Building a better Zombieville

I spent part of the Thanksgiving holiday at my brother's.  He's been gathering minis, vehicles, and scenery for a massive All Things Zombie game. 

We had planned on maybe getting a game in, but since none of the minis were painted (or even put together), instead we spent several hours painstakingly assembling the plastic minis from Wargames Factory. 

We had male and female zombies, along with men and women survivors.  We glued together more than fifty of the undead, and by sibling used the survivors sprues to put together some law enforcement.

I supplied a couple of vehicles: a four-wheeler and a dune buggy from the old Void miniatures game.

He also had some metal minis from a British manufacturer--some interesting zombies as well as a unique take on the characters from the Wizard of Oz.

He's also constructing some buildings from laser-cut wood, including this multi-level parking garage.  I'm looking forward to playing in Zombieville.

HappyThanksgiving!

Lots of people are on the road this week, or are hosting visitors themselves, making it difficult to play games.  I'm travelling myself, and I want to push some miniatures around the table (X-Wing and maybe All Things Zombie) at my brother's.  Anyone else hoping to play a few games this weekend?

For everyone observing the Thanksgiving holiday, I hope you have a great day filled with fellowship and feasting.  For all of you who are on the job while the rest of  us are lounging around, I appreciate your work, and hope you get a chance to relax soon.

HotT tournament at MillCon

Saturday night at Millennium Con was the Hordes of the Things tournament, billed as the Texas Championship.  Because the tourney was for 15mm scale armies, I had to borrow one of Blake's.  He loaned me one of his several dwarven armies.

My first opponent was Wayne and his orc and goblin army, which I ended up defeating.  My second game ended in a draw.

Meanwhile, there were other goblin armies battling various other 15mm creatures.

My final game was against Grant, using another one of Blake's dwarf armies.  We fought a tough battle that also ended in a draw.

Grant took first place in the tournament, while I came in second.  My prize was this nifty chainmail dice bag.

It was fun playing HotT, but I want to play some 60mm games so I can use my own armies.

Star Navy at MillCon

Friday night at Millenniumcon, I ran a game of 5150: Star Navy.  I'd prepared an eight-player scenario in which eight players each take two starships, a dreadnought and a cruiser. 

The setup has the players' admirals on the smaller ships docked with a space station in the middle of an asteroid field, with their larger vessel on the opposite side of the board.  Looking back, I probably should have started all the cruisers facing out, instead of in, to get the game moving a little quicker.

As it turned out, only three people showed up to play the game, and I gave them each two pairs of ships to handle.  Two of them, Joe and Coach K, had played Star Navy before.  The third player, Jesse, was new to the game.  While I could have taken the final four ships, I decided to instead concentrate on refereeing the battle.

When hostilities broke out (as they always seem to do in these situations), the players had to get their commander back to the flagship and escape.  We quickly saw our first casualties.  Once each force had a few fighters launched, we saw some more losses.

Eventually, a couple of admirals managed to return to their dreadnoughts as each side continued to launch as many fighters as they could.

The fighters proved dangerous in large numbers, but the larger vessels were hard to kill, soaking up a lot of damage from the small craft.

Eventually the fighters took their toll, but Joe's remaining dreadnought still kept taking hit after hit, limping slowly to the edge of the asteroid field.

Finally, unable to escape its tormentors, the DN exploded.  Still, it was a great run that almost succeeded.

As the game progressed, other capital ships bit the dust, and players' forces dwindled.  In the end, Jesse, the first-time Star Navy player, ended up accomplishing the most and had the most ships left on the board, so he was the winner.

The players all enjoyed the scenario, and I had a fun time running the game.  I hope to run another Star Navy scenario at next year's Millennium Con.

OGRE at Millennium Con

Saturday afternoon at Millennium Con, I took part in a game of OGRE Miniatures.  This was the full-fledged tabletop wargame, not the hex game with minis instead of counters.  George, our Game Master, brought scores of tanks and GEVs to the table, as well as infantry and several of the eponymous OGREs.  Craters and ruined buildings dominated one end of the board as well, with a road running down the middle.

The scenario involved a Paneuropean force (the Royal Romanian Armored division) trying to obtain data from a Combine command post in a ruined city.  Both forces looked good, the PEs in the green and gray of the Romanian army, and the NAC sporting the yellow and black of the 1st Cavalry.

The Combine side had three OGREs (two Mark Vs and a Mark III).  I ended up with the PE, commanding the Paneuro cybertank contingent: two Fencers and a Doppelsoldner.  One Mark V was General Ike (I forgot the name of the second I noticed in the photos that the second one was called Can Do), and the Mark III was called Shoo-Shoo.  My guys were Yellow Dragon, Green Dragon, and Big Dragon.

Our main mission was to bring a hovertruck loaded with electronics close enough to a command post to download info from the Combine network.  To do that however, we first would need to knock out the laser towers that would otherwise make short work of the nearly defenseless transport vehicles. 

We decided to avoid the road as too obvious.  Instead, our GEVs made a big feint to our left, drawing most of their forces in that direction, as our heavier units plodded forward to the center and the right.  It took several turns for our tracked armor to get close enough to start shooting.

Missile racks on the PE cybertanks put forth a lot of firepower in a single turn.  I was able to clear out some infantry and superheavy tanks before getting in range of the NAC OGREs.  They launched all their missiles at my missile racks, but after the smoke cleared I still had two launchers on the Dopp and all the missile racks on the Fencers.

I then cleared out to let the lesser armor deal with the enemy OGREs while we proceeded toward the city, accompanied by some GEVs (off-camera) to our far right.

With the GEVs and the infantry that they carried taking out the first of four laser towers, the battle tilted in favor of the Paneuropeans.  The GM called the game, with a Paneuro victory.  All in all, it was quite a battle.

I'm glad I got to play this scenario, my first-ever game of OGRE Miniatures.  Now I need to get my own minis out for some more games, either using the hex-and-counter rules or using the minis version.  Either way, I want some more OGRE!

Battlestar Galactica at MillCon

One of the more popular games at Millennium Con this year was the massive Battlestar Galactica game run by Only Warlock using the Starmada: Fleet Ops rules.

He ran this scenario of the  Saturday morning and again Saturday afternoon.  Both sessions were booked solid.

I didn't play in either game; I just took photos.  OW had a great-looking game mat with well-painted ships from a variety of manufacturers.

Here's a thread about this game on The Miniatures Page.  The GM also discusses it on his own blog.  More on the games actually played at MillCon coming up.

Fantasy skirmish at MillCon

While it seemed that the main fantasy gaming at Millennium Con was Hordes of the Things, there were a couple of fantasy games that weekend as well.

HoldFast ran a game of Song of Blades and Heroes Friday evening.  You can read about it in greater detail on his blog, but it's important to note two things: First, the game can be used with any figures you happen to own.  Second, it's awesome when a player's Alien queen (as in the critter from the movies) gets taken down and chomped on by zombies.

There also was a dungeon exploration game called DungeonQuest on Saturday morning.  I noticed that it, too, used minis from other games.

Don't worry, I will get to the spaceship games eventually.

Sci fi skirmish at MillCon

In addition to the historical games at Millennium Con, there were a number of scenarios to please sci-fi fans.  One notable setup, from Coach K and his son (who did the Hoth game at Guadacomacon), was called "Contra" and used the Chain Reaction rules.

The scenario involved a U.S. special forces unit out to smash a group of insurgents in Central America.  It was a good looking table, and as you might guess from some of the characters, all was not what it seemed in that steaming jungle...

Zombie games were as popular as ever.  One nice-looking scenario involved a carnival with 28mm figures.

Another table contained a beautiful large setup of hills and valleys, using 15mm minis.

Yet another table held a modern town, and what looked like 20mm figures.  All these games seemed to generate a great deal of interest.

Next: some fantasy games at the convention.