Essen in Full (with Wargaming, Honest) Part 1

Why should wargamers give a damn about Essen?  It's a board game show after all.

Well if you're a regular reader of my blog for a start, you know I love board games, and they offer a much broader feast than wargaming, even if they cannot match the latter for spectacle or the ability to represent battles and skirmishes in detail.

But that aside, being the biggest store-front for the wider hobby in Europe, arguably the World, major players in the Wargaming hobby have to take Essen seriously and have a presence.  We'll see them crop up as we go along, but especially for fantasy gamers, all the major players are there.  It is not a place for display games particularly (unless you count a twelve foot wide version of Catan), but rather it is all about demoing games.

Anyway, enough preamble.

Special thanks go to Jet2 for arranging something akin to an endurance test of a flight out to Germany, a 6 hour delay was at least compensated for by extended time to chat with the pretty passenger sat next to me (and in due course with a full refund).  German airports seem to have very variable hours of flying, and so eventually we ended up in Munster, some 120km north of our intended destination.  Eventually arriving at our hotel at three am, this led to a slow start to our Thursday morning - the first public day of the show.

Opening panorama, for room one, of seven...

 First of all, to misquote Douglas Adams, Essen is big, really big.  You might think it's a long walk from one end of Salute to the other but that's just peanuts to Essen.  Let me put it in context, the trade stand for Queen Games was larger overall than the main hall used by Pudsey Recon, and there were several major traders of a similar size.  The place was really just enormous.  We spent day one, of four no less, leisurely going around the various halls looking out for things of note and games to play.

One of the first things I spotted were these enigmas, that I've mentioned on the blog before.  Not available in the UK, my will to resist would slowly crumble...

Recycled T54 parts?

 Out first game of the day was Space Cadet: Away Teams, but it proved to be a disappointing dungeon crawler with little to commend it other than pulp styled models.  Moving swiftly on we managed to play one of the games of the show thereafter:

Art straight from 'Archer' it seems

 Codewords is a deceptively simple game of word association, that as a group was bought and played a dozen or more times over the week.  Great for larger groups and as a filler game.

Wondering around the huge halls on the first day I had to draw the attention of one - a massive wrestling fan - of our group to WWE Superstar Showdown.  Neither of us expected much, though I had heard if you wanted a wrestling game it was the one to go for.

Annoyingly, this turned out to be a fantastic game.  If thought of as a one on one skirmish or brawling system, it is really well presented and conducted, and thanks to ingenious card play and loss mechanics, really supplies the theme of wrestling in buckets!  I spent the next three days giving the stand a wide berth, to avoid buying the game. I am no fan of wrestling, but it was that good.

As stated, Essen is an enormous show, attracting 150,000 attendees, many attending for all four days, as we did.  None of these however seemed to be flocking around the Games Workshop age of Sigmar stand.

Tumble-weed not pictured

It was never busy, and seemed to come with an air of desperation throughout the week.  It is notable that at a show where people actively demonstrate their games, GW did not have a demo of AoS, 40k or any other of their in-house products available.  The Forgeworld stand by comparison was busy, not least as it was saving Europeans an enormous sum in postal charges to buy at the show.  By comparison the Warlord Games and Mantic Games stands both were busy, and both had demonstrations available to play.

both this and GW out in the sticks of the smaller massive halls

 Elsewhere there were were a variety of weird and wonderful skirmish games.  The expected such as Infinity, War Machine and Freebooters Fate rubbed shoulders with innumerable newer or smaller systems:

Steam Robot deathmatch

 Wolsung (?) was just one of many, with steampunk seeming to be a definite theme to many games.

Elsewhere some beautiful samurai miniatures caught my eye, if only for the paint jobs:

Yes, hand painted

 One of my favourite games as a nipper was Civilization, the original version.  IIRC it took up to 7 players and took about 6-12 hours to play.  Years later certainly the 'heftiest' game of the show was the new revised edition:

Wooden box

 More on this in part two, but this is a game with components numbered in the thousands, not to mention a board that looked to be about eight feet long, accommodation for upto 18 players and a full playing time measured in days, not hours.  Oh, and it was 179 Euros (about £140).

Osprey were there with their gaming arm, selling plenty of Frostgrave and showing off their upcoming Arthurian game and a game based on submarine hunting:

Um, C4?  Nope, wrong game...

 Both looked intriguing, but even more so was the large anime character on their back wall, what are they planning on next?...

Our last game of the day was The Bloody Inn; a French game about gruesome murder and hotel management.

The Monk helped me bury a corpse, the Gardner was having nothing of it!

 A neat little card game, strong on theme and 'Take That' mechanics.  It is however a pitch black theme and the card art won't appeal to everyone.

Chinese food, a mooch around the centre of Essen and an early night finished off the day for all, and we hit it early doors on the Friday.

First up was a run in with Kings Forge at the Game Salute stand:

Dice!  So many dice!

 This was to be my first purchase.  Kings Forge is a card crafting and dice collecting game.  To build the valuable objects needed to win you have to carefully select the resource cards to allow you to build up the needed supplies of dice; each player gets a chance to roll to create objects, and rather than first come first served he who rolls the highest combo of dice that make up an object wins it, so gathering resources effectively can give you a real edge.  Balanced by the destruction of resources to fuel cards or to make items, the game requires deeper thought than just chucking a pile of dice, and has excellent catch-up mechanisms.  40 euros (£30) got me the core game, two expansions and a completely separate card game - which given they offered me a wooden box first seemed like a great upgrade!

Being Germany it was completely acceptable to wonder around the halls with a beer, so I did.

Ah, beer...

 The social contract is such that no one in Germany would misbehave due to excess alcohol in a public place.  I don't think I did anyway.

The day rolled on, several of us were in full-on buying mode, and various other games were played; including Trains - a Japanese take on a Deck Building game with a a board game of railway building attached.  Actually pretty good.  Later the whole group reconvened, having split in two earlier and we agreed to go wait for one of the major draws at the show.  Mysterium.

Queues worse than at a theme park

 After an hour waiting we managed to hook into a game with a French couple, who clearly did better with the language barrier than we could've done in reverse.  Mysterium is essentially a detective game with one player (the ghost) handing out clues to the players in an effort to get them to guess who murdered the spirit's human form.  The clues come in the form of abstract cards, and the ghost cannot say anything to support his choices.

I proved to be a very good spiritualist

 The art in the game is beautiful, the game itself is essentially a cooperative version of Cluedo, but with so much more to it than that simple description suggests.  No dice, no movement, but a lot of fun and a real experience.  Worth our wait to play.

On last round of the hall and I spotted something I should own soon, the Ares Games reprint of the Conan Strategy game is due any day now, and the expansion is soon to follow.

 With lots of new games between us, we grabbed quick food on the go for the evening and headed back to the hotel, which like most in Essen laid on rooms for gaming in the evening.  Our Holiday Inn had two large rooms plus overflow space available and on the Thursday-Saturday nights these were both full with 30-40 gamers eying up one another's purchases.  We played Escape from the Temple, more Kings Forge and later a game of dubious aesthetic/ethical merits:

Maids - the game

Tanto Cuore is the sort of game that gets gekks that reputation we're often trying to shake off.  It's another Japanese take on Deckbuilding, but this one features anime artwork and a heavy dose of what in the genre is termed 'Fan Service'.  This was a fun game, with plenty of laughs within the gameplay, and a decent amount of thought involved, but the theme would certainly divide many.  It's one you need to know your partner would be cool with before bringing home and plonking on a shelf where - y'know - normal people might see it.

So that was days one and two.

Half way through the show.

Coming up in part two more games, more models, something that constitutes an actual wargame (kinda) is played; and perhaps much more besides.

Perrywatch - Battle in a Box

Look at this behaviour, fascinating

So, after a few days out of things I check in on my favourite little company, and find the announcement of this on their Facebook Page:

Stuff!

This comes only days after I sell my American Civil War army, as a range I was never likely to finish or find a use for, but still; DAMN - that's good value!

All but the trees and boards for under a ton.

Around £150 of models plus a simple set of rules for the modest price of £95 seems like a great deal to me.  If I were looking to start a period from scratch this is an elegant way of doing it.  Although more expensive, it reflects much better value than Warlord's Bolt Action equivalent.

I hope this does well for the chaps.

But than can they please stop building dioramas and doing novelties and get back to sculpting the upcoming plastic French...

 

Essen Loot

Only a quick post for now, as I have University to go to.  But Essen was definitely something special.  I came home with a modest collection of stuff, as you can see:

And it still all went in carry on baggage

Six new games, and a range of expansions/miniatures; most thanks to show offers and a favourable exchange rate on the Euro at considerable savings on UK prices.  Sure I went to Germany to get them, but these were just like holiday souvenirs really so it's all good.

More soon...

Soguillo Del Paramo 1811

Myself and my old French opponent James, were able to take advantage of a local gaming open day to put a decent number of models on table and play a good sized battle of Black Powder.

I set up a simple scenario of a British Brigade defending an isolated farm, with two other brigades dashing to their aid in the face of larger numbers of French in assault formation already closing on their position.

James was to bring some of his own models for the first time, but whilst waiting for him I got the bulk of things set up:

From the British rear

 We had about a 7x5 foot play area, which would be played lengthwise.  Not much room for flanking manoeuvres perhaps but it would allow for delays in the arrival of the rearguard.  The British would always be holding on for time.

Meanwhile the dense French lines looked daunting, even before their full numbers arrived:

Grenadiers lead the march

But the British were confident that they could hold out in farm, making use of its' orange grove for concealment and drystone walls for protection.

La Granga, a fortress in the making

 One brigade of British reserves was formed of Portuguese troops, stiffened by a battalion of Highlanders.

The 79th lead the way

 Whilst the other was of solid British troops led by the Guards.  Between the two were Allied and British cavalry, advancing along the road.

Rocky ground barred the British way

As the final French arrived, dense columns of new recruits appeared in the centre.  James models were painted and based but not yet quite finished; they still looked the part though, and helped increase the numbers of figures to around 700 on the day.  In effect we had a divisional sized battle ahead of us, typical of many of the encounters in the peninsular, with around 10,000 French facing about 6,000 Allied.

A scary sight, such thick masses

 Battle opened with the French taking first turn, and James swiftly advanced on the farm.  His centre brigade, screened by skirmishers of the Legion Irlandaise, moved swiftly upon the British.

Clouds of dust rise...

 In response I tried to rush forwards my brigades, and reinforce the farm.  As it was the left made good progress through the rough ground, but the Portuguese were less mobile and so the cavalry found themselves plugging the gaps.

A hurried advance for the British

 On his next turn James aimed to attack the farm before I was ready, but poor communication led to a blunder (one of many the French would endure) and the central brigade turned to it's left and marched clumsily toward the farm house itself rather than the British line before them.

The French Hussars leading their cavalry attack apparently received a similar 'Left Face order, and were in danger of leaving the field of battle!  This allowed the British to address their lines and contain the other brigades with cannon and rifle fire.

Closest the camera the International Brigade approaches the British line

 For the next turn, James was joined by Paul, and I gained the aid of another of our James' (at least four in the club, not even counting my mate whose 'new' to gaming).  With two commanders per side the game would be more entertaining, and we could both at least lay some blame on dice rolling elsewhere!

The French centre got its act together and the great mass tried to fight into the corn field, defended by two lines of redcoats.

Here they come!

 The British waited until the first battalion began to reach the wall before unleashing a devastating fusilade.  The French wavered then ran leaving many dead and wounded, but their flanking battalion, a little slower in the advance and unharmed so far made it to the wall and were able to force the stout defenders back through their friendly lines.  In the event both sides were forced to retire, and latterly the British reserve took up the place of their comrades at the wall.  The first attack of the French was repulsed with heavy loss on both sides.

Elsewhere British cavalry did what it always does, saw the enemy and charged it rashly.

Not the plan

 The 16th Dragoons suddenly found themselves out numbered three to one and, after giving the French Hussars a bloody nose, were routed.  This left the allied cavalry holding the baby, and none too keen on it really.

On the left of the farm, The international Brigade, formed of the Regents' Spanish, French and German troops suffered the loss of its' unwilling Westphalian regiment to sustained British fire.

Schnell, schnell!!

 The French centre went in again, and made a little progress, forcing the British back from the wall.  To the other side of the farm the Grenadier led brigade was pinned by artillery fire from the Orange grove, and found - as happened for most of the battle - that its' own artillery was out of position and unable to effectively reply.  With some strange rush of blood to their head the voltigeurs of the two brigades tried to assault the farm with only their own mutual support; rash, and futile.

The biggest threat at this stage was French cavalry breaking through, so the Highlanders and Lusitanian Legion dutifully formed square and hoped for the best.

What transpired to be the French high-watermark

 At this stage the British left was grinding down the international brigade, forcing it to retire, although one Spanish regiment found itself seriously unstuck.

Almost unfair

 At this stage the French attacks were disintegrating, and efforts to fight in to the farm were coming to naught.  Especially as Portuguese troops came up up to provide reinforcement.

Welcome gentlemen!

 Seen from the French lines the problem was apparent.

Sacre Bleu!

 The international brigade was attempting to rally and in doing so was forced to retire in the face of the enemy.  The centre was holding by a thread, whilst the Grenadiers had been raked by fire to the point of destruction, bringing its' brigade to a crisis point.  In a desperate move the French shifted their cavalry to the opposite flank in an effort to shore up their lines.

It was not a success.

Rashly thrown into the hornets nest

 As the French centre collapsed the British advanced out of the farm and flanked the Hussars.  Supported by a company of rifles they made short work of the horsemen and put them to flight.

And by that point it was all over for the French attack.  Ultimately they had not been able to coordinate enough force to throw the British back.  They had got a toe hold at times in the farm, but in the end British firepower was enough to drive them back.

All over bar the shouting

James and Paul were defeated, t'other James and I revelled in a hard won victory.  As it turned out the lay of the land could have been held by less allied troops than I actually had - trying this again I might cut the allied infantry numbers by a quarter or so to give the French more chance.  But luck played a hand in it too, James laboured with five or six blunders ruining his attacks, and unwilling troops stalling in musketry range, which is never a good thing against the British!

Once more a grand game, and great to get all those troops on the table, with James' extra men I actually was able to leave some of my collection in their boxes for once.  Visually it looked great, especially at the start, and given it was an open day for gaming it attracted a fair bit of interest and approving comments.

However after set up, five hours of play and pack up I was burned out.  I sacked off the following four hours of gaming to go hope for food and TV instead.

A battle hard won is a tiring thing indeed.

Something different on the Show Front...

Ordinarily I only go to a couple of gaming shows a year, and they're usually in-out affairs, where I take a few snaps and buy a few bits and get gone as quickly as I can.  The exceptions to date have been the handful where I've put on a display game, and been expected to hang around all day.

Well next week I'm going completely against those principles, with a trip to a four day gaming convention.

In Germany.  No less.

  

Yep, big time board game fans will already know this must mean I'm going to Essen.  Europe's, possibly the world's biggest gaming show.  It was a bit of a last minute thing, but it is part of an intent to do stuff a little out of my familiarity zone again.  It's not the sort of event I can sneak in and out of in a few hours, rather it's four days of 9-5 gaming with a few guys from the gaming club taking the lead (thankfully at least one has fluent German).

A not entirely serious map of the venue

Now the event is mainly known for board gaming, this is Germany - home of the Eurogame - after all, but there is also plenty of roleplaying, LARP, comics, and hopefully figure gaming too.  And of course, it's going to be all about playing games, lots and lots of games.

And then maybe buying a few.

This could get kinda expensive.

More to report in due course folks, I set off Wednesday...

Kings of War on the Home Front

Jim came round for what was to be his first game of Kings of War, and his first figure game in *cough, cough* years.  I set up my new home table - an ingenious combination of two Ikea coffee tables and some MDF - and two 2,000 point armies and we set too...

The arrays face one another

Not only a first run out for the table, but also a first run for my new scenery collection.  Just enough bits for a decent layout.  We rolled the invasion scenario and began to array our forces.  I guess Jim's played enough computer wargames to have some idea what to do, as his deployments were sensible enough.  I got first turn and began to advance my Dogs of War army against his Orcs.

Menfolk advance with conviction

By comparison, Jim was overly cautious at first, grasping that the pre-measuring allowed you to calculate charges and firing zones easily, but not that falling into the enemy's hands was inevitable and you needed to do so if you were to deliver your own attacks in force.  As a result in the first two or three turns he hung back when ploughing forward would've made better tactical sense.

Cavalry tempt the Orc hordes

But throughout the game luck generally favoured him, I particularly was rolling badly in attacks and ranged shooting, which meant I couldn't drive a wedge in his battle lines.

Simon and the Orc centre advance cautiously

Battle is joined, left and right

On my left Jim's first attack by his fleabag riders rolled away allied Ogre cavalry and gave me a real headache.  On the right I had to go for it and use all my remaining cavalry to try and smash through.

Goblins do their best against the knights

This led to a large general action as Jim began to bring up his reserves.  On my left Simon the giant added to the pressure by attacking my Ogre horde, whilst an Ogre captain put up a valiant last stand against the goblin cavalry.

Simon gets stuck in

The right flank eventually would go well for me, but it was proving too late in the game.  The job was a long and bloody one.

The knights try to break the Orc lines

A general melee ensues along the line

Finally Jim's centre joined the battle, allowing itself to be savagely flanked in the process.

An Orc mass is cornered

However my luck was still struggling offer me the results I deserved; well, in my opinion...

Orcs hold sway on my left, men hold sway to the right

Simon destroyed my ogres and the Orc horde in the centre was more than holding its' own.  I had to rush my general from the far side of the battlefield to attack them from behind.

Simon breaks through, as the Human general does too

This finally did the job, but time was running out.  The giant was into my artillery, ans last desperate attempts to bring him down came to naught.

By now it is a case of trying to hold ground

My cavalry were virtually unscathed, having obliterated the right flank, but only part of that force was able to make an appearance in the centre.  Dispatching the last of the Orc Morax regiments.  With that all the Orc rank and file were gone; but with his general, Simon and the fleabag riders still ravaging my rear lines, I was still in trouble.  It would depend on whether we had another round of battle or not.

Too many Orcs left in my territory

Jim rolled a three and the game ended on the sixth turn.  To my detriment; Jim's remaining forces were all sat in scoring zones of the battlefield, whilst mine were not.  Jim was declared victor.

Another good game, though with teaching the rules this was slower than previous games.  Also the annoyance of dealing with hundreds of individually based figures really got to me this game, and so a radical solution must be undertaken.

More on that another day...