Fourteen Men in the Solomons - Patrol

Wednesday, 23 June 1943 - 06:00 

At first light, Lieutenant Lance "Harvard" Nelson's platoon set out with orders to scout out locations in their area of operations to look for signs of enemy infiltrators. 

(The Mission rolled was - Military Mission - Meeting Engagement - Scout locations- Three locations near the objective must be scouted for possible enemy contacts. I decided to try out the hidden sniper rules... but I just told Orion we were playing with "hidden deployment" rules...) 

Orion setting up her troopers! 

The men of First Platoon, Company J, 25th Regiment, 93rd Infantry Division approach a farm they've been tasked with investigating on their patrol. 

As Sgt West and LCpl Gonzalez maneuvered out of the bosh, heading towards the farm house, a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed by a little too close to West's head! 

It took the Sergeant a moment to realize he was under fire, then he shouted out "SNIPER!!" and made a run for the building! 

Sarge and Gonzalez made it to the building an Gonzalez set up his BAR at a window ready to give some covering fire or light up a sniper, if they spotted him! The sniper shot at Gonzalez and missed, hitting the frame of the window. The near miss caused Gonzalez and the Sergeant to retreat. 

The rest of the Platoon moved up through the dense stand of trees. 

Privates Smith and Brown rushed across an open bit of ground to get to another stand of trees, but the sniper hit Brown, who started screaming! Smith completely lost his nerve and ran deeper into the jungle to hide! 

Gonzalez and the Sarge got it together and made a plan to move back to the window and lay down some supressing fire into the nearby woods where they suspected the Sniper was concealed. 

When Gonzalex got to the window the sniper put a bullet through his spine and that was the end of his soldiering days! 

Privates Johnson and Masters rushed out from the woods and took cover in the the overgrown cassava fields. 

They were joined by their squad leader, Corporal Freeman in the fields.

Masters got his head a little too high while they were moving through the fields and the sniper put a bullet through his neck. 

The Sarge decided he'd had enough of this and called for the platoon to rush the treeline. Private Davis was about to join him, but seeing how much distance he had to cover to make it to the jungle across the farm, decided maybe he should move to the field first... 

The Sergeant rushed into the jungle and the sniper panicked and took a shot at the Sergeant... and missed. 

Sarge fill the tree he was hiding in full of lead and the sniper dropped down. 

Others continued to maneuver up while the sergeant fought with the Sniper in the woods. 

The Sergeant rushed the sniper, fixing to brawl with him. Despite the Sergeant's +1 for charging and the Sniper's -2 for being Down, he still only beat the Sniper by one, which forced the sniper to retreat. The Sergeant followed up again, and with the same odds, TIED... the Sniper was obliged to retreat again and that took him off the table!! So he disappeared into the jungle... but he'd dropped his rifle and was clearly bleeding so the sergeant didn't pursue any further without his troops, lest he run into an ambush! 

Checking on the injured soldiers, Masters was killed in action and Gonzalez seems to have been paralyzed. Brown, it turns out, had been hit in the pack, but the force of the blow threw him to the ground and knocked the wind out of him. He was certain he'd been hit and was dying... but wasn't even scratched... 

Rolling for events, Orion rolled "It's All Coming Together" AGAIN, allowing her to raise one of the units ratings! She chose to raise their mobility again! 

Private Harris had an encounter with the Battalion Commander as they reentered the bivouac area and the two had a friendly little chat. (Harris can use this friendship to avoid a court marshal at some point in the future!) 

A replacement was rolled up and Orion used a Player Action to see if that could be a marksman with a sniper rifle - and was successful! A new sniper will be added to the platoon!

The Sergeant became a Veteran. 

Having a LOT of fun with this campaign. Super looking forward to the next game! 

January Games

 In January, we played games... 

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

Amanda, Finnegan and I  kicked off the year with our first Decapitation Journey in Warhammer Quest: Cursed City. The game took most of the afternoon, so we were glad to have the free day where no one needed to do anything! The scenario is effectively the same as playing TWO journeys... 

First there is a Deliverance Journey, where the heroes have to rush through the city's streets and alleys avoiding a Suffocating Gravetide... 

After that is a special Hunt Journey...

Where they have to hunt down one of the BOSSES - in this case, a Vargskyr! 

It was a LOT of fun! You can read the full game report and see ALL THE PICTURES here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Eight - The Fell Guardian

Thursday, 2 January 2025

While Finnegan was out playing D&D at a friends and Amanda wasn't teaching yoga (which she normally does on Thursdays with one of the Community Associations) we played through ANOTHER  game of Warhammer Quest Cursed City... 

But this time with Grombrindal, The White Dwarf! 

You can read the full game report and see ALL THE PICTURES here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Nine - Grombrindal's Hunt

Friday, 3 January 2025

Friday evening I introduced Amanda to Lost Patrol... 

It was moderately fast and bloody and... she was NOT a fan... 

Afterwards we tried out Crypt Hunters, which is based on the same basic mechanics... but the Stormcast Eternals are MUCH tougher and more survivable. 

She was pretty tired and had a hard time wrapping her head around the geometry of how the tiles appeared and disappeared... 

but very nearly won and said it was a "1000% better game" than Lost Patrol! 

Saturday, 4 January 2025

On Saturday evening, while Finnegan was running his weekly D&D game downstairs, Amanda and I cleared off the dining room table upstairs and played a couple of games of Patchwork... 

The last time we played was a little over 3 years ago... So we actually had to read the rules again!? 

I did okay in the first game. Scored 13 points? Amanda scored zero... which is still pretty good, because i've had more than a few games with NEGATIVE total points.. I feel like I've played games where BOTH players had negative final totals...!? Which seems lame to win a game because you had the least negative number... 

Amanda felt she needed to play again, as the first game she was just remembering how to play, and, indeed, she did better, scoring 7 points. 

But so did I, scoring 17... 

This ended an unofficial 12 days of gaming that started on 24 December 2024! 

Sunday, 5 January 2025

Every year around his birthday, Finnegan runs a one-shot role-playing game adventure that starts around noon and ends later in the evening - with a brief break for pizza and cake. This year there were EIGHT PLAYERS  in attendance (in addition to Finnegan the Dungeon Master)! (one doesn't like being in pictures and is hiding)

This year they played D&D. There was a Hydra involved... it was slain before pizza and were consumed! 

Tuesday, 7 January 2025

Tuesday evening Nick and Orion joined us to play our first game of Soulbound for the year. Still working their way through Crash and Burn. I'd given up on getting the goblins painted for the goblin encounters and just threw a bunch of extra Nighthaunts their was (since I have a bunch painted!?) 

Thursday, 9 January 2025

Orion was looking for a game in the local Path to Glory league... and I figured it was about time I actually PLAYED with some of these miniatures I've painted... So we decided to meet up at the Warhammer Store to play (as, at one point, it had been suggested that only games played there officially count towards the league...? and also there was a new Free Miniature-of-the-Month to pick up!). The weather has been warmer this week, so I enjoyed my hour-long ride to get there... but was a little disappointed to discover the store was CLOSED when I got there!?

The silly thing is, I'd thought of shooting the manager a note the night before to check and make sure it would be open (because sometimes they have training session on Thursdays)... but then got distracted and forgot...  and then in the morning, at one point, I'd though of doing the same, or at least checking the Facebook page (because they always post there if the store's closed for any reason).. but in my panic to get things together, I completely forgot AGAIN... 

Ah, well... it was a nice enough ride and I needed some exercise after not getting out so much over the holidaze... 

Luckily, Orion only lives a few blocks away, so we wandered over there to play a game!

It was an absolute disaster for Bob Bloodblob's Bloodbound Brotherhood of Blood... You can read all about it here: 

Age of Sigmar - Path to Glory - The Ruined Settlement

Saturday, 11 January 2025

Played another session of the Online Soulbound campaign. Tethas and Kugraz got in a fight with a BUNCH of Bloodreavers! They survived... 

Sunday, 12 January 2025

We had to shift to Sundays for playing Warhammer Quest, because Finnegan has a night class on Wednesdays... 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Ten - Another Disastrous Scavenge Journey!

Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Tuesday we played Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound - the Role-playing Game. Our Heroes were fleeing through some caves to escape a massive Nighthaunt horde... 

This post will bring you up to date with what had been going on in the campaign to that point... 

Soulbound - Flight Through the Caves

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

We kind of moved back to Wednesdays for Warhammer Quest as Finnegan ultimately dropped the Wednesday evening class... and sort of skipped a week as there was a cold making it's way through the house and everyone was sick... 

You can read about the disastrous Journey here:

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Eleven - Hunters Become the Hunted

Saturday, 25 Januar 2025

On Saturday morning, I FINALY got around to playing a second session in my Solo Five Men in Normandy campaign with the Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy. This was mostly to remind myself of how the rules worked before running Orion through a game on Sunday. You can read about the action here:

Five Men in Normandy - Holding at Varaville

Afterwards I ended up reading the Five Men at Kursk rules and decided that might work better... 

Sunday, 26 January 2025

Sunday I started playing a new campaign with Orion using the Five Men at Kursk rules. She's playing her newly painted WW2 Americans and I'm playing Japanese on a fictional island in the Solomons. The American Patrol was tasked with capturing a prisoner for interrogation. They were unsuccessful in this task as every Japanese soldier they encountered fought to the death! 

You can read about the adventures here: 

Fourteen Men in the Solomon Islands

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Tuesday we were back to playing Soulbound... I forgot to take a picture DURING the game. The group gained passage on a new ship - The Grund - and made their way to Brightspear and were given a new mission but the Lord Celestant of the Stormcast Eternals there.

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

In the afternoon I rode out to the Warhammer store. 

There I played Crypt Hunter with John and then bought some stuff... you can read about that here:

Crypt Hunters at the Warhammer Store (and Some NEW STUFF!)

later in the evening, we played our weekly Warhammer Quest adventure. This week wasn't quite so deadly - for the Heroes! You can read about it here: 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Twelve - Scavenging Again

And that was it for January! 

That's a fair few game we played! 

I got in games of Warhammer Quest: Cursed City (five of them!), and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (four of them - three in person, one online), and one game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar... and I even got in some games of Five Men in Normandy'Five Men at Kursk (one solo, one not-so-solo) - all things I'd hoped to do in the Game Plan 2025 - Q1

I have not, yet, played any games of Warhammer Quest... Not being able to access the Warbands of Embergard card pack means a bunch of my warbands are still not playable... which has been a bit of a downer... I haven't managed to motivate myself to set up a game... but also... there have been a LOT OF OTHER GAMES going on! 

I kept the purchases and acquisitions to a minimum. I did acquire a pile of Disciples of Tzeentch part way through the month, but I traded away over twice as many WW2 Americans I knew I'd never get around to painting up! 

Near the end of the month I did pick up a few things; the Ravaged Coast Path to Glory book, the big box of Endless Spells, and the Soulbound Starter Kit

Next Month...?

Hope to continue with Warhammer Quest and the Soulbound games. Maybe get in a few more Five Core WW2 games and get a Warhammer Age of Sigmar Path to Glory campaign started! 

There will be the Codex: Aeldari that I'll be picking up and I have ordered a few metal Harlequins and a Swooping Hawk to finish up a few units. (I also ordered a Japanese tank! DON'T TELL ORION!!!) 

I don't know that there will be many more purchases... Unless the new Soulblight Gravelords battletome is realeased later in the month...? or the Emperor's Children...? Part of me feels like I'd like to pick up the release box - to get some of those new units for a little less dollars... but part of me just wants to focus on the Aeldari and just finish up some of the units I've got!

What did YOU get up to in January!? 

tell me all about it in the comments below!

The Rat Patrol

 When I was a wee lad, I was a HUGE fan of The Rat Patrol TV series. So when I saw there were miniatures made of them by Company B miniatures, I obviously had to pick them up... 

It looks like they made jeeps specific for them, but somehow that is not what I ended up with (perhaps they made them sometime after they made the miniatures?) Instead I got a pair of SAS jeeps. 

It had been a toss up between regular jeeps (which I recall the jeeps in the TV series looking like) or something a LITTLE more like actually deep desert raiders and went with the SAS jeeps. 

Then I was kind of torn about how to PAINT them. SAS jeeps were tan or sand (or pink?) in colour. The jeeps in the Rat Patrol were just regular army green... I'd originally painted them a tan colour. But when I dug them out last week to paint up and was looking for photo references for the uniforms, I realized the jeeps were green, so I went with that. 

the uniforms worn in the TV series do not entirely match with these and it's hard to tell what colour they actually were as they look like wildly different shades of tan or khaki, depending on the photo... I just went with a mix of different tans and khakis trying to hit a medium between actual uniforms work by troops in North Africa and something like the TV series...?

I guess the TV series wasn't SUPER concerned with depicting actual uniforms and equipment worn, so I shouldn't get to wound up about it either... 

I'm not entirely sure when or how I'm going to make use of these... around the time I bought these (which was more than a few years ago, now!) I also picked up the complete Rat Patrol series on DVD, thinking I could mine the episodes for ideas for scenarios!? 

I also have a BUNCH of other SAS and LRDG vehicles in varying states of completeness, from have-not-touched-them to 99%-done-why-the-fuck-didn't-I-just-finish-them-off!? Not thrilled with the Desert yellow I used on two of them. Perhaps that's what stalled them... 

Kind of want to finish THOSE up now... but also, not so sure what I'd use them for...? Or what rules to use...? (I haven't really read through the vehicle rules in Five Men at Kursk, yet...) 

I feel like the times they were used in action was driving up air strips shooting up parked aircraft... and I just do not have that many aircraft to set out on a table - that that would be FUN, I think it would be prohibitively expensive to do... (there HAD been a series of aircraft toys at a local discount store that were close to 1/48 scale and I will forever kick myself for not having just bought them all!? Of course, at that time the only World War Two stuff that I had was in 15mm and 20mm... so...)

I have a few stacks of barrels and crates, I guess... could try driving up and shooting those up before sentries rouse the other guards and shoot the fleeing jeeps... not quite the same... 

Any ideas? 

What could the rat patrol or my SAS/LRDG trucks be used for on the table top!? 

I do have a smattering of German Afrika Korps and Italians! Most of those still need painting as well, though. 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Session Twelve - Scavenging Again

 

After last weeks Pyrrhic victory, everyone was feeling a little bit anxious. Initially a Deliverance Journey was discussed - to bring the Fear Level down, but I pointed out five was pretty safe place to be and it might be a good idea to TOOL UP with some new gear to replace the gear lost along with Jelson Darrock... (Okay.. there were OTHER reasons as well...)  

Things looked grim when all was set up and both Captain Halgrim and Gorslav were on the table (with TWO OTHER hostile groups of zombies!?) 

Luckily when the initiative cards were dealt out, the only hostile group that went before the Heroes was the zombies that were furthest from the Drop Zone... and it was daylight, so they didn't go very fast... 

The ALL of the Heroes went... 

Cleona Zeitengale stepped out of the Drop Zone and savagely beat down Gorslav... She'd become quite good friends with Emelda Braskov and was determined to avenger her friend!  

Dagnair Holdenstock headed for the nearest Mysterious Object to look for treasure (or REALMSTONE)... but found a pair of Zombies blocking his way, so he took them out.. 

Glaurio Ven Alten III swaggered out of the Drop Zone and into a large courtyard and blasted two zombies across the way... 

Brutogg stepped out of the Drop Zone and decided to just hold... He'd let the foe come to him, rather than tire himself out chasing them down. 

... and come they did! Brutogg and Glaurio smashed down skeletons and zombies as they approached. 

Glaurio when charged out and took down Captain Halgrim in a duel of extreme violence. 

Cleona set about clearing away the last of the Zombies. 

by blowing them up. 

Dagnair set about clearing away Mysterious Objects and collecting Treasures and valuable Realmstone! 

More Ulfenwatch appeared and attacked Glaurio. 

Brutogg came to his aid. 

Cleona finished clearing away the zombie menace. 

Fast Food Delivery... Bats flew at Brutogg and he just grabbed them out of the air and ate them on the spot! 

A Kosargi Nightguard finally showed up and dealt both Glaurio and Brutogg some serious wounds... 

Dagnai just running around the circumference of the abandoned market place, exploring Mysterious Objects... 

... collectine more Realmstone. 

Things looked a little hairy for a moment when a swarm of Skeletons and a Vyrkos Blood-Born vampire all arrived, while they were still dealing with the Kosargi Nightguard... but the vampire was blocked by the Skeletons and Cleona was able to stun the undead ogor long enough for the others to deal with it and then the other hostiles in order... 

Dagnair just screaming around at top speed collecting treasues and Realmstone. 

More treasures... more realmstone... 

at one point, there were TWO Mysterious objects in adjacent spaces!

Finishing off the skeltons... a BUNCH of Corpse Rats arrive! Like, ALL OF THEM!?

And another Kosargi Nightguard... which went after Dagnai... 

But Before it could get to Dagnai, Glaurio intervened, blasting it multiple times with his pistols... 

Before charging in to deal a final blow with his sword... Cleona attempting to stun the hulking brute! 

So Dagnai went about collecting his treasures and Realmstone!

Another Vykros Blood-Born snuck up and attacked Brutogg from behind as he was clearing away the last of the Corpse Rats... 

Cleona rushed to his aid! 

No sooner than she had dealt with the Vampire, a horde of Zombies shambled out and assaulted them!

Ven Alten covering Dagnai as he retreated to summon the Adamant to the Extraction Point! 

and everyone escaped... with a LOT of Realmstone! 

Huzzah! 

Well this went considerably better than last week's misadventure! 

Both Fear and Influence rose a bit, and the extraction event involved bring some refugees aboard the Adamant... which were carrying some kind of illness... so whoever is playing in the next Journey begins with a diseased token! 

Brutogg and Glaruio both made it to Level Two! 

With all the Realmstone they had they were able to purchase a Embramatic Blast Rune for Glaurio's weapons (like Jelson Darrock had) so that none of his attacks can be reduced. 

With the leftover Realmstone they were able to get Cleona a Transmutable Coating for her armour. 

There was some discussion about whether they should use Glaurio or Brutogg in the next adventure. Using one (or both) of them with Level One characters will mean the Level One character gain experience faster... but it also means playing at Level Two encounters... Level Two means Torgilius the Chamberlain starts showing up (guess I better get HIM painted quickly!!). Also the Vargskyr starts showing up and groups of TWO Vyrkos Bloodborn and larger groups of other hostiles!! This game gets NASTY... 

To bring that Fear Level down a bit, they decided it was time to do another Deliverance Journey... 

... and, hopefully, by then I should have an actual Suffocating Gravetide model ready for them!!

Because they're getting closer to doing the next two Decapitation Journeys - to take down Watch Captain Halgrim and Gorslav the Gravekeeper, respectively, I've been looking ahead at the respective Hunt Journeys. I discovered, therein that after each is successful the token for each slain Lieutenant of Radukar is to be ADDED to the board (as I'd originally thought)... as a trophy...? But I kind of prefer the idea of REMOVING them as they're taken out. It's my game, I'm going to keep doing it that way!