Battletech Alpha Strike and Tacta

We had a total of five players for our August session, and we decided to play another multi-player game of Battletech Alpha Strike, which was always a crowd favourite since everyone loves to have a chance to field their mechs.

For my part I though it was a chance for me to field my ZOD force. I picked a few units from the Battletech Master Unit List that looked close to the models I have, and we just went head-to-head.

 

Afterwards, we played a game of Tacta, which I enjoyed so much that I think I will get a copy of.

Battlefleet Gothic

 

FG and I got together for a game of Battlefleet Gothic a couple of weeks back. I have always liked to try the game, but never got around to actually acquiring the stuff required for a game, so this was all FG's efforts.

He had printed an Imperial and a Chaos fleet at 50% scale, and painted them. I thought they looked very effective at this scale - they certainly are more in line with the sci-fi starships we already have in our collection.

The basic rules were easy to pick up, but no doubt there are depths to these rules that are beyond me now.

Perry Miniatures Elite Companies French Infantry 1807-14

Not a month before Perry Miniatures announced their "Skirmish in a Box" Peninsular War skirmish set, our group decided to get into the period. Never fails.

We knew we wanted a simple and fun set of skirmish rules that didn't require a lot of figures. After some searching, I settled on Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket - the rules seemed easy, and the card-based activation gave players interesting decisions to make, and I liked that reloading takes a full turn under these rules. Each player needed only five figures, which is a big plus for us.

Dom had about a dozen 95th Rifles pained, so I decided to paint up some "French". I settled on the Legion du Midi, which I painted a base of in 15mm years ago. Their brown uniform makes the distinctions stand out, which I thought looked really good on the tabletop.

FG took the Hanoverian Legion, and since I liked how well these miniatures painted up, I decided to do the 26th Regiment of the Line (which was brigaded with the two regiments) too. Wahj bought some Spanish guerillas from Battle Honours' 3D range, to balance the two sides.

I also purchased some dry stone walls and prepainted buildings, so hopefully we will be able to have a game in October.

Ruckus: St Elmo's Friar (Men-at-arms in motion)

For July's game we played a game of Here's the Ruckus, featuring our newly-painted figures (with FG completing six sergeant figures just the night before!).

The scenario is centred around a walled church model that I got on a trade many years ago, and has the attackers trying to kill a "turbulent priest" residing in the church, while the defenders must try to hold the attackers off until reinforcements arrive.

I made up some rules for battering down the gate, and used the basic Ruckus rules otherwise.

The defenders barricade to the gate to the church, while crossbowmen stand on crates to shoot at the attackers

Attackers come with scaling ladders and a battering ram. Brace!

Baron Hugh de Sappointment fends off the would-be priest-killers

The gate is finally breached!

The game was pretty straight-foward once the attackers chose their sites of attack and the defenders decided not to launch a sortie. Still, we had fun pushing the figures around and rolling dice.

I plan to do a scenario with mounted troops next game, to try the mounted rules. Stay tuned!