Birthday Weekend Part 2

After Friday night's WWW2 game, I set out to help with the local Sacramento club's playtest of their massive 15mm pirate game the club will be running at 2 upcoming local conventions: Conquest Sacramento, March 16-18 & Pacificon Game Expo in Santa Clara Labor Day weekend.

One of our more insane members has decided to organize a game on 2 24'x6' boards, complete with 4 national towns (Dutch, French, British & Spanish), a pirate island, 2 native island, a volcano, & lots of minor islands & lagoons to expore.

The organizer has his own blog showing construction & progress of the game called the Carob Bean Sea.

Here is a picture looking out from my Dutch town with my main 30 gun frigate in the foreview. Every national town has 3 ships (frigate, merchant & privateer) with 50 crew each. Plus in the town are 2 50 figure forces for the colonial Govenor & the military Commander. So each national town has about 250 15mm figures. With there being 4 towns, that's 1000 figures just for the different nations.


Here is 1 full 24'x6' board. You can see the 2nd board in the background to the right. The boats are able to move between the 2 boards, but the boards are separated so players can walk between them.


Here are a number of ships ready to sail. In addition to the 3 ships each nation has, the Pirates have 4 ships, for a total of 16 ships on the board. Plus the natives have lots of canoes & the 2 land forces in the national towns each have their own smaller boats.


Here's one of the towns with its land forces deployed. I have built 6 sets of the defensive works & stakes seen in the top left corner of the picture as my meager contribution to the club effort.


& another town.


Some ships mixing it up off the coast of one of the native islands (you can see their huts in the top right corner).


This is the sacraficing natives' island, as opposed to the cannibal natives' island that you will see in a moment.


Here is the view of the cannibal natives's island after I bombarded the shrine to their pagan god. One of my objectives was to "chastise" the sacraficing natives. Unfortnately, I got confused & bombarded the wrong native island. While my crew was focusing on the bombardment, native canoes paddled up to my ship & climbed over the railing. They surprised the on-board Marines & killed 4 stands of them before disappearing back into the sea.


The game will support 32 players, with each player having their own objectives. My objectives were to: 1) Trade with the Spanish, 2) Raid the French, 3) Chastise the sacraficing natives & 4) Explore & find treasure. But my Dutch force of 3 ships & 2 land forces would be split up between 5 separate players in the big game, so those objectives would be split up too. The natives even had their own objectives of crossing the ocean to a lagoon to go pearl diving.

The playtest went well, if very chaotic. The rules were homebrew & this was their first outing. The games was as much to teach the GMs the rules as it was to try to has out any issues.

Birthday weekend Part 1

With Sunday being my birthday, I'm trying to stuff as much gaming as I can get away with into the weekend. So on Friday, I attended our Friday Night Irregulars Weird World War 2 game.

I faced off against Skrapwelder borrowing his US Infantry with British armored support vs his Germans. We were short on trees, so the large flat flocked sheets are supposed to be full woods.

My right flank consisted of 2 walkers with a scout car & a Comet tank escorted by an infantry squad in a half track.


My left flank consisted 2 squadrons of a Comet & infantry squad.


The German force were from left to right: 2 PZ IVs with an infantry squad in the truck behind, a Tiger I in the center, & 2 Stugs with another Stug & what turned out to be an anti-tank squad in the prime mover to the rear.


We both amazingly went about 4 turns shooting & missing everything possible. Finally, my 2 walkers were brewed up & the fight shifted to the center.

Here my Comet was able to fire twice because it was stationary & take out both the infantry squad truck & the Pz IV escorting it.


There was a big infantry battle in the central forest. My 2 squads caught his anti-tank squad setting up inches from most of my vehicles. I was able to cause enough casualties to drive them off. But his Tiger, Tiger Firing Bright fired HE in support suppressed my guys, so his infantry could slink off to greener pastures.


Even though I had a few turns where all of my units went & only a few of his went (we used card activation with a Turn End card in the deck so not all units go every turn), he slowly picked off my big armor leaving my infantry to fall back.

Overall, it was a fun & somewhat close game. We're using a version of the Screaming GIs rules that Skrapwelder added weirdness to. I believe the rules are mostly ironed out (except for getting all the anti-tank rifles listed), so some sort of campaign is imminent.