Future on the Pacific

It's been a bit quiet on the hobby front for the last couple of weeks for me. The big EastFront game is always fun, but it tends to suck the juices out of you real good. The next weeks are really busy as well, so it might be that I won't have time for much in the near future either, altough I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case. I have evening shift the whole next week so no time to play, but hopefully I'll be able to get a game of necromunda in the week after that. Or maybe Pacific Victory, which arrived yesterday.

Pacific Victory, 2nd edition

All the blocks, put in the stickers yesterday.

I haven't had the chance to read the rules yet, but they're pretty short at a bit over ten pages, so that shouldn't be a problem. The game is pretty colourful with the addition of Chinese blocks to the second edition and the Kickstarter version having separate colour blocks for UK and ANZAC (brown). I'm missing one blue extra block, but I might not do anything about that since it's not necessary for the game and it'd be pretty ridicilous to send one (1) wooden block all over the world. Or maybe I'll ask Columbia Games to put it in my next order (let's face it, there's bound to be one). Anyhow, can't wait to get gaming!

Catastrophic losses suffered by the Russian Red Army in the east

Besides miniature gaming, I also play boardgames of various genres. When it comes to non-miniature wargaming I'm part of a group that meets once a year for a weekend long game of EastFront II or sometimes EuroFront (block wargames from  Columbia Games), and also play other games every now and then (There's copies - singles and multiples of - of atleast EastFront, Westfront, EuroFront, Julius Caesar, Rommel in the Desert, Here I Stand, Sekigahara, Pacific Victory and Twilight Struggle, and if I remember correctly Bobby Lee and Hammer of the Scots in the group. Personally I have EastFront and Julius Caesar and am waiting for my copy from the recent Pacific Victory 2nd edition kickstarter). I've been part of the group for about four years, but the rest of the group has been at it for much longer, the core members for over a decade. "What makes this event special?", you may ask. Well those of you who have played EastFront know (and those who have played wargames in general can reasonably guess) that it is a two player game. Except it's not when we play it. In our games there is usually two teams (Germany and Soviets) of 4-5 players each, and 1-3 judges. Each team has the HQ (Supreme commander and Chief of staff assisting him) and 2-3 frontline commanders (usually 3), each commanding one of three separate fronts (Northern, Central and Southern). Each front and both HQs are located in separate rooms to make sure no information bleeds from one front to another unintentionally. Judges take care of the game running smoothly.

Front locations this year. Pohjoinen is north, keskinen is centre and eteläinen is south. Dacha is soviet hq and bunker is german hq. Upstairs blueprint is incorrect on the room placement (it was done from memory before the game).

Once every month (every other game turn), before production is assigned there is 15 minutes long negotiation period held at the team HQs. These negotiations are the only times when every player in a team are in the same room and can communicate freely. Other times communications are done by messages between fronts or between HQ and a front, but these messages have a chance to get lost or being intercepted by the enemy. Here is a link to 8-player version of the multiplayer rules, put together by a couple of the guys in our group and shared by a third one.

This year the scenario we played was Winter '43 (starting in December '43) (likely to be taken out of rotation for a while as it's been played several times in the last few years). I was playing the Chief of Staff on the Soviet side. Our plan was to push through north and south of the marshes between Kiev and Minsk. At first this worked resonably well even though we lost our southern Panzer army which meant putting all of our proverbial eggs (armoured eggs travelling on tracks, that is) in one basket so to speak. This again worked fairly well (we were mostly ahead of the Soviets' historical advance) until March '44 when disaster struck. The German team managed a brialliant coup (aided in no small part by the weather going completely their way, but brilliant nonetheless) and succeeded in a counter attack that saw about third of our army (includingin three Headquarter units - that is, whopping half of them - and practically all of our attack units) first encircled and then destroyed.

Rough outline of the situation before the Disaster of March

Line stabilised in early summer

It took us the rest of the spring and start of summer to stabilise our lines and start building new attack forces, but we ran out of time and the game ended in a decisive victory for the axis. The rules describes this as a victory of the magnitude to almost certainly guarantee victory in the war (Altough, realistically I'm not sure even such a coup would've been enough to save the Third Reich at that point. It would've likely meant that less of central and eastern european countries would've fallen under soviet occupation after the war though.).

Northern front at game end

Central front at game end

Southern front at game end

We may have lost the war, but I can confidently state that the soviet side had better provisions

Apocalyptic Weekend

Everyone knows those times when it seems everything you want to or need to do or are invited to seem to happen at the same time. This weekend in general, but especially yesterday has been one of those times for me. While fun, it can be a bit exhausting. On friday we played D&D for the first time after a pause that had somehow gone on for quite a while. It was a one-shot in which our characters had been hired to protect a local Baron's daughter and then had to rescue her from kidnappers and their employer, an unstable elven sorcerer going by "Paljasjalka" ("Bare foot" in english). I saw this as an opportunity to paint and use one specific mini I had been itching to use but which doesn't really fit into anything else, so I based my character on the mini and painted it earlier during the week.

Yosuzume - an Aarakocra Monk

I don't play any historicals, so I haven't really painted anything this small before. I have some 10 or 15mm (IIRC) samurai that I bought by mistake/deceptive photographing somewhere around, but so far I haven't really had any use for them.

Yesterday was the really hectic day though. One of my friends works at a video game company and she had invited me to attend an event they were holding for friends and family. The NDA was pretty strict so I'm hedging my bets and won't name the company or write more about it besides mentioning that it was cool, and I'm glad I was able to go despite having to leave early. The reason I had to leave early, was that there was a 40K Apocalypse game being run at my FLGS which recently moved into larger premises. I got there during the first turn and my forces (Beholders, some Assassins and a Knight) arrived at the start of the second turn, reinforcing Dark Angels, Imperial Guard and Tyranids. The other side had Orks (WAAAGH!) and Necrons.

Brutal corner of armor, artillery and lascannons. My whirlwind joined these and some of the frontline units were destoryed (that Knight included), but mostly this corner stayed the same for the duration of the game.

3rd turn

3rd turn. Those Lynchguards popped up from a Monolith that got destroyed and proceeded to wipe out my Terminator and Apothecary and badly wound the Dreadnought.

It turns out the Ork players had had most of their heavy stuff exploded before I arrived, so the game wasn't all that close (we won), but it was fun and everyone seemed to be having great time. One of the highlights for me was a Stompa charging (and squishing) my already wounded Callidus Assassin in a spectacular overkill.

"Uh oh"

After the game I had a sauna evening with some friends with sauna (how suprising), grilling, drinking and games on the agenda. We played Secrect Hitler (a consistent favourite), Captain Sonar (new game I'd gotten - the idea is that there's two competing submarines and each player has a distinct role - either Captain, First mate, Engineer or Radist) and Mario Party. Fun was had by all, altough I have to admit atleast I am paying for that fun today.