Arrowstorm and FiveCore Company Command (ft. Undaunted: Normandy)

I am actually two AARs behind on our Savage Gamma World campaign, but since it is faster to wrote a wargaming AAR than an RPG AAR...

We were planning to play another Napoleonic game on Sunday, but due to unforeseen circumstances only Fg and myself were able to meet up for the session, so we decided to instead play something I have been planning for for a while, and something that just came up recently.

The first game we played was Arrowstorm, a recent release by Dan Mersey. I was actually a playtester for the game in its previous incarnation many years ago, so I was excited to get a copy of the rules when they were released this month. The rules cover the period from the Norman Conquest to the Hundred Years War, and I was hoping to use them for Wars of the Roses too, but given that this was October, I decided to take my Dark Ages collection out and fight the Battle of Hastings.

The rules utilise a tile system, which allows me to use my Undaunted: Normandy tiles. They are a tight squeeze with the 15mm figures we used, but I like the look. In the original game players placed order token onto a shared order chart, but I thought it would be easier to just print the order chart out, glue it onto a piece of card, and cut it into counters which the players can take instead.

The game is rather, well, game-y. You take turns to choose a limited menu of orders from a common pool, which you can then use during the upcoming turn. However, you may choose orders which your troops cannot actually execute just to deny them to your opponent - in our game I (playing the Anglo-Danish) chose the Shoot order on many turns even though I had no missile troops simply to deny them to the Normans, who had missile troops.

The game flowed well enough. In our game the Normans charged the English left flank, but then their cavalry was defeated when they charged up the hill. Fg sent his spears round the English flank, but as I held a unit in reserve they were able to hold them off until I could deploy more units from the main line.

I will see if I can make up scenarios for Wars of the Roses for these rules in the future.

For the second game we played FiveCore Company Command, a game by Nordic Weasel, but not exactly. You see, I have been looking at the Undaunted: Normandy tiles for a while, hoping to use them with miniatures. They are unfortunately a little small, being only 9cm x 9cm, and while they are printed on both sides, there are only 18 tiles in a box, and I had to wait until Amazon Prime Day to order a second set to have enough tiles for our games.

Anyway, back to rules.

Our group were playing the Chain of Command rules several years ago, and have between us accumulated four 20mm armies. While we enjoyed the period, the CoC rules were not the easiest to play or remember. After trying out a few of the other Nordic Weasel games, I decided to give FiveCore Company Command a try, and thought that its depicted my idea of WW2 combat well enough. With some tweaking, I converted the rules to being grid-based, using a rough conversion of 1 grid = 6".

As you can see from the photo above, the tiles are even more crowded when using 20mm figures, and all the more so when vehicles are used. But the grid format made the game easy to play.

We played a scenario from a Chain of Command Pint-sized Campaign book, twice - the first time with just infantry, and the second time with a Sherman on the US side and an anti-tank gun on the German side. The Germans won the first game, and the US the second game. In both games the victory came after one side suppressed the other side and made a dash to/from the church on the upper side of the map across the open ground (tile 12B). The tank and the anti-tank gun we used in the second game did not actually end up having much influence on the outcome.

I enjoyed the games a lot, but the small size of the tiles was an issue for me. After the game I explored the options of recreating larger versions of the tiles, or even making similar larger tiles using the RPG maps I have been using, but there was no perfect solution. I think we will probably stick with the Undaunted tiles for now, and hope that they produce a deluxe edition with larger tiles someday.

Savage Gamma World #7

Our mutants were resting in their lair in the Titan when they heard a commotion from without. Emerging from the Titan, they were confronted by angry and confused mutants from a village 3 days away. They soon learned that the mutants' village was attacked by a giant steel robot a few days ago, during which eight of the villagers were captured and taken away. The rest of the villagers decided to come to our mutants' lair to see if they (and their Titan) were responsible for the attack. After seeing for themselves that our mutants' Titan was not the robot responsible, they villagers asked for our mutants' help in finding and returning their friends.

Batte, Ranggup, Rex, and Vik (see PC profiles here) followed the villagers back to their home, and from there they followed the giant round footprints of the robot, which led up and over a ridge. From the top of the ridge, our mutants could see a giant structure at the floor of the valley below. At first they thought that it was a building, but they soon noticed the tracks on the ground behind one end of the structure, realised that it was in fact a giant vehicle with tracks, consisting of a tractor at the front, hauling two trailers behind it. All told, the vehicle measured 60 metres long, 20 metres wide, and 40 metres tall at its highest point. At the bottom of the side of the front trailer was a door, and midway up the wall they saw an opening, from which plants grew out of. They also saw the giant robot described by the villagers patrolling around the vehicle.

Our mutants watched and waited, until at last a ramp lowered from the rear trailer, and the robot walked up into it. Batte decided to fly up to the opening on the side to see if it could provide a way for the party to enter the trailer, but when he came near the opening a plant tendril lashed out and grabbed him by the foot and pulled him inside. Below, the other mutants could hear Batte screaming telepathically for help. Rex and Vik decided to throw Ranggup up towards the opening, and sure enough the plant grabbed ahold of Ranggup and pulled him in too. Once inside, Rangup lowered a rope to Rex and Vik below, who quickly climbed up. Together, the mutants struck at the plant until it released Ranggup, and then reduced it to a pulp.

Our mutants then left the room they were in by the only door out, and were quickly confronted by man-sized security robots. They were able to overcome the robots, but could not open any of the other doors they found at the corridor they were in, until they realised that they could use the head of one of the droids (which they had knocked off during the fight) to unlock the doors. After some exploration, they learned that they were in the living quarters of the humans who must once have crewed the vehicle. They eventually found the door to lift, which they took to the lowest level. When the door to the lift opened, they were once again attacked by robots, which they once more overcame. They then found the door that opened to the outside of the vehicle (which they saw from the outside) and tried to wedge it open with the inactivated robots, but flying drones soon came to begin to repair the robots. Our mutants realised that time was of the essence, and decided to find the missing villagers and leave the vehicle before the robots were repaired.

At level 2 of the trailer, they found a large room with screens that showed the different parts of the trailer, and realised that the villagers were being kept in cryogenic stasis tubes at level 5, along with dozens of other mutants. Venturing to level 5, they exited the lift only to be attacked by a large yellow ooze creature, which caught Vik with a barbed tentacle. In a panic Vik used his molecular disruption power on the ooze, which turned it into a puddle of liquid, but also rendered him unconscious.

The other mutants brought Vik's unconscious body to what appeared to be a laboratory. Here they realised that the cryogenic storage room was at level 6, which was not accessible by the lift, but via hatches in the ceiling of the lab. Our mutants manipulated the control panels of the lab in random fashions, until at last one of the hatches opened, and a mechanical arm holding a cryogenic stasis tube descended from the opening to deposit it. Batte seized the moment to fly through the opening, while Ranggup leapt onto the mechanical arm, and was taken up to level 6 too.

Once the hatch closed, Batte and Ranggup found themselves in a cold chamber filled with close to a hundred cryogenic stasis tubes, each holding a mutant. They were unable to find a way to activate the mechanical arms in the chamber, or otherwise cause the hatch to open again. Cold-blooded Ranggup soon became to fall into a stupor, while Batte once more began to scream telepathically to Rex below to find a way to open the hatch.

Just then Vik woke up, and together he and Rex tried to work he control panels again, to no avail. In a panic Rex smashed opened one of the panels and peed onto it, which caused some sort of alarm to go off and a voice to announce that a fault had caused the cryogenic system to go into failure and that all the specimens held in stasis would die if not released from stasis in 15 minutes!

Vik proposed to Rex that they searched somewhere else for a solution, and the two took the lift to level 4, where they found the infirmary of the trailer, and found a robot doctor. The robot doctor was initially confused by the presence of our mutants, but once it had learned of the situation from our duo, its programming kicked in and it offered to help reverse the cryogenic process. However, there was not enough time left - only 66 out of the 99 mutants held in stasis could be saved before the time ran out; our mutants were able to save 6 of the 8 mutants recently seized. Our heroes herded the survivors out of the trailer, and they quickly put as much distance between themselves and the vehicle as they could.

When questioned, the other revived mutants all told the same story: they were going about their own business when they were attacked and seized by the giant robot. None of them could tell how long ago they were taken, and how far away they must be from their homes. Some of the mutants decided to follow our heroes, while others decided to strike out on their own to try to find their homes, and so they parted ways.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the Mutant Crawl Classics module "The Apocalypse Ark", which features a vehicle of “the ancients” with a mission to find and collect different species. The original story had a villain (who had taken over control of the vehicle and its AI), but I removed that character and plotline and instead just used the vehicle and its attached robots as a basis for this session.

The set-up was pretty standard, with the PCs exploring the “dungeon” and overcoming its various denizens. The players did do rather poorly towards the end of the session, which was probably due to a combination of boredom and frustration from lack of clear direction. I will have to manage this better in the future.

Xenos Rampant and Space Hulk again

For the September session we played two games of Xenos Rampant, followed by a game of Space Hulk.

We decided to make up lists of set points and then roll for scenarios.

The first game saw me fielding 36 points of Space Marines vs Rick's Necrons in the Diversion scenario. The game ended in a draw.

For the second game Adrian's Eldar defended against Rick's Tyranids in the Orbital Drop scenario.

We wrapped up the afternoon with a big game of Space Hulk.

For the October session I am planning to return to some historicals with a game of Napoleonics.