Down in Flames

 Last year and this year I have been lucky enough to discover three wargames that have become firm favourites of mine. SAGA and X-Wing I have featured in recent blogposts, the third is Down in Flames which is a card game I got for Christmas last year.

It's a cracker, I played it exclusively for four months solid, it isn't a solo game but I can manage it with a few house rules.

There are several iterations of the system, this one is from 2008 and is simpler than some of the other versions. link I went to town with it a bit and bought a couple of expansions, I then photocopied cards and downloaded anything I could. In a dogfight game I like to use four cards for a "squadron" which is the sweet spot for me, six a side is too many to handle for me playing solo.

Some of the images I found only had the front "undamaged" side of the card so I printed off numbers and flame images and used a marker pen for smoke, see the Chaika on the left. The unofficial SB-2 I did digitally.

Here are two of my homemade Spitfires flanking the published card.

Finding images on t'internet let me expand the game and provided a lot of fun.

It wasn't all plain sailing though I don't know what caused the ghost image on the left, I had the same problem with some of my early SAGA dice images too.

I made a "Red Tails" P51 squadron.

I introduced Tank Busters and nightfighters.

I added some of my own pilots real and made up and gave them a chance to parachute to safety.

I added bomber crews to the game too.

I made target counters and cards for the bombing missions, I like to use a squadron of four to eight bombers with two or three escorts against a squadron or two of defending fighters.

Then I added some postwar jets.

Then off to Korea, I don't know how accurate my stats are but it's a bit of fun.

Great fun, the game is very abstract but the cardplay feels more like the cut and thrust of a dogfight than any other air wargame I have played.

OLD SCHOOL TACTICAL - PARTISANS

 While awaiting the arrival of a Tie Bomber for X Wing( I thought I heard it approaching earlier but it was just a plane) I made myself some boardgame counters.

I designed and printed off these counters months ago and finally set to and made them yesterday. They are Partisans for Old School Tactical and Partisans are not at time of writing produced by the publishers. So fancying some for my OST set up I got stuck in...

I had a short game tonight and set them up against some 2nd line German troops defending a small village. I used a pair of maps from another tactical boardgame The Last Hundred Yards.

They are nowhere near as good as the real I am but they're alright for me.

Hold on, is that my bomber I can hear...

X-WING

 Last year I got into X-Wing, it all started when my wife spotted our new next door neighbour spray priming some figures in his garden. She said " Oh!, you must be a wargamer too" and the poor fella was gobsmacked. Shortly after this slightly surreal encounter we started getting some games going, when he mentioned that he was a Star Wars fan I got hold of a couple of X-Wing starter sets and off we went...

Now I was never that fussed about Star Wars back in the day , my cousin raved about it but I was living and breathing Conan stories (Airfix Romans and Britons battling through the Hyborian Age), so I never took much notice of Star Wars. It was on the telly and we watched it but that was about it for me.

But X-wing is a cracking game, I really enjoy it. I went for first edition because the points values are on the cards and not on some app. Of course the game is long OOP nowadays so I am about 10 years late to the party.

Here are some pics of my collection so far... 

I got hold of a Millenium Falcon yesterday, chuffed with it. 

These are a pair of 3D printed Tie Phantoms.

Another view of my latest addition, it is bound to fail spectacularly in its first game!.

X-Wing was a great game to learn together and we have played several other games sush as Xenos Rampant, Ravenfeast and The Rules With No Name. He is time poor compared to me so we haven't had a game for some time but he has almost finished painted a Lord of the Rings set so that is to be our next get together.

Happy days. 

SAGA- Age of Hannibal with my old 15mm soldiers.

 Well, after a short delay I got hold of the bases to start my next SAGA project. I've started off  with Romans and Carthaginians, and because I have more figures than I need I have based the close order infantry two to a base. SAGA is a headcount game but I'll just count the bases rather than the figures. 

Most of these figures were bought and painted in the late 1980's/early '90's and I recently tried to give them away, no-one wanted them and I considered binning them. But now with a bit of a tickle with a paintbrush and rebasing these old veterans are back in action...

Romans, Museum Miniatures (MM) and Irregular Miniatures

Roman Velites MM.

Roman Equites MM.

Carthaginians, MM and Tabletop Miniatures.

Iberians, Essex Miniatures.

Numidians, Tabletop Miniatures.

Nellie the Elephant, Tabletop Miniatures.

I got my SAGA dice made too.

It is all set up ready to play but it is too hot in the room tonight, I don't know how we'll get to sleep. 

More SAGA - Crusading on the cheap.

  Last week I was fortunate enough to get a second hand copy of SAGA Crescent and Cross for a very good price. Luckily I have a collection of shonky old figures ready to go, all I needed to do was make some appropriate dice...

I really like this game, the game mechanisms are easy and good fun but the Battleboard malarkey takes it to another level. 

The battle came down to a fight between the warlords, both fell but the Crusaders were victorious.

I wish I had got into SAGA years ago, I considered it more than once but something always put me off. Not this time though, I have a heap of 15mm Punic Wars stuff which will be tidied up and rebased, bases and basing material are ordered and SAGA, Age of Hannibal has just come through the letterbox.

Very happy days!. 

SAGA on the cheap.

 About this time last year when I wasn't blogging I picked up a SAGA rulebook for about six quid. I tried the game out with some free fan-made battleboards and really enjoyed it. 

Since I own a bunch of Vikings I pushed the boat out and bought the Age of Vikings book which was NOT cheap. Never mind there are twelve battleboards in there for different warbands ( I don't care for the term "factions") so there is a lot a value in the book.

I wasn't prepared to pay fourteen quid or so for eight dice so I went about making my own. I downloaded the free dice symbols and found some cheap blank dice on ebay. I matched some printer paper as close as I could to the colour of the dice and spent some time cutting and clagging.

I had enough to make six sets of eight dice for the price of one official set, they aren't as good but they are good enough for me.

Next up I got myself a nice little Anglo-Saxon warband to fight those naughty Scandinavians, I got a canny deal on them too!.

After some cracking games it dawned on me that just one box of Wargames Atlantic Irish could give me a six point warband, so after a little bit of shopping around I got my hands on a box.

The last few days I have been re-discovering SAGA so tonight I will play an Irish raid on Wessex. It should be fun...

Saxon Hearthguard.

Irish Bonnacht.

Saxon Ceorls.

And lots of doggies, nice doggies, FETCH!!.