First (mis)Steps into 2017

The first thing I wanted to do this year was figure out what projects to focus on for the first few months of 2017. I had listed several in my previous post and wanted to talk with others about some joint Enfilade projects too before making any decisions.

While contemplating what I was going to do, I got in my first game of the year. Which was a playtest of a scenario Kevin and David are planning to run at Drumbeat on February 4. It was an Aztecs vs. Conquistadors game using their Quetzalcoatl Rampant variant for Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant rules.

The scenario seemed good, with the Spanish and their Tlaxcalan allies raiding an Aztec village to grab food and trying to get out before the inevitable Aztec counterattack. I was helping to run the Spanish/Tlaxcalan side. We made planned to get some Tlaxcalan units out front to act a speed bumps, while the Spanish would act as "Fire-Brigades" to fill any gaps and cover the retreat.

As often happens, our plans didn't survive contact with the enemy. The plan probably wasn't too bad, but our die rolling to activate units was pretty bad. On my half of the table, by the end of turn 4 I had only been able to move 5 units.

Slow moving for the Spanish

I was able to get one Tlaxcalan unit into the planned position, but it was quickly overwhelmed by counterattacking Aztecs.

My high-water mark as one of my Tlaxcalan units makes a stand in front of one of the grain stores

Overall, it was pretty much a fiasco. You can read a little more about this action, and see some better photos, over on David's blog. I will point out that David's post will back up my claims of the bad die rolls:

"Dave and Bailey were plagued throughout the game by the most abysmal die rolling in the history of dice."

Which was followed up by:

"I'm not sure how to figure the Spanish/Tlaxcalan loss. Their die-rolls were legendarily bad. In the hall of shame for all-time poor rolling, they'd be on Mount Rushmore. They just couldn't get their units to do anything."

I'm just hoping I've gotten all (or a really large percentage) of my bad die rolls out of the way for the year.

I was able to come up with my plans for Enfilade, which will be my main focus for the next few months.

• First up, Kevin and I will do a joint "what if" air game on the Cuban Missile Crisis covering a U.S. Navy airstrike on a Cuban/Russian missile site. It will be similar to the one we ran at the Museum of Flight, but with more options. I'll be painting up some Navy F-4Bs for this and handling the scenario set up, while Kevin takes care of the other aircraft. 

MiGs, missiles, and Skyhawks from the Museum of Flight game

• I'm also going to do a "Cold War goes Hot" naval game. This will be a solo project and I'm going to use a variation of the Captain's Edition Harpoon rules with 1/6000 miniatures. For those of you that know the game, the rules are pretty simple and I think it should work pretty well in a convention setting.

On another note, between Christmas and New Year's I ordered some more submarine models from OKB Grigorov and they arrived not long after my Spanish got trounced. I ordered four American subs (most of which will just be used as display models) and a Russian Delta IV SSBN (which will be used with my submarine rules).

Cold War subs USS Tang, USS Barracuda, USS Cavalla (a long-hull Sturgeon) and USS Thresher

Soviet Delta IV (Project 667 BDRM)

I probably won't work on these until after my Enfilade projects are well underway, but it was nice to get them.