Gigabytes Game Day - 7/19/2014

A great day all around. There were a number of games going on including one rather large pirate game that seemed to last a long time. At some point I realized that they had changed terrain and begun play of a second scenario. Seems like they were having fun.

I was told that there was a Saga game going on somewhere and on the table next to us there was an ancients game but I know nothing about how those fared.

A quick note about the new Gigabytes. It is fantastic. There is plenty more space for games and most importantly, there is much more light to take pictures.

Game One

For myself, I joined James' WWI Check Your 6 game. It was great fun. Mark and Steve were the German players.

Piloting the Belgians were myself, Jeremy and Bill. James would also pickup Bill's aircraft after he had to leave for a short time. I managed to not get a picture of Jeremy. (Sorry about that.)

The scenario was a balloon busting scenario on the Western Front. The Germans had a balloon and four albatross fighters. They were engaged by several groups of Belgians. I commanded a group of two Belgian Handriots. Mine are the blue fighters on the table. One pilot was a veteran pilot and the other was a complete new boy. We had six (I think) Belgians to run. My fellow Belgian players made a beeline for the balloon while I drove straight at two of the Albatrosses.

The plan worked as the Balloon was quickly shot down by turn 4. This left one of the most unusual dogfights that I have ever participated in. In turn 3, my Veteran pilot fired upon an Albatross and instantly jammed its guns.

It took some four attempts before I managed to get the guns unjammed. Meanwhile my sprog pilot took a long and slow circular route around almost the entire table before finding a target at turn 12 and shot down a German pilot. My sprog had better luck than my veteran.

The Germans managed to fail maneuver after maneuver roll. I think each of their aircraft were out of control at one point or another. One of the other Belgians managed to get a kill in and another had a great shot lined up but could not complete the kill.

In the end, it was a fantastic Belgian victory. But most importantly, it was a fun game. We had five players and James supervised then took over aircraft as a player had to leave for a bit. I also had to take over a second flight as another player had to run for a bit.

The WWI mods seemed to work well. It would be interesting to compare these to Algy one day.

Game 2

First up was a quick detour out for lunch and then back to Gigabytes for another game. I would have eaten there but the owner does not have the license yet for serving food yet so Arby's was the order of the day. The second game I played in was Rob's Spanish Civil War Chain of Command game.

I played Nationalists with Nathaniel. Across from us were Steve who commanded the anarchists. He was supported by Steve S who commanded the Communists. The Communists were ordered to keep the anarchists in place and would fire on them if they fled.

Nathaniel laid out a simple enough plan. We would drive bulk of our forces and take the church. Once that was done we would move across and flank the enemy. We each had a platoon of Foreign Legion troops supported by an armored car with a squad of Guardia Civil as supports.

Nathaniel had the left and I the right. I positioned my men behind the rocks and moved my light machine gun to the far right and a squad up on the rocks to engage and keep the anarchists still. Nathaniel's men were in the rocks across from the church and one squad on the rocks to the left flank. That squad would get beaten up a bit from some Communists in the large building.

With the support of the two armored cars (which I think had way too many fire dice) the two squads holding that small wall were eliminated to a man. This decimated the anarchists morale. Their big men kept getting wounded or killed with alarming frequency.

Once the walls were cleared, Nathaniel rushed his men forward. The armored cars still pounded away on the barricade and eliminated the squad there to a man. Somewhere in this pounding, the anarchist morale broke and they fled. I ran my men forward and climbed into the positions just abandoned by the anarchists.

A few more turns were played and the command of the communists in the large building took a pounding that caused them to break and flee. This took the senior big man with them. That made the communists break as well, giving us the field. I had lost a total of 2 men. Nathaniel took something like six men killed. It was a solid victory.

The Republican players were unfamiliar with Chain of Command and at a bit of a disadvantage. They also were not supporting one another very well. Our coordination was probably the key to the victory.

Wrap up

All in all, it was a great day. The only sad point for me was that Brian was not able to join in and that I could not get in Mark's Chain of Command game. It looked like it was going to be a fantastic game but I had run out of time and had to leave. I would like us to plan large events like this on a quarterly basis. I think it would be great fun.

By the way, Mark has much better pictures than I do of the day on his site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/6mmgaming/sets/72157645846521223/