Scenes from the Phantasmal Island Chain

This is a Ghost Archipelago game from several months back. There was a small lake with an island in the middle, where the main treasure was.

My lizardmen encountered armored skeletons, along with local wildlife. The main danger, however, was (as usual) other crews.

All of us made good tactical use of the terrain, as we each tried to abscond with as many treasures as possible.

Crew members in the water were easy prey for missile weapons, as were those of us foolish enough to stand on the island, surrounded by very shooty enemy crews.

There were also natives, including a witch doctor, that showed up.

What has everyone else been playing lately?

One more Ogre batrep

Another look back at an Ogre game, this one from July. The green and gray force is trying to get across the river and off the opposite side of the map.

The OGREcovery vehicle also serves as an infantry transport, but the defending blue ground-pounders are dug into the city ahead.

Pro tip: If there's infantry dug into the town hex, target it directly. Once it's rubble, infantry only get double defense instead of triple.

The Ground Effect Ogre got some game time here; with the river providing a nice pathway for it.

The opposing Ogres, Big Red and Bigger Red, were attempting to stop us.

Yes, we used superheavies as well.

Below, you can see the conning tower of the Mark V as it travels along the lake bottom, trying to get to the opposite shore, with the GEO in support.

One Ogre is across the bridge, with the second right behind it but still submerged.

The Ogres ended up busting through; making it a victory for the greens and grays.

Coming soon: More Ogre.

A Song of Ice and Fire

A couple of weeks ago, I played an introductory game of A Song of Ice and Fire. Although we didn't have the rulebook, we did have enough information to play a rough approximation of the rules. It has some interesting mechanics with the non-combat units and the cards, but the combat is similar to other fantasy games in that you roll to attack and then roll to block the hits.

The minis are nice, and Yosef did his usual great job with terrain. I had fun, and am interested in playing the game with the complete rules. This should help keep me from getting to anxious for the final season of Game of Thrones.

Enter ... the Enterprise

I recently grabbed a Star Trek Deep Cuts mini by WizKids: The Enterprise herself--or at least a Constitution-class Federation heavy cruiser. Of course, this is the refurbished ship from the movies, not the vessel from the original series.

Even though the miniature came primed but unpainted, I gave it a base coat of flat black before drybrushing with medium gray, light gray, and titanium white. While the paint job may not be up to Starfleet specifications, I think it came out great for my gaming purposes.

You see, back in the '70s, there was this awesome vector graphics arcade game called Space Wars. It was a player-versus-player setup, where each person controlled a spaceship. One was a triangular craft (which I decided was from the Vega system), and the other had a familiar shape, as seen in the lower center.

Image from this page at Biltronix.

I decided I can use the Trek ship to play a tabletop version of Space Wars. And I already have a suitable black-and-white mini for the Big E's opponent, one of my Terran stellar destroyers from Galactic Knights (and before that, Starfleet Wars).

As you can see, the two ships provide a reasonable approximation of their electronic counterparts on the game mat. Now I just figure out what rules to use for a one-on-one spaceship battle. It needs to use vector movement, to emulate how the ships moved in the arcade game.

Or maybe I will just use it as a special ship in my Galactic Knights scenarios. It might be fun to see this Federation ship boldly go through a battle between the Terrans and Entomalians.