Cangames - Report #3 - Blood Red Skies Mig Alley

Hello everyone,

I hope all is well on your side of the internets. Hot on the heels of my recent painting and interest in Blood Red Skies, both Blood Red Skies MiG Alley and Beyond, I had the chance to jump in on a game of BRS MiG Alley at Cangames. My buddy Duncan did an excellent job of GM’ing and had a great scenario for everyone to try their hand at. I have to say, I’ve been enjoying the air combat games lately, as well as the painting. Duncan’s game also gave me the chance to help him out with models and I got some of my recent works on the table.

The scenario for our game was inspired by some experiences of United States Air Force (USAF) Korean War bomber operations. In this case, we had a flight of 3 x B29s that had to get across the length of the table and exit on the other side. For this op, the US forces had 6 fighters as escort; the North Koreans had 6 x MiG 15s as the main attack force.

Looking at the far edge you can see the three B29 bombers in-line with escort fighters on their left (two separate 2 ship formations) and right (single 2 ship element). The North Koreans are at the lower portion of the picture…3 separate elements of 2 aircraft each). While the B29s were not completely helpfulness, they had turret and tail gunners, the kicker was that they would shoot at any aircraft that were within a few inches of their stand…without worrying about the friend or foe quandry…everyone was a bandit.

The view from the US end of the table…there are a few clouds over the area, and all aircraft start in the ‘advantaged’ position…i.e. nose up position.

B29s moving forward. The MiGs moving in hard to get shots on the big birds. The US fighters are working hard to get re-established on the tails of the MiGs after flying through their formations. If I remember correctly, there were some head-on shots, but nothing of consequence. Any aircraft that flies through cloud loses advantage and/or disadvantage and is instead neutral.

The bombers are starting to feel the heat…MiGs are on their tails and getting some shots on them.

The MiGs are hot on the ‘29s tails…the US fighters are turned around to push through the bomber line and engage the North Koreans.

Not a great moment for the US crew…bombers shooting everything up, escorts unable to get any hits on the MiGs, and the MiGs taking station behind the bomber line.

By this time, we have 1 dead B29…the other two have damage, and the NK’s are throwing out excellent dice.

The escorts finally take a couple of MiGs…but the NK’s are doing a great job…a second B29 falls out of the sky.

The NK’s spin in another 2 ship element into the fight.They make short work getting within range of the bombers and keep up the pressure. The final shot of the game as the last bomber takes 1 more point of damage…and succumbs to the relentless MiGs.

Cangames - Report #2 - Rapid Fire WW2

Howdy all,

For anyone about to be OR already under a heat-dome, good luck and keep hydrated & cool. Following up my previous ‘timely’ Cangames post and battle report, I thought I’d get #2 posted up. This time, I signed up to try out the Rapid Fire ruleset that my buddy Ed was using for his Eastern Front WW2 game. Of course, as with my last post, I have made sure enough time passed so that I cannot remember specifics.

I do recall that I found that the ruleset seemed pretty easy flowing. Admittedly, Ed does an excellent of GM’ing and guiding players through…so while the learning curve is there, he is handy with the values need for the roll. I think Rapid Fire might have a bunch of tables, but again that would be guessing as Ed was the man with the numbers. I did like how easy it was to do hits, casualties, and movement…so that’s a solid bonus. 

The game was a river crossing on the Eastern Front with Soviet troops pushing hard to overwhelm German defenders. The Sov’s had the ability to call in air support (Il-2’s) and at some point had the River Navy to bring extra direct/in-direct artillery support. On the Soviet side it was pretty clear, the main feature being the 4 launches and docks for the river crossing. On the German side, the village was spread across the table edge, there were a variety of entrenched positions and ruins for the defenders, and for both, each side had an array of reinforcements that they could call on (if they rolled appropriately, each unit designated by a numbered poker chip).

The setup as described above…the docks included a set (1 at either side of the picture) of small boats/canoes more for infantry troops, a large barge that could take heavy armour, and 3 transports that could get infantry and light gun troops across.

The view from the German side, flank to flank. As you can see, early morning fog as well as Soviet Gods of War have laid down an impressive pre-emptive strike with HE and smoke munitions. The first wave of Soviet infantry have leapt from their landing craft and stormed the riverbank. 

As the first wave push towards the German lines, the first wave of river crossers head across…given the width of the river, it would take 2-3 turns to get offloaded on the opposite riverbank.

Infantry, heavy machine gun support, anti-tank gun, and mortar platoons load up and start their crossing.

Wider view of th above shot…the smoke/fog is clearing…you can see the rafts beached on the German side. The first wave is closing in on the edge of the town, casualties shown with red X’s on the stands. If you look closely you can see some buildings that are empty, these have been cleared of defenders with massed shots at range.

The Sov’s make it to the centre and right blocks in town and they are taking the outer wall of a few others…there’s still some smoke to obscure line of sight, but casualties are mounting.

No rest for the river flotilla as reinforcements start to queue up for their turn. River monitors start to shift position to bring some fire to bear…and you can see the stands of air support rushing in to provide close air support. We actually didn’t do too terribly with the air support - we had to roll to bring it on table, we had to roll for target visibility, and depending on the outcome, the aircraft could be diverted off target or even end up engaging friendly forces. All in all, we were successful bringing on a few sorties, I think one of them ended up targeting some of our unit (luckily they missed), and we put some hits on high value targets when we needed them most.  

Overview shot of the flotilla and diverted air support sortie.

And here you can see an Il-2 roll in to engage German defenders. The Sov’s are making some progress, in bottom of the pic you can see HMG troops in the first line of ruins providing support to infanteers pushing to the second line of buildings.

Heavy tanks pushing to the riverbank now.

A furball of activity…the Sov’s had some favourable events cards that brought on Partisans…they provided some much needed bodies to support the assault. You can see armoured elements mixing it up as German Panthers try to push assaulters back to the water.

Final move of the game, our tanks try to rollover the Soviet positions and lay down some late game hurt. At this point, I think we were able to achieve an extremely minor victor given the losses…we had put out some pain, but had some tough rolls that kept the Germans in the game. 

All in all an enjoyable game and I would like to try Rapid Fire again to get a better sense of the actual mechanics…but a great first bite.

Cangames - Report #1 - Face of Battle

Howdy folks,

I hope all is well on your side of the internet. This post definitely took me much longer to get out than I would have liked...it is a continuation of my Cangames coverage and post-con contemplation. Of course, there has now been sufficient time past that my memories are somewhat muddled, so this will be much less substantive as an after-action report, and moreso a recap of memorable highlights from the game.

In this post, I finally had a chance to try out Michael Ball's ruleset The Face of Battle...version 2...to be honest, I had never been able to make timings meet so I totally missed out on version 1, and this con was the first time that Michael was taking this version to the Cangames crowd. The game is World War 2 focused, with player activation based on which cards you turn up. Each of the players control a force, a platoon or platoons of infantry and/or tanks, and while each player activates together (i.e. they all flip over a card at the same time), the card determines the action and by whom. 

So in the case of our game, we had 3 players per side. Each player had a deck of cards specific to their allotted force, so in my case I had an infantry squad/section and at a later point in the game I was going to get a T34 tank. Each infanteer had a specific weapons loadout, so I had stats table for them, but the determination of which individual soldier could do their actions was dictated by the card I turned up. In addition, the leader(s) had their specific actions that they could do as well as leadership actions that they could allocate to a soldier when that card was drawn. As well, each specific crew member of the tank had their own individual cards (i.e. loader, gunner, driver, etc.).

Admittedly, I found that there was a pretty steep learning curve as there were several nuances that needed some practice to go over. The overall flow of the game was really good, but given the con setting, it was tough to get the details straight…the mechanics, definitely picked up quickly…but I was fretting over getting the details right.

Anyhow, please enjoy the pics and random commentary.

Initial layout...the Sov's will come in from the top right side of the pic, German troops from the mid left side. Objective is to capture as many buildings in centre as possible.

Our platoon starts moving up. Each player has control of a section/squad of infantry (I think up to 10 troops - 1 leader, 1 light machine gun, up to 8 soldats mix of smg's and rifles). Her you can see a squad that has double-timed up to the stone fence; another squad mid-field; and third squad on left side of the field.

Different perspective as we cant the picture. The squad that was at the stone fence make it to the line of buildings. My squad is half mixed between the other field (near the blue card) and building across from that...they are holding there before double timing to minimize exposure.

Closer look at my squad hunkered down, a couple of soldats have entered the building, I have 2 others waiting to sprint across the road.

The game has progressed a bit, at some point I kinda stopped taking pics of the infantry and focused on the action on the German side of the table...we have infantry at the cemetery walls, a T34 behind the tree...squaring off against a Panther that is next to the building at the top right of this pic. The green field shows some German infantry taking cover behind a fence. There's an MG team out there somewhere, I think behind the tree at centre of pic.

T34 moves a little closer taking it slow.

The Panther taking aim...

The T34 dashes forward and tries to disrupt and ground down the MG team that is causing some hassle for the infantry trying to advance into buildings.

Not the outcome we were looking for, the MG crew get a lot lower down in their position (the crater was deeper than it looks) and the Panther connects and makes it mark. The mechanics and resolution of hits by vehicles takes a bit of time as there are multiple tables to consult and damage is boiled down to damage to each crewmember and vehicle system.

We finally reached the point in the game where the rest of our armour support shows up…3 x T34’s show up in the field and we start pushing them towards our right flank and the cemetery.

The German players score some hits on the tanks and we end up with some slight damage and one of the tanks has to fall back before taking some additional damage. At this point the game is pretty much one…the one building that I was trying to hold was destroyed by tank fire, so that was one less point available. All in all, an enjoyable game but like I said some of the nuances eluded me and the level of damage detail for vehicles was pretty intense.

Cangames - Random Stuff

Howdy folks,

I hope your May is going as desired. As you can see by the title of today's post, it is/was that time of year again when folk collect to Ottawa for CanGames!! While I made sure to register in advance, I was not as diligent with my game registrations…so I had to play that one from the hip…but more on games played in another post.

I thought I would post a selection of pictures I took of some random tables and games happening around me…admittedly I missed a number of tables, but here goes nonetheless.

Chris’s Force on Force, 20mm,  US Army and Iraqi insurgents 

The Walking Dead, 28mm

Star Wars Legion (?)…not sure if it was themed with different ruleset or not…forgot to ask.

Cangames standard…Rubberboots game and I think they used Silver Bayonet.

Mike’s SAGA Game

And Mike’s Dead Man’s Hand game…