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
At long last, the Alien Artifacts expansion for Race for the Galaxy has arrived, and Sarah and I have been able to play a few games of it. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a chance to play the new “orb” game, as our schedules have prevented us from having much gaming time together over the last week, but we’ve still had the chance to play a … Continue reading Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts report
After the 11 am prerelease, Dave and I chose not to play in the 3 pm session – David because he had to go to work, me because I had D&D to run later on! However, we still had some time left, and so we spent it playing a three-player game of London, with Kalum, who had arrived early, joining in. David had played the … Continue reading A Game of London
Kalum wandered by on Friday afternoon and we had a second game of ASL Starter Kit 1. Kalum is quite young, and doesn’t pick up rules as quickly as I do, but his unconventional tactics actually posed a problem for me in this game. I’m also growing old and forgetful, which didn’t help. This scenario sees a lot of badly-trained Russian defenders trying to stop … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report – S2 War of the Rats
I’m writing this at the 11 am prerelease for the newest set of Magic: the Gethering, Born of the Gods. Apparently the midnight prerelease got 45 players here, and there are quite a number here for the season, about 28 by my count. The final number turned out to be 33. I chose Green as the colour of my pack, and ended up with the … Continue reading Magic: Born of the Gods prerelease (Ballarat Good Games)
The following are notes taken during play from our Deadlands Noir campaign. They’re from the last two sessions. My character, James, a reporter, is aided by Jenny, Jessica, Jacques and Junior as he discovers there’s more going on in Great Depression-era New Orleans that he knew. At this point, he and his friends are aiding Pierre Deveraux, a “music vampire” in a fight against the … Continue reading Notes from a Deadlands Noir campaign
Thursday evening was a light night for boardgaming – both of my regular opponents cancelled on the day, and so I went home early. I did manage to play through one game of the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit though, playing through scenario S7, the first of the scenarios printed in Operations magazine. I have played this scenario before, although I can only remember how … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S7 Prelude to Festung Brest
