Thursday 18 December 2014

The Battle for Ranuigrad - Part 2

Lara and her Panzers were sitting high in the ruins overlooking the remaining standing tenements and could hear movement in the floor overlooking their position. She looked toward a window and saw a face peering out at her, definitely not one of her battle brothers.... "Elf uhr! Feuer frei!!!" From inside the building, the sound of dying Fakyeli fills Lara's ears...and a wry smile crosses her lips as she is blasted to oblivion. The Allies have struck...

The aircraft were now starting to come into play. The Allied Pelican pilot makes his move over toward the Axis power weapon, the Wotan sitting back and lasering the crap out of anything coming into range. A single bomb under its fuselage...its one shot for glory. It releases and strikes....Wotan is no more. Caught in the blast is also the Axis Faceless Death unit...their numbers now diminished despite their DR saves.

Winter Child now makes himself known. He moves into a lower level tenement and is quickly followed in by the Flak Boys who open up with a Full Salvo at him...the blast and smoke clears and there is Winter Child, hovering...unscathed. "...übermenschlich...!", the Flak Boys utter as he leaves their presence...he is hunting more important prey. 



Over on the hamlet flank, the Gorillas and other infantry start moving forward, taking advantage of the terrain to move into positions to make life difficult for the remaining Pershing with Rosie piloting it.

With some air support at their disposal, they started strafing the Pershing and trying to whittle down its effectiveness, as well as trying to dislodge and destroy Andrew's command team to prevent him bringing reserves in.

The monkeys surround the tank, but their numbers are quickly diminished by reactive fire. They only get one punch in before they're reduced to hair and mush.



This could be a blessing though. Back toward the middle of the battle, both Winter Child and the Pelican have converged on Rommel's position to try and destroy the Supreme Commander once and for all. The Pelican shoots the Desert Fox's Hanomag out from under him and he rolls free...but is vulnerable now. Through-out the game, the Axis players have struggled to bring on reserves, but now we need them! And get them we do, Damian's Gorillas come on to try and remove Winter Child...they strike and hit, but not enough.He strikes back and their gone. The Pelican now opens up on Rommel....and the Fox is dead. And with him, the hopes of the Axis forces.



With no remaining command teams, we cannot call on reserves. Our last hope for points is to return the favour and obliterate Patton. Our air support moves in and shoots away his transport. Patton rolls away and soon comes under fire again...but he survives just.

With time running out, we decide to call it. The Allied/SSU forces have won the field and the day, 10 VP to 7. 

From all accounts, this was a great game and definitely something worth repeating, although there has been calls for one-on-one games as well....for vengeance!





Wednesday 17 December 2014

The Battle for Ranuigrad - Part 1

The sun rises over the shattered remnants of the old SSU city of Ranuigrad. The tenements left standing eerily loom over their destroyed neighbours, casting shadows across their blackened walls.

Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, from his command Hanomag knows that a fight is coming. The SSU and the Allies have banded together to bring him to account and get him to reveal the secrets of the Axis war machine. He can hear the Pershings of Patton in the distance and the faint buzz of a radioactive disturbance in his earpiece announces the imminent arrival of Winter Child....

Today...will not be a short day...

In the final club meeting of the year, Damian came up with the idea of a 5 on 5 DUST Battlefield mega-battle which many of us quickly signed up to. Showing up on the day, we find both sides short a player, so it turned into a 4 on 4. 4 tables were set up with the remains of a large city and its surrounding hamlet and forests dominating either ends of the 12 x 4 table. The sides were as follows:

Axis: Damian (CiC), Francis, David and Greg
Allies/SSU: Andrew (CiC), Matt, Alex and Peter.

The Axis side, all seasoned DUST campaigners. The Allied/SSU, a rules writer and a few newer guys. We should have this in the bag!

75 points per player to spend as fit and each side would have a character leading the overall force and could issue orders to any unit on their side. Rommel for the Axis (using the soon to be seen Babylon rules) and Patton for the Allies/SSU (using the Red Banner rules).

So, the sides were set and forces had already been determined over the previous week, so we were set. A good mix of infantry and tanks/walkers on each side meant that this should be relatively balanced. The Axis had 2 aircraft while the Allies/SSU had one. I've never played a game where planes were involved before, so was curious to see how they went.

 So, with everyone set and ready to go, Damian and Andrew rolled for initiative and we started on our way toward finding who would control Ranuigrad. 

No-one really wanted to start exposing their valuable walkers and tanks early, the infantry started moving on to the battlefield but with the ranges still long and terrain intervening no shots rung out just yet.

Once the big guys started coming on though, that was a different story all together. Andrew, having only tanks left brought his first Pershing on and preceded to decimate my unit of Ghosts who had moved toward the centre objective. The favour was soon to be repaid as I brought my JagdLuther on and fired....dealing 4 damage to the hull of Andrew's tank which puts it over halfway damaged. But he wasnt finished yet. During our next activation, Supreme Commander Rommel rolls on and reactivates the 'Luther...who opens up on the limping Pershing, finishing it off.

One big hull down and a couple more to go! Units were now starting to manouever into their positions to get shots of at the enemy with the big guys starting to do a lot of work.

Over on the hamlet flank, David and Damian push their monkeys forward to start flanking and removing command units as well as securing objectives.

The Allies and SSU werent content just sitting back and waiting though. In the broken city, Bazooka Joe and his mates were heading forward tentatively but with purpose. With the support of flame and grenades they started cutting down all that stood between them and their objective....Lara and her Panzers. Sitting high in a ruin, they started raining down shells on anything in their sights and refusing to roll over and die. DR saves just rock!

And then the tide started to turn...

Part 2 of The Battle of Ranuigrad will be told tomorrow....for now the Axis hold the upper hand but how long will they hold?

Tune in tomorrow...same TCOW time, same TCOW station...


Thursday 11 December 2014

Last TCOW for 2014 - hashtag sadface

So this Sunday will be the final club meeting for the year and it looks like there is something pretty massive planned! 

THE BATTLE FOR RANUIGRAD WILL RAGE!

This is going to be a 5 x 5 DUST battle pitting the mighty Axis forces against the combined power of the Allies and the SSU over the once formidable fortress city of Ranuigrad. Phaser, laser and tesla fire will fill the sky and many a Ghost, Ranger and Fakyeli will meet their maker. Who will prevail and hold the ruins and their position on the battlefield....you'll have to turn up on Sunday to find out...or maybe check the AAR next week, whichever is best.

SAGA

Lots of people have been making a heap of progress on their SAGA forces and there have been some shots on the Facebook page to keep others going. I managed to get a 4 point game in on Tuesday....and I can attest to the fact that Dane Axes suck ass. Stupid bloody Danes.

FLAMES OF WAR

On the FoW side of things, a little quieter post-FlamesCon as we play a few other things, but I have heard murmurings of a Vietnam focussed campaign....time to break out my Airmobile I think!

Keep an eye out for details of THE GREATEST FOW TOURNAMENT in the Southern Hemisphere. DanCon 2: Electric Boogaloo is coming....

So, we shall see you Sunday! DICE ON!!!

Monday 1 December 2014

Meet the founders.

We here at T.C.O.W like to stay grounded and not forget where we came from. Every tree started off as a seed and every Westies Holden started off rust free, good things often start of small and take on a life of their own.

So I would like to introduce 3 of the 4 founding members of T.C.O.W. Damian (other one, not me), Dan & Paul who without their efforts Aucklands most awesome club of diverse gaming would not exist.



Cheers guys the rest of us appreciate the time and effort you put in and lets make the last club session of the year on the 14th a massive one.