DAK: Commander

Having completed enough Commonwealth troops to field one side of a battle I'm now able to move onto the opposing force. As Mr T had already purchased some Italians I opted for a box of the Perry Deutsches Afrika Korps infantry with supporting weapons from the same range. The big box of plastic infantry gives more than enough for a platoon strength force and then a few packs of metal round out the force.

First up with have the command section made up of a Lieutenant, senior sergeant  and a couple of riflemen. This is almost exactly the same as the Indian army command group. For the DAK we have a couple of metal models and a couple of plastic ones, as they are from the same range the blend in well together.

With these commanders in place we can have a look at what you can command your men to do on the table during a battle. Each player starts with the same seven cards in their hand at the start of a turn. Each turn is divided into up to seven activation phases where players each reveal a card and then carry out some or all of the actions on the card. Once the cards are revealed the player with the higher score on their cards (draws are handled by an initiative counter) carries out their actions and then the other player does the same.

There are three types of action that a card could allow you to undertake and each unit is only allowed to take two actions each turn. Those actions don't have to be taken together and the game has a reactive fire mechanism that also uses up an action. So you could move a unit up and leave it covering an area so it can take a reactive shot later on in the turn.

The red aiming symbol allows a unit to take a shot or make an assault. This is your chance to lay down some fire without it needing to be a reaction to an enemy move. As you can see there are five Engage Order symbols available each turn for your forces so you want to use them wisely.

The blue arrow is the Movement Order symbol and this allows you to walk or sprint your infantry across the battlefield. Vehicles use the same order but as you would expect move much more quickly than the PBI. Sprinting allows your infantry to get around quickly but at the expense of making saves against shooting more difficult. You don't want to be caught sprinting in the open by an enemy squad.

The last (green) symbol is the Tactical Order symbol and this is used for a couple of different things. Firstly it allows a heavy weapon to unlimber and setup to fire, and possibly more importantly it allows you to rally troops whose morale is wavering. You only get three of these each turn so you probably want to get that heavy weapon out early in a good spot so you can concentrate on your troops morale later in the game.

In the game squads are split up into Teams each with their own leader model. I've been representing this with painting the team leaders of a squad with the same coloured base. The reason this matters is that if your squads team leaders are within 30cm of each other you can split the actions on a card between both teams. Otherwise only one team (or vehicle / heavy weapon) can benefit from all the actions (up to two activations) on a card and you are likely to waste some. You can also play a card (up to twice in a turn) on your commander and he can take a free action of any type for himself and spread the actions on the card out to any team leader within 30cm.

Working out how to get the best out of this action economy is going to be central to commanding your forces to victory. 

I've also completed the first infantry squad which come as a standard eight man squad with two SMG armed leaders, an LMG, and five riflemen.

More infantry and some terrain to hide behind are on the way.

Ill Tides: Prize Salvage

Armada/ 250 points/ Prize Salvage/ Draw

Rich!  This is it.  To cut free from the unyielding patronage of that bully Ironjawz at last.  

The rumours must be true mused the Admiral as he squinted into the distance.  The mist hung like a veil across the dawn’s mournful face however from the east arthritic tentacles of light battled to pierce this seeming wall of grey….and momentarily the Admiral caught sight of a hulking great edifice upon the black water.  True it is - a fortune awaits those with courage enough to reach out and grab it.  The order went up…onwards to Wealth & Fortune!

Unbeknownst at this time to the greedy little Admiral The Dark Elves were making haste for the same prize, their rapacity knowing no limit.

Too late the shout was heard from the Angkor on his far right and the Katsuchan on the left, the Pirates had been sighted and were going to steal the Admiral’s prize - and his future - from right beneath his crooked beak.  An impressive flotilla on this occasion, after he had dispatched the last pathetic fleet sent against him.  It was clear the Twilight Kin fancied making themselves kings one and all.

As they closed the Admiral could see the Corsairs, their sails billowing furiously, thrusting for the prize, HIS prize he smarted.  From the east, arrayed against him were an Impaler, Butcher, Heart Seeker, Soulbane and way out on the western flank an Assassin.

He knew speed was key and here his Hell-Forged fleet were no match for the Elves but perhaps their swiftness could be used against them.  

The Assassin thundered into the dwarven line to disrupt and slow the fighting Infernox.  Then the Soulbane hulked her way past the treasure ship to block his Hellfane from boarding and claiming the loot.  To make the situation dire the Heartseeker pulled alongside the treasure ship on the far side, shielded from any dwarven attack and the Butcher secured herself to the treasure ship at its prow.  They swarmed like overbloated flies gorging on a dismembered Goredrake - vile scum the Admiral raged, but he knew he’d been beaten to it.

The Infernox and Assassin traded shots as they passed.  His own Hellfane manoeuvred perfectly to rake the

hubristic Soulbane and the plucky Decimator glided between Soulbane and Impaler pouring forth Dragon Fire

into both at hellish close quarters.  These concerted blows crippled both vessels, soon to be surrendered or

sunk - had the voracious Dark Elves overplayed their deformed claw hands?  The treasure however was safely

aboard their leviathan of the Butcher which had taken minor prow damage from the Hellfane.

To the east the minnow Katsuchan had been crippled by the Impaler who, the Admiral thought, too far away now

to impose herself.  The Katsuchan had done well!

The Infernox, Angkor and Decimator now sought to round the treasure hulk and annihilate the Heart Seeker

which had now disengaged, while the Hellfane grappled the Butcher to wrest the Admiral’s rightful treasure. 

This would be an epic contest, Leviathan against Behemoth, a titanic struggle the Old Gods would savour with

blood-lusting glee.

The Infernox did for the Heart Seeker although her mighty efforts saw her crippled in the process while Butcher

and Hellfane were locked in a pitiless contest which ended in exhausted triumph for the Hellfane, the Butcher

dispatched and the treasure aboard the Admiral’s ship.  Disaster though was to come as the toil taken on his ship

and crew was so immense the Might of the fleet was stricken and unable to move.  

The Impaler, clearly disconcerted by the systematic destruction of her kin, crashed into the surrendered Soulbane. 

Crippled she was stranded until the Decimator breathed deadly Dragon Fire to send her blazing to the ocean

depths.

The Admiral had one last chance to salvage the Prize.  The Decimator and Angkor were still relatively unharmed

and nearby.  Expert seamanship would enable the Hellfane to unload her precious treasure to her kin and

the Admiral’s plans realised.  Try as they might though the debris of broken ships and increasing swell of the

capricious mocking ocean meant the treasure was all but lost…….. 

Next time: KoW/1500 points/ Smoke & Mirrors

Halo Flashpoint: Sangheili Elites

 Because it's good to have a least a couple of new games on the go I've also started painting up Mantic's latest game, Halo: Flashpoint. This is Mantic's entry into the growing field of low model count skirmish games using large models (40mm+) based on popular IP's. I'm thinking of Marvel Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint as prime examples. These games are more aimed at people who love the IP but don't necessarily have a background in wargaming. My personal interest was piqued by the fact the rules are based on my favourite set, Mantic's Deadzone rules. I've never played Halo and don't really know much about it's setting as I was busy shooting people in Planetside on the PC when Halo was released on consoles. 

The games comes in a couple of versions and I went for the bigger box as you got a greater variety of models including some non-humans to play with. The human forces are made up of genetically modified warriors called Spartans. The aliens in the box are called Sangheili and I believe they are the main enemy in the games for the Spartans. Each fireteam is (currently) made up of 3 or 4 models with the biggest difference from Deadzone being that when they die the models can respawn into the battle. This is a mechanism straight from any PC/console game and means that you can only really gain a temporary numbers advantage rather than the snow-ball effect losing models can have in Deadzone. 

The Sangheili Mercenaries are a complete fireteam of four elites so I've started off the painting with them. This will allow me to field a complete team with only having to paint a few models.

In the box you get a nice stat card for each model, these have been produced to a high standard and give you all the information you need about each unit and it's various keywords and weapons. One thing I have noticed is that compared to Deadzone the weapon ranges tend to be shorter and the movement speeds quicker so I think you can expect to be in melee more often.

That won't be a bad thing for the Sangheili as you can see they have a Fight of 4+ so they are perfectly able to handle themselves in a brawl. Each of them is also armed with a one-use grenade (which comes back when you respawn) so you certainly want to make sure you use that every life. Like Deadzone, Flashpoint uses command dice but you only start with two in your initial pool. At present the Sangheili have no models that add to this pool so they will always be starved of dice and get no re-rolls. Command dice are very much part of the 'special sauce' that makes Deadzone so it will be interesting to see how this lack impacts the amount of fun you have playing the Elites.

The team itself looks to be reasonably well balanced between melee and shooting with the energy sword looking to be a top melee weapon and the ranged weapons having a decent spread of abilities. One thing Flashpoint does have is random weapon spawns so you can add a second weapon onto a model, having 4+ for melee and shooting will help the Sangheili make good use of any weapon that they pick up.

If like me you have no knowledge of the history of Halo then flipping the unit cards over gives you a nice little bit of information on the unit and the weapon it comes equipped with. I'm hopeful that Mantic plan to add Halo to the Companion so we get the appropriate keywords printed out with the list in the future. 

The models themselves are good quality pre-built plastic miniatures of the sort you'd get in a high end board game. You can see they are aimed more at the non-wargaming community and offer a quick to table experience. You also get some rather nice cardboard terrain in the box which slots together very easily to make up your board. Of course I also have plenty of Deadzone terrain to add onto the table but with the shorter weapon ranges I think you could go a bit lighter on the terrain in Flashpoint.

Well that's the first team done, I'll probably try to do another team over Christmas in between starting the DAK forces for WW2.

8th Army: Support Units

Work on my Indian army troops for V for Victory has been progressing well over the last couple of weeks with several heavy weapons and a new vehicle joining the ranks. In fact I now have enough troops to field one side of a battle, which means I can start working on some Germans. I also received some decals from America so have been back to add those onto the recon Jeep.

Medium machine guns (MMG) and mortars are a staple of platoon sized engagements, adding some extra firepower to the handheld weapons of your infantry sections. In VfV you can generally add one of each to your force if you have the spare Stars to spend.

In a WW2 game you are going to spending a lot of your time shooting at the enemy so it may be worth having a quick look at how that works in the game.

You start off by gathering your fire-pool of dice, with each weapon adding a number of dice of a certain type. VfV is interesting in that you are always aiming for the same target number for a success, 5+, (in fact the designers call the game 5 for Victory) and the number and type of dice you roll is what changes.

The dice have a hierarchy shown below which they work up and down by a system of  boosts and burns.

D6- <> D6  <> D8 <> D12 <> D12+

If we look at an average section of Commonwealth infantry consisting of 2 NCO's with SMG's, 1 Bren LMG, & 5 Rifles, they would generate 13D6 without taking any modifiers into account. The dice pool is then modified by the table below, you can see it's mostly burns so the pool will get smaller.

You start by reducing the highest dice first down a step until all are on the same step apart from D6's. If you have to burn a D6 and it isn't the last dice in your pool then it's discarded, once you get to the last one you roll 2D6 and take the lowest result, the games calls this D6-. If you manage to boost a D12 then you roll 1D12 & 1D6 and take the highest result (D12+). You can choose to make either a direct attack which causes casualties or suppressive fire which ignores cover penalties but only reduces the targets morale.

Shooting at armoured vehicles uses a similar process but has it's own table so it is fortunate that my troops have a 6pdr to knock on the enemy tanks armour with.

All of these models are from the Perry Miniatures site and they also see the Indian Pattern Carrier which is an oversized Bren carrier style vehicle. The hull comes is mostly one piece of resin with some metal additions to glue on. The crew are more Sikh infantry so these chaps fit in well with the rest of the infantry in the platoon.

I went with a brown striped camo option not having the nerve to do the full-on Caunter camouflage pattern. I'm sure Mr T will cover that when he paints his M3 Honey up.

The IPC comes with a Bren gun and an anti-tank rifle so given the scale of game and the light armour we plan to field it should be reasonably capable in most situations.

I've also put some unit markings on the recon jeep to show it as part of the HQ group for the 8th Indian Infantry Division.

And here's the whole unit, I do have a few more bits on order to add to the force but this is more than enough to get started with.

Ill Tides: Compass Points

 KoW / 1500 points / Compass Points / TK Win

It had all started well enough thought Arlantrix, a Void-skiff patrol has spotted a large dwarven army heading inland towards the hill range. Seizing the chance to ambush her opponents for once she had gathered the available crews of the ships she had to hand and set off after them. Considering the shortness of their legs the dwarves had moved quickly and by the time her force had caught up with them they where already grubbing around in the dirt.

Arlantrix had no idea what it was they sort but the presence of their Leader, Sycorax, indicated that at least he thought it was important enough to lead the force himself. 

Arlantrix had noted the large number of guns her enemy had brought with them and ordered Zor'damos  and her corsair crew to hold back as long as possible to try and draw the dwarfs forwards.

She had placed herself on the of the army along with Khresh, a Soulbane who had proven himself in previous battles and been awarded a mighty Nightmare to ride into battle. Along with a couple of Void-Skiff squadrons she hoped to close on the enemy and ride them down.

It had started off well enough with a dwarven unit being routed in the first assault, she'd also caught the enemy unaware with a new spell. Since the last encounter when she'd been personally assaulted by a hulking monstrosity Arlantrix had been searching for a way to turn the enemies strength against them, and she'd found it. A spell called the Alchemist's curse, the more heavily armoured the opponent the stronger the force of the spell against them. With this she's attacked the enemies animated Golem's, threatening to turn them back into piles of rocks.

Things had however taken a turn for the worse when first one and then the other Void-skiff squadron was turned into splinters by the enemy Golems and worse followed. Somehow the dwarves had found a way past her defences and hexed her. Even thinking about casting a spell gave her a blinding headache and uttering one was much worse. As soon as she'd completed the Alchemist's curse Arlantrix was wracked with unimaginable pain and a being of lesser willpower would have collapsed. She however clung to consciousness.

In the centre the dwarves had been tempted forwards to get into range to unleash their fire-storm and at the last moment possible Zor'damos had lead her corsairs forwards into the enemy. As gunpowder exploded and fireballs splashed across her troops Zor'damos launched herself into the enemy ranks headless of the danger. The dwarves had also unleashed a new weapon on her troops, a device witch spewed forth great streams of flame.

Despite the torrent of fire the corsairs launched themselves into the enemy ranks and started to cut down the cowardly dwarves who had sought to hide behind their guns. At this point Khresh had appeared behind the dwarven lines and despite being subjected to attack by the flame-throwing weapon had launched himself back into combat.

At this point Arlantrix had staggered out of the woods, covered in her own blood that she had vomited up due to the pain of casting spells she was barely able to stay standing but through her iron-like willpower she remained upright. She had just enough energy to cast one final spell on Sycorax which saw the dwarf collapse as the last of his troops around him where massacred. 

The only thing left to complete the victory was to cut the dwarfs heart out with her knife but as she staggered over to his body she was foiled. Out of the skies swept a troop of Gargoyles which had hovered on the side of the battle without committing themselves. Now they sought to gain some measure of forgiveness by stealing away the unconscious dwarf leader from the massacre.

And now the battle was done, Arlantrix slumped wearily on the ground, unable to care about her troops seeing her brought low. The willpower it had taken to fight through the hex had all but drained her strength and it would take some time for her to regain her strength.

Next time: Armada / 250 points / Prize Salvage

8th Army: Growing the Platoon

As we've not played a campaign game this week I have some time to show off some more of the troops for my 8th Army force, these are all Perry models.

As I'd been painting up a fair bit of infantry I decided to throw a vehicle into the mix and painted up a recon unit with it's jeep. I'm still waiting on the unit decals to arrive so they will be applied later on. 

V for Victory isn't a vehicle heavy game but you can't really do WW2 without the odd vehicle so including a scout unit in a jeep is a good place to start. The crew can dismount so I also painted them up in case they want to leap out and take cover, or if the jeep is destroyed.

Force building in V for Victory is pretty straightforward with each side getting a command section and a couple of infantry sections as a base force and then a certain number of stars to spend on extras. An average game seems to use between 6 - 12 stars of additional troops and you can see the basic options for the British below. AFV's have their own section and can easily run up to 5 - 9 stars so you won't get much else if you bring a couple to the table.

Each unit starts with the number of men and weapons in bold and you can fill out the ranks with reinforcements  bought in to the maximum shown by the greyed out figures. You can also drop a model to swap 4 rifles to SMG's if you want some more close range firepower.

As well as the recon unit I've been working on some 1 star support choices so I've painted up an A/T rifle unit and a sniper unit. 

I've also completed the 2nd and 3rd infantry sections to bring the platoon up to full strength. It remains to be seen if you are better off reinforcing your two starting sections up to 11 men (from 8) or going with a 3rd section.

I had a few models left over on the sprue so I also made up one points worth of reinforcements and also some SMG troops to swap out. SMG's have twice the firepower of rifles when up close so you may want an assault section if you think you are going to be on the offensive.

I also had a few leftovers from the SAS pack I bought to get the sniper model so I've painted them up as well, I'm sure they will come in useful at some point.

And here we have everything I've painted up so far. I'm now working on some more support weapons with a HMG, mortar, and A/T gun next in line to be painted up.