Clickbait

Seeing as how the majority of this blogs followers are proper « old skool » military history gamer types who wouldn’t normally bother opening up a sci fi themed post I have sneakily deployed this picture of my recently completed Pendraken 10mm AWI 64th Regiment…

…. in order to lure them in to a post that’s really about a recent solo game of Trek Hulk. (pat pend).

I hate to think how long it’s been since I last ran a proper game, so having finished the above unit I took the opportunity to take a break from painting and test out some alterations I’d made to my Startrek / Spacehulk rules mashup.

The result is shown below in glorious Broom Battle Picture Library format.

The scenario: 

A small recon team from the USS Witchita Falls have boarded a damaged Borg sphere orbiting Cestus III. The sphere is undergoing repairs following a recent battle. Having split up to place a number of covert surveillance devices we join Lt Commander Cassidy Yates who has become lost in the internal labyrinth of the ship and who has only twelve turns to make her way back to the docking hatch entrance.The Borg are absorbed in repair work and at game start remain passively disinterested in the interlopers. Cassidy is equipped with a hand held phaser and a tricorder.

Victory conditions:

Borg: Major victory - assimilate all Starfleet personnel. Minor victory - assimilate some Starfleet personnel.

Federation: Major victory - Get all personnel off the Borg ship before turn 12. Minor victory - get some personnel off the Borg ship before turn 12.

Turn 1. Game start. Lt.Cmdr Yates starts in a room that contains a Borg regeneration alcove and a dormant Borg. The corridors of the sphere are dark and without electronic help she can only see into the first corridor tiles running off from the room she’s in. She urgently needs to find the hatch leading to the small cloaked shuttle the away team came in on, but all comms are being jammed and the Borg are close to completing their repairs. 

Turn 1 cont’d.  As part of the federation players phase, new corridor sections are revealed either by being within two squares of a join (just one new tile is revealed) or by using the tricorder to reveal 3 new tiles (in a single direction). Yates used the tricorder and with 3 x 1d6 die rolls revealed a long corridor a short corridor and  wonder of wonders the access hatch to the cloaked shuttle! (Striped end piece). This could have made it a pretty short game but unfortunately the narrow long corridor turned out to be populated by two Borg that are blocking her path. (Occupancy of rooms, long corridors and crossing points is diced for - this was the worst possible outcome!). The orange game marker indicates she has used the tricorder once. If it is used more than 3 times the Borg will consider this a hostile act…which would make them angry…and you really don’t want to make them angry. For reference purposes, moving more than 3 squares in a turn also makes the Borg angry as does weapon fire or blocking a drones path.

Creeping along in the dark Yates tries a different direction and reveals a long corridor section occupied by…another lost away team member. Lt T’Rell is a Vulcan (command branch) armed with a phaser rifle. This has more punch and longer range than the hand phaser but is unusable in close combat. Friendly figures in a corridor block line of sight and line of fire.

 

Using the tricorder for a second time Yates detects two crossing corridor sections and a T junction. The freshly revealed areas are populated by 1 drone, 2 drones, and a third away team member (Ensign Savar - science division - armed with a hand held phaser and a tricorder).

It’s behind you! Oh no it isn’t… Err oh yes it is! Until the Borg are triggered into becoming collectively hostile the federation player has to roll dice and move any borg drones within their line of site, the dice indicate the number of squares moved. 2 of 4 was having a fine old time repairing the ship until he tried to move four squares down a corridor and found his way blocked by T’Rell. Being unable to reach the data node he intended to repair made 2 of 4 angry. Unfortunately when 2 of 4 became angry all the other Borg on the board become angry too. Angry Borg are no longer controlled by the federation player and must move towards the nearest none Borg interloper and attempt to assimilate them. just to be clear, assimilation is not a nice thing.

A change of view. Yates and T’Rell are in the far background. Ensign Savar at the T junction realises the Borg have just become hostile and determined to get her retaliation in first she fires her hand phaser at the drone with its back to her. Hand phasers roll 2d6 and need a 6 to kill with the first shot. Bingo. 1 drone down - several thousand to go.

With alarms going off all over the place and Ensign Savar’s target now a glowing pile of ash Lt T’Rell turns swiftly and attacks 2 of 4 in close combat. T’Rell is carrying a two handed phaser rifle which he can’t shoot in such close proximity to a target so he has to biff the Borg with it instead. The Borg roll 2d6 in close combat and pick the best result, while T’Rell rolls 1d6 but gets to add plus 1 since he’s a Vulcan. Choosing the 6 result 2 of 4 rolls higher so manages to fend off the Vulcans attack. Using the rest of his personal action points T’Rell tries again but once again the feisty Borg stops him cold. While the Vulcan grapples with the drone Lt Cmdr Yates is unable to fire since the corridor is narrow and her colleague is blocking the shot. In the background Savar spends her remaining action points to go on overwatch.

Though she’s on overwatch it’s dark in the corridor and Savar is scared. Prompted to attack and assimilate her, the nearest Borg moves purposefully two squares in her direction. Savar’s shots go wide. With two action points left the Borg enters close combat and rolls high. Savar goes down. Two assimilation tubules enter her neck and millions of assimilation nanites entire her blood stream. Stage 1 of the assimilation process starts to occur. 

Lt Cmdr Yates goes on overwatch looking to cover against Borg moves should Lt T’Rell go down as well, but the doughty Vulcan clobbers 2 of 4 upside da head (as I believe the youth say these days) with his phaser rifle and finishes him off. Yates gets a tingling feeling at the back of her neck and turns…

The other Borg drones have not been idle and while the drama has been unfolding in front of her they’ve been sneaking up behind. Cassidy uses her hand phaser but fails to score a six with her two dice. Her second shot needs a five or six and fails again. Her third shot only needs a four five or six. She rolls a four but it’s a double four. Doubles indicate that the Borg drones personal shields have blocked the shot by matching the frequency of the phaser (or some such). She still has one action point left and therefore one shot but the adapted Borg shield prevents any further fire at him this turn.

Poor ensign Savar starts to transform into a Borg and soon rises to her feet as one of them…

…But not for long. Turning the corner Lt T’Rall uses the phaser rifle as it was intended. The phaser rifle has a longer range and a multi kill capability. With his first shot the Vulcan takes out the assimilating drone and what’s left of poor old Savar. I still think they’d have been better to have pulled back and nuked the site from orbit mind you.

Placing herself on overwatch Cassidy uses her tricorder with her last two actions and discovers…silly old T’Rell had been standing in front of the escape hatch all along!

Turn 11 and one turn ahead of schedule the remaining team members escape through the hatch into the  waiting shuttle. I make that a minor win for both party’s, or a draw as we used to say in the old country.

This game only took an hour to set up and play so I could’ve played again if those pesky continentals had somehow learned to paint themselves in the interim. I’ve taken down my Trek Hulk rules (above right) for now while I make  a few alterations but they’ll be back up again soon for anyone that’s interested. 

Toodleooh.

Mud blood and STEAL

Yup, not an original idea in my head.

Cursed as I am, with clumsy hands of death, I usually spend 30 seconds moving a unit into a wood and five minutes standing all the trees up again, so it was a bit of a boon when I came across this tree basing system used by the guys over at LittlewarsTV.

Two packs of rubber slot together kids play tiles (which sit snug in the base of my new table) and a box of pins later and… voila.

Kids rubber play mats, which the trees are pinned into.

The extra tiles I’ve had left over now serve as contoured terrain under the game mat with the advantage that I can pin trees upright, even on slopes.

A unit of Gallowglass in the woods…looking for the teddy bears pique-nique no doubt.

Not only without an original thought in my head, but also happy to jump on the « everybody else seems to be doing it » bandwagon. Here’s a quick piccie of my painting desk.

Where the « magic » happens. Lol. For those with an inquiring mind we have from left to right… a regiment of Continental infantry on bottle tops undercoated grey and inked with nuln oil, a tray of pre chosen paints for the continentals (which get moved out of the tray as they are used), reproduction Anglo Saxon beaker holding my dwindling supply of crappy brushes, operation tree pin, and a small bronze statue of Ing. Or as we call him, Ing and his Thing (Pre Christian pan European deity). The troughs you can see through the window are former cattle feeders that’ll soon be planters when the weather improves.

Okay that’s quite enough show and tell for one day. Catch you on the flip side dudes.

The British are coming!

Well to be honest the British are actually here, or at least some of them. 

In a desperate attempt to uphold my two posts a month resolution I’ve belatedly squeezed in this update, in lieu of anything better. As the Russians famously observed - sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own! 

All figures below are 10mm Pendraken - from their lovely AWI range. I’m still undecided about basing. I’ve ordered a load of 25mm but these are sitting on 30mm x 2mm rounded corner ones so I can get an idea of what’ll work best. I think the charging pose may be too big for the 25’s. Hey ho.

So far I’ve painted 6 companies of the 64th Regiment for use with LFoD rules from LittlewarsTV, but the remaining two line plus the grenadier and light companies will be along shortly.

Eventually I hope to run an AWI campaign along the same lines as my previous blogs ECW one. Though I’ve now read fairly extensively around the subject I’m still struggling to define victory conditions for either side in terms of wargaming. The death of key personages such as Washington, capture of important settlements and winning or losing a certain number of battles on the trot must play a part I’m sure, but any suggestions from the cognoscenti would be gratefully received.

Finally, the new Geek Villain furry mat has turned up. After making my 6 x 4 board slightly too big (bad measuring) I rectified the error by using the excess to make two integral dice rolling or reinforcement holding areas. The wife was impressed. I told her I designed it that way on purpose. Lol.

Toodleooh for now.

Back to the future

Sorry about the posting gap, but in the last few weeks I’ve deliberately spent less time looking at screens and more time on painting. For any bloggers whose recent posts I’ve failed to comment on, apologies are in order…I still love you…it’s me not you…etc etc.

Anywhoo apart from a few progress piccies below I have two items of gaming related news. Firstly my expected AWI order never turned up, so I can only assume they’ve deserted the kings colours. Leon at Pendraken has been very good at organising a replacement so hopefully I will be able to get started on that project…before I lose interest and start something else. 

Second bit of news was that I took part in my very first zoom game just before Christmas, and jolly good it was too. Apart from playing against my two lads when they were growing up it’s the first time I’ve played against another real life opponent since 1988. I know. As a wargaming hermit and general technophobe this has been a big old step for me. Potentially on the strength of that game I have now been invited round to nundanket’s house to play, so I think I’ll wear my PJ’s for that one in case there’s a sleepover. 

Work on the 10mm Elizabethan pike and shot stuff has recommenced and here’s where I’m up to at the moment:

English pike and shot company circa 1590. Note the bowmen still included in its order of battle. 

Another English company of foot though this lot are sporting the latest « muskets » to complement the more numerous but shorter ranged arquebus blokes.

Demi lancers. Partially armoured cavalry relying on the shock of impact. English forces of this period suffered from a general lack of cavalry, through Elizabethan parsimony (they cost a lot to raise and maintain) and the rise of pike heavy infantry formations that initially made them less effective in their direct combat role.

Petronels. Mounted infantry who predated the later dragoons and harquebusiers. From what I have read they were not intended to dismount and fight but shot a mix of pistols and carbines from the saddle. Another troop type not really available in large numbers since the individuals asked to raise them were frequently also funding foot units as well.

One of my command stands. Difficult to see in the picture but this bloke is sporting a pair of red and yellow striped puff ball loon pants. Right on brother.

I’m now working on artillery before branching out into some Irish opponents for them. Despite creating my own set of rules I’m probably going to use the excellent C&C ECW ones available at the brilliant Prometheus in Aspic blog, jiggered around a bit to allow for unit facing and new unit types. 

Righto I suppose I’d better sling my hook and break those ruddy brushes out again.

Toodleooh.

Starting again from scratch

Well it’s been a long time coming but finally…finally…a games room of my own with a 6 x 4 table. No more  rushing to finish up a game before tea. Huzzah.

The geek cave.

The observant reader will notice that the whole shemozzle is little more than two IKEA book shelves on legs, topped by two slabs of pine - but it’ll do the job I reckon. After a great deal of reflection I’ve now officially abandoned the bucket of sand terrain modelling concept and will be going for some of those fancy geek villain furry mats - if they ever have any more in stock that is.

An added bonus to this gaming space is a dedicated painting and model making area with actual real life daylight. There’s even room to turn around should I feel the need. Such wonders! And to think it only took moving to another country to achieve it. 

Sadly the geek cave is still pretty bare since The Current Mrs Broom twisted my arm into going to the Limoges Christmas market and all of my remaining pocket money got spent on hot chocolate and crêpes.  Damn it.

Limoges Christmas market. I haven’t had a good crêpe in years… 
< insert crude joke / innuendo here  >

No sign of the Pendraken AWI order as yet either but seeing as everyone in Britain is now on strike I’d probably best not hold my breath, lol.

Right then I’d better sling my hook I suppose; the archers I’m adding to my Elizabethan pike and shot company won’t paint themselves, more’s the pity.

If I don’t catch you again before the big day have a great chrimbo / festivus / kwanza!

Toodleooh.

Now it can be told

Precious little wargaming content again I’m afraid, though we do now own the house out here and thoughts have finally turned to decking out the games room… so stay tuned (he said desperately).

Now, despite Nundanket’s previous warning that all the cool kids are doing AWI I’ve begun to dabble in that period a tad myself. Hopefully the cool kids won’t give me a Chinese burn and take my tuck money off me when they find out that I recently purchased these:

Pendraken AWI 10mm wargaming click bait. 

A proper wargamers tome.

The AWI is something I hope to explore alongside my Elizabethan pike and shot project; flipping from period to period as I slowly create two sets of opposing armies.

So then In lieu, once again, of any decent toy soldierly content let me regale you with a quick kafkaesque yarn about French bureaucracy in the hope it keeps you vaguely entertained for a mo.

Followers of my old blog will recall that the then ongoing Brexit shenanigans pushed The Current Mrs Broom and I into selling up and returning to Blighty in 2019. We moved to Wales and had only been there a couple of months when a very ominous “Avis de Reception” letter from the French tax authorities arrived. Although we had been solely resident in France for over 5 years someone in the bureau des impôts (tax office) had convinced themselves that it was a holiday home we’d sold and that we jointly owed the French government 6k in capital gains tax.

Mmmm.

It was an easy assumption to make I suppose since a lot of half here and half there Brits were fleeing their French nests around the same time as us. But in our case they were wrong. In my bestest French I wrote back explaining that it was not a holiday home and they were mistaken. A month later a second letter arrived but this time the sum owing had risen to 8k due to the addition of several late payment penalties. 

Cripes. 

A further explanatory letter was swiftly sent with copies of adhoc documents proving we were resident in the property full time…and then… 

Nothing. 

Two years of nothing to be precise. Two years of nothing in which nearly all of our accumulated French bills and paperwork were chucked away as no longer being relevant.

Two years of nothing  …until surging UK house prices made a financially impossible return to France suddenly possible. 

They say that if you want to make the gods laugh you should tell them your plans, so it was with impeccable timing that three days after putting the offer in on our new gaff, and getting it accepted, a third and entirely unexpected letter from the French tax guys flopped onto our Welsh doormat.

This time it said we owed 16k. 

Gulp. 

Now I’d not lost any sleep about the previously alleged 8k charge because they were in the wrong, and anyway what the hell were they going to do about it when I was safe and sound in post Brexit Britain? That said, owing 16k to an uncaring and inflexible bureaucracy when I’d just committed to moving back into their manor was another thing entirely. 

An urgent email was sent to madam Javayon in the Gueret tax office stating my case. She wrote back advising me that if I could prove that we’d been full time residents by producing five years of EDF (leccy) or Veolia (water) bills for the property then they’d drop the charge. 

Pah! Easy peasy. 

It was only when I dragged the box files down from the loft that I recalled the mammoth chuck out session TCMB and I had indulged in only months before. Of debt clearing documentation…we now had…erm…precisely nothing.

I called the lady at EDF who seemed uninterested in searching their archives and put the phone down twice rather than deal with a language mangling étranger asking her to do something slightly difficult. The lady at Veolia was nicer and more than happy to send out the required hard copies, but she could only send them to the address listed on the invoices, ie the property we’d actually sold up and left.

Aargh.

I was on the point of tearing out what little hair I have left when she asked why I hadn’t accessed our internet client space at the company. All the documents I needed were apparently there to download and print off if I just logged in to get them.

Okay, now I was getting somewhere. The web site was vaguely familiar but I was buggered if I could remember our old password. Guessing it three times got me locked out. Two days later when I tried again I went straight to the « generate a new password » option which the computer did, pinging it straight to my phone, my old French phone that is…the phone that I no longer had but was the only one their computer had on file and which I couldn’t gain access to to change.

Double aaaargh. Everything I needed was there…just out of reach.

Plan B - I sent a copy of my Carte Vitale to madam Javayon. Something I’d only hung onto for sentimentalities sake. The card allowing you full access to the French healthcare system, the card only issued to me in 2015 after giving up my NHS healthcare rights and which I’d naturally only do if I lived in France. No that was not good enough.

Plan C - I sent a copy of my Carte de Séjour obtained in 2016. This was only issued to those who could prove they were financially self supporting and were permanently resident in France. Not really necessary at the time but hey I’m a belt and braces kind of guy. Nope. Not acceptable to madam Javayon either.

Plan D - Bank Statements…the ultimate clincher. The lovely folks at Credit Agricole sent me five years of bank statements. The statements showed regular bill payments to EDF, Veolia, Orange, hell even the monthly tax d’habitation paid to madam Javayon’s own department and only levied on those adjudged by them to be actually living in France. Nope. Not acceptable. Her criteria was fixed…proof of residence could only be provided by the actual bills from EDF and Veolia - not indications we might have paid some that we’d received.

My final punt was to walk her through 35 or so randomly selected extracts from those same bank statements. They painted a clear if somewhat mundane picture of daily life, small cash withdrawals in Aubusson shopping at the Intermarché in Felletin the next day and so on.  Ahh, said madam Javayon. That proved nothing, I could have given my bank card to someone else to use while I slipped back across the channel to my other residence in London.!

So, I enquired sarcastically, how do the bills you want me to produce showing electricity usage in my old house prove I was actually there? Could I have not in fact have arranged for some local chap to go in and turn the lights on and off once in a while - while I luxuriated in my imaginary London pile?

Email silence ensued; if there is such a thing.

Desperate to resolve the matter I decided to go over the head of a mere fonctionnaire, only to discover that she was in fact the head of the self same recovery department!

Damnation.

Further emails went unanswered. At night I imagined the extra late payment charges she’d be slapping on out of spite. The sheep I counted while struggling to get to sleep all had little euro signs on them.

Then we moved…and this massive unresolvable black cloud moved with me. 

The world turned.

Four weeks ago, give or take, I met a guy who lived in a yurt in some nearby woods. Don’t ask. It’s the Creuse. That kind of shit happens here all the time. Anywhoo it turned out that his sister worked at the Veolia accounts department in Aubusson, the place where our water bills used to come from. He confessed that he’d had his eye on some old oak beams currently residing in our barn, so we cut a deal.

Yesterday he rocked up with a flatbed truck for the wood and a bundle of our old water bills printed off by his sister. Within the hour they were scanned and on their merry electronic way to madam Javayon’s office. This morning I received verbal confirmation that the matter was being dropped. No apology mind you. 

So then I suppose that’s proof, if proof were needed, that what my old fella used to tell me is true. It’s not what you know it’s WHO you know that counts.*

****** LATE EDIT ******

This just in… Jeremie said I could take a picture of his mysterious yurt in the woods!

The yurt in the woods, it’s got a stove and everything!

* along with his other invaluable advice - “trouble wears a skirt” & “never eat yellow snow”

The devil finds work for idle hands to do

First off, apologies to everyone whose blogs I normally comment on. Although you have kept me greatly entertained of late, I’ve been temporarily reduced to accessing the internet through the hotspot of a single 2007 iPhone. Let’s just say that the waving of the local trees has made access difficult and leaving comments virtually impossible. The current Mrs Broom assures me this is a temporary issue that will be remedied very shortly. Mmm. We’ll see. Hopefully I won’t have to resort to fashioning a tin foil helmet and sitting on the roof again. 

Honestly, the things I have to do these days for 4G coverage

Unable to do much of anything until the sale of this property is complete I’ve been faced with a sudden surfeit of time…thinking time… 

I was musing on kitting out the new gaming table the other night, revisiting the perennial problem I have in deciding if boards or cloths are best…when I had a brain wave. 

How about this stuff…?

Green sand! Possibly not the future of gaming terrain, but hey it’s cheap. 

A 6x4 walled trough, for want of a better description, filled with say a three inch layer of green sand. Hills, rivers etc would be easy to sculpt and the topography could be changed from game to game - as required. 

Now obviously it’s not a great idea because if it was it would be in regular use by others, but if anyone has come upon this concept before or have used something similar I’d be pleased to hear more about how it turned out.

Thinking time has also allowed me to address the issue of monotony that I often experience when focussed purely on one project. To address this I shall hopefully be flitting back and forth, painting wise, between my current Elizabethan Pike and Shot lads and something entirely new (to me) like the American War Of Independence.

Rules by Littlewars TV - Norm sent me. Cheers Norm.

Having just purchased these rules (which really tickle my fancy) I will be sticking to my now favoured 10/12mm and looking forward, as much as anything, to reading up on an entirely new subject.

Anywhoo I’d better ditch this post now cos the winds getting up again and it’s not comfortable sitting up there on those ruddy ridge tiles.

Toodlooh for now mes amis.