Horizon Wars Game 2

Martin and I played our second game of Horizon Wars this afternoon.

I fielded my Heavy Gear Caprice mechs. As Martin had more points in models, I picked the Failed Ambush scenario, where my force, harbouring in a village in the centre of the table, is surprised by a superior enemy force coming at it from (potentially) all sides.

While Martin had the advantage in points, I had the advantage in numbers and of starting in cover.

Most of my mechs stayed in cover while a couple tried to make a break for it to the foreground in this photo. Martin committed his mechs to this corner of the table and managed to destroy one of my mechs and cripple a couple others. My mechs then conducted a fighting retreat to the opposite side of the table. Martin then threw in his off-table mobile artillery to try to stem this retreat, and managed to destroy another mech before it was destroyed by my artillery.

With one table edge open and most of my mechs still mobile, we decided to call the game.

We certainly had a better grip of the rules in this game, and I even performed the Recover action a couple of times. As with the previous game, I find that having more elements of the table confers a significant advantage.

We have yet to try out the aircraft rules, so perhaps in our next game we will do so.

Warzone 2nd Edition Imperial Regulars

A quick shot of the 40 Warzone Imperial Regulars that came in the 2nd Edition box set I got, plus a Trencher Hero. It took me a while to get everything assembled and primed, but I managed to power through 30 of the figures in the past 3 days once I developed a system of painting them quickly.

They are painted in a WW1 British colour scheme, which I think turned out OK. There are just enough colours to give the impression of an infantryman at tabletop distance.

The figures took the block-and-wash method well. I am particularly impressed by the detail on the bayonet, which looks more WW1 than sci-fi.

I am planning to add a heraldry decal on the left shoulder pads of these fellows, but apart from that they are done. I am tempted to add a mortar with 3 crew to the force though, if I can find the appropriate figures.

I still have the 40 Bauhaus Hussars that came in the box which I don't think I will use - let me know if you are interested, and perhaps we can arrange a trade.

Thanks.

Kings of War Hits Tracker

One of the nice things about Kings of War is that you do not remove figures from a unit to represent casualty, but at the same time this obliges you to track hits on a unit somehow. I looked at the many ways other gamers have used, and decided I wanted a system that kept the markers within the footprint of the unit. As my figures are all currently mostly singly-based and used with movement trays, I figured it was simply a matter of replacing one or two figures with Hits Tracker base occupying the same area.

As I had several dice holders left over from a purchase from Warbases, I decided to make use of them for this little project. It was simply a matter of gluing one of these dice cells onto a cavalry base and adding some battlefield litter and scenic tufts to blend the base to the unit.

The 3-cell frame is a little too large for one or even two infantry bases though, so I had to remove the the divisions between the outline and also one end of the frame.

The result is a precise fit for three dice, although in retrospect having two cells would actually be sufficient for most infantry units, and would have allowed me to add stuff on the base for decoration.

I made enough bases for my WOTR army, so the next question is whether I should do the same for my Night Goblin army, which I am planning to expand (just by 90 or so figures, nothing much...) to make up a 2000 points KOW army. And whether I should get fancy coloured dice for each of my two armies...