Some of the tables setup
My own table which has been tweaked (again!!) for the tournament.The board edges were redone and a new board added.
Moderns gaming report - Battlecry 2014
Introduction
We ran another Microarmour Moderns convention in the beginning of 2014 and this is the report from it .This year the format was quite different as we were using the tournament to try out some modifications (house rules) to the WRG ruleset (WRG 1950-2000 rules) we play. A major discussion that has come up locally is how non-skirmish/thrusting armies are difficult to play and how we could balance that and look at other changes to the rules to help speed up games. We are finding players are drifting away from the rules due to the complexity and time take to play a game, and the learning curve of the rules. Overall the changes were positive and using smaller armies helped, but some felt the changes have not gone far enough, however work is still progressing on the rules at the time this was written.
There was 1985 cutoff period for armies although this was relaxed and we had a 2000+ British army to see how smaller high tech armies would perform. The tournament had 8 players and we used the WRG 1950-2000 rules and our figures were in 6mm scale (1/300th)
scale. The competition was 4 rounds spread over 2 days and each round was 4 hours. We
setup the tables at the beginning of the tournament and then rotated tables to save repositioning the terrain each time (same as last year).
This report is more of a gallery of images from the games rather than a battle report (such as previous reports) mostly because of the informal nature of the tournament, and the fact that the players were more interested in the rules, than any results.
And finally a special thanks to the organisers for a well run convention (even better than last year) and everyone who played or commented on the games. And apologies to
those players whose armies I didn't photograph!
Click on the thumbnails to see the full sized image
More table setups
Close up of some of the terrain features. The middle photo (with the radio mast) is a new board I finished for this tournament, along with the nuclear missile silo.
Desert Table
Desert table with a game between West Germans and British (a modern version of the 8th army vs the DAK battles). The buildings are all Gamecraft and feature in the terrain section of this site.
Belgians vs Soviets
Some pictures of the Belgians fighting the Soviets. Note the Leopard 2A5s are proxies for Leopard 1A4s!
Desert table features
A few photos of some of the great features of the desert table. The boats and wharf is from Old Crow, and the camels are from Irregular.
West Germans vs Israelis
Not the best photos of thes two armies, however the closeup of the Merkavas show how well Andrew painted them.
Steves wonderful terrain
Every year his tables and armies are impressive. There were some new fields this year (in the photo with Mikes BMPs) which blended well with the rest of the terrain.
A game between my Soviets and Steve's Soviets
A very good game and pretty even until the BMP commander in the middle picture called in Salvo rockets and they landed short and destroyed over half their own BMP company and then the rest routed! However my artillery finally did something helpful and destroyed most of my opponents Battlegroup HQ after their radio comms were located as they took cover behind the airfield.