What's on your table right now?

[BanzaiCat]

Hopefully I will actually have some time to read some rules and play something this weekend.

[Bison]

Played a two-player game of Blood Rage this evening.  The game is a lot of fun with four or five players, but with two players it's just meh.

[Bison]

Punching counters for Clash of Giants: Civil War last night made me regret not have my exacto knife, but very happy I have the new clippers.  I thought I'd ripped a few of the backs of the counters punching them from the sheet. 

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Played a massive 4-player, 800 pt battle of Star Wars Armada today.  Two of us were hoping to get two new guys interested in the game.  I think we may have been a little over ambitious and threw them in the deep end right off the bat.  Still, it was an interesting game and it was nice to see so many ships out on the table all at once.

[trailrunner]

I played Rifles in the Ardennes, which is a light, solo game.  According to the publisher, it's supposed to take 60-120 minutes to complete a game, but I think 30 minutes is more realistic.

I didn't care much for the game.  The rules need a good editing, and there are a few inconsistencies or holes.  Most are easy to figure out or to come up with a house rule, but for such a simple game I would have hoped that everything was pretty tight.  The game is available as a PnP, but I bought the ziplock version.  The components are pretty nice, with large, thick, glossy counters, but I had a helluva time getting the counters loose from the sprue.  I spent a lot of time with an x-acto knife and wound up mangling some counters.

The game itself is pretty simple -- move up and down the stripes, with a relatively simple combat system:1d6 plus combat factor plus modifiers is  compared to defender's target number.  Units that take damage first get suppressed, and if they take damage again before recovering, they are eliminated.  The AI for the defenders is pretty simple.  You can be either the Germans, Americans, or Russians, and the AI can be any side (even Russians vs Americans), but there isn't that much difference between the forces.  And the game in no way represents any battle in the Ardennes -- it's just a generic WW2 squad-level game.  Some of the youtubers compared it to Fields of Fire, but I've never played that game.

I've been playing a lot of ASL lately.  I knew Rifles was a simpler game, but it was still a big downshift.  Whenever I moved my Russian group with impunity, I kept thinking they should be taking DFF and getting creamed.  In the game I played today, I didn't have too many though decisions, and the Russians won Mission 2 handily.  Maybe they just got a bunch of lucky rolls?  I haven't played the game enough to know.  One good thing about the game is that the setup has randomness in the setup, which may add variety and replayability.

[mirth]

These guys need better minis :P

https://twitter.com/_6RIFLES/status/952201730879578113

[bbmike]

^No, that's exactly how Command Post Wargaming at Origins should be!

[Cyrano]

"Flick 'me Up" as CPX tool.

Let it be so...

[mirth]

Tsushima ships from Topside Minis




And Pre-Dreadnought era rules to go with them

[bob48]

I'll be very interested to know how that plays. Its a fascinating period.

[bbmike]

Finally received a couple of holiday sale purchases.

[mirth]

You got FoD!

[bbmike]

^Now if I can remember what my Origins teacher taught me about it.  :P

[mirth]

Don't worry. You'll be running at Origins in 2018 ;)

[BanzaiCat]

Hey, bbmike, let me know how the Civ board game plays out. That one was on my list for a while but it didn't quite make the cut.