Beta Strike

This weekend past, I had the chance to play Alpha strike again with P, this time to celebrate the completion of his new hobby and gaming shed. 

It is hard to do justice to the space with just a few words, but it is pretty much every gamer's dream, storage, hobby space, art and books, and in the middle a nice sized table, ready for gaming. 

Lovely space, and very large! 

We were supposed to play a four person game, but sickness prevented the other two from coming, so we shifted around the game time to be more convenient, and essentially playtested the scenario.  In this game, the evil Clan mechs would come in from one corner of the board, attacking some sort of forward base held by mercenaries, and then later a couple lances of the real heroes from the Inner Sphere would come in to save the day.  The Objectives for the baddies were to destroy the parked leopard dropship and to get infantry into the bunker.

 

Start of the game, with two lances in reserve

This game was a reminder that while the Clan mechs are absurdly fast and well armed, they have effectively the same durability as the Inner Sphere mechs, so concentrating fire eventually can put them down.  Doing that while they blast away at your much weaker mechs is the real trick! 

Still one lance in reserve

As usual, I forgot to take many pictures once the game really got going, but the Clan mechs dumped off elementals at the edge of the complex and then supported them with pretty heavy fire.  The Inner Sphere eeked out a victory mostly due to time. 

Climactic action with the Elementals swarming in

Once again fun to get mechs out on the table, and P is always great to play against.  We had a good chat after about the 101 other games he has, now that they are all unpacked from storage and can be seen... so hopefully we will be back in the shed soon for more games! 

Holidaze 2025

Well hello again. 

Happy New year and Merry Christmas to you my dear reader(s)! 
Hopefully everyone is well, and you got what you wanted from Santa.
As for myself, my family was very generous, and I got a few gaming related items.

Nothing touched yet

The generic black box on the bottom is an Eldar Fire prism, which guarantees that GW will release a new one with the new codex.  I also got a new Kroot kill team, some bones figures, and the sprue is a Stargrave Crew II sprue that Santa put in my stocking. 

Over the holiday we did manage to play a single game of Splendor, a single game of Forbidden Jungle, and got in a good session of the kid D&D game with all the cousins, but little gaming or gaming related work has happened in the last few months.  Between work and driving to school or water polo I seem to have little time or energy.  I am nearly ready to reveal a fall project which should lead to more games, so watch this space. 

Also somewhat exciting is that the kid got the huge Necromunda Ash Wastes box and some additional stuff to go with it, so we have been talking Necromunda and campaigns quite a bit.  

Actual plans for this year look depressingly like plans for last year: Finish the Eldar army (complicated by a new codex and miniatures in March or so), paint something I got as a gift, and work on WWII Normandy. 

What about you, what are you planning on doing this year?