DUST Returns! Club Meeting - 14 February

Even we at TCOW celebrate St. Valentines day, although we tend to celebrate it in a similar manner to Al Capone...with the elimination of our enemies!

With BattleCry just around the corner, a number of the guys took the opportunity to use the meeting as a refresher on rules and to finalise lists for the systems they're intending on playing. While BattleCry isnt as big this year as it has been in others, it will definitely be well represented by TCOW Alums!

Oh....and something came back....








DUST

Thats right! Contrary to popular belief on social media, we actually DO play DUST from time to time here in NZ. Dave and I took the opportunity to get a game in with Dave using a completely new force in the Allies (he's an Axis player at heart, I know it) and me taking a few of the new toys from the Operation: Babylon kickstarter.

And so we rolled a mission...and of course it had to be Free-For-All! For reference, we were using the DUST Battlefield rules. My 100 points of Axis had a lot more bodies that Dave's 100 on Allies which mean only one thing. He had lots of spendy big toys...

So we start rolling troops on. As I have the advantage in numbers, Dave then has the advantage in seeing where my dudes are coming on by passing his initial few activations. Effectively what I'm trying to do is get my guys to the objectives as quick as I can, using whatever cover is available. As my guys are Infantry 1, they're gonna potentially die very easily!

Dave was ready for that and with his Phaser Rangers walking on to the board, they open up and all but decimate my first unit of Sand Vipers. Cover saves mean nothing against power weapons like these!

My other unit cops a hail of autocannon fire from the roof of a busted-our building and they're gone as well. REally, I have to bring on something with a little more firepower.

Leopold shows up and with a mass-hail of 3.7mm fire wipes out the unit on the building. Revenge for the fallen...

Thats pretty much all she wrote from there, for the Axis troops at least.









The remainder of the game saw Dave mopping up what was left of my raggedy bunch. The Chef made an appearance behind the line (Scusi!) and cleaned out my Fox Cubs command squad and would have eaten my mortar next had they not been decimated by phaser fire.

All in all, I got my ass handed to me and had a heap of fun doing it. DUST is such a well-balanced and crafted game, it really is a shame about all the other issues that have plagued it.

Bolt Action

More Early War goodness for Bolt Action this week with Dave's Germans taking on Stu's Germans in the desert.

I'm not sure how the battle ended, but I have a pretty good idea that the Germans won the day.

Might have to pop along to BattleCry and have a watch of the Bolt Action...

TNT

TNT came back to TCOW this week as well with Harrison and Alex going at it in the ruins of humanity.

Flames of War

And in a noob on noob game Faizal and his Soviets battle against (guy who's name I cant rememeber, soz)  Darren (thanks Damo!) and his Germans. This one looked like a real instruction session in tactics and maneuvering on both sides of the table.

The highlight of this one was the sneaky Mobelwagens heading around the left flank, forcing the deployment of the Soviet reserves away from the main German force lest the objective fall into their hands. Very funny!

Magic Commander League

Week 3 and some moves are being made for the top tiers of the leader board. Check it out on Facebook .

You can tell that Magic is getting serious when this happens...

And that was that, TCOW was over for another week!

Good luck to all the TCOW'ers venturing to test their mettle at BattleCry this weekend. Roll well!

Next club meeting is on 28 February so see you there! GAME ON!

DanCon III - Results and Photos.

As tradition would dictate, with last weekend being Auckland Anniversary, we descended on the TCOW venue for the third iteration of the maddest, wildest and funnest FoW tournament in Auckland. DanCon III was here!

This year would see the repeat of random mixed doubles employing the "Carried to Victory" rule once again. Each player would bring 1000 points of Early War forces and then be randomly paired with a player from the same side of the tracks. They'd then take on a similar pairing. All going well, no player should play the same person twice or be on the same team as someone twice. Yeah right! This is DanCon!

It was really great to see some different forces being fielded. Typically we're LW players at TCOW, so EW is a bit of a rarity. Some players didn't even own EW forces and had to borrow them (me included). Many nations were also accounted for with my last count being 8 (German, Soviet, French, Hungarians, Japanese, British, Italian and Finns).

No AAR's here, but a few key moments from games I saw.

Glider Assaults. Well, what can we say. When they go well, they go well. And we did see that...once. So many crashed gliders and dead FJ. So much Koch potential, never to be unleashed. And Damo and Monkey were so confident as well...

And then....

Game 1, all Monkey got to do was move tanks and fail a bogging check. 

This became a very familiar scene...

Horses. I have a long and painful history with Cossacks. So why not take the fear head on and run them? So many horses! They look awesome deployed though, especially with 7 T-35's in support!

And now, the photo dump! Enjoy!

This is what happens when you get a turn 1 win....

And now to the results...take it away El Pres!

1st Place: Rob Sadler

2nd Place: Faizal Mohammed

3rd Place: Ryan Jeffares

And the ever coveted, ever sought SPOON! You know who!!!

There you have it team! DanCon done for another year and who knows what madness will be dreamt up for next year!?

Whatever it is, its gonna be Top Notch!

Huge thanks to everyone who helped make the event a massive success either through loans of terrain or armies or through their willingness to have fun! A massive thanks to Dan and Dave for prize support as well.

Until next year!