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!

IN THE CLUB!!! 17 May Meeting....

Ahhh, Sunday. As a gamer and a nerd/geek, its always great to know that every other Sunday, I get to head out, man dollies in tow, and meet up with a group of like minded individuals. And then we play man dollies!

This Sunday was geared around blowing the dust bunnies off our DUST models and get a game in. There has been some bad blood for the system floating around of late but we seriously enjoy playing the game, as was shown by the number of games that we got in.

Dave brought along his awesome desert board to play on as well. His Axis units are painted to match, and they really do look right at home there. He took on the Bludgelord and his Ribbitski line with KV walker support. I didn't catch the result though...

Faizal wanted to get some more DUST games in, having not played too many. He took on Damian "Pablo" C and his Axis first and got a whole heap of stuffs blown up...Twin-Twin 88's are just broken and Pablo really does enjoy a good n00b stomping!

So to make Faizal feel a little better, Monkey said he would take him on with his Rangers and all seemed to be going well....until....

Time for a cooking! Scusami!! I always love it when The Chef arrives....and I'm not playing!

Jon and Rob were getting some FoW practice over on another table. They were playing 1800 points, LW...but I don't want to infer that they were tuning or practicing for WolfCry...at all!

Jon was playing a German Grenadier company with Ludwig Windgruber in tow and Rob was running Commandos with some tank support and an arty park (BOOOOOO!!!!).

Looked like they were having a great time of it. I should really remember to get results from people and write them down though! Hey, at the end of the day, everyone is a winner.....right?

We also had a couple of intro games of Warmahordes going on by the window-doors.

While all this awesomeness was going on, I was playing Andrew at his first game of Bolt Action with an appropriate amount of seagulling happening at the same time. Andrew has a beautifully painted (mostly) British force with a Cromwell and a couple of cheaty carriers...

I took my Yanks with a Sherman, Greyhound and M3 for support as well. We decided to play Max Attrition, really easy and simple way to get the basics down.

I would like to add, on the record, that I am not now, nor have I ever been a n00b stomper...I am a n00b myself....but sometime the dice just go in your favour, as was the case this time around.

I managed to get a first turn range in with my mortar which killed off Andrew's 25 pdr. In a repeat of my game against Rob, Andrew called in an Artillery bombardment right by the bulk of my force and once again, rolled a 1 meaning it was now MY artillery....I moved it toward his stuff and did a heap of pins. No kills though.

Recce vehicles are just great. Especially when they can get in behind the enemy...Andrew didn't like it though.

Final turn of the game, I get my CO killed though but by then, the damage has been done though and I walk away with a 4-2 win.

And last but not least, Pablo wanted some more n00b stomping so took on Pete at some X-Wing. After Pablo killed Vader in the second turn, it was pretty much all she wrote for Big D and the Ijits....

So that was another TCOW meeting. 5 systems played and a great meeting all around I think. If you disagree, you know who to direct complaints to...

GAME ON!

Something Dusty....

Its been 2 weeks since the last club meeting, the first ever Bludgefest, so you know what that means...its Game Time!

This week, we go back to having a bit of a themed day and the theme for this weekend is DUST. That's right, break out your SSU, dust (pun intended) off your Axis and unbox your Allies because we're taking this thing back...all the way back to 1947 where the war isn't over and nothing is as it seems.

Now this of course doesn't mean that just because you don't play DUST you cant turn up and play other games. That just isn't the TCOW way. 

You wanna play SAGA? Come to TCOW! 
You wanna roll Bolt Action? TCOW is the place! 
You wanna hit some Flames of War? You know where to come!

So if you're free on Sunday between 2.30 and 6.30 and want to play some games or even just watch/seagull come and see us at TCOW!

Club Meeting 22 February or Renewing Ones N00b Status

Even though BattleCry had a firm grip on the Auckland wargaming community this weekend, TCOW was still open for business today for those souls who wanted to get in and have a game despite not being at the tournament. Around 10 people showed up and even with the relatively small numbers, we still managed to see games of Warmahordes, Dropzone Commander, Flames of War and DUST played today. Not a bad effort at all!

Now, there are those days as a wargamer that you just cant win no matter what you do and today was one of those days for me. I'd lined up a 1600 point LW Flames game with Mike and noodled a little list from Bridge at Remagen which had almost all the flavours of German heavy tanks in it! Yay for kitties!

And that was pretty much where the fun ended for me today....Mike took some CV American tanks and ran them straight at my RV heavies and just decimated them....not once, but twice in the space of an hour! Some days.....

I did manage to blow Mike's CiC up in game 2....moral victory.... :0(

So I thought I might have a bit more luck against Ryan! I mean, I must have gotten all my bad luck out of the way in that first hour, right....?

Wrong. Another loss here. I did manage to get rid of a Panther platoon with some long range Tiger shots in turn 1, but thats about all she wrote on this one. Once Ryan's grens had overrun my King Tiger packed on the far objective, it was another aria for the rotund lass....

Dead Panthers!

Before the slaughter.

Over the other side of the hall, Damian C and Adam were engaging in an intro game of Dropzone Commander (DZC). I would have liked to get a bit more of a look at this one as it is something I'm interested in adding to my list of systems. Maybe next time...

Andrew was also doing an intro game, this time of Warmahordes, taking Martina through the basics with a Khador on Trolls battle-box game. As always, Warmahordes is a helluva lot of fun and I think this was no exception!

Finally, I also managed to fit a game of DUST in against Ryan. 100 points of my Axis vs. his Allies. I threw in a few of the new Babylon toys from my NDAK box set to see how they'd fare. This one eventually came down to a shoot-out with time running out. I got a team on to an objective and took the game, so not all was lost today! I did manage a pretty good save roll at one point....6 hits and

BOOM!

A bit of discussion around Bolt Action as well tonight with most people agreeing that we're going to look at playing in 15mm as well as 28mm. Seems like a good deal to me....I'll still be getting the 28mm stuff though!

So, another fortnight and another club meeting done and dusted! See you next time!

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...

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!!!

So many games, so little time #3: Simple painting to good effect - Part 3

Here we are back for part 3 which I will go over the picking out the detals & leg armour plates. Decals & weathering will follow in another part shortly.

So the main body of the walker is done but there are armour plates on the legs which have not been given any love as yet.

For these I did the same technique as the the main body where I sprayed them with the Red Brown all over, put in a large Green Grey area, thin line of Yellow Ochre to separate the 2 other colours then a final touch up of any over spray.

Next up I needed to define the details on the miniature as looking at it from any distance you just see a mess of colours from the camo. I know this was kind of the point of camo BUT this is a scale model remember and you do want to be able to make out what you are looking at.

The method I decided to use is called pin-washing, instead of slathering wash over the entire mini with a large brush which I have tended to do in the past I applied the wash just to the recesses with a thin brush. This was far more time consuming having to work around every panel joint but the colours of the model remained far more vibrant than if the mini had been bathed in a wash.

The paint I used was the Army painter ink "Dark Tone" which is just amazing and the Army Painter Inks are now my go to washes.

Here you can see the first part of the walker that I pin-washed vs the other arm which has yet to have it done. Hopefully you can spot which is which!

Here is both of them having been pin-washed.

Next up I did the same pin-washing to the main hull.

Which when you put them together you get.

Lastly I finally attached the leg armour plates that I talked about right at the start and the mini is looking nice and factory fresh, ready for unit markings and some wear and tear added (but keeping that new walker smell).

The final part where I do the decals and weathering will be up soon.