So lets start at the beginning, after catching a handful of sleep from returning from a night shift, I make my way through a chilly January day to IFG. After general greetings and weekly catching up over a Pepsojsh* (that's pepsi in the common tongue) I was kindly offered a demo game of Dreadball Xtreme (which i recently acquired on my birthday) by Faction Ray, our resident rules guru. After a quick set up, I chose to use the Convict team while Ray used the Asterian Kalyshi (Someone's been watching there Game of Thrones) and after a quick explanation of mechanics the game begun.
NOTE: I have a terribly memory so these After Action Reports literally only cover a jist of the true events
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| Pre Match Shot |
I had already had a trial game of standard Dreadball and was pleasantly surprised that no major changes to the core rules had been made which in turn made stepping into Xtreme very painless. After a early score from Ray I decided to turn on the offensive, grabbing the ball my Striker tore off ahead towards the opposing far right strike zone - but I forgot that the mid section was bristling with explosive crates which led to my guy being hurtled to the floor.
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| Its Clobbering Time! |
After that disaster I then decided to deal a lil punishment to the Kalyshi Striker that scored - using my Thug I slammed into the Striker and putting her permanently out of action.
The game continued with the Kalyshi skilfully manoeuvring score after score while the Convicts kept up the brutality while managing to score a couple to keep themselves in the game. This was framed by more explosions - Riot foam trapping my robot and a sneaky Kalyshi firing a concealed dart gun at my Thug!
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| Defo not a gentlemen's game! |
Than something nothing short of a miracle happened. I don't know if it was the caffeine kicking in or the excellent tutelage of Faction Ray - I began to think!
Using ability cards, my jacks and strikers - I managed to pass and position a 3 point shot - putting me in the lead! With the end in sight I remained defence and managed to scrape a victory. I found Dreadball Xtreme is a incredibly fun game (when winning or most of my team being blown up by crates), it reminds me of some of the brutal craziness of Gorkamorka and is defo worth a go.
After a round of burgers and bacon sandwiches, next up was our first games of Bolt Action. I had recently been gifted the D-Day Firefight Box Set for my birthday and had quickly built enough figures to play the first two scenarios from the booklet.
The first game was a pure learning experience - with me acting as Umpire, Faction Ray as the US and Jason playing Germans. We grasped the rules very VERY quickly, the book is brilliantly structured and clearly written and after two turns we got the 90% down. The game progressed with a heavy assault from the US who met a disciplined wall of fire from the Germans that ended with a Assault of six US vs 3 Germans who held a ruined cottage and managed to fend off the entire unit - we didn't see that coming!!!
I must say that I absolutely LOVE this game, it plays so fast and cleanly and can imagine it can handle games of a substantial size. Needless to say I am hooked and as soon as I get the box set painted and planning to get a lot more reinforcements. So impressed was we that we decided to play again but this time the rest of the club, who noticed the amount of fun we where having decided to join in too. So playing Scenario 2 from the Firefight booklet, and each club member controlling a single unit - we decided to go again...
Now this game was a absolute riot! It began with the US (controlled by Faction Ray and Jon Snow) gaining a early foothold making the German advance (controlled by Jason and Phil) very painful. But with grit and determination the Germans managed to turn the odds and unleash a punishing amount of fire, heavily pinning down the US infantry sections. With victory in sight they turned there attention to the remaining sniper team situated in a rocky outcrop, deep in the US deployment zone. Now what happened next was nothing short of hilarious. The sniper managed to place a few good pinning shots into both German units and after some shockingly bad order tests from Phil and Jason, managed to steal victory and rout both units!
With the evening creeping in, many IFGers said there fair wells while myself, Jason and Tony decided to hang around and squeeze in a game of Mordhiem.
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| Rodric and his men - taken from a earlier game |
For about over a month now, Jason has been running an absolutely epic Mordhiem campaign, with his inclusion of random events - from wild monsters, evil lurking within terrain and harmful weather conditions - we have had endless laughs as our warbands fight for survival. In the campaign I am using Bretonnians - the Warband of Sir Rodric (pronounced Wodwic) and have had mixed success throughout but at the moment am in a pretty bad place after a punishing game against Alex's High Elves.
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| Call me Short Will Ya! |
Today's game was against Tony's Dwarven Miners and was playing a straight up skirmish scenario with Jason as Umpired and rules moderator. Tony, like me, hasn't had the best of luck so far but with my uber hard Questing Knight I was confident that I could outmanoeuvre the stunties and snatch up a quick victory while bagging a load of experience for Rodric. The game began in good favour for me. My longbowmen took up good position in a meadow and began hurtling arrows down onto his crossbowmen who took position in a ruined bell tower while Rodric stormed ahead and managed to bag a early kill - things where looking great until....
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| Get Off My Land!!! |
A bloody Chaos Warrior emerged from a ruined cottage, probably miffed that the battle outside was ruining his episode of Corrie... who knows but he managed to emerge and start hacking my poor longbowmen to pieces who after 4 games had yet to ever be harmed! While that was bad enough Rodric's assault had managed to slow down to a pace that even a crippled snail would find tiresome. With more and more bodies dropping and a single one of my beloved longbowmen left standing, I decided to turn tail and runaway!
So there you have it - while other games where been played around the above mentioned throughout - all I played/ witnessed seemed to share a distinctive surprising outcome, with almost sure defeat turning into a victory!
I think we all sometimes need to remember that these games can surprise us all and that victory is only determined after the game has concluded.
NEVER GIVE UP - NEVER SURRENDER!
Thanks for your time, cya soon ;)
*Copyright Bianca Mallick
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