Dark Age battle report

Got back to some good old skirmish gaming today with one of the best skirmish games out there, Dark Age.

It was my Forsaken against the Outcasts with the points set at 750. I won't list the forces as the pictures are below.

The Forsaken led by St Mary

The Outcasts with the imposing Mongo on the left

We randomly chose scenarios with my one being Escort, basically had to pick a model as my leader and escort it into the enemy deployment zone then make sure it survived. I picked the less threatening of my models, Judah.  My opponnets mssion was I think Glory Hog where he chose a model that had to kill its worth of me in points then get into my deployment zone.
Here is deployment.

Outcast deployment



Forsaken deployment

 I chose to split for my force with my two stronger individual models (St Mary and  the warwind) on one side and Judah on the other. I was hopeful my opponent would focus on my stronger flank allowing me to slip through on the other.

What happened....
All was going well until in the early phases with each side abit cagey. I then made a tiny mistake and took the bait of a unit of Brutes pushed forward that my strikes charged but only killed one. Then Mongo rolled in and killed all 3 strikes, yikes. Next turn got worse when the outcasts won initiative and crashed Mongo into St Mary and squashed her.
Mongo then rolled towards my deployment so I charged my Clergy Ann into him to stop him as it was apparent that was my opponents Glory hog and I had to stop him getting into my deployment zone. The Clergy Ann put a couple of wounds on Mongo but he survived. The brutes then charged in but did no damage.

The Warwind then instead of coming back to help the Clergy Ann and stop Mongo took a chance and took off towards the enemy deployment zone which I think confirmed in my opponents mind he was the leader. He then pulled his whole remaining force over towards the Warwind leaving Judah free.

Luckily next turn I won initiative and killed Mongo and one of the Brutes with the Clergy Ann. Before Mongo died he finished of the Clergy Ann.

The Clergy Ann take on the might of Mongo and the Brutes

The rest of the game saw my Wawind take the focus of attention allowing Judah to slip into the enemy deployment zone. A few anxious moments as I had quite a few shots come his way but thanks to his special ability 'sidestep' I dodged all the shots that came my way. Win for the Forsaken.

Judah sidesteps his way into the enemy deployment zone to win the game.

Dystopian Wars - FSA dreadnought

I have finished my FSA Dreadnought at last. One of my favourite models of all time can't wait to field it in a game.

My new 'Hurricane season' book from Sparten games arrived in the post today so looking forward to reading that. It is a campaign book for Dystopian wars and from a quick glance has lots of fluff and missions so could be good. will try and put a review in soon.

Dystopian Wars - new models and battle report

Have been abit quiet lately but last few days have been busy on the painting table and gaming table. First the new models and I got 4 destroyers and my Valley class airship done on Saturday. Love the airship and think I will have to get a sky fortress very soon especaily after todays game (but more of that later).

Guilford Class destroyer squadron - can put out 15 AD at range band 3 with their rockets

The Guilford

Valley class airship

So the reason for my painting flurry was that I had a game scheduled at OMTS today vs Bill and his Covenant of Antartica. We played 850 points as an upcoming tournament we are both going in was the same.
Forces were
FSA
Battleship + escort
Savannah class sky fortress (was proxyed by the Valey class airship)
3 Lexington cruisers
3 John henry robots
4 Destroyers
COA
Battleship
Sky fortress
4 destroyers
2 meduim flyers
3 cruisers

Here is the deployment

The COA just after deployment. The destroyers in the centre were to feel the early firepower of the FSA.

FSA deployment

To sum it all up the COA pushed forward but the FSA crusiers took out a couple of destroyers while the FSA destroyers blew a cruiser out of the water with their rockets.
The fsa lost a couple of destroyers to the COA battleship but inflicted alot of hurt on the COA crusiers who were eventually completly destoyed by some FSA tiny flyer torpedo bombers and the sky fortress that sailed up the middle broadsiding everyone who got close. The coa meduim flyers popped up and destroyed a couple of FSA cruisers. The sky fortress finished both flyers with bombs and a broadside (double 1s helped). On the left flank the John Henrys came straight at the COA sky fortress and over a couple of turns to 4 HPs of damage and although damaged themselves all stayed in one piece. The two battleships slugged it out on the flank with the FSA battleship taking a minor points decision.
It was at this stage we called the game (lunch time) which was looking like a probable FSA victory with only a damaged COA sky fortress and battleship left.

FSA tiny flyers have just taken out a COA cruiser and face the wrath of the COA tiny flyer fighters.

Good game and probably cemented my force choice for Tagcon. The sky fortress was great, the destroyers at RB 3 are deadly to virtually anything and the robots... why they're just flying robots so are my first choice everytime.

Finishing up finally my Dreadnought tonight so hopefully a picture or three tomorrow...

Dystopian War update (painting plus battle report)

Got through a bit of painting this week finishing my FSA John Henry Robots and FSA Escorts. You can see the pics below. Needed to get them done as I had a game over the weekend at the club (OMTS) vs Andrew (of Hobby Hub fame).

We played a 850 game as talk is that Tagcon (September) maybe using 850 points. I didn't take any pictures but forces were roughly as follows
FSA
Battleship
Saratoga Aircraft carrier
3 x cruisers
3 x destroyers
4 x frigates
3x John henrys
2 flights of tiny flyers torpedo bombers
1 flight of fighters

Kingdom of Brittanica
Battleship
2 x 3 Vanguard subs
2 meduim flyers
3 x 3 frigates
1 flight of torpedo bombers
1 flight of fighters

We just played a standard kill everything game. I can't remember most of it but this is roughly what happened.
After deployment I found myself facing his battleship, one squadron of subs and two squadrons of frigates on my right flank against my battleship, cruisers and destroyers.
My frigates were on the far left while all my torpedo bombers, fighters and robots plus my carrier were positioned in the centre against the rest of his forces.
Turn one saw me slowly decimate his frigates. In the middle my carrrier took a point of damage from the other subs whilst I lost a robot to the long range fire of the battleship.
Turn two to three saw me focus fire on the battleship from all my right flank and virtually cripple it. His meduim bombers came over to target my carrier again to know effect and were gunned to virtual annihilation by my robots. My fighters swept into his fighters and killed three to the loss of two of my fighters. His vanguards on the right surfaced to fire their torpedos to little effect before my torpedo bombers lined them up and sunk two.
Next turns saw the end of his battleship and vanguards plus most of his frigates. It was at this stage we called it a game.
Abit of a rout but as Andrew commented after the game probably his initial deployment had him at a disadvantage. I think he needed to focus all his subs. 6 subs are scary.
I am sure there will be a re-match and a chance for revenge for the Brits.

I think 850 points is a good number for a tournament and hopefully the guys running Tagcon run with that.



FSA Escorts



FSA John Henrys robots

A John Henry close up



My favourite FSA model, my Saratoga carrier who took a ton of punishment in todays game but laughed most of it off.

 Next up on the painting tray is my FSA Dreadnought which is undercoated and ready to paint, more next week...

Southcon Flames of War 2012

Well my first FOW tournanment is now all behind me. 6 great games with very patient, friendly and helpful opponents. The FJ did pretty well coming up with 4 wins so I was pretty happy with that. Anyway here are some pics from the tournament.


The venue at Forbury




My favourite table 'Stalingrad' (though I never got to play on it)



British paras - Played them in game 2 and had a win thanks to my panzerpah patrol zipping along a road at breakneck speed to start the struggle for an objective

Fisrt game against Nick's 'Kiwis'. A very good player who taught me alot which helped later on in the tournament

                          

Nasty staghound list that had me on the ropes but somehow thanks to a command stand from my Nebelwerfers contesting an objective I some how won.

Callum's armoured lst that gave me a right royal beating.

My finished army plus display board I put together. The medal at the bottom right I got for playing my first Flames event at Southcon.

Bit more of a close up.

Now that I have had a chance to have a good play with them I probably might change things abit, maybe by dropping the panzerpah light patrol and maybe adding in some air support or some LG40s I can deploy with my FJ platoons (don't like being surronded by armoured vehicles and shot at with no viable response).

So what is next? Well thinking about going up to Call To Arms in Wellington later in the year to play Flames. they are running late war at 1750 points which would allow me to run a cassino list and maybe add in some stugs and air so that could be fun. But before then I have got a load of Dystopian Wars models to paint...

Fallschirmjager army finished

Well finally all done. 1500 points of FJ all painted for my first tournament 'Southcon' coming up in a couple of weeks.

This week I finished my Light panzarpah platoon and Pak38s (although just noticed on the photos I forgot to put flock on so will fix that tonight).

Had been trying to think of what to do for my objectives and was abit stumped. I thought I would have to buy a couple of extra vehicles to use when I stumbled upon a post on the Battlefront forum where some bloke had just put a flag so I took that adapted it and put some para containers on it with the flags. The flags are of course Fallshirmjager. I got a bit anal and got the container codes of the 'net' so each container is coded accordingly.

This week's work

Light Panzerpah patrol

Objective #1

Objective #2

The finished army

Next on the plans is a display board. I just find having one makes it easy for using an army at a tournment and transporting from game to game.

FOW: FJ vs Indian Rifles

First game of FOW last night. We played MW 1500 points my Fallschirmjager vs I think Indian rifles (from North africa book).
Fallschirmjager
FJ Command with PK + 2 x 8cm GW42 mortars – 120
2 full FJ Platoons with PKs - 540
4 FJ Marder IIs - 400
3 15cm NW41 – 115
Machine gun platoon (one section) - 80
1 Light Panzarpah patrol 110
3 x pak38 -135
1500
Indians
3 Infantry platons
2 batterys of 4 25 pounders
Limited air support (hurricane)
3 Churchills
I could be wrong on the indian force but that was basically it.

We played a free for all. Tha table had a reasonable amount of terrain with a big village just to the right where I planned to run a platoon of FJ through to try and grab the objective while my other platoon dug in at the back.

Start of the game, all deployed.

First turn and the hurricane swooped down and took out 3 FJ infantry stands (yikes). thankfully after that the hurricane never showed up the rest of the game!!

The hurricane making its lone appearance

The Indians went first and rumbled their churchills forward. Two poked their heads over the brow of a hil and had a shot at my marders (gulp). Luck went my way and only one was bailed. The rest of the indians tried to dig in across the table with little success. One indian platoon pushed forward on my left flank to threaten the left hand objective.
My turn and the marders opened up on the churchills destroying one. This was quite pivotal for the game as my opponent really from there on in pulled them back and they contributed not much.

Dead churchill

The game really unfolded with me pushing through the village and the indian platoon tasked with defending in repeatly not digging in, getting pinned and shot by my nebs.
I then got lucky and took out the artillary behind the village thnks again to my nebs and marders (who had refused flanked and shot around the right to shoot up the artillary on the hill).

My FJ set for the assualt

So my FJ platoon assualted forward with mortars dropping down smoke but despite all my shooting I could not pin the indian platoon. His defensive fire only came up with 4 hits (though I did fail 3 saves) and my assualt crashed home. At the end the indians were gone and my FJ were down to 3 stands. However they moved forward onto the objective and with my opponent throwing everything at me they only lost one more stand made their morale roll and game won 6-1.

The FJ take the objective

After game thoughts:
Well I have lots to learn mainly regarding coordinating my attacks. I was really lucky to get my assualt off and didn't really have it set well. My light panzarpah platoon did nothing and I need to get them in the game earlier thus providing another threat for my opponent to worry about. Need to be mindful of air attacks and positioning my forces (infantry in the open are toast especailly when grouped close together)