Lestrades_Game

I've been slowly building up a Russian fleet using Three Decks 1/2400 miniatures. I've had most of the Japanese fleet for some time, but used them against the Chinese for Sino-Japanese war or against my French fleet for no compelling historical reason. I picked up Broadside And Salvo from Long Face Games (David Manley) as a shorter form quicker rule set. The other rules I have copies of (Tsushima A&A rules designs) and Fire When Ready (also David Manley) require quite a lot of prep getting together box checking sheets for each ship.  Typically this is 20-120mins work depending on whether I've got the research done. For Broadside and Salvo a battleship is a battleship, an armoured cruiser an armoured cruiser. All ships of a class have identical stats and no box checking sheet. Damage is split into four grades which ships move up or down with repair and damage.   This means I only need an ORBAT for my scenario, and a few markers.   Hopefully we will return to...

I have complained on a few occasions about the random movement in TooFatLardies games and the die roll for actions mechanics in DBX style games. It's not that I think that random movement is wrong or bad or that random activations are bad but in both cases the range of results can seem to wild. In Chain of Command vehicles can sometimes seem like they are driven by learner drivers, surging forward one turn, stalling out the next. In DBA Hannibal can have a brain wave one turn and forget to move both flanks on the next. The story of the battle in my mind hits the record player stopping sound effect and I feel irritated on these occasions. With that in mind I want to talk about Winter Hammer. I played a Winter Hammer scenario at Ferret Con in Sheffield a few weeks back. This is a ruleset by Nordic Weasel for the Finnish - Soviet Winter War. I have not read the rules, only played Tom's excelent game set in a ~brigade level action south of Lake Lagoda in the intitial soviet of...

 I painted up a 28mm collection of Late Romans and Goths / Early Saxons a year or two ago for Saga. Having played about 5 games of Saga I realised I hated it. It is a very clever and imaginative ruleset, but far to gamey and historically dubious for my tastes so onto eBay those books and fancy dice go. The armies assemble either side of a stream I had picked up Dan Mersey's Osprey rule set Dux Bellorum on the cheap some time ago, so I decided to upscale my armies and sabot base them for some rank and flank. The Goth infantry line My Romans army is roughly 100 figures from a mix of manufacturers. In metal I have Footsore cavalry, some Gripping beast characters and some Foundry manabalistas. In plastic they are gripping beast and Victrix. The Victrix are more detailed and more dynamic and I like the Victrix heads alot. But they break really easily and are hard to rank up because they are all flailing their limbs around. The Gripping Beast and exaggerated sculpts, not quite heroic sca...