Fall Pro or Con Convention

Fall Pro or Con Convention at the Lutheran High School in Westland.  As we were leaving the convention, one of our group made the observation that it was a good thing it was not a Quaker High School.    It is always a top notch convention with great games.  The food is also great and good venders.

In the 1st session I had the pleasure of playing a Modern 20mm game run by Mike Erisman.  It was based on the Rapid Fire rule system.  We had mixed command of Ukrainian and US units vs. a rogue Russian General.   I can say an American Calvary unit acquitted itself quite well.

I had a bad week and I was really tired, so I just Kibitzed in the second session.  We did not stay for the third session.  We stopped at the Model Cave in Ypsilanti MI on the way home to get some paint.

Here are a few photo's and a link to a bunch more.

A link to my other photos of the convention

Thank You for reading.

Mike

Drums at the Rapids

I have the pleasure of playing at this convention every year.  It takes place at Fort Meigs historical site.  It takes place in the visitors center.

Drums has a wide variety of games offered and it is pretty neat to look out the windows and look onto a Fort.  I am not going to post every photo I took, but here is a link to my set on Flickr dedicated to  this years Drums.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33016873@N06/sets/72157633532851732/

I played in two games, the first was a CY6 Jet Age game run by Dan Joyce.  It was India vs. Pakistan and I was on the Indian side.  Let us say that India did not do herself proud on that day.  Dan always puts on a great game.  I always play in his CY6 games.

The final game was a Black Powder Game run by Ted Bender.  It was a war of Spanish Succession, French vs. British.  All the figures were painted by Ted.  I am going to talk about Ted's ability to paint, it makes me sick.  He can paint a 16 man unit in about three hours, that is 13 minutes per figure. They are very well painted too and did I mention that it makes me sick.  In all seriousness it is great to play with such well painted figures.  He also does a lot of commission work .

Now everyone has a weakness, I mean Superman has Kryptonite and all.  Ted has a weakness too, it is dice, they are not his friend at all.  Ted has been known to destroy whole divisions with his poor dice rolling, never mind the divisions are his own. Up until this point, Teds dice were hot, I knew this could not keep up.  In fact in our group, we call poor dice rolling by anybody as "Ted Dice".  Here is an example of Ted's poor dice rolling.   Ted gave orders that his unit should move up and deploy in line.  Ted's first mistake was not to deploy in line and then advance, but I digress.  Ted's second mistake was that he assumed he would get two actions from his order dice roll.  He only received one command, so the unit advanced in column. The following photo is my subsequent turn, I charged into his infantry in column and he could not disengage.  That flanked crumpled in two more turns.  The British were victorious.

In closing if you are in Northwest Ohio in May, check out a great convention.

Thank you for reading and good gaming.


Mike

CY6 Jet Age at Drums at the Rapids 5/21/11

     On May 21^st at the convention Drums at the Rapids, I had the pleasure of playing two games run by Dan Joyce.  The 1^st was a CY6 Jet Age game and the 2^nd was Cold War Commander.   I have always wanted to play Cold War Commander, but that will be in a post in the future. 

     The game was Egyptians and Syrians flying MiG-21s and MiG-19s, for a total of three MiG-19s and two MiG-21s (armed with Atolls).  I was flying two MiG-19s.  The Arabs had one +1 pilot and  he was flying a MiG-19 (my pilot).  We were flying against 3 Israeli Mirages armed with Shafirs, piloted by two +1 pilots and a +2 pilot.    Before I go on and I did not take a photo of  Dan’s maneuver sheets.  He made some in Publisher and they were really easy to use and very good looking.  I do have a partial photo of one and I will point it out.

      The 1st shot came from the Israeli +2 pilot ant long range and he hit. The MiG-21 pilot blew his robustness and it became a critical  hit.  It blew up his canopy and the pilot became unconscious and never regained consciousness.   In three turns he made a slow turning egress from the playing table. Then came some maneuvering.  The MiGs are trying to get into a slow turning fight  with two Mirages.  These are the +1 Isreali pilots, the +2 pilot is chasing the unconscious MiG-21 pilot and fails.  He is very far away from the action by now.  My +1 MiG-19 finally get a shot and I shred  one of the Mirages. The Mirage pilot fails to eject and goes down with his plane.

The lone remaining MiG-21 gets a shot with it's Atolls (sorry no photo).  Neither one malfunctions they are both near misses and of course the Mirage makes both robustness roll.  More maneuvering ensues and in two turns this is what transpires (next photo)

The outcome from the previous photo is one less MiG19 I have to pilot and he does mange to eject safely.

You can see Dan's maneuver sheets beside the erasable pen.  I wish I had taken a photo of those, oh well maybe next time.

In the end the Arabs lost two MiG-19s and one MiG-21 withdrawn. The Israeli lost one Mirage  The other Arab planes bugged out, so it was an Israeli victory.  Now what was interesting, the outcome of this game affected the Cold War Commander Game in the second session.  With the Israeli victory they received 3 Mysteres  fighter bombers as support.    If the Egyptians would have won, they would have had artillery support.  I will tell you more about both of those in the next post.

Mike