Prairiecon 2018 - Battle of Blickheim, a "Team Yankee" Game

Ouch! Tough outing for the Royal Canadian Dragoons at Prairiecon...victory came at a price

So another "Prairiecon" has come and gone! This is Western Manitoba's main gaming event, held every summer in Brandon, Manitoba.  Conscript Dallas has been involved with Prairiecon for...longer than I can recall, so I will leave origin content to him, but as a group a few of us have been going to Prairiecon every year for...wow, something like 19 or 20 years, with Dallas even more? It's a real tradition, one I look forward to every year.

This year I am pleased to share reports of a heavy Conscript presence at the event, with three different demonstration games.  Dallas ran a fleet-scale "Battlestar Galatica" game.  Byron ran an exciting "Through The Mud And The Blood" WW1 game.  Our great friend Curt came out from Regina to host a special game of "Spectre".  And if that wasn't enough, we also ran a game of "Team Yankee".  That's a LOT of gaming!

The table at the outset of the game...the peace of the village of Blickheim will soon be shattered...

For today I'll touch on the "Team Yankee" game that was played on the Sunday morning at Prairiecon. The game was an opportunity to put the new Canadian units I had been working through the winter into play on the table.  The timing was fortuitous given that Battlefront has recently "released" its new Team Yankee book, "Free Nations".

Soviet elements prepare to move out on the assault

The scenario is we played was derived from the battle reported in the (fictional) book "First Clash" by Kenneth Macksey, which features the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in action against a Soviet ground assault set in a fiction Cold-War-Gone-Hot in the 1980s.  In Macksey's story, a moment in the battle arrives when the Canadian line starts to buckle, and the Canadian commander unleashes his reserve armoured Squadron, catching the Soviets by surprise, and blocking their breakthrough.

Soviet advance elements approach the McPizza king...they would soon learn the blue "objective marker" was, in fact, a NATO pre-registered artillery target!

Since the theme for Prairiecon 2018 was "It's a trap!", I set up the scenario with some mild deception.  The Soviet players, controlling a T-72 battalion with some attached infantry and AAA support, were told they needed to clear the village of Blickheim (home, naturally, to a critical 'McPizza King' location) of a lingering Canadian rear-guard, that the NATO forces were in retreat.  They would have eight turns to accomplish this.

The Canadians appear! Leopards and M150s move into firing positions

The Canadians, on the other hand, learned they had the opportunity to arrive from a totally unexpected table edge at a turn of their choosing - they have been working themselves into position through the late hours of the evening and into the morning, with the Soviet forces unaware their flank was vulnerable. This was a great advantage - which the Canadians would need, as the Leopard C1 tanks do not dominate the tabletop the way other modern NATO MBTs would in games of "Team Yankee".

Soviet armour burning after the ambush...

The game was well-attended, with several guests and observers participating.  Dallas led the Canadian side, with help from Byron and Curt, while Dave V led the Soviet side, with support from a few convention-goers.

Leopards try to move out...the obstacles ended up being tough to overcome, due to some bad luck with the dice...and you can see the Soviet's put an artillery aiming point on one of the bogged-down tanks, causing Canadian frustration and knocking out a couple of Leopards

The Soviet column rolled up aggressively, and uncertain of the location of targets, started to hit the town with heavy fire.  On the third turn, however, the Canadians emerged on their flank, and opened fire. A pair of US Cobra helos came along in turn four to add to the carnage.  Under Curt's careful guidance, they picked off several T-72s with TOW missiles before the ZSUs finally got to them.

Many Soviet tanks and BMPs were lost, but critical morale roles kept the large Soviet tank company in play to the bitter end.  The remaining T-72s dished out heavy return fire, knocking out many Leopard C1s.  The Soviet infantry also struck hard, neutralizing a bold flank maneuver by a Leopard C1 troop with their RPGs.  As the number of losses on the Canadian side mounted, it was in doubt for NATO...

Soviet infantry prepare their AT weapons...

But in turn eight, the Soviet side finally broke...a real nail-biter, and a pyrrhic victory as the Canadians were reduced to a mechanized infantry platoon (which was a little low on the 'mechanized' part due to losses in the fighting), a pair of Lynx recon vehicles, and a pair of surviving Leopard C1s, all that remained of the 12 tanks which started the ambush...

A Canadian Leopard C1 troop shows the impact of losses from infantry AT weapons...

A big "thank you" to everyone who came out to play, particularly to our great friend Curt, who made the trip from Regina.  Work has been very, very busy over the past month and a half (and as you can see, the blog posting and painting progress has been very sparse) and it was SO great to dive into a bunch of gaming and see so many friends once again.

Necromunda etc. at PrairieCon

Almost two weeks ago, I joined fellow Conscripts Greg and Dallas in running games at PrairieCon 2016 (the 37th running of this long-standing event!). The program shows the variety of board, role-playing, tabletop, and miniatures games offered.

PrairieCon weekend capped a week of being away from home. I turned a short business trip to Riding Mountain National Park into a mini-vacation with my wife, Jen. (I heartily recommend the Elkhorn Resort, and the restaurants, shops, and hiking trails in and around Wasagaming and Clear Lake MB as restful vacation destinations.) So, for a week, our car was packed with not only our luggage, but a set of golf clubs, two briefcases, a laptop, figures, and enough urban and scatter terrain to cover a closely packed  4'x4' table!

Arriving early in Brandon, MB on the Friday, Jen and I met up with Kim and Conscript Byron, We had a great German meal at Hansel and Gretel's Schnitzel House.



To go with the spaetzle, and the chicken and pork schnitzel, what better than some German beer!



***

I ran Necromunda twice on Friday night, using the Total War scenario from the Necromunda by Night campaign. Along with my terrain, I brought my own Spyre Hunters, and three gangs thoughtfully provided by Dallas, his Delaques, Redemptionists, and Adeptus Arbites.

First game, the table was crowded, with the Adeptus Arbites and Delaques allying against the outlaw Redemptionists and Spyrers. The players make quick work of the "monster" (this time porteayed by a Talisman figure with a big stick). Below, the players include Astronomi-con's ChristianA and Conscript Byron.



The turning point was when several Delaque reinforcements were put Down by a Redemptionist with a single-shot flamethrower! The Redemptionists and Spyrers ended up holding the field.



In the second game, one of the players failed to show, so I refereed a Delaque (Conscript Perry)  vs. Redemtionist  (Cliff) fight.



As the (real) Sun set, I lit up some battery operated tea lights for atmosphere.



It took 3 full turns before the monster showed. Parry's team bottled out, but the monster started to whittle down the surviving Redemptionists...



...until  Downed by a one-two meltagun and giant chainsaw beat down.



I was using Bolt Action order dice as ersatz status counters. I ordered from Chessex two sets of custom Necromunda status dice. They arrived in the mail too late for PrairiCon, but I used them in a recent game I had pitting my Spyrers against Levon's Van Saars; Levon thought they worked very well. Below is photo of the test dice provided by Chessex ( I shall post about my game with Levon later).




OTHER GAMES AT PRAIRIECON

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator

[From the convention program:] "Artemis is a multi player, multi-computer networked game for Windows computers, and now iOS devices too. Artemis simulates a spaceship bridge by networking several computers together. One computer runs the simulation and the “main screen”, while the others serve as workstations for the normal jobs a bridge o fficer might do, like Helm, Communication, Engineering, and Weapon Control. Artemis is a social game where several players are together in one room (“bridge”) , and while they all work together, one player plays the Captain, a person who sits in the middle, doesn’t have a workstation, and tells everyone what to do."

This game was supposed to be run in every time slot. Unfortunately, there was no game-master at the late Friday night slot Byron, Dallas, and I played in! Fortunately, the player Captain had played before and was able to guide us through a scenario. It took awhile before I got the hang of running the Science station.



It was fun working together to try and fight our ship against a series of hostiles.





Otherworld

Dallas ran his Otherworld skirmish game, which elicited fond memories of my playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends in high school. The human adventurer figures I ran, painted by Dallas, are also from Otherworld. I really liked how they were festooned with adventuring gear (50' rope? Check! Wine-skin? Check! Potions and scrolls? Double check!)



Settlers of Catan

Settlers is one of Jen's favourite games. PrairieCon hosted the Canadian National Settlers of Catan Championship. It was cool to see the variety of players who participated, both young and old. IIRC, the winner won airfare and hotel for the World Championships!




Warhammer 40K Tournament

There was a 40K tournament on Saturday. The participants fielded some nicely modeled armies. I still play 40K, but it was interesting to note several longtime 40K players who weren't playing at the tournament (Dallas, Greg, MikeK, and myself, to name a few).




Epic 30K

Greg ran his truly "epic" 30K Smackdown on Sunday morning. I have been following the progress on his beautifully painted forces. His desert terrain table is also real eye candy.




***

All in all, I had a great time at PraireCon. I highly recommend the convention, which has something for just about anyone's gaming taste.

Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish at PrairieCon!

Two weeks back, Conscript Greg and I ran some games at PrairieCon, Manitoba's premiere gaming convention. This was the 37th iteration of the venerable event, and my old pal Kelly reminded me that we'd been attending together since PrairieCon III, lo those many years ago. Thanks Kel! ;-)

Anyway, we always try to bring something different out to the Con. Some years it's been Star Wars skirmish or space battles, other years a different sci-fi game; WWII or who knows what. But this year, since PrairieCon started as (and remains at heart) a D&D tournament, I thought I should bring out the modern miniatures equivalent of OSR: Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish, in a dungeon.
 

So I gathered six factions: two groups of dungeon adventurers, the Orcs of the Severed Hand and some Pig-Faced Orcs, some Skaven, and a couple vampires and their minions. Conscript Byron made some awesome laser-cut tokens for me to use, and I laid out the dungeon using Games Workshop's excellent and long out-of-print Dungeon Floor Plans.

The basic premise was simple: the dungeon beneath Castle Drax had long been home to monsters of various descriptions, in thrall to the mysterious Wizard who lived there. But the Wizard hasn't been seen for some time, and rumours abound of monsters fleeing the dungeon in the middle of the night... sounds like the perfect opportunity for plunder and pillage in an abandoned dungeon, no?

Of course, every faction had this same idea and therein lies the opportunity for a game. As mentioned, Byron made up some superb tokens for me based on Chris Abbey's excellent six-player Otherworld game. Cheers Chris! The Adventure tokens Byron created replaced the cardboard ones produced by Otherworld - I needed about 25 for this game and only 8 come in the set.

If you haven't played Otherworld yet, it's a hoot. For me one of the joys of the game is the Adventure deck. When your model comes across an Adventure token you pick the top card off the deck to determine the result - a treasure item, a trap, another special game effect, or a Wandering Monster!
In our game, each faction had a couple models in its Wandering Monster pool and these came onto the table when the WM card was drawn, a very cool mechanic.

Too much happened in the game to go into blow by blow, but if you were wondering what happened to the Wizard and why all the monsters left the dungeon...

It was because a Purple Worm happened to surface in his bedroom, and ate him! (Shown here about to gobble a hapless Elven Ranger)

The game was great fun and we tabulated victory according to treasure taken and XPs notionally gained for killing characters from other factions. The winner was Oliver, with 13 VPs (his adventurer group shown above, finishing off Byron's Orcs of the Porcine Visage).

Conscript Dave's band of murder hoboes was arguably the most dangerous group in the dungeon, here shown finishing off the Purple Worm...

...and right after that, Craig's Wandering Ettin, Phil.

I had great fun running the game, and I want to thank Oliver, Byron, Craig, Dave, Brett and Andy for playing and Greg for hanging in with the Purple Worm.

I took a few pics of the models we used today as I finally put them away. Here they are:

Otherworld hireling-types

The Over-the-Ponders: Livingstone the Mage, Blume the Elven Ranger, Sir Jackson, Ansell the Thief. Blume is a Grenadier figure from the AD&D set of the early '80s; Ansell is also Grenadier c. 1979  

I really like this model! Figures back then were a bit smaller so I just call him an elf.

Purple Worm! Reaper Minis

Orcs of the Severed Hand - Grenadier box set from the early '80s, with Citadel Ettin

Disciples of the Horned Rat, with Ral Partha bugbears

Elsa and Vlad, vampires. Both Citadel, with Citadel villagers and Dire Wolves

Otherworld adventurers - Gygax the Mage, Sir Perren, Zeb the Rogue, Brother Arneson

 

 

Epic 30k - Smackdown at Prairiecon 2016

Glaive super heavy tank from the XVI Legion supporting an attack in Epic 30k action...

Another June in Manitoba, another Prairiecon in Brandon, Manitoba! The 2016 edition of the event took place this past weekend and the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts turned out in force once again.  Conscript Dallas is the cornerstone of our overall annual raid on Western Manitoba's premier gaming event - volunteering, running the auction and staging two separate games of this own!  For my part I took the opportunity to stage a demonstration game of Epic 30k.

Sons of Horus on the bottom left, Imperial Fists on the top right

The target: Mechnicum facility, home to dark knowledge which is vital to both sides in the Horus Heresy

The scenario was a big one, a huge, armour-heavy clash between the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Fists.  The prize was an important Mechanicum facility, home to dark knowledge from lost ages past.  The forces on hand were enormous - I really wanted to get a little bit of everything I have painted so far on to the table to see how it would perform.  To give you an idea, each side had two Fellblades, a Glaive and a Falchion - AND a Reaver Titan...and THEN you got to the main forces...

The result was many, many burning vehicles, but a pretty slow game.  Epic: Armageddon is a great set of rules, and the games tend to move at a pretty good clip, but I was greedy and put like 3,800 points of stuff per side out on the table...oh well...sorry about that guys!

VII Legion attack waves at the ready...

Mixed dreadnought Talon supporting a Sicaran tank squadron

Dallas took command of the Sons of Horus, while Byron and Winnipeg gamer Christian played the Imperial Fist side.

Imperial Fists move out...

Sons of Horus Land Raiders race ahead - the Warmaster has a schedule to keep!

VII Legion Fellblades engage at long range - twin accelerator cannons make short work of just about everything...

It starts to go badly for the Sons of Horus...

For a slow game, the carnage was satisfying. The Space Marine Legion super heavy tanks were suitably devastating. Both sides paid dearly in their attempt to seize the Mechanicum facility...an Imperial Fist detachment, backed by Spartans, a Typhon and a Whirlwind Scorpius battery made the first entry, occupied the facility and felt pretty secure.  Dallas then rolled up with a column of infantry, backed by a deadly Glaive super heavy tank which cleared out the entire facility in one amazingly lethal blast of its Volkite Carronade...suddenly the XVIth Legion was ascendant...until a talon of Imperial Fist dreadnoughts threw THEM back...it was carnage! Very "30k", in my opinion.

Falchion super heavy tank takes out some loyalist fools at long range...

The Land Raider is such a tough vehicle in most 40k games, but in the 30k setting there are many terrible weapons around which zap them in a single shot (and I'm not talking about the Eldar)...this was from the Falchion - an Armoured Proteus is replaced by a crater...

Elsewhere on the table Land Raiders on both sides exchanged fire, backed by the guns of heavy tanks and Reaver Titans. Overall I would say Dallas' dice were not kind, and his armoured forces took some large losses.  The Imperial Fists were also able to coordinate a precise take-down of the Reaver Titan supporting the Sons of Horus, knocking out the void shields and then delivering a coup-de-grace from a Falchion heavy tank,all in one round of firing. Ouch!

Predators sense an opportunity and move in for support (aka kill stealing)

A Reaver Titan tries to support the Sons of Horus attack - but note the blue tokens - each one represents a void shield lost...

One killer shot from a distant Falchion (seen dimly near the top centre of the photo) and the Reaver Titan is no more...needless to say, the Spartan APCs were a little reluctant to advance down THAT particular avenue...

We finished three turns before calling the game.  While losses were high on both sides, I would say the the Sons of Horus were suffering a little more, even though they still had a strong second wave left of troops for a final push.  If you go with the whole "posession is nine-tenths of the law" approach, the Imperial Fists were technically occupying the Mechanicum facility at the time the game ended, although a substantial portion of that occupying force was comprised of ashen remnants of a tactical infantry detachment which had been hit by a Volkite Carronade.  Since the Imperial Fists had enjoyed a bit of a bonus with the facility being a little close to their side, we'll call it a high-price draw...

As I said, the scenario was too big, as I had overloaded both forces, so we couldn't get the game to a decisive conclusion.  I promise to be more focused when planning for my next Epic 30k game!

Final dispositions - lots of smoke and carnage, an advantage to the Imperial Fists, but still enough Sons of Horus to be very dangerous...

A BIG "thank you" to Dallas, Byron and Christian for playing and helping to show off the game.  It's always nice to wave the Epic flag, and was great to participate at another Prairiecon.  Looking forward to Prairiecon 2017!