Dystopian Wars - victory for the French

Bank Holiday Monday saw some gaming action in the form of Dystopian Wars Chez Pete

1000pts were the order of the day.

Amazingly enough, I won.

Setup, from right to left: Epaulard subs, Furieux scoutships, Vauban sky fortress, tiny flyers, Voltaire heavy interceptors, Lyon frigates flanking Marseille cruisers, and a Mk.1 Magenta pocket battleship on the far left.

Playing against Pete's Covenant of Antarctica, the Furieux died early trying to spot for the subs' mortar weapon and lay mines across the front of the CoA line. Frigates perished early too.

Then Pete pulls some surprise move involving teleporting his Battleship onto my left flank - it has some beam-mounted energy weapon and had the potential to wipe out my whole line in one go. Some supremely unlucky dice for Pete meant it did nothing. He then tried boarding my Magenta, and fluffed that too.

The Magenta counter-boarded the battleship and captured it.

As the lines moved forward, the balanced nature of my fleet meant I was concerned about it's ability to deliver a knock out blow. With six Icarus flying cruisers on the CoA side in the middle (seriously difficult things to kill), the Magenta delayed by dealing with the battleship, the Furieux shot down, the Epaulard subs doing nothing, and the Voltaires taking a hammering, I decided to move the very shooty Vauban into the middle to dish out some pain.

As the Vauban was moving in, the Voltaires tried to stem the CoA tide, but weren't packing enough punch

The Vauban closes up to support the Marseille cruisers (left) as the Voltaires also endeavour to bring down the Icarus flyers. By the end of turn 3 the Vauban was in the middle, over the top of 4 CoA destroyers, the two Marseilles, the Icaruses, and the Voltaires. The Magenta too far out to lend any significant weight.

Predictably the Vauban started taking damage, but overall was tipping the balance when... the as-yet unused CoA carrier moved up and threw a long range salvo at it. Some very good dice for Pete saw two critical hits and on the second crit roll he got snake eyes = catastrophic explosion! The Vauban died, in a big way, and took out everything within 4" (which was most of the remaining fleets of both sides)

Ironically, this kill assured me victory as Pete was basically left with a Carrier, and four frigates, whilst I was left with both subs, the pocket battleship, and a cruiser.
So, we called it a day. Totting up the points saw that I'd won, but only by capturing the CoA battleship (double VP) otherwise it would have been a drawn.

Another great Dystopian Wars game, and a rematch is expected soon.

BTH Cards - now smaller

Pondering the logistics of 8 cards per A4 sheet, and the cost of printing a full 160-card deck, decided to look again at the test sheet I'd printed during the week. Then decided to see how big they'd be with 16 cards per sheet by turning it to portrait and then pasting two of the 8 card sheets onto it with relevant scaling.

The result is much better I think - they're a bit smaller than a credit card now, as opposed to just bigger than a  packet of cigarettes size. The real boon to this is that I'm using half the amount of paper to get the same number of cards. This means that I won't have to fiddle about with four or five way joint cards when I add the Pacific theatre to the set, and might even be able to squeeze some extras in like Kamikaze, V1s, and a decent amount of ship move and so on.

Bag The Hun Cards Pt 872

In the style of James T. Kirk...
More cards... losing will to... live... must... go... print... ers...

This is sheet 11, with a few more cards missing. This means my estimate of 96 cards covering everything was significantly under (I'd estimated 12 sheets of 8 cards would cover everything) - if I follow the same method for IJN and USN in the Pacific I'm going to end up with at least 160 cards in the complete set... which is a silly idea.

I could revisit the shared cards and make them properly generic to save on numbers, but I think that might take the fun out of it a bit, and would only save one sheet's worth at most.

I can cut down the German 'kette' cards to three from five, with reduction in 'air gunner' too - this would reduce the bombers on the table from 15 to 9, which is probably a blessing in disguise.

Going to give it some thought over the holiday weekend.

Bag The Hun Cards 4

A couple of more USAAF cards for BTH. Had a quote from the printers, to get them printed on postcard thickness cardstock, both sides (will be backed with a classic contrail image I should think). Will work out at about £8 for a full deck of 96 Cards - mix of RAF, Luftwaffe, USAAF, USN/USMC, IJN. Drop me a comment if you're interested.

Bag The Hun Cards Pt 3.1

Just a preview of the USAAF cards to finish the day with. This set is probably going to end up pretty big - as it'll include the bomber sections, ground targets, and some more German ones (including jets as we have HE162 and ME262 models to play with).

I need to decide whether I'm going for B17s, B24s, B25s, or all three, and whether I escort them with P47s or P51s. Later is simpler as they seem to be painted silver/left in the metal. Interestingly, whilst reading something today on this, the general theory is that the speed/economy gain from fine tuning of aircraft by flushing rivet heads etc was usually negated by the act of painting the thing.

I recall reading a study twenty years ago made by a large haulage firm who used red lorries. They changed corporate colours, and overnight their fleet fuel bill jumped 4%. Wind tunnel tests found that red paint is fractionally more aerodynamic than other colours. You'd never notice the difference on a car or bike, but something big and heavy with a very big thirsty engine is going to be affected. Whether that's true or not I have no idea...

Bag the Hun Cards Pt.2

German cards below. This rounds out the Battle of Britain collection for Bag The Hun. Next up will be some 41-42 stuff such as Bomber Command, German Nightfighters, ships, and so on, then onto USAAF daylight pack, before I round out with Pacific theatre.

Bag The Hun Cards

Ian 'make you a tank guv? Crouch was at Castle Tangent last week, to collect a bicycle. He spied my 1/600 planes and consequently went off on one upon his return to West Denmark (also known as East Kent) Buying a hex mat, some 1/285 Raiden planes, and getting into Bag The Hun. Which means I've been dragged along. Already got most of the planes, already got the rules, and now I've got a hex mat for a not unreasonable £25, from Wargames Command Post - I've temporarily given up on the colouring-in and stitching together old B&W aerial photos to make a mat

If you're not familiar with Lardies rules, they use cards for events and activation. There's some downloads on the Lardy blog for Bag The Hun, but I wasn't too taken with them. So, having the day off today, I decided to make my own with PhotoGimp. RAF and joint cards today, Germans tomorrow.

Will be getting these printed out on cardstock, so undoubtedly I'll have plenty of spares. Probably work on the rest tonight. The originals are A4 @ 10mb