fully fledged battle report are in tatters as I didn't take the right photos to remind me what happened and my memory is addled by beer. I deployed with my infantry blocks to the centre, Molochs shielded by imps. My gargoyles and winged hero were on the left flank hoping to deal with whatever may be there (a chariot in the end) and start to threaten the flanks. My tortured souls, winged archfiend and abyssal cavalry were on te right flank again hoping to neutralise the elohi and pressure the centre. Cris's deployment had his infantry to the centre flanked by knights then his speedy chariots on the wings.Turn 1
Cris had his tokens on the large unit of infantry, the elohi and one of the knight units.He took turn one and advanced all his units in a pretty steady line with not much else to report. I took advantage of the range of my fliers and used my winged hero to tie down one of the chariots while one regiment of tourterd souls charged into the elohi to hopefully hold them up by disordering them. My Archfiend took a punt and managed to waver the mounted abbess with a lucky lightning bolt.
Turn 2
Due to the proximity of the small church to the chariot on the Baselian right flank, an almighty slap fest of Iron resolve and Regenerating abyssal champion now took place for the rest of the game. Despite being nimble there wasn't enough room to pivot and maneuver so the pair just clobbered each other. The fanatical followers of the shining ones blazed up the centre making combat but breaking no one. The tortured souls which had been thrown against the angels were destroyed by their foe and flank charging knights. They had done their job though in stalling the units and breaking up the battlefield.
Turn 3-4
My Imps charged his chaff but didn't break them. unfortunately causing a traffic jam meaning my molochs were stuck so (foolishly) backed up. My bane chanted lower abyssls countercharged the knights and wiped them out while my efreet and chorneas ripped into the men at arms infantry block causing about 14? wounds. Chris retaliated by exploiting the stranded Molochs with a massed flying and knight multicharge before they speed off to take on my out of position and isolated cavalry on my right flank to claim a loot token.
Turns 5-6
I shot up the infantry to claim another shooting token and deny the centre objective. Chris destroyed my cavalry but as the victorious elohi and knights returned to the centre the winged chaps were burnt to a cinder by the fireball tag team once again. With my having taken 2 units down with shooting and a third in combat I was winning over the one loss of my unit of knights in combat. My archfiend went off hunting other units. The lower abyssals, footmen and his champion on a flier kept slogging it out in the pond.
Turn 7
Chris moved up on the centre objective to now be drawing. He also finally saw an opening on Chroneas and nimble charged into him taking the loot counter. I was now down with the only hope of recovery being to get rid of the knights on the centre objective or deny him with unit strength. Neither happened and a Turn 6 victory swung to a Turn 7 loss.On the whole a great game with a lot of ebb and flow. I really need to stop my cavalry getting stuck in traffic jams! Chris was a great opponent and hopefully I'll be back another time to play him.
Game 2
By the time I played Tony the beer had been flowing a fair amount, I din't take many photos and my memory is hazy We played push.. In summary.He took dwarves with an elf dragon ally and Golloch's fury. backed up with some badgers, berserkers on foot, organ guns bulwarkars and a missile horde.
- My knights got stuck AGAIN behind some wavered gargoleys.
- My tag team roasted the horde of brock riders in a turn
- His dragon hid behind a house a bit, threatened and flamed
- The steel behmoth rained fire everywhere
- The bulwarkars were legging it across the table so fast they forgot to see my (poorly direction defined imp unit) had a rear charge on them backed up by the archfiend and died
- All was good until again turn 7 where I lost...Again :)
At this point we had a few more beers, played some board games and called it a day.
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