I Ain't Been Shot Mum!

The setting is spring of 1940. A small town in Belgium, where a railroad, a highway and a canal all meet. The Third Reich wants this important road network. The Belgians and the British are desperate to hold it from the German blitzkrieg, but are woefully undermanned and virtually without effective anti-tank weapons. Thankfully, the British have managed to send a company of Scots and a few tanks (Matilda Is and Mk VIs).

The photos are from a game of "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum!" played on April 17th. We played at UH-Clear Lake, our usual third Saturday of the month.

Belgian Marines hold the Town

I wish I had taken photos of the Stugs shelling the buildings of the town and driving the Belgians out by collapsing the stone houses on top of them. I think if the German player had continued to do that, shelling the village, he could have turned that entire flank. As it was, he split the Stugs off to deal with some British infantry.

A Stuka divebomber prepares to strike British infantry

The German player had some astonishing luck with his divebomber. Three times he hit right on target. Blew the heart out of an entire platoon of Scots, and slowed the only real anti-tank weapon (a 25-pdr) to a crawl.

British Motorized Platoon pulls up to defend the Canal

This flank is now safe from the Stuka, with all those Bren guns pointing skywards. But the damage was done. The platoon pounded by the Stuka was half dead, and all discouraged. Other than the Boys AT Rifle team (which banged away gamely at the Stugs), the platoon was done for the day.

Miraculously, at the end of the alloted game time, the German player had not reached the village. I think this was more due to a few tactical mistakes on his part than any particular genius on the defenders' parts. You do not want to leave your infantry out in the open in front of a weapons platoon's worth of medium machine guns! Very bloody.

Also, the card driven system, with random turn ends did not help. Finally, I got a bit of luck with my aircover as well, with the Rare As Fairies showing up twice to strafe the German ATG crews. I have experienced a great deal of frustration while trying to get an attack under way using this system myself, so I can empathize with the German commander.

IABSM! is not my favorite set of rules, though it is pretty simple once you get used to it. My biggest gripe is that random turn end (the Tea Break card). You have to be super careful to get that deck of cards well shuffled so that the Tea Break doesn't happen too early in the turn every time. It is incredibly frustrating when you move the same unit over and over and the rest of your troops are glued in place.

If you are into VSF gaming or 40K...

...you might want to check this out: Bartertown Link.

That, my firends, is a 28mm scale Knight Paladin in resin. Muy impressive. All I think it needs is a big honking steam engine on the back. the God-King of all Automatons for VSF. This thing might even be self-aware, it's so honking big. Then Doctor Maton will have some worries of his own...

Also, you can get these bit parts to make some Imperial Guard Praetorians of your very own. One option is to have the rider's legs as well, so you end up with Rough Riders. Just the thing for making German Imperial Uhlans out of Mordians, I think. Need some steam horses, the legs, uh... my wife is not gonna like this line of thinking....

Anyway, they look fabulous. I promised no minis wargaming purchases until Historicon, but...

Labyrinth Lord Purchased. Let OSR Commence!

My good buddy Eli over at ISLP has been talking about playing some really great sounding games with his daughters using the game Labyrinth Lord. Essentially, the book (which I have not read through yet, only flipped pages) is the old Red Box Basic rules and Blue Box Expert rules. So awesomely simple.

Yesterday, a buddy and I went to a couple of game stores in Houston. One of them (Nan's) has a lot of RPG stuff in it as well as minis, comics, and all that. So I grabbed a copy of Labyrinth Lord as recommended by Eli.

Looking forward to sending my sons through the Keep on the Borderlands. Yes, I still have a copy of it. No, I won't let you borrow it.

BattleTech Storage

The following pictures show the system I finished up about a month ago for holding BattleMechs. It will hold 21 'Mechs, with a two inch tall foam. The bottom of the box is a magnetic sheet. I am putting a piece of magnetic flexsteel (from Litko Aerosystem) to the bottom of each hex base.

View of the entire tray. The tray is 3" deep, and sized to fit my rolling aluminum case that my wife and sons got me for my birthday back in February.

Closeup shot of the 'Mechs in their snug little compartments.

Extreme closeup of a Phoenix Hawk (unseen). The red and white paint scheme is typical of the planet Talabheim IV.

Terror on Torrent

We finished up our Star Frontiers scenario / mini adventure last night.

When last we saw our Intrepid Heroes, Bahud, the Human Military Specialist, had just tossed his fragmentation grenade at the 10m long dinosaur that attacked him. Meanwhile, Yanshack'A of Zigara, a yazirian Technician known to his friends as Yan, was taking careful aim with his grenade rifle on the second dinosaur of the predatory pair...

And missing. Fast moving dinosaurs and no skill with a weapon means that happens a lot. The dinosaurs skid around in a sharp u-turn, then charge back at the hapless pair of (apparently) soon-to-be fast food containers. The pair of adventurers decide discretion is the better part of valor, and that one live dinosaur delivered was worth more than a trip through a Ripclaw's digestive tract. Again, fickle Fate saves our heroes, as they win the initiative and sprint for the safety of their nearby Explorer [1].

Safely behind the armored doors of their vehicle, Yan tries to sedate the creatures outside by dropping pairs of doze grenades out the (barely opened) window. Dane's lucky rolling streak continues, and he manages to put one of the Ripclaws down after it failed its STAmina check. He'll be sleeping for about five minutes (53 turns). One down, one to go.

As the second Ripclaw futilely claws and bites at the solid rubber tires and unyielding durasteel armor of the Explorer, Bahud passes his two doze grenades to Yan, hoping to repeat the performance and reap a bigger reward. Unfortunately, Yan's luck runs out, and Dane rolls a 99 - critical fumble! The doze grenades go off inside the cabin! As the Explorer's cabin fills with gas, Bahud and Yan pass out when they both fail their STA checks. When they awaken, both of the Ripclaws are gone. Running low on filters for their CO2 masks, the pair decide to return to the shuttle and leave Torrent behind.

On arrival a few days later at the Port Loren WarTech Industrial Complex, Bahud and Yan receive their walking papers. The Vrusk executive who hired them has mysteriously disappeared, and the project he headed up has been canceled. The new VP of the Prenglar office honors the original contract, and even offers to pay in kind at a 20% discount rather than in cash.

Newly unemployed (again), Yan and Bahud decide that maybe working directly for the big conglomerates is not as great a job as it seemed before. They decide to start their own business as freelance investigators and troubleshooters. The name of their company is (what else?): The Boys.

And that was pretty much where we ended the evening. We did a little bookkeeping (updating equipment lists, assigning and spending experience points, that sort of thing) and then called it a night. After they went to bed, I got to work on a handout for the next adventure - a classified ad sheet with all sorts of interesting leads and info on it. When it's done, I'll attach it here as a PDF (if I can figure out how to do that!).

[1] Explorers are large off road RVs, amphibious, and sometimes armed. This one is not armed, but is armored, and has a large cage (currently occupied by a sleeping and restrained dinosaur) in the back in place of the usual crew cabin.