0200: Butcher and Bolt

We've been working our way through the first few scenario's for 0200 Hours and this week was my first go at being the attacker. As we don't have cards for German attackers and British defenders we just used the cards as they came and swapped them over to representing the opposite nation.

We'd played this scenario the week before with the British on the attack and it's a fairly straight forwards one. The attacker needs to kill half of the defenders and escape without losing over half their men. Half of the defenders start off the table with the remaining troops walking around a patrol route. As the game goes on and the attackers are spotted and shots fired the alert tracker goes up until the alarm is raised and the rest of the defenders come on.

For my playthrough I had a mixture of SMG's and rifles with one sniper, the British had deployed a Bren the previous weeks to good effect so I want to try something a little different. 

The attackers have more agency than the defenders so in general can pick when and where the engagement starts and then the defenders need to hope that troops move in the right direction to get involved. So it was good to finally be in the attackers corner after several games as the defender. You certainly wouldn't want to be the defender every week.

In the game my officer and sniper opened the encounter taking out a pair of sentries which immediately raised the alarm and then the SMG armed troops pushed forwards to try and get the crossroads under a crossfire.  

The sniper gave some covering fire for this with his long range of 25" proving very useful with all the 10" SMG armed troops around.

Fortunately for my attackers the defenders managed to move into the kill zone I'd setup and they managed to kill enough to secure the first part of the objective, my Heer officer personally took out three (iirc) Brits to bring home the win.

This scenario didn't really need the attacker to over extend themselves as they could just pick off the defenders without any real need to advance to far. Next time the attackers will need to be a bit bolder in order to blow up and objective.

Armada: Northern Alliance Fleet

A while back after attending the South Oxfordshire Armada event I was inspired to print off a new fleet and after what feels like a long time they have finally been completed.

Wanting something a bit different from my current fleets I went with the Viking themed Northern Alliance/Varangur models. The plan is to use these alongside my Kingdoms of Men army when we next do an Kings of War/Armada campaign. I'd put off the start of painting the fleet to await the arrival of the Army Painter flexible triad paint set so this was also my first outing with those. 

Not really knowing what fleet composition would be best I went with printing off two of everything apart from the XL. Not being a fan of fliers I didn't print off any of those so did save myself a small amount of effort. In general the NA ships pack a good number of Heavy and Close guns generally backed up by a reasonable amount of crew strength. I'm thinking they want to get in close to soften the enemy up with shooting and then finish them off with a boarding action. They also have a couple of Indirect options to shoot on the way in to further soften up the enemy. 

The faction specific upgrades (Dwarven Ale & Naiad Ensnarers) are defence orientated as they add nerve and reduce incoming boarding damage respectively. Whilst the fleet also benefits from the Glide rule which could potentially add 1" or 2" onto a movement step. I think Glide could potentially be useful in a number of scenarios so it will take some practice to make the most of it.

First up we have the XL which in common with all XL's is a bit of a beast. It packs a fearsome broadside and a good number of combat crew so cannot be taken lightly. It's nerve is perhaps a little low but that can be boosted by both dwarven ale and sturdy construction if you can spare the upgrade slots.

The fleet only has one large ship option, the Serpent. Again packing a decent number of guns on the broadsides with a decent crew strength these can put out some shooting pain. They also have a special ability (Ice Blast) that lets them potentially reduce the speed of enemy ships, so this could be useful for slowing an enemy ship for boarding or other reasons.

The Draakar is a true glass hammer, it's the fastest ship in the fleet and has very low nerve and structure points but does pack a mighty 7 crew strength. It's not cheap and is unlikely to survive much shooting or combat against a strong foe but it is capable of wrecking similar sized ships in quick order.

The Ice Breaker is a much more sturdy ship with above average nerve and decent broadsides and crew strength. It feels like this is the safer option between the two medium main battle ships and probably the more sensible choice.

The first support option is the Snekkja which adds to your indirect weapon options. It's not fast or tough and doesn't want to fight up close but they reasonably cheap. You could also double their firepower with an additional forward weapon though that would increase the price to 22 points.

The Skeid is a nice model but I'm struggling to see the value in it's special rule and it's not really quick or tough enough to be an objective grabber so I suspect I won't be putting any on the table.

The last option is the Karvi squadron which allows nearby ships to count as having grappling hooks. The squadron auras are a nice idea but I've generally found them to be too slow to actually use them when needed, so it's probably better to just put the item on the ship that needs them.

It's taken a while to get these all done but I'm glad I've got them all painted up and ready to use, hopefully the South Oxford guys will have another Armada event I can take them too.

 

0200: 2nd First Game

Having played a reasonable number of VfV games now it felt like a good time to have another look at the other set of WW2 rules I have. I've played one game of 0200 Hours but that was a long time ago now so we essentially came to the game from fresh.

Mr T and his 8th Army took on the role of the attackers as we played the introductory scenario again. This sees the alarm already raised and the attackers trying to get off the opposite side of the table without losing three men. The defenders simply need to stop this happening by killing three of the attackers.

The game is asymmetric in that the two sides generally have access to different orders so the attackers spend a lot of time sneaking about whilst the defenders have a semi-random patrol mechanic which stops them simply heading straight towards the attackers.

As with the previous game this meant that some of the attackers spent a fair bit of the game wandering around whilst the attackers killed off their friends. For much of the game it looked like the attackers would have an easy win until the German Officer stepped up and dispatched two of the attackers.

This lead to a rather nervy conclusion to the game as the last pair of SAS had to try and get off the table without either of them being killed, something they just managed to do with some aid of an event card. 

Next week we will go onto scenario 2 which introduces an alarm tracker and larger forces.

Firefight project

 My first dip into Mantic's Sci-Fi universe sees me trying to work out colour schemes for Firefight/Deadzone Nightstalkers - surely it shouldn't be this hard.

I think I'll go with these schemes, give or take, for the Scarecrows and Spectres but there's plenty of room for technical improvements.

I started a Reaper but got completely disillusioned so he(it) is marinating in Dettol so I can start again - #TorturedArtist

V for Victory: Shifting Lines

The seventh scenario in the book is Shifting Lines. This involves each player placing down three jump off points in their half of the table and then three objectives in the opposition half of the table. Once these are all out each player takes it in turns to place infantry teams around a jump off point. Any teams left over and all vehicles are then placed on the board edge. Essentially you score more points for an objective at the end of the game the closer it is to the opposition base edge, you can also move objectives you control a short distance each turn so you could push them closer to the opposition edge.

The 8th Army went for a narrow front with their three jump off points close together and two of their objectives just over the half way mark in front of them. Their third objective is sat under my A/T gun. I went for a broader front with two objectives right on the opposite baseline from the 8th Army deployment points and the third on the same side but just over the half way line.

The early moves saw the Sikhs pushing up towards their two closest objectives whilst their recon jeep had to switch sides to contest the my two objectives. The DAK where more happy to sit back and pour fire into the opposition. The primary target for this fire was the Sikh mortar which had managed to knock out the sdkfz 250 with it's opening salvo. This was the only time it shot in the game though as it took heavy and accurate fire and with it's morale crushed it was forced to retire.

This somewhat set the tone as the DAK firing was consistently accurate and whilst not often firing to kill they forced several units to take morale tests and stalled the Sikh advance.

The decisive moment came when the Sikh's launched an entire section at the central building held by the DAK, this was met with a devastating fusillade of fire which cut down five out of the eight attackers before they reached the building. Two more died in the combat with a lone NCO staggering away from the combat.

On the other flank I'd managed to wear down the morale of the Sikh recon team and forced a moral test (which they failed) by driving my Kubelwagon through them. These casualties along with those suffered on the other flank tipped the Sikh's over their break point (50%) so the DAK secured the win.

Next week we take a break from VfV to try out some 0200 Hours which we've only had one game of so far and that was a long time ago.