Zona Alfa : a day trip to the yellow zone.

 Two rival crews enter the Zone, a military crew and an independant crew...

Approaching the hotspots.

A yellow warning sign confirms the threat level.

The Indy crew attract a gaggle of Zombies.

Rutger is on alert with his flamethrower...

But Rutger fluffs his shot when he recognises an old comrade amongst the zombies and some of the undead pounce on Bolter (blue spot on his base) and Yak (yellow spot).

The leader of the crew, Bolter is wounded before Yak finishes the Zombie!.

Meanwhile, the Military crew attract a huge mutant worm.

An anomaly pops up too!.

Sgt. Renko and his men kill off the monster.

And Renko successfully inspects the anomaly.

Revived by Yak's medikit Bolter moves on the hotspot.

Renko moves up.

Rutger is lurking near the objective and he's alert    ( be alert, the country needs lerts).

Another monstrous worm is awakened. Ganz is ready and blazes away at the horror.

But he fails to stop the worm.

Bolter dashes over and kills the worm with his SMG.

Sgt. Renko sprints over and gives Ganz first aid, the crews will now work together to get out of the zone.

Bolter inspects the anomaly and finds valuable artifacts.

It is time to get out fast as the sky goes abnormally black. Both crews have well over 5K of salvage and artifacts for their troubles. Not a bad payday!.

Zona Alfa is a canny game, a nice change from my usual games.

 

Skirmishing with my old toy soldiers.

 

Taking a breather from some very intense games of "ASL" I got out some of my oldest toys and have been playing some "One Hour Skirmish Wargames".

The soldiers are my Airfix and Britains Deetail 1/32nd which I have had since I was about eight years old. Veterans for sure!.

I have put labels under their stands with names on, I mainly used names from "Combat Commander" leaders. The narrative of the game means more somehow when the wee men have names.

I am having a lot of fun with these rules, I kept all the distances the same but I use a bigger 5 inch grenade template for the larger figures.

I staged a few photos for this post, this isn't actual gameplay.

I have a bunch of Russians to play with as well, I made the signage on the buildings detachable so I can go from the Western Front to the Eastern Front in a jiffy.

I'm planning another game tonight in which a cut off US officer needs rescuing from a village swarming with Germans. It should be fun!.

A nice change of pace, "One Hour Skirmish Wargames" gets a recommendation from me!.

Baroque - English Civil War.

 Well I'm still battling away with me ECW toys. After many good games with "Furioso" rules I found the rule set I originally fancied at a good price.

These rules are entitled "Baroque" and are published by Dadi&Piombo. I decided to half my unit size to suit the rules on my small table.

The rules play well with commands activating by initiative as the opposing units may react to the activating sides actions. It is all very to and fro.

There is a very good blogpost featuring Baroque here... link It is well worth a peep for anyone interested, I have found it very useful.

I discovered that I needed a couple of camps to be protected so I set to and made some today.

I've spent some time improving my terrain a bit too, I've invested in some new trees, painted my fields and had a right good time of it.

I love learning a new rules set and I reckon Baroque is well worth learning.

Furioso

I got my English Civil War toys out and have had a lot of fun trying out rulesets with them. I played "Warhammer ECW" for a few games and that was enjoyable but didn't quite hit the spot.

 Then I tried out "Furioso" by Steve Danes, I bought these rules a couple of years back when I had wild ideas about wargaming the Italian Wars.

Furioso is designed to wargame the sixteenth century, somewhat earlier than the English Civil War so I had to use similar unit stats to suit my collection.

I enjoyed my first couple of games, I particularly liked the initiative system.

The next couple of games knocked me back a bit, one or two implausible events occurred. 

Then I found that I had missed some rules so I had another game which was much better.

I played more, introducing some skirmishers and found some more depth to the rules.

The upshot is that I am very pleased with Furioso, the rulebook was a bit hard for me to grok but definitely worth persevering with.

For those that are interested in Furioso there is a great blogpost here... link

The rules are available from Alternative Armies... link

I foresee plenty of good games ahead.

Great stuff!.

Old School Tactical

 Old School Tactical is a fine addition to my tactical wargames collection. I am lucky enough to own the first two volumes and the Airborne expansion.

Here are a few shots of tonight's Eastern Front game.

The maps are beautiful, here are a few close ups.  

There are info cards for the units and they are very useful.

The game plays very well solo and the back and forth impulse point system gives you some tough decisions.

Smashing!.