Thursday night, club night and Command and Colors

I must start posting on what happens at the Perth Wargames club of a Thursday evening.

Last time, I took along Command and Colors Ancients with my big hex map and miniatures. The intention was to use the big map and minis instead of the wooden blocks that come with the game. Here's the box and contents on the big hex map.

Three of us played two games in the evening, both Rome vs Carthage. First up was Ilipa. This is not a photo of the original game but my attempt to show what it looked like. All the views are the starting set up from the Roman side.  

And a closer view of the Roman right. Main Carthage threat here are the hefalumps. 

The view from the Roman centre. Roman latin ala auxilia types facing light intantry, auxilia and warband. 

And the view from the Roman left. Again the hefalumps here are the main threat.   

And how did the games go? Well game 1, Ilipa, was a complete whitewash, gubbing, drubbing and granny for the Romans. I didn't destroy a single enemy unit while my opponent progressively whittled down the Roman army. A complete sconing, with jam and cream and hundreds and thousands scattered on the top!   

In Game 2, we played Zama. A different player on the Carthage side but me again with the Romans to try to improve my performance.

This was a much closer and tightly fought game and it went right to the wire. My oppoent scored some early victories but I pulled level and then ahead till I was one banner away from complete victory. But in a great contest, my opponent pulled back level and for a time both of us were just that one banner away from victory. Then finally my opponent defeated the Roman unit he needed to clinch the win.

Both great games and a great night with both games being completed inside 2 and a half hours.

Next week it will be our first bash with FoG Napoleonics in 25/28mm. One chap was a playtester but the rest of us have never played FoGN before. 

big hexes and big wee squares

Not posted in a while, but not from a shortage of games - just laziness. 

Recently a friend game me a loan of the GMT boardgame, No Retreat. This is a game on the Russian front in WW2.  The scale is German Armies and Russian fronts and as well as the standard stuff it also has a card deck to introduce 'events'. It's an interesting game, but the scale is just one level too high for me. However, it did promt me to drag many other Russian front games from the shelves including the venerable old Stalingrad, the excellent Russian Campaign and a personal favourite, Russian Front, all games from the sadly now defunct Avalon Hill.

All of these games are much more my preference in scale, with German Corps and Russian armies. I get more a sense of the size of Russia with these games - though some time in the future I'll post on the mighty Fire in the East and Scorched Earth, and maybe some other really big games.    

Both Russian Campaign and Russian Front are subjects for my double sized maps and counters project. I'll post Russian Campaign later, but here is Russian Front in progress. Maps are done. The new maps on the floor, it totals about 4 foot east / west and over 5 foot north / south. Just looks good spread out.

Here is the original mapboard to the side of the big version.

And the counters. Still a work in progress. All the counters have been printed and stuck to 3mm foamboard, and here I'm cutting them out. Each counter is about 1 inch square.  

And some original 1/2 inch counters placed alongside the new ones.

 More adventures with big maps and counters to come.