Living on the Front Line: rescue mission

Bristol 1979, civil war. The general has been captured by a local terrorist cell and intelligence indicates they have permission from their leaders to kill him in one hour. Three sections of anti-terrorist commandos launch a desperate rescue mission on the cluster of industrial buildings where he is being held.

This is a six player game using the rules: Living on the Front Line, a Winter of 79 game.  The GM was Clive who built most of the scenery. I was on the army side.

A factory, and workshops occupy the centre of the table with houses all around the outside. The location of the general is not known to the commandos but one of the upper level rooms seems likely.

Each turn, when the end of turn token is drawn from the bag, the player who acted last chooses how much time has passed by rolling a dice of their choice. For the first half of the game it was mostly our side and we rolled D4s to maximise the the time available to reach to the General.

Each of us has our own orders and my leader is determined to come out looking the best. Matt has the CinC, a machine gun and a section and enters from the open end at the North. Pete and I move from the south to scale the wall and attack the factory from either end.

My land Rover immediately comes under fire from an RPG on the roof, the first shot misses and the second hits, but fails to injure my disembarked troops. My leader is keen to be the first one over the wall, using the bonnet of the Land Rover on one side and a pile of boxes on the other to climb.

I was wary of using the gate in case it was booby trapped but as my leader ran past it was the red car that was rigged. He survived the blast and gunfire, all without a dice pip to spare. The man with him took out the RPG firer on the roof before being shot.

On the other side of the factory Pete got his troops over the wall and came under fire from the factory windows.

Matt drives into the courtyard on the North side and disembarks.

The machine gun claims one terrorist before being lost, and two more were quickly lost.

 The rest of my section head for the gate, one fires through the window and is killed by return fire. He is replaced and another commando enters the compound and fires into the room, his SMG jams.

My leader rushes into the building and takes out one terrorist but is then killed. My commando with the jammed weapon rushes in and throws a grenade at the two terrorists now in the corridor, killing one. The turn ends and I get the next initiative and charge into hand to hand, pushing the enemy back. Next door, having killed one enemy and stunned another my commandos climb through the shattered windows.

 Pete moves into the factory shooting at close range.

The enemy are able to shoot down from a gallery in the roof space. This part was kept to one side of the table for convenience.

Two Matt's troops fought through a building at the North end.

He put the Captain and a couple of others back in Land Rover which survived and explosion, and drove to a new location. The terrorists in the workshop started moving towards the factory.

The Captain went over a wall into a the factory yard. and attacked the central factory building, this being the one most likely to hold the hostage. The gunman on the roof turned his attention to Matt as all my guys were now inside.

In the main factory building we were taking heavy losses, about one to one which was too much as we were the smaller more elite force. Two of my commandos went down in the stairwell. Another blazed away at point blank range without hitting anything.

 Matt was fighting inside the central factory building, and soon down to two men. Matt would have to deal with two enemies on the ground floor and two more upstairs, and there were plenty more enemy ready to pour in after them. By now Pete had lost four and I had lost five, out of our original six each.

We decided it was now impossible to complete the mission and finished there.

 

Hordes of the Things

 We played four games of Hordes of the Things today at Lincombe Barn Wargames Society. These were 40mm frontage (15mm) and 24 points.

 

Game one, Anglo Saxons vs Naked Warriors.

I aimed to hold off the left and tie up the centre while my big block of spearmen pushed through the weak defence on the right, allowing me to turn and move along the ridge, denying Nick the benefit of being uphill.

I went through the Horde defenders and turned towards the stronghold. Unfortunately the other half of my army weren't doing so well and were all killed

Game two: Zardoz vs Naked Warriors.

 

 

Zardoz for those who don't know is a strange 1974 film by John Boorman starring Sean Connery set in a dystopian future where immortal psychics live in a giant bubble and mask wearing exterminators worship a flying head.

 

As the armies came close to contact I rolled a six and brought on Zardoz, a god, and quickly moved him to the enemy rear.

On the left my Shooters defeated the enemy Warband.

A long engagement with Zardoz in the rear quickly became chaotic with formations broken up all over the place. Eventually the enemy Spear General was killed by Zardoz.

 

 

Game three: Undead vs Welsh

Nick changed armies which prevented my making a joke about the 'naked and the undead', to Welsh. My Dragon turned up on turn two.

My plan was to pin Nick's line with my Hordes and park the Dragon behind them, blocking their recoil, and also possibly sending the Riders round the side to attack the Stronghold.

The Hordes started being destroyed. I wasn't worried about the points but they were along way from my board edge where I would replace them. By the time the Dragon arrived I decided I needed to try and get the enemy General.

I did get the General although it was the humble Riders who did it alone not the Dragon. However I was down on points so the game continued. The Welsh now poured towards my exposed General while replacement Hordes were only beginning to appear at the rear.

Despite the Dragon coming to help my Magician General was surrounded and killed.

Game four, Welsh v Welsh

I brought out my own Welsh army led by Owain Glyndwr (Hero General), this time I was defending and placed my Stronghold behind a hill I could defend.

The enemy attacked uphill and their Rider General found himself in a sticky situation but managed to escape.

The attackers broke through and attacked the stronghold over several turns but their casualties were mounting. A Warband recoiling from arrow fire into a Horde placed behind them broke the army.

 

We expect to be running our annual competition, Barn Hott, on 9 June. Look out for details as they appear on the club website: https://www.bristolwargaming.co.uk/index.html

Warhammer Fantasy Battle 8th Edition

 With Warhammer: The Old World appearing recently there has been discussion among club members about whether to get into it. We stopped playing Warhammer a few years after Games Workshop abandoned it, mostly moved onto Kings of War.

 

Today Alex and I got some of our old armies out and played the last edition of Warhammer. This is a 2,500 point game of Dwarves vs Warriors of Chaos.

My army was led by a Chaos Lord, with a Sorcerer and an Exalted Hero, both with the mark of Nurgle. There were Chosen with great weapons, warriors with the mark of Nurgle and additional hand weapons, and warriors with the mark of Khorne with halberds, all of them with shields. I also had two units of Marauders, 5 Chaos Knights and three small units of Chaos Hounds to shield the others from missile fire.

Before the game the Chosen rolled on the Eye of the Gods table and gained an extra attack each for the battle. The sorcerer, having a familiar got an extra spell and rolled Stream of Corruption, and Plague Wind (twice), not ones I would have chosen. I swapped the duplicate for Curse of the leper.

Alex had five war engines, a canon, flame canon, organ gun and two stone throwers. He had four units of infantry including Troll Slayers and Miners, and two Gyrocopters. He set up at the rear of the table and my aim was to get my all-melee army across the table with enough left to fight.

 I put the Marauders on my left, the Nurgle Warriors and Chosen with all the characters in the centre, and the Knights and Khorne Warrirors on the right. Chaos Hounds blocked line of sight to my best units, but since the firepower was mostly from artillery, rather than crossbows or handguns this had limited value.

The Chaos Hounds on my right routed after being hit by artillery on the first turn and left the table. 

A Gyrocopter moved into the enclosure on the centre-right. The other came down the opposite flank. The  The Gyrocopters were soon enfilading my units with teardrop template hitting most of the target unit each turn.

One unit of Marauders was quickly reduced to half strength and ran, rallying soon after, to face off against the Miners who had appeared at my rear table edge. The Miners charged and destroyed them. The other unit was also soon destroyed by missile fire.

The Nurgle warriors were also destroyed, including the Sorcerer. I forgot I'd gained a permanent bonus to his Toughness and Wounds earlier (The Nurgle lore of magic grants this if a six is rolled after casting a spell). He had been casting Curse of the Leper each turn to give my a Toughness boost but to one of the main units there, but fire was then directed at the other one. 

The Battle Standard Bearer survived, injured, but routed and was hunted down by a Gyrocopter.

 

By tun five I had lost more than half my army and the only Dwarf casualty was the Flame Canon which blew up due to rolling a miss-fire.

On the right my Knights were down to two models due to canon fire, and were charged by the Troll Slayers. I won but Troll Slayers don't run. Their extra attack when they died proved more effective than their regular attacks. 

The next turn My Khorne Warriors charged the Troll Slayers, winning easily and destroyed them in the following turn. Both unit champions were obliged to make and accept challenges, and mine lost.

My Chosen finally got close the the enemy who charged first. The Chosen Champion was killed in a challenge, a Rune Smith retired to the back of the unit rather than accept my Chaos Lord's challenge. Despite having plus one strength on the charge the Dwarves had little effect and the Chosen, on 3 Attacks with Great Weapons smashed them. The Dwarves routed but I only managed to follow up a few inches.

The Chosen now charged the routing Dwarves. I was hoped I would fail to catch them but still force them to run off the table, allowing me to re-direct my charge into the next unit. In fact I did run them down which left them facing the wrong way to charge anyone else in my next turn. In his turn Alex advanced his units putting them further away from danger.

On the right my remaining Chaos Knight and the Warriors of Khorne each charged a war engine. The Warriors wiped out their target and the Knight killed two crew before being killed by the surviving crewman, failing his 2+ armour save. My Chosen, facing the table edge couldn't charge anything and had nothing to do.

My Chaos Hounds charged a Gyrocopter but neither side did any damage.

The final score was (roughly) 1,450 points losses foe Chaos and 1,000 points lost for the Dwarves, a clear victory for them.

Converting the Black Beast of Argh and the Three Headed Giant

 I made a pair of armies for Hordes of the Things based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (see the article below). These two units were some of the more challenging to create but a lot of fun.

The giant was made by cutting up three plastic toy knights I sound on the bring and buy at the IMPS show. These were a lucky find as they had the right equipment and two of them were identical meaning when I put them on either side the stance was natural. What’s more these two were holding two handed axes, which allowed me to have them waiving their fists at each other in argument.

The knights had poorly sculpted faces with gaping mouths which I did some work on to give them an approximation of the actor’s features, hair and beards.

The sword was a separate piece which plugged into a hole at the waist. It was in a scabbard, so no edge, with crossed straps at the top. I had to cut these off and try to get an edge on it. This all looked a bit ragged which is why it is splattered with dried blood to hide it.

The sword was a separate piece which plugged into a hole at the waist. It was in a scabbard, so no edge, with crossed straps at the top. I had to cut these off and try to get an edge on it. This all looked a bit ragged which is why it is splattered with dried blood to hide it.

I built up the head with green stuff, I must have had Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors in the back of my mind as this was the shape it was taking on. I had to cut the mouth back and re-do the lips to expose more of the teeth and gums.

The eyes are round headed pins, cut down to a short length and embedded in green stuff. At first I let them eyes sit at different depths but it looked rubbish so I took them out and started again. I made the hair with clumps of thin rolls of green stuff, lots of them. I added the ears and dangly bits.

I realised that the continues row of toes was wrong and clipped out the inner toes and sculpted new ones on the end. I cut off the ends of the fat claws and put brass rod in to sculpt new claws around. Then I incorporated the remaining original claw into the toe. I also bulked out the muscle in the legs to get the right proportion. I inserted more brass rod into holes in the back to build the spines around.