It has been a while since the last entry. We have had a lot going on at the store which has kept me busy - building three new miniatures/ card/ boardgame tables, researching new rulesets & mini's, trying to learn a host of new games, and still get in a few games of the old games I love.
NUTS!
Speaking of new games, I just played my first couple of games of NUTS!. It is a man-to-man WWII skirmish game from Two-Hour Wargames. What a great game! The rules take a little time to learn just because they use some different mechanisms than we are used to, but boy do they generate a fun game.
Thor and I tried these out on Saturday with Thor leading a squad of German Panzergrenadiers, and me leading a squad of US paratroopers, all of which were nifty 28mm Old Glory minis. The first game started out great for the US - they almost wiped out the entire German force as they approached the objective, an abandon farmhouse.
The Germans managed to get into good defensive positions with what they had left, and then things started going wrong for the Americans. The American commander made some serious tactical errors (what was he thinking?) which resulted in the Americans hunkering down in their own defensive positions for a sort of stalemate.
In the second game both sides made much more careful maneuvers, with the Germans getting an excellent defensive position early near the objective and keeping the Americans at bay. But this time the American commander had learned his lesson. Other than sending Jonesy to his doom (sorry about that Jones), the sarge set up excellent suppressing fire on the Germans with the squad's best shooters then sent the rest of the squad to flank the German position.
In desperation the German commander tried to break the covering fire by sending his men out from their positions one at a time - I think one of the squad did manage to live, albeit badly wounded.
In any even it was a very fun pair of games and I am looking forward to playing again real soon (hopefully when I work on Thursday). In addition to the WWII variant of this game, there is a more generic modern/sci-fi version as well (Chain Reaction 2.0) that plays the same. With a couple of tweaks I have adapted it to be used with my 40K figures. Imagine, exciting man-to-man skirmish combat in the dark future! I am also going to pick up some SWAT and terrorist figures to use in some "hostage rescue" scenarios with the rules.
BLIZTKRIEG COMMANDER
I have also managed to get in a couple more games of this WWII gem. Both were very entertaining with a narrow German victory in a battle for a pair of Italian hillsides (in 15mm), and a crushing Soviet win in an eastern front duel (6mm Micro Armor).
I have gotten a lot more of my micro armor painted and based, and hope to pick up a few more units in our next GHQ order real soon. I am also going to be starting my American 6mm force with that order too. One of these days I will start my North African armies, I am just not sure yet what scale to do it in - 6mm or 15mm.
For those interested in trying Blitzkrieg Commander, I try to run games every week or so at the store and will teach the rules. Otherwise a big game of it is being played at ReCon - a local miniatures convention put on by the MMGA - on Saturday, July 29. You find out more information about that at www.MMGA.org. Hope to see you there!
Well, until next time...
Dan
