Cangames Day I - Day III

Well this certainly took a lot longer than expected to put up. In brief, I forgot my camera, squirrels attacked the house cutting short my Cangames and then work got very, very busy. Fortunately, Rob of Captain's Blog kindly sent me the photos below a few days after the event.


My game on Day I went very well. Five of six slots were filled and the players seemed to have a good time. As with every event, something important got left behind and that was the camera and of course my fancy new movement bases.

The Objective - An Ancient Martian Temple

I learned a great deal about running convention games. The play aids went down pretty well. However I did learn that a good percentage of players won't even look at a QRS, I found myself explaining things that I thought were pretty clearly laid out on the sheet.  I also found out that players will do the unexpected especially when they are not familiar with the time period.

Hill Martian light cavalry survivors flank the Earthers after charging formed infantry. 

On the Earth side, the three players had a good understanding of colonial era tactics and deployed and moved accordingly.  On the Martian side, this was not the case. I really didn't expect to see hill Martian light cavalry charging in the open against a formed British company (it wasn't pleasant). Later, another player told me he had never heard of an enfiladed line. Again no criticism of the players and a clear sign that keeping things simple is absolutely critical in a convention game.  The young lady whose Hill Martians charged the British with disastrous effect later routed a rifle company with her High Martians so player skill was not in question.

Watch the Monkeys..... 

Of course, the game brought out a number of sticking points with the rules - or rather my understanding of them.  A close re-reading after the fact cleared up some problems we had with opportunity fire - it is there, just not obviously so.  My only real complaint was with the initiative system. The Martians won initiative something like 5 times in a row leaving the Terran players twiddling their thumbs until the defensive fire phase. This wouldn't be a big problem in  a club game but it really isn't good to have players standing around in a convention game.  Card activation by unit is probably a better route.  

Please, Sir - Can we move?

A good game for a first time outing and many lessons learned on my part.  A big thank-you to all the players.

Martians Sir! Dozens of them!

Day two - Saturday was a slow one with some non-game related frustrations.  It began well enough when I found that the naval game I thought had been cancelled had been moved to later time period.  I had missed the game last year due to a scheduling conflict and was really looking forward to it this year.  I did my shift on the information desk and then the missus came by and we walked home together taking in a street festival along the way. Very pleasant indeed. 

I was cooking up some chicken burgers for an early dinner before heading back to the con for the naval game when I saw our attic squirrels were all grown up and ready to be booted out. To keep it short, a mother squirrel had chewed through a roof vent and nested inside. We had been advised to leave her be if possible because if we sealed her out away from her babies she would do a lot of damage getting back in and to put it bluntly, dead squirrel babies in your roof create quite a stink. Having been considerate to momma squirrel we now found she had torn away some of the shingling and of course it was going to rain the following day. 

I went back that evening to play in the home brew WWII naval game put on by Chris Evans from Ottawa Miniature Gamers.  Buckets of dice fast play but with a good level of detail. One of my Italian destroyers put a full load of torpedoes into a British light cruiser sending it to the bottom. I also learned a lot from Chris on how to run a convention game.

On Sunday, I went in for my volunteer shift as promised. I flipped part of my admission refund into Air Force, Tactics II and Lufwaffe from the gamer's market and headed home to repair the roof. I missed a WW I Naval game and sadly the DBA tournament.The only good side to this was that the damage was much less severe than we thought.

So a great learning experience and some great gaming with good people sadly cut short. I will go back next year - and may be run another game.

Rogues Gallery

A very big Thank You to Rob for allowing me permission to use his pictures.

Hill Martians advance past Shield Gunners

The regulars advance supported on their right by stragglers and staff from the Officer's Mess

What? Another flipping hedge? Canal Martian infantry tell the ref some area features
would go down well in the next battle.  

Using Earther tech against the invaders! A Whitworth gets ready to fire.

Temple Fanatics Charge the thin Red Lin!

Cangames 2013 Day 1 - preparing for my first convention game.

Last night was volunteer training. I am on service desk this year so more talking and less hot glue. The shifts are long but one gets you a day pass refund and two gets you a full weekend refund and of course you are helping out the local gaming community. This year I will take the refund since that will be my toy money.  After watching the kids standing around while the old guys moved table last year, I decided I wasn't able bodied this year and besides - I had final preparations to carry out.  

Because tonight's the night. I will be running my first ever convention game.  With life revving up at home and work over the last few months, I have not been able to put in as much time or to be honest money as I would have liked into the project. However, as an old mentor said about teaching, the participants will leave with more than they came with.

So some samples:

Martian artillery

Yes Bob, they are regulars so get the shaken state. ;)  I am calling them European trained Askaris who have gone over to the rebel side. Loyalties can be changed by swapping the rammer figures. A roogie is a small pack hunter. I have decided that the martians will use banners since they have bannermen in their to&e

Hill Martian Light Cavalry

The only true cavalry unit on the table for this game.  I have some Sikhs to paint up for the Earthers.  

Colonial Rifles

Not quite my old regiment but close. I left the field craft at 2 because we didn't do so well at Cutknife Hill.
Part of the reason for going with big earth units was to allow for a square formation because: You yellow  yellin', yomper - for you broke a British square!

Pictures and full report to follow. 

The Push Part III More Paper Work

Since I am aiming at a potentially newbie audience and Soldier's Companion is an older more dice intensive rules system, I wanted to put together a QR sheet. It's not perfect and I have intentionally omitted a few things but I hope it will help make matters clearer.

Some of the formatting could be better and I caught one spelling mistake as soon as I printed it - always the way. On the whole I am quite happy with the results.

One interesting discovery was how working methodically through all the little details brings up some of the finer points of the rules that you don't see when playing. The morale rules in particular have some subtleties I hadn't noticed in the heat of it. Next up Unit Cards again.

The Push - Part II

This last weekend was spent finishing up the last of the figures for my game at Cangames

On the Painting Table

I while back, I had ordered up a pair of Whitworth 12 pounder Rifles to reinforce the Martians. They will count as rod guns but being breech loaders will have an improved rate of fire of 1 and will be able to fire shell. Their back story is that they are American Civil War ex-CSA surplus sold on to the natives by unscrupulous Yankee traders. To support this, I decided to paint them up some what accurately. The included instructions said the carriages were painted "olive" a somewhat vague description. I went on-line and poked around various historical and re-enactor sites then mixed up a batch of something fairly close. The whole process took a bit of time but I felt it was worth it. Later in the day, I was rummaging around in the paints box and came up with a pot of GW Catachan green - an almost  identical match for what I had mixed up. Live and learn.

After painting was complete it was into the dip for everyone. I really like the block paint and dip method. It doesn't always do justice to the sculptors' art but then neither does my level of painting skill.  What the dip does do is encase every model in a hard wearing shell that is unfortunately glossy. I am cheap so my dip is Future floor polish with a healthy dose of brown paint. To kill that gloss the next step is:

Form up for Dullcote!

I use Krylon Matte Finish rather than Testors Dullcote mostly because it is what I have. For me, painting is something to get out of the way so I can play the game. For others, painting and basing is central to their enjoyment. This is one of the things I like about the hobby, there are many ways to enjoy it.

Onward to the play aids!

The Push - Part 1

As mentioned previously, I will be running an 1889 game at Cangames this year. With school work out of the way and things at work calming down a bit, I was able to get going on terrain this past weekend.

Dollar Store Goodies

An earlier trip to the Dollar Store gave me some of the materials to work with. Woodlands Scenics it isn't but the price can't be beat. One note: try to buy all you need of a certain item in one go - you may never see the exact same item in stock again.    

Red Weed

Plastic plants are always useful. As you can see above, most are made up of smaller sprigs that can be separated out. Be sure to wash all plastics well to remove any mould release agent especially if you will be painting or dry brushing later.

Stacked up ready to go

My rifles still needed some touch ups and I had purchased some guns to even the odds for the Martians. Saturday was pretty grey wet out so painting was the order of the day.

The bird houses were slated to become a Martian swamp village. Weapon ranges are rather long so the Martians need all the cover they can get. The first step was to give them a good coat of gesso.

Doors

The next step was to add some doors cut out of recycled three ring binder cover card and cereal boxes.

Garish....

 The back story material for Space 1889 talks about the Martians ability to fuse sand to create their canals. I thought that the same technology would be used in house construction. Canada is now, or rather was home to a rather ugly form of pottery known as Blue Mountain. I used that as a inspiration for my swamp Martian huts.  While Blue Mountain primarily used a subdued dark green, I went with brighter colours. I am going to rationalize this by saying that Space 1889 can quickly devolve into "North West Frontier in Space".  I wanted to mix some "strange" into it so that the players know this is not just India on another planet. 

Ready to move in.

Sunday was bright and sunny so construction moved outside. The various bits of plastic greenery were cut down, reconfigured and applied as thatching to the huts to produce the rather fetching trio above. Bits of ceramic fruit and silk flowers were used to add a feminine touch.... not sure why exactly but there you go.

Hedges

Other bits of  greenery were hot glued onto more recycled binder card to produce a series of hedges for the Martians to hide behind.

Cheap Walls

A final project for the day was to make up a series of broken walls out of recycled Styrofoam scrounged by a friend on garbage day. I used the beaded variety because it was what I had and the beads give a rubble like texture to the breaks. It is not particularly robust so for longer term use I would look for insulation board and possibly even add an MDF base for strength.

Next up will probably be the temple complex. Work is also ongoing on the unit cards and quick reference sheets.  When does a hobby turn into more work than your actual work?

Magnetic Movement Trays Part II

With Cangames fast approaching I have been trying to fit in bits of modelling here and there. Unfortunately, the weather has been less than cooperative, reducing my time in the man cave. So painting the movement trays I made earlier it is.

Above is a selection of the three types of bases. The small ones on top are for regular troops in base to base contact, the larger rectangles are for massed irregulars and the larger ones are for your sneaky skirmisher types. All are made up of thin MDF drilled to take rare earth magnets at appropriate spacing.  I am still deciding to flock or not. So let's put the boys on the cat walk.

We begin with a quintet of Oenotrian Fusiliers. Though most of these lads are from the Cutter company, they have brought along one of their riflemen to balance out the party.

Next up is a mass formation of Oenotrian citizens army irregulars demonstrating the close packed formations so often seen in the streets after the Gashant Polo Matches let out. The fuzziness of the image is as much due to the intoxication of the fearsome fighters as it is due to the incompetence of the photographer.

And finally, we have 5 young Martian chaps down from the hills showing off the latest spring fashions while they demonstrate their renowned skirmishing skills.

The bases work quite well and can even be inverted without the minis falling off (as long as you don't shake them too much) As noted in the first post keep them away from your credit cards etc.

Next up we go terrain shopping at the dollar store.

CanGames Day 3 Part Three - DBA and Wrap Up

DBA Tournament
I was really looking forward to this tournament and I was not disappointed.  There were 15 players altogether giving us a solid four games each. The tournament organizer, Tod, did his best to create reasonable match ups.

Game 1 Ancient British vs Macedonians

My first game saw me up against Macedonians. I managed some generally good match ups but the dice did not cooperate and the centre folded. Facing double ranked pike didn't help either. My second game was against Patrician Roman. This went as expected with fate tipping to the other side - but my opponent Ben is a very good player and definitely gave fate a hearty shove.

Game 3 Ancient British vs New Kingdom Egyptian

Game 3 against New Kingdom Egyptians  went a bit better with the foot sloggers on both sides hanging out while the chariots got to it - again I came up short. Game 4 saw me against Ayyubid Egyptians. With three straight losses I was a little rattled, I allowed myself  to be distracted by a kibbitzer and didn't put down enough terrain. I lost yet again.

Some of the other games

Crunch!

Burgundian Ordonnance vs some flashy eastern chariot army

Burgundians again

I have been holding off on this post for a while because frankly I was a little disappointed in my performance. I made a study of the rules, tried for good match ups, developed a set of contingency plans and still placed dead last. Ancient British has a reputation for not being the best tournament army but still I should have been able to pull off one victory. In the end, my scores were something like1:4, 3:4, 3:4, 2:2+General  which frankly isn't that terrible a performance for my first big tournament. My one lasting regret is that I let the kibbitzer distract me in the last game.  My opponent deserved my full attention.

So will I give up on Ancient Brits and get something more tournament effective? No - while a win would have been nice, just playing was the highlight of my weekend. When my boys do come out on top - I will relish it all the more.


Wrap Up
CanGames is a gamer's convention. Apart  from the small vendor's area there is nothing to do but game. This appears to be by design or at least tradition. During my volunteer stint we did regular headcounts including people not at the gaming tables. One of the committee remarked that if people weren't gaming, what else were they doing? I also saw one couple cancel a couple of Sunday games on Saturday afternoon because they had been gaming since Friday opening and were burnt out. I am not sure if the venue is big enough to effectively offer other activities and the formula seems to have worked well for the last couple of decades. It is certainly very well run with no major problems left visible to the attendees. 

Apart from the food situation mentioned earlier, my one complaint was the noise level. It is entirely due to the characteristics of the building and thus unavoidable but still I found it very difficult to hear even across a 2' table.

Would I go again? Without hesitation.

CanGames Day 3 Part Two - Queenston Heights

On Saturday I decided to sign up for another game to replace the naval game I missed. Since this year is the anniversary of the War of 1812, I decided to go with a re-enactment of the Battle of Queenston heights using the Rockets Red Glare rules. We played in teams generally by committee until enough reinforcements arrived that we could each take a command. I stood on the wrong side of the table and was assigned to the American side.

Board setup

If you see some similarity between this setup and the Dr. Who game posted earlier, it is because they were run by the same person and I believe on the same terrain using the same troops. The objective is to control the town and the gun emplacement on the high ground.

The invasion goes in

The Americans have superior numbers but have to land them in waves under the muzzle of a rather nasty gun in the redoubt on the first elevation. Our beach area was roughly from the base of the high ground elevation to the movement stick in the village. There was a gun on the hill and a rifle and a musket unit in the village.  We decided that the gun was the biggest problem so went for that first.

The Assault goes in!

The first wave consisted of a unit of regulars and a unit of  Militia. We landed our regulars first and while we were able to shoot up the gun a fair bit, we were pushed back. The militia then went in and retreated in short order. While the regulars stood and took it and were chewed up for their efforts, the militia ran away preserving most of their strength.

Let's try the town instead.

We had been under harassing fire from Sharpe's younger brother and the Militia were proving decidedly ineffectual against the gun. We switched targets to the town. Above you can see the remnants of our regulars resting on the landing beach as the reasonably intact militia tries to clear the buildings.

Reinforcements for all!

This shot is from much later in the game. Both sides have received reinforcements including an American unit right next to the gun emplacement as part of a special deployment roll. Of course they took one look into that big black muzzle and hightailed into the wheat field upper left. Here they were able to occupy British reinforcements for the rest of the game. We have more troops in the town and are close to clearing it out.

At the whistle, we were a couple of turns short of the scenario limit but had got all our troops landed including a cannon. the town was cleared but not occupied but the British still held the high ground with fresh troops. So not exactly a success for the American side but better than the historical outcome.

The rules were not the ones the GM wanted to use initially and none of us was familiar with them. After reading them again there were many things we were doing wrong but since that was happening on both sides, it cancelled out.  An enjoyable recreation of a famous Canadian battle.

Next section

CanGames Day 3 Part One the other games

Again there were a great number of participation games running on Sunday. I did a quick tour of the tables before I got stuck into my games. First up is a trio of Warhammer Fantasy shots. This game has a soft spot in my heart because I played a fair bit of second edition. I have yet to get sucked into the current cult.There was a tournament on bringing out a number of interesting armies.

Warhammer Fantasy

Warhammer fantasy

Warhammer Fantasy

 I was also able to grab a shot of the Phaser Lock game. Many nice looking ship models but none of my favourite, the classic Trek destroyer.

Phaser Lock

Next up Queenston Heights - 1812

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CanGames Days 1 and 2

Day one for me - the Friday was something of a non-event as all I did was go and pick up my package. I did take a shot of the outside of the venue. Being a bit too clever, to save batteries, I used the viewfinder on the camera instead of the display screen and didn't notice the camera strap across the image.

CanGames is held in a down town curling club, with the main playing space on what is normally the ice surface - about 20x50 meters. This gives a large unobstructed playing area but also means there is no sound absorption so it can get very noisy. There are about 37 tables in the main area for the most part each hosting one game. For larger tournaments, tables can be combined or multiple sets of tables used. There is a small dealers area in the back and board game and RPG  areas in the off-ice club section of the venue. A big plus is that the site is licensed - beer at the gaming table! (I only saw a very small number of people partaking though.)

Day 2, Saturday began with a walk around the dealers area. It was small with the majority of the space taken up by a local comic book/game store. There were some interesting things on offer but the prices could be wildly variable. For example a copy of Panzer Blitz was on sale for $15 at one booth and for $45 at the booth next door.  I nearly came away with some 20mm WWII Japanese but forced myself to be good and stuck to my plan to buy some more 15mm Ancient Brits. The convention price wasn't  any better than retail but I saved shipping. The bring and buy had some good deals and also some very "hopeful" prices. From one bring and buy, I picked up a 1/72 kit for VSF conversion and might grab a couple of 1/32 kits today for the same purpose.

My brief shopping trip over, I went to do my stint behind the awards desk.  I will not go into detail on the next five hours I spent filling out certificates, assembling trophies and filling in stats. The end of my shift does highlight one interesting event.  The food. The curling club provides on-site food services as well as the bar mentioned earlier. They also strictly enforced a no outside food policy. I can't really disagree with this as it allows them to pull in some extra money and provide a service to the convention goers as well. All well and good if the average war gamer had the same spending habits as a curling club member. A very basic hamburger with French fries was $11 and a hot dog with fries was $7.50. In the neighbourhood are a couple of pizza places and some of the best Vietnamese and Chinese food east of British Columbia. For contrast a bowl of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) big enough to feed any war gamer for day or a small village for a week can be had for about $6. The uptake on the curling club offerings was minimal. Towards the end of the day, the prices had been dropped twice down to a much more reasonable $3.50 for a burger and $1.50 per hot dog with fries extra. Being especially cheap, I left the venue and supped on my home made lasagne in a serene curbside environment.

I chose to do the right thing and asked about the photo policy - no faces in frame without permission. As a result, I wound up shooting many tables with terrain but no players. This is a tiny small sample of the participation games that ran on Saturday.

Heavy Gear

28mm Sci-Fi Rules unknown

Another 28mm Sci-Fi - rules unknown

Fields of Glory

Computer moderated WWII

The gentleman in shot is Gordon one of my room mates from my early days. He is a very skilled gamer and used to run battalion+ level Squad Leader games on a ping-pong table set up in the middle of our apartment. Unfortunately in this game, the first of his tanks on the bridge was shot up leaving the rest of his armour trapped on the wrong side of the river.

Dr. Who 1812

Dr. Who 1812

This game was run by one of our club members Brian H. I would have participated but it was in the same time slot as my first game ever of Saga. I don't have all the details but The Dr. was on scene to thwart an invasion of my fair land by the forces of eeeevil and some Americans.

Saga - Normans vs Scots

This was the main event of the day for me. My first game of Saga! After hearing and reading all the hype from the other side of the pond, I was a bit concerned, but it did not disappoint. The historical scenario saw Norman and English forces descending on Scotland to lift the siege of a castle (Yes, I forgot the battle name - call me old). There were four war band per side with a young gentleman and lady  splitting one of the Norman commands.

My valiant troops - about turn 4.

I was on the Scots side. I had two units of hearth guard, a unit of levy and a warlord. My levy were mauled turn one but managed to stick around for the rest of the game. In return, I wiped out a unit of mounted warriors only to see more horse come around my flank. I moved my hearth guard out to inflict another mauling leaving my warlord unsupported. Unbeknownst to me they were mounted hearth guard who using some fancy Norman trickery galloped around my spear men and smacked into my warlord.  In the shot above, the banner is that of the Norman warlord and the greasy smear on the grass to the right of it is the remains of my mine.

I made more than a few errors including putting saga dice on abilities I couldn't use but on the whole I think I did fairly well taking out a good chunk of the Norman mounted on my wing and still having a strong force on the board at game end. A great experience I intend to repeat as often as possible.  In the end the two youngsters did the best decimating the Scots forces on their flank. A great performance that bodes well for the future of war gaming. The young man gallantly gave the trophy to his co-warlord.

That's it for Day 2. Today - Day 3 is 1812 and DBA!

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