The up-and-down numbers of my AD&D player base saw only four players attend this weekend’s session. I wouldn’t be utterly surprised if I’m dealing with ten players next week; it’s that sort of campaign! The regulars of Jesse and Tait were there, along with Tim and a new player, Mike. Mike rolled up a fighter, and so we had characters from 1st to 9th level … Continue reading AD&D – The Frost Barbarians – session 65(ish)
Various factors combined to have us with fewer players this week than last week, which left my table of keen D&D players with only three players: Tim, playing a paladin, Tait and Harry, both of whom were playing rogues. As Tait and Tim were using characters they’ve played in previous Encounters seasons, that meant we had a 2nd level rogue, a 5th level rogue and … Continue reading D&D Next: Scourge of the Sword Coast, session 2
My latest game of Advanced Squad Leader saw Mick and me facing each other over the fields of Sicily. The victory condition of this scenario required the Germans to get a certain portion of their force off the far side of the map (lengthwise), whilst not losing too many of his own units. Mick chose to play the Germans (who have a slight advantage on … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S11 A Long Way to Go
And so it begins. The third part of “The Sundering” series of adventures started around the world this weekend with the D&D Encounters Launch Event for Scourge of the Sword Coast. We at Good Games Ballarat had our largest turn-out for some time: fifteen players and three DMs. And we were still missing potential players who couldn’t attend! All the tables were running D&D Next … Continue reading Scourge of the Sword Coast: D&D Encounters launch event report
There are a few board game designers that I pay a lot of attention to. Stefan Feld, Vlaada Chvatil and Martin Wallace are likely the three top designers on that list. Martin Wallace has a great range of designs, some of which I enjoy, others which I avoid, but there’s no doubt that his design of Brass, which looks at the Industrial Revolution in Great … Continue reading Brass game report
Scenario S10 is the first scenario in the ASL Starter Kits to feature two “minor” nations of World War II fighting each other. In this case, it is the Greeks against the Italians in a chase across the board. Set in November 1940, Italy’s leader, Mussolini, had decided to impress his German allies with a “parallel war”, and so had sent his troops into Greece. … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S10 Paper Army
Continuing my tour through the ASL Starter Kit scenarios, I’ve come to the first of the Starter Kit 2 scenarios. This is still an infantry-only scenario, but it adds two major features over the first Starter Kit. The first is that the map now has hills on it, leading to different levels in the Line of Sight rules. The second is that the list of … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S9 Ambitious Assault
I played this game against Popey, who had played the ASL SK once before with me, but that was now a year ago, so he was understandably rusty on rules and tactics. He chose to play the Americans in this scenario, which required them to take at least one squad and one leader off the central road (Q10) – and if I moved any squads … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S8 Ad-Hoc at Chef du Pont
It’s a relief to get away from the first three scenarios, which are really different variations on one, to the wilds of Russia. Hills! Trees! More complicated line-of-sight rules I’ll get wrong! Off-board Ordnance! And no tanks! (This is the last Squad Leader scenario without tanks for a bit. I’ll just enjoy the infantry-only battle for a bit). However, Piepsk has one particular special rule … Continue reading Squad Leader report: Scenario 4, The Hedgehog of Piepsk
The big difference between this game and the play of the previous version of the scenario is that this is the moment that Squad Leader adds tanks to the mix – or Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) to use its terminology. The rules for AFVs are not particularly difficult, especially in comparison to how complicated they would become throughout the development of the Squad Leader line … Continue reading Squad Leader report – 3c: The Streets of Stalingrad
