Gaming in the Country

 I mate and I went for a short drive North of Melbourne to visit another gamer friend's farm. We drove up on Saturday morning, did a bit of a tour around the farm, visiting the many animals and checking out his enormous wargaming collection, and got down to some gaming. It was a great way to spend a day, night, and morning - not only did we get to enjoy each others' company, but I also tried three new games, and a trip to the country is a great tonic for the stress of city living. I'm looking forward to doing it again.

The farm house - don't worry, there won't be too many
non-gaming pictures! Beautiful isn't it!

Ancients (DBA)

First up was a game of DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis) which is a very popular and well-established system for playing out pre-modern massed battles - anything from ancient history through to Roman, and medieval - apparently till about 1500AD. Our mate Drew led Rob and me through a game that saw me lead an Egyptian army against Rob's Hittites Philistines - think lots of chariot action. 

Eventually, we settled on the Conan soundtrack which made for some good atmospheric music, and got down to the business of destroying each other's armies. It was a long game - we were playing with the intention of grinding our opponent into the desert sands - but fun. We quickly got the hang of some of the maneuvers, sequencing, etc and I can see why people enjoy playing it as the tactical and strategic gamesmanship is very apparent.

 

 

 

Yeah, lots of cranky old men when their dice didn't roll right. LOL. But check those minis of Drews out - they were absolutely beautiful and believe you me, that was just a fraction of his amazing colletion.

Spectre Operations

Later on Saturday night, we set up a quick game of Spectre Operations. As I brought along a handful of Space Marines and Chaos Cultists, we used them as proxies for a group of operatives trying to extract themselves from some gullies as two groups of militia closed in.

 

 

The rules are very 'moderns' - tactically unforgiving and bloody. I liked the manner in which suppression is handled and how Units can break down and reform (e.g., a 12-man squad could break into 3 separate fire teams and then later reform). We were a little bewildered by some of the rule interpretations but were happy to put that down to the beers taking their toll and the lateness of the hour.

I've got an idea brewing, using these rules for a scenario in a sci-fi hanger/port - once I've finished my latest terrain project I'll have to rustle up the usual suspects and make it happen.

F28

Our last game of the trip was F28. I purchased F28 a while back now but hadn't found the opportunity to give the rules a run. We set up a very simple scenario where Rob's Space Marines were charged with entering into a Chaos enclave and capturing a Chaos Cultist. Rob had about 5 Units and I had around a dozen Cultists.

 

 

As we were learning the game, we made plenty of mistakes as we played. That said, there was a lot to like about the rules, especially the turn system's activation action/reaction mechanics. After a few fumbles, we got the hang of it and I can absolutely see the attraction. 

The game isn't counter-free (which is a shame) but it didn't seem to suffer from counter overload like some games (looking at you Kill Team). That coupled with comprehensive army lists, scenarios, and active support on the web... well I'm going to see if I can pull together a force list or two and make a game of it at Axes & Ales sometime soon.

And the animals