Chicago Skirmish Wargames Goes Mainstream, Plays 40k!

You read it right, folks: We temporarily sidestepped our passion for independent, affordable gaming and spent some time in that grimdark universe where war is constant, money flows like water and cranial embellishments never go out of style.

This weekend, Karl and I got in a 1500 point game of the glorious carnage that is 6th edition 40k. My Dark Angels tried to take out Karl's Imperial Guard. Throwing caution to the wind, we both brought lists inspired by the fluff of our chosen factions. I brought an all-Ravenwing army full of new models and a brand new codex. Ravenwing is the mobile assault arm of the Dark Angel's Space Marine army, and nearly all units come from the fast attack category.

Sammael, Master of the Ravenwing, rode in on his jetbike, accompanied by:

• 1 Ravenwing Black Knight command squad with 1 grenade launcher
• 1 Ravenwing Champion, and a banner bearer 
• 1 Ravenwing attack squad (3 bikes) 
• 1 Ravenwing attack squad (6 bikes) 
• 1 Land Speeder Typhoon (dual missile launcher) 
• 1 Land Speeder with an assault cannon 
• 1 Attack bike with a multimelta 
• 1 Lascannon/missile launcher venerable dreadnought 
• 1 Deathwing terminator squad with storm bolters and a plasma cannon (started in reserves) 
• 1 Nephilim support jetfighter (started in reserves) 
• 1 Ravenwing darkshroud (a large land speeder that confers stealth to units in a 6-inch radius) 

Karl's Imperial Guard was a much larger force. Putting 80 figures and 5 vehicles on the table, he brought:

• 1 Command Squad with a Master of Ordinance 
• 2 Platoons with 3 infantry squads in each, half with a lascannon and half with an autocannon 
• 1 squadron of 3 Basilisk mobile artillery 
• 1 standard Leman Russ Battle Tank 
• 1 Leman Russ Demolisher 
• 1 squad of 5 ratlings 

Putting aside the random terrain rules in the rulebook, we setup a table thematically with the Imperial Guard holding the line against the Dark Angels, who were advancing through the remains of a village and a boulder field. We were playing a modified version of the "Purge The Alien" mission from the 6th edition rule book. Karl's army started in and around various buildings and ruins (including his new Mine Entrance terrain piece).

Most of the Dark Angels circled around the darkshroud unit in order to take advantage of the stealth feature. In hindsight, this may not have been the most tactically sound decision, but it looked awesome on the board as they rode up in style.

Turn 1 
Dark Angels seized the the initiative, and the bulk of them moved along the road and behind some rocks for cover. The attack bike and land speeders circled to the right to take the enemy by surprise while the dreadnought moved to cover in the backfield. Dark Angel fire shot up some of the Imperial Guard infantry, and took a hull point from a Leman Russ Demolisher. The attack bike and land speeder killed all but one ratling. The remaining ratling ran away, never to be heard from again.

The Imperial Guard immediately started dropping the pie plates, taking out Sammael and one of the command squad members who missed ALL cover save rolls. The dice were NOT with me! Shooting continued, resulting in another lost command squad bike, 4 bikes from one attack squad, and 2 from the other. It was a brutal start to the game.

Turn 2
Deathwing Terminators dropped in on one of the remaining bike's teleport homers, and the Nephilim jetfighter zoomed in from reserves. The terminators and jetfighter massacred 2 full infantry squads in the shooting phase. The terminator's plasma cannon took a hull point from one of the Leman Russ tanks. The attack bike went further to the right side of the field, staying behind cover.

Predictably, the Imperial Guard's turn began with more pie plates, killing one of the attack squad bikes and immobilizing a land speeder. Concentrated fire from plasma cannons and lascannons destroyed the entire terminator squad.

Turn 3
Another squad was decimated by the jetfighter's dakka, and the dreadnought took out one of the Leman Russ tanks. The remaining bike and landspeeder boosted forward and shot into one of the bunkers, taking out some troops. The attack bike came around the side and multimelta'd the other Leman Russ. It exploded, taking out the attack bike, and most of one platoon command squad.

The Imperial Guard shooting phase took out the last bike and land speeder and a lucky snap shot took a hull point from the Nephalim fighter.

Turn 4
At the start of turn 4, the Dark Angels' only remaining units were the flyer and the dreadnought. The flyer zoomed along the Imperial Guard deployment zone and took out some more troops. The dreadnought also took out a couple more. The three Basilisks dropped some indirect barrage shots over the lonely dreadnought and managed to take a hull point and immobilize it. At this point, it was facing into cover, and would be useless for the rest of the game.

Turn 5

Little happened in this turn. The jetfighter zoomed off the board, into ongoing reserves. Imperial Guard troops on the right flank started moving forward, and another round of Artillery fire failed to further damage the dreadnought. We rolled to see if the battle was over, but it continued for another turn.

Turn 6 
The Nephilim flyer zoomed back onto the field, and took out some more troops. In a repeat of the previous turn, the dreadnought stared at the wall but was again unharmed by the Artillery barrage that rained down on (or should we say "near") his position. The flyer again remained unharmed.

We rolled to see if the game would continue, and the dice decided that the game was over! We tallied up the score, and the Dark Angels lost 8 to 10, only a minor victory for the Guard. I am surprised the score was so close, as it really felt like a massacre to me!

It was a great epic battle. I am looking forward to playing with this army list again. I am sure I can use the Ravenwing more effectively. I suspect that if I had turbo boosted the bike squadrons, I could have assaulted in the first round, and kept the bikes alive for at least another turn or two.

The Nephilim jetfighter looks awesome on the table, and was very useful in this game, but it costs a lot of points that may be better spent elsewhere. No matter what anyone says on the internets, my las/missile dread is one of the best performing units I have (plus, he has dangling skulls). I will always try to fit him into my lists.

Next time I fight Karl's Imperial Guard, I'll try fielding an all-Deathwing terminator army.

Here are some thoughts from Karl about the game: "This was a lot of fun, and reminded me of why I liked 40k. It was only my second game with the 6th edition rules, and Josh was patient through quite a bit of rule-checking, but they didn't seem overly complicated. I definitely saw the advantage of lascannons over autocannons against tough enemies. I've got the parts to do it, so maybe I'll go ahead and make lascannon teams for the rest of my infantry squads. The flyer rules really seem to add a new dimension to the game. One aircraft isn't a game changer, but if one player were to show up with two or more, and the other player didn't have any aircraft or any ground units with the "skyfire" ability, it could drastically tilt the game. I'm not sure whether this is a new and interesting addition to the game that will encourage balance between air and ground units or a cynical plot by Games Workshop to make players buy expensive new units. Perhaps it's both, but I look forward to seeing how it shakes out. It has definitely given me the desire to someday build and paint up the Hydra Anti-Aircraft Flak Turret decks (can be switched with my basilisks) and Valkyrie flyer that I have in storage."

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

More Mech Attack and Panzer 8 Gaming

Towards the end of last month, the club gathered again to play Mech Attack and Panzer 8, two rulesets we've been enjoying recently for 10mm scale sci-fi mass combat games. We had played these games two weeks prior, but we decided to give them one more evening of play before jumping into our winter post-apocalyptic campaign.

There were four of us present, so both games ended up being multiplayer affairs. For the first game, Terrence put on a nice Mech Attack game using a few home-brew rules and the Solaris 7 game map from the Mechwarrior CMG. Each player was given an entry point and a light mech. When that mech was destroyed, the player received a medium mech from the same entry point. When that was destroyed, the player received a heavy mech, and when that was destroyed, the player was out of the game.

I had previously run a similar game where each player started with a light mech, but had to "earn" heavier equipment by making a kill and returning to their entry point. My scenario went on for quite a long time and resulted in many folks repeatedly dying, and lots of time spent just running back to the entry points.

Terrence's scenario was more fun, as it was faster playing and there was ample opportunity for sweet revenge when a defeated player quickly returned with a tougher mech.

The game moved pretty quickly. It didn't take long for every player to have lost his light mech. As you can see from the pictures, we are using Mechwarrior CMG prepainted plastic figures that have not been rebased. This, combined with the hex map, felt a bit odd for a game club that makes a point of playing on real terrain. However, the mechs did have some great stock paintjobs, and Terrence had prepared all the requisite stat cards for us.

 A few bad dice rolls, and Terrence ended up getting eliminated from the game first. The game quickly wrapped up from there. We had a rarity in the game when one mech managed to take full damage to every single location before finally succumbing to a critical hit. You can see its mangled stat card in this photo.

The game came to a dramatic end when my mech managed to take down its nearly-undamaged enemy with a ridiculously lucky double laser hit. The shot immediately burned through the target's armor and resulted in a mech-destroying explosion. Folks seemed to really enjoy the scenario and I look forward to playing it again. The jury was mixed, however, on the virtues of playing on a printed hex map as opposed to a traditional miniatures wargame tabletop. On the one hand, counting hexes for movement (one hex equals 2 inches of movement) and using hex sides for shooting is an extremely fast and time-saving method that allows you to dispense with rulers. On the other hand, no map, however nice, is as pretty as real 3D terrain.

The group seemed to be evenly split, with half the players favoring the map and the other half wanting 3D terrain instead. For me, playing on the hex map may prove to be the impetus to someday paint up some of the Battletech figures I have in my collection so I can use them on their hex-maps as an ultra-portable Mech Attack game that could be played on a a smaller tabletop.

We were running a bit short on time, so for our game of Panzer 8 sci-fi, we each fielded just a couple of platoons of armor and a few mechs (no infantry) in a two-vs-two game. Tim and I controlled the grey force, and we set up in cover preparing to ambush two columns of tan force armor controlled by Mike and Terrence.

The tan force was relentless, sending its lead elements veering off the roads to engage the ambushers.

The ambushers were cut up piecemeal as they attempted to waylay the tan force, which used the movement bonuses granted by the roads to quickly move into position.

The tan force's Mad Cat was particularly fearsome, ripping into the enemy's armor with ease. Likewise, the tan force's jet bikes had incredible speed, which allowed them to be remarkably effective against much heavier opponents.

The battle quickly became a rout. By the time grey team ceded the field, it had lost 70 percent of its forces, compared to about 25 percent casualties on the tan team.

It was a fun game. I only wish we had time to run a larger game with infantry. Panzer 8 is such an enjoyable and fast-moving game that it really inspires large-scale engagements. I prefer the game without clicky bases, but one of our members who has a lot of based units wasn't able to make it, so we had to use minis that had not been rebased yet.

I've also put the finishing touches on a slight modification of the games rules. Among the main changes:

• Shooting and movement modifications to better accommodate 10mm scale units on bases, which comprise the bulk of our collection. 
•  Slightly more specific rules for indirect fire artillery. 
•  Moving all the unit guidelines and other extraneous info to the end of the rules, resulting in a ruleset where the game rules fit on one page! 
• A full list of ready-made units with corresponding point values. 

These modifications will be available for download shortly on our Yahoo group, and also at the Panzer 8 Yahoo group.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Pizza, plaster and paint: CSW hosts hobby night

Last week a few Chicago Skirmish Wargames members gathered at my home for an extended evening of hobbying. Drop-cloths descended, bins of supplies emerged from storage and we completely took over my dining room and kitchen. About midway through the evening we paused to order Chicago-style deep dish pizza from the place down the street, which gave us fuel to carry on and make some good progress on various projects.

At the first table, Pat was hard at work on a batch of Stonehaven Dwarves, which he recently received in the mail following a successful Kickstarter campaign. They had only been primed gray, but he managed to get three of them block painted and highlighted to the point where they were ready for the dip.

He then proceeded to put a second layer of paint on a batch of roads I had been working on. They are made of latex caulk spread in sections on hardboard, then sprinkled with just a bit of sand and painted brown. After a bit of dry brushing, we'll have some nice dirt roads for our wastelands. We'll have photos of these roads on the battlefield soon.

On the opposite side of the painting table, Mike was arranging his Imperial Guardsmen for an epic mass painting effort. A veteran of 3mm, 6mm, and spaceship fleet painting, Mike likes to paint in huge batches and today was no exception. He was painting the pants and sleeves on 60 Imperial Guardsmen! Here's some of the progress he made.

Across the room, Josh was hard at work building a set of hills. He is a bit new to terrain building, so we started with basic styrofoam hills. Despite a few mishaps with the foam cutter wires, he managed to carve and prep one section of hills, and he cut out a few more beyond that. The hills are made from a four-section styrofoam shelf display arrangement that was designed to display Lemax Christmas houses. I picked up the display at an after-Christmas sale for $4!

Josh also brought along a few Pegasus Hobbies Gothic Ruins that he had glued to hardboard triangles. He took this cool project to the next level, though, by beveling the edges of the baseboard and adding real broken ceramic tiles to the floor, then scattering kitty litter around for rubble. The end result is pretty great looking.

I really like the substantial look (big pillars, etc) of the Pegasus gothic buildings. They don't have as many bits and pieces, but they look good -- and the fact that they are not covered in skulls gives them a much wider appeal outside of Games Workshop battlefields.

Lastly, I worked on a bit of terrain that is sort of a bunker or mine entrance. It was originally sold as the "Brendam Dock Playset" from the Thomas the Tank Engine toy line. I found the main section for a buck or two at Goodwill. It's scaled nicely for 28mm figs, with the walkway being the perfect height for use a firing trench. It would have looked like this when new.

I removed the storage rails behind the garage door -- which still opens, by the way -- and I also chopped off the various tabs on the building where the railway and roadway would have been attached.

I added doors, fencing, a fuel tank and some other bits. The doors and hatches are all made from a bag of precut wood rectangles that I picked up from Michael's. They come in three fairly standard sizes, give or take a millimeter or two, making them an excellent option for cheap panels for sci-fi modeling.

It's since been primed and ballasted, but I'll do a post about it later. A great time was had by all, and a lot was accomplished. We've only managed to have three hobby gatherings in the nearly three years the club has existed, but I hope we can do this more often. Maybe deep dish pizza is the key?

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Mech Attack and Panzer 8 for 10mm sci-fi gaming

Last week, while Pat and Josh were playing This is Not a Test, the rest of us were playing Mech Attack and Panzer 8 sci-fi. For 10mm gaming, most of us have rebased Mechwarrior clix without any repainting. However, there are some exceptions. Tim has repainted his mechs in a green scheme that matches his 28mm Neo-Soviet forces.

Jon uses some really nicely painted Games Workshop Epic 40,000 titans. Technically they're 6mm, but they are big enough to make great 10mm mechs. Here's half of Jon's force. Vintage awesome-ness!

Panzer 8
Panzer 8 is part of a family of two-page rulesets based around the same fast-playing rule system. It's free, so check it out! For the game, we setup an urban layout using lots of card buildings. We house-ruled that any building of 2 stories or higher blocks line of sight, even for mechs that appear taller than the building. At some point we hope to build some of the excellent free cardstock buildings from the Dropzone Commander games, as they are taller than our current buildings.

We modified the rules as follows, mostly to accommodate the fact that we use 10mm figures based on fairly large bases. Due to the large bases we use, any gap (even one smaller than a unit) between units is enough to allow other units to pass through and shoot. Similarly, we ruled that shooting is measured from any base edge.

Jon and I began with Panzer 8, while Terrence and Tim took over the adjacent table for their Mech Attack game. We were a bit rusty so we began with a meatgrinder, kill-em-all game. I was using a pair of mechs and two platoons of armor, which you can see in this photo.

As the game started, I attempted to quickly bring my armor up the center and left flank, with my mechs bringing up the right flank.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Jon began to concentrate his fire and systematically dismantle my forces. Here's a shot of his titans pouring fire into my team.

I did manage to take down one of his light mechs, as well as a heavy mech.

But it quickly became a massacre. None of my forces even made it much past the center of the board.

 
Here's how things looked at the end of the game.

Mech Attack
Mech Attack is a game from Armor Grid Games that distills the fun of classic BattleTech into an actual, playable ruleset. The PDF is $6. For our game, we setup a maze-like rocky layout. I didn't end up with very many pics of these games, unfortunately. Terrence and Tim started off on this table with a simple meatgrinder game.

 After that, Tim and I played a game where the objective was to get a squad of elite jump troops to occupy a gun emplacement at the center of the board. The troops unit were given the following scenario specific rules.

• The ability to cross all terrain (not a standard troop ability in Mech Attack) 
• In increased speed to 5 inches 
• Didn't enter the board until turn 3, when they entered from a side of the players choosing 
• One new troop unit would respawn every time one was killed

It ended up being a very fast game as once the troops entered the board, as it only took them two running moves to reach the emplacement. The game simply came down to who won initiative on turn 5 for their troops to enter the emplacement. It was a bit of a 'blah' scenario, but it has given me some ideas for future scenarios.

Conclusions
In the end, this evening reminded me why I like these two rulessets so much. Panzer 8 is a great way to get a mass of figures on the board without being bogged down in rules. We could have easily fielded twice as many units per side and it wouldn't have lengthened the game much. The rules are extremely streamlined, but as we've seen, a few house rules can really round it out nicely. I'm looking forward to increasingly making this game our own.

Mech Attack did it's usual job of making a Battletech-sized game (roughly five-vs-five units) resolve in about a quarter of the time while still retaining essential mech-game elements: damage grids, heat tracking and weapon systems with varied effects. It did, however drive home the benefits of a well-built scenarios. Without one, it can simply degrade into a dice rolling slug-fest. Such games are fun for a while, but not likely to hold one's interest for an extended period of time.

As a club, we've decided to postpone the start of our winter post-apocalyptic campaign until early February to allow for one more evening of 10mm sci-fi. Stay tuned for more Mech Attack and Panzer 8 next time!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

TNT playtest: Attack of the Rad Bugs!

Last week the CSW crew gathered for a bunch of games, including another playtest of "This Is Not A Test" (TNT), the forthcoming post-apocalyptic game we've been following for a month or two.

For this game, we decided to put a bunch of rad bugs on the table and craft a scenario around eliminating the insectoid threat. I had a bunch of rebased Heroclix Brood minis that I'd been itching to get on the table for quite some time now. So Josh and I put together a tight, cramped urban battlefield, then put a big ol' drainpipe in the center of the table. This, we decided, was the objective: the first warband to lob a grenade down into the drainpipe and stop the outpouring of bugs would be the winner.

To start out, we scattered 8 bugs randomly around the board. Each one was attached to a particular terrain piece as its home base. As per TNT rules, these bugs would venture out from their home base to attack enemies, but wouldn't go more than 6 inches away.

On the flip side, the bugs that were going to be pouring out of the drainpipe (1d3 per turn, starting on turn 3) didn't have any such limitations. They were going to close with and attack the closest target in line of sight.

Beyond that, Josh and I agreed that our warbands could certainly fight with each other, but that our primary objective was to destroy the drainpipe and save our respective encampments from the bug threat. He was running a group of heavily armed Preservers (seekers of lost technology, represented in the game by relic weapons). I was fielding a group of primitive techno-scavengers using the Tribals force list. Here are our respective armies in action.

With those broad guidelines in place, we got the game started. We were playing at about 450 points, lower than the game's suggested threshold of 600 points, but more appropriate for our small, terrain-choked table space. (With the rest of the club playing 10mm sci-fi mass combat games, we were relegated to a 3.5 x 3.5 foot folding table.)

We started in opposite corners. Josh's Preservers moved to explore a ruined area and almost immediately came into conflict with a pair of bugs. For these smaller guys, we used the Giant Tick profile from the TNT rulebook. For the larger flying bugs, we used the Giant Mosquito profile. Both monster profiles seemed to strike the right balance of being more than just a nuisance but not so deadly that they'd wipe us out if left unchecked.

Across the table, I was positioning my Tribals to avoid contact with the bugs if at all possible. Instead, I sent them into the ruins where they could hopefully use their hunting rifles to pick off bugs (and Preservers) from cover.

The game unfolded well, with both Josh and I being fairly familiar with the rules. As before, we found ourselves using a variety of colored tokens to track conditions -- though not nearly as many as in our previous game. This was due to our reduced point level (450 points instead of 600 in our first game) as well as a note from the game's creator about a rules tweak that reduced the bookkeeping.

We battled the bugs pretty much exclusively for about 4 or 5 turns. Then Josh's warband leader (a singularly awesome figure who we took to calling Snake Eyes) fought his way to the drainpipe and hurled in a grenade. The ensuing explosion won the day for Josh, but it also frightened my primitive tribals -- causing them to turn their attention to the Preservers warband, which was still heavily engaged with the remaining bugs!

 

So Josh had to fight the bugs as well as the increasingly accurate potshots coming from my Tribals across the table. This he did, though things got a bit dicey at times. Eventually our two warbands killed all the bugs and fought each other to a complete standstill. We decided to call the game a draw -- we had defeated the bug threat, but our warbands were uneasy allies at best.

Once again, we had an enjoyable game of TNT that didn't result in too much rulebook-flipping. We agreed that it's a solid system and is easy to teach to new players. The playtest rulebook we have is just jammed full of campaign material, including random weather event tables, a currency-based barter system, and a big list of irradiated pests and predators ready to be dropped into your games. There are still a few holes where the author obviously intends to expand the book a little bit. But this playtest rulebook should be sufficient for us to launch our post-apocalyptic campaign in early February.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member