The Battle of Plutusk - 26 December 1806

On Christmas day my good friend Dave and I got out Command & Colors: Napoleonic's, and setup the expansion 2 The Russian Army. The scenario played is as stated in the title of this post. Dave and I happen to be big fans of the sister series Command & Colors: Ancients and play that system quite a bit. So we don't play this series as much. The two systems are similar but not quite the same so having a long period of time between play sessions means re learning the rules again.

We ended up playing two games, the first being more of us trying to remember stuff and constant referencing to the rules. But it didn't take long for things to come back to us and so once we were satisfied we knew somewhat of what we were doing we set it up again. 

The second game was going to be what I thought another lesson taught to my good friend of why the French soldiers are to be feared. What happened instead was the lesson taught to me of why the Russian soldier is to be feared. What they lack in number of blocks they can take for causalities (some of the units at the beginning of the battle can be brought up to full strength with the Mother Russia roll at beginning of game), they make up for in their stubbornness when it comes to retreating with a built in may ignore 1 flag. There were so many times I got brutalized because I could not get an attack going to push him off terrain because he was able to ignore my retreat results. It also didn't help that my hands sucked and so did my dice rolling, while Dave made masterful strokes during his moves and rolled dice the Greek God Mars would envy! By the time we finished (I conceded) I had three useless Cavalry charge cards that couldn't get used as I wasn't getting any cards to get the infantry out of their way. Though it wouldn't have mattered much as the Russian's where dug in deeper than an Alabama tick (okay an exaggeration, but that's how it felt to me;)). 

Here are a few snap shots of the game at the start. If you haven't played this, I highly recommend that you do. Especially if you're a miniature enthusiast. You don't have to paint any minis to play this, and the feel the blocks give you is, well miniature soldier like. Enjoy your holidays.

Cheers

Kevin

Formula De (or Formula D for latest version) campaign game

Sadly I've been ill the last two weeks and unable to gather any energy whats so ever to do any hobby related stuff. It's the worst head cold with persistant cough that I've had in quite a while. But that's not what this little Posting is about.

This past November my face to face pals and I started a 6 team campaign game of Formula D. There will be 6 races with each team having a bye week (game is designed for only 5 teams and we found having more teams causes too many problems). We will only do two lap races as we have time constraints and straight up un modified cars. With 5 teams racing and each having two cars we've decided to do a mirror system start up. So if one of your cars starts on the pole position (1st car) then your other car starts in tenth position, next team that starts in 2nd position has their second car start in 9th position etc. etc. All races will be dry conditions to make it a level playing field through out. Also everyone gets a chance to be on pole so we will be using a rotational system where all cars get bumped up and lead car rotates back.

We had our 2nd Race this past Friday and we had a blast here are a couple of shots from the first lap:

Not half way through and you can see the field start to stretch out.

Some of the drivers made a mistake and coupled with a bad roll here or there and the field changes position. Notice the white car in the lead driven by the Devil aka Team Chad.

Some shots of the last lap (remember only two lap race)

Now the field really is stretching out and Team Chad's lead car (white car) has hit the corners just right and with some good die rolls he is guaranteed to win as long as he races conservatively at this point. 

As predicted Team Chad's lead car breezed to a win. Just look how far back the next car is. Amazing.

All in all we had a great time and after two races Team Chad leads by 25 points followed by Team Mark & Rob both having 12, Team Dave at 4, and finally Team Al at 3. Oh yeah Team Kevin the author of this most excellent blog, where is he at in the point standings? Big fat zero.... Oh well I can't wait till next race just the same.

Cheers

Kevin

Inspirational Cat Posters

As the title suggests, this post is about inspirational Cat Posters. You know the ones I speak of I am sure. Little bit of comedy here, an inspirational saying there. We've all seen them and they have either brought a smile to our faces, or have us go wow, and even sometimes say "well that was a waste of 5 seconds of my life. But here we are, me writing this, (and if you've gotten this far) you reading it.  So on to the story of why we are here. I've fallen into the trap of trying to paint everything I want to at the same time. This causes me distress, which causes me not to paint. Well my oldest Son knows that I have been trying to stay on track and continue with my Samurai project, so he went and sent to me an inspirational cat poster to bolster my sagging moral. I couldn't help myself saying wow when I saw it, and I know I had a smile on my face. I do believe it has had the desired effect. Now if only I could find a company that produces some quality sculpts of some Samurai armor wearing cats!

This is better than Tom Cruise's movie "The Last Samurai", at least I think so;)

Cheers
Kevin