DEFIANT ASCENDANT

A couple of weeks behind now!  Before our Thursday game, to familiarise Neil with the Star Trek: Attack Wing rules, I set up a game. A Breen battlecruiser and two Galor class cruisers have come across USS Defiant and a Galaxy class cruiser engaged in crew change and resuply. The Defiant has been on a reconnaisance mission to find out what is happening in the are  since the Klingons took over DS9                                                                                                                                           

The inital encounter.

The consternation caused by the surprise appearance of the Dominion ships almost caused a collision.

In the inital pass, hits were scored by both sides, most of them absorbed by shields.

               Defiant's photon torpedoes score hits on one of the Galors.

        The Galaxy also chips in with  a hit. The Galor was destroyed.

The Breen Battlecruiser was the target of both Federation vessels and took heavy damaged.

Victory was not without price. The Galaxy was damaged and forced to flee. It was merely a parting shot, as the two remaining Dominion ships attempted to evade the Defiant.

 

I decided that the continuing chase would form the basis of the scenario for our Thursday evening game. 

 

POCKET BATTLES.

During one of Neil's visits, we managed to fit in a short notice game of Pocket Battles.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/4563/pocket-battles . We used the Celts v Romans edition.

This game is very similar to Dixie/ Last Crusade/ Eagles in that the battlefield is split into 9 areas (the face down cards represent the boundaries). Each army consists of, in this case, a selection of tiles representing each individual troop. These are formed into units. 

For each 10 points, a player gets an activation counter to activate units each turn. Each troop tile has a number of dice symbols (black for combat, white for shooting). When making an attack each tile in the unit that matches the number thrown on the attack dice scores a hit. Most troops can only take one hit. Those that take more than one, get a wound counter, which is the reverse of an activation counter.

The game played well, and Neil won by destroying 50% of my Celts.

FROM THE DESERT TO DEADMAN'S HAND.

A couple of weeks ago, my old friend Neil was back visiting from the UAE. As well as catching up we managed a few games. Three weeks ago we had a Wednesday of games. The first game up was a couple of Scenes from Dead Man's Hand. 

The first scene was 'Ambush'. My Outlaws ambushed some Lawmen. This led to a larger gunfight as other members of both sides rushed to support their comrades.

It took a lot of cat and mouse movement and quite a few missed shots, before the Lawmen managed to win the scenario.

The second scene saw the aftermath of an Outlaw bank job. The Sherriff was in the Barber's, but rushed out to help bring the Outlaws to book, along with some deputies and concerned citizens. To start off with, the Outlaws had the best of it. That was until the gunfighter on the roof was put out of action allowing the Lawmen to catch the Outlaws in a crossfire.

The Outlaw boss resorted to taking a female hostage to use a human shield.

But good use of the cards allowed a concerned citizen to put him out of action with a straight shot with no modifiers (good or bad).

Neil enjoyed his first go at the game. The card driven mechanisms were familiar from our experiences with Piquet.

We later had a game of Star Trek: Attack Wing, which will feature in my next post.

THURSDAY: SAILS OF GLORY, ISLAND HO!

This game was related to the previous two games we have played and follows on from http://www.sailsofglory.org/showthread.php?2189-After-Action-Report-with-Pics .

 

The French frigates Unite' and Hermione' have been shadowing the Vanguard and Spartiate, the damaged british ships of the line. They lose contact with Vanguard and move closer to try and regain contact. Spartiate turns in an attempt to drive them off.

Two views of the inital set up. The islands are made from Hexon 2.

Spartiate tries to draw the French away from Vanguard which is in the lee of one of the islands deperately trying to make repairs to make her seaworthy and is, as yet undetected. A sudden change of wind scatters the French.

 These pictures show Hermoine' chasing down Spartiate and managing to get a super effective raking shot. Vanguard can now be seen. She managed to make repairs and is now under way. We had to make slight changes to the island at this point. A change of wind meant that my two planned manouvers meant that I was sailing Spartiate directly aground. It did not occur to me to adjust my sails. If I had, the situation would not have arisen.

 Unite' adds to the misery of Spartiate by adding a partial broadside to the accumulated damage. Unite' now tries to outrun the pursuing Spartiate. Hermoine' can be seen managing to avoid a grounding. In the far distance. Vanguard can be seen making her escape.

The pictures above show the closing stages of the engagement. The two French frigates slowly, but surely, close in on Spartiate. Unite' exchanges a broadside with her before Spartiate barges Hermoine' out of the way. Despite taking fire from the heavily damaged Spartiate, the two frigates batter the ship of the line into submission, and she strikes her colours.

 

We played this game using the full rules, as close as possible, as there were only four ships. Rick was the rules guru and handled Vanguard. I took Spartiate. Neil was back from UAE and handled the French.

Using two cards to plan moves was difficult enough without wind changes intervening. That was mostly responsible for the grounding, although I have now learnt the importance of using minimum sail when sailing in the vicinity of islands!

 

More photos and commentray can be found here:

 

http://www.sailsofglory.org/showthread.php?2235-After-Action-Report-Part2-with-pics

WEDNESDAY GAME: RELIC RUNNERS.

This week's board game was Relic Runners http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/144270/relic-runners . Inspired by Tobago, this is another explorer/adventurer themed game.

Each player is an explorer and starts from Base Camp, in the centre. They spend rations to explore the ruins and temples. Ruins allow a player to place one of his ten 'familiar trails' on an adjacent trail. Temples have three levels. The colour and level determines the effect or the amount of gold.. 

Movement is one way and a player can move one trail per turn. Movement along 'familiar trails'is free. So building a network of trails is vital. They also play a major part in the later part of the game.

Once a temple or ruins has been totally explored, an artifact is found. Ruins produce Emerald Frogs, temples produce an artifact of the appropriate colour.

To collect artifacts, a player has to move from the site of an artifact to another artifact of the same colour in one move. This makes placement of pathways vital. There are effects that allow you to shift pathways (seen on the purple temple above).

 Once a set number of artifacts have been found (8 for three players). Victory points are scored by collecting gold and artifacts of different colours.

In our game, David managed to win by a fairly wide margin, with Del third.

Monsterpocalypse next week!