Warfare 2019

Andy and I went to Warfare at Reading last Sunday.  It's the last time at the venue - they want to make it bigger and move nearer London in the hope of improving attendance.  Fortunately, the show is moving just 15 mins east to Ascot Racecourse, so looks like it's still worth the trip.  I didn't spend much but enjoyed looking around the stands and, especially, the demonstration games.

Some nice dioramas from a model manufacturer:

An amazing tower with decorated interior (tapestries, four posters etc) which had been built by the wargamer's children and their friends:

The moonbase wargame also seen at Salute:

Attack on a Saxon village:

A wintry Wild West game - with snow covered roofs, ingeniously created with white aquarium sand glued to acetate sheets - so the sheets can be removed.

The biggest game of Battleships I've seen... Cold War in the Med:

A submarine pen (bespoke product made with Blotz):

Pegasus Bridge (background) and V2 rocket (foreground left):

The Shire:

Ambush! Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny - 30 October 2019

David and I met up to play another Ambush! scenario.  Continuing the campaign with the squad from the last game, we set up for Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny (only afterwards realising that we should of course have played Mission 3 next...).

I had updated the small yellow German character cards with some beautifully illustrated versions that had been uploaded to BoardGameGeek.  A huge improvement to the look and feel of the game.

Inspired by that, I added some headshots from the Band of Brothers characters to the squad sheet for some additional colour. 

It was all downhill from there...

The eight US soldiers and their cache containing a bazooka and four charges entered from the eastern edge of the map and were randomly blown all over the place.  One soldier landed in the river and was swept away, presumed drowned.  Two others landed together but the rest were so spread out that they were out of command and many of them panicked following a series of unlucky initiative rolls. 

As the US regained their bottle, German soldiers and snipers started appearing all over the map, killing or wounding several more US soldiers before they had barely finished packing away their parachutes.

The US discovered a General and his aide-de-camp but after some one-sided firefights, the Germans had a firm upperhand.  The General was being driven away in a Kubelwagen and the Germans had blown one of the two bridges we were tasked to capture.  It was late, we had definitely lost, so we paused the game at this point.

The following day, I was keen to discover the fate of the remaining soldiers.  The highlight was blowing the General up in his Kubelwagen with a bazooka (surprisingly only panicking the driver who then drove off the map!) and the lowlights were one soldier failing three times to shoot two Germans with his SMG in the same room as him, and the remaining bridge being blown up.

The map was soon covered with KIA and Incapacitated markers.  Two wounded US soldiers limped around the map clearing up the town of the remaining Germans.  The US earned 9 Victory Points for discovered Germans but failed to capture the General or the bridges.  There was a loss of 12 VPs (2 each for the six lost soldiers) so a disappointingly negative score well short of the 10 required for victory.  A dismal outcome but still a fun game.