So as something a bit different, I figured I'd show some pics from Pacificon 2011...
I have several games I'll show here. Our War of the Rings game is over on Legio Minimus..
First up was a skirmish 28mm WW2 game called Firefight. Very fast. A little umpire heavy, but lots of fun. Each player runs a fireteam of 5 or so men. We were running the Fallschirmjagers. We had to defend a house on D-Day against British soldiers coming in from Gold Beach. Our arty observer as in the house directing arty onto the beach. Fun game although my poor team got wiped out by lucky dice roll by my immediate opponent. The umpire gave me his rules, so I can show them to my games group. I'll probably use my Aussies vs Milton's Fallschirmjagers. Good times.
On Sunday, I played a WW2 air combat game, homebrew called "Skies the Limit". We played 2 scenarios. Both bomber missions, and I played an interceptor in both missions, always Axis. I was playing with people who had all played before (I hadn't). I was flying an Italian..... something something. Damaged the bomber but got blown out of the sky by a pair of Lightnings.
In the photo below I'm the foremost plane in the middle. The bombers alas made it to the target.
The next scenario we were Japanese Zeroes (3 of us). I played an Ace pilot. It helps a lot for shooting and initiative. This time we got both bombers. I shot down one. And shared the kill for the 2nd. We all got shot down by the escorting Kittyhawks... BUT I only damaged the 2nd bomber. His engine caught fire, and the next turn, he took enough damage to go down before he hit the target, so we won! w00t!. In the photo below I'm the guy tailing the B-17. I stayed there for 3 turns blasting away and finally took 'em down.
I also played my first two games of Force on Force by the Ambush Alley guys. Unfortunately I took no photos, but the game itself is great, and I think our group will play it over 40k for sci fi scenarios. Its reaction based, so not really IGOUGO, but more IGO...you react, then if you have stuff left over, UGO, and I react with overwatch units. This game was regular vs irregulars in a "undefined African nation Dewala". Since I had read the rules and fancied myself a sneaky git, I played the insurgents. They are crappy with respect to US Marines (or generally modern western forces), but there are lots of them. The first game I was experimenting with charging marine units, blocking units with civilian mobs (which is a bit sad when you think about it too hard frankly), and lots of reinforcements. There is lots of maneuvering, and when a marine goes down, especially if he's isolated, its a real temptation for the insurgent player to go over and try to capture them (captured troops are worth more).
The regular player was distributing food at a UN station and guarding it. The insurgents were trying to disrupt this. A few turns in, the marines got a distress call from off board and were ordered to send as many troops as they could off board. They managed to get 3 men off, which got them the victory points for that scenario... BUT in the next scenario, there is an Observation Post and the "reinforcements arrive" to help them out. Those reinforcements got taken out in the first turn since there so many insurgents on table at that point.
Then the 2nd game slowed down a bit, since we (I was running all the insurgents vs 3 regular players) decided not to charge anybody, and just shoot the heck out of the OP trying to weaken it so we could then charge and capture everyone. Lots of dice rolling later, I won but killing everyone, but it was late, so we didn't play the 3rd game in the series.
I think now that I know how to play, I would have changed the scenarios a little bit by only telling each player about their own objectives, and even then, only when those objective appear (i.e. the marines should only find out about sending guys off board when the call comes in. Also the insurgents shouldn't know anything about the marine's intentions.)
FoF flows quite smoothly, and encourages movement and fire tactics. The marines did a great job to having overwatch units in good locations and it forced me to move around on the streets to avoid sniper fire, but that also limited our fire capability. Really great game, and I'll post a sci fi version on Legio as soon as I run the game with my regular group.
