AQMF: Our third game

Yes, the system is fast enough, and our games small and simple enough to do a third game (we played 11am to 6pm including time for pawing with trembly hands [mine] of the hard back book, and pawing of the miniatures [Richard’s]).

First up we expanded the table. The h/back book suggests a 6×4′ table, whereas we’d been using a 4×4′ table for the first two games. It also allowed me to get out the two storey pyramid to help bulk out the Martain style scenery. (NB: Despite washing the resin before spraying, the spray paint didn’t adhere all over so its a bit scrappy – WIP)

By now we had all 4 tripods ready to go, and all the tanks.

So I gathered the 3 Assault tripods in the centre to move in and defend the pyramids (of Mars), with the Scout out on the flank to deal with the blips which could be human infantry.

Richard deployed 6 Mark II tanks on his right flank, and three Mark III tanks in the centre, surrounded by a cloud of blips.

For pretty much the only time in the entire game, I won initiative and pushed forward.

Unfortunately, this meant they were in range of a heck of a lot of tank guns ! The tripod went down fairly quickly. And then a second one fell in the first turn !

It was only the Scout that had any luck in the game, flushing out BEF troops who ran aay before I zapped them.

the third Assault tripod went down, leaving the Scout on it’s ownsome…

…for two rounds dodging in and out of cover, but it was another loss for the Martians.

So conclusions:

• The Martians are vastly outnumbered. Loss of two Tripods so early in the game pretty much decided it.
• Winning Initiative is very important.
• As per the earlier games, mass targetting of single Tripods is the way to take them down.
• However, even the Scout Tripod can clear out nests of HMGs and Infantry relatively easily – they also move FAST.

AQMF: Our second game

Byakhee Rich re-zaranged (slightly) the table. I’d done up two more red weed bases, and also the Critical Mass Games Kommados building had dried. So we had a very martian feel to the centre of the board. We also chose more forces, and I’d assembled (as a demo) some more tanks for Richard.

We also started to sue the advanced rules on stealth units – human infantry, so we broke open marker packs.

The Mark III Baldwin tanks remianed assembled but unpainted at this point in the game ! 😀

The Tripods advanced into the centre of the table.

The Scout Tripod on the right flank advanced toward a blip that turned out to be BEF infantry, that through a series of good dice rolls shot at and destroyed the scout. The scoput duely exploded and wiped out the BEF as well as itself. This was yet another example of Richard’s lucky rolls, and not the last…

I’d followed the Scout up, with a regular Assault Tripod, and guess what, it to got destroyed with Ricrad rolling a 10 on the tripod damage chart. This time he got lucky as none oif the tanks were taken out.

Another Tripod was damaged and couldn’t move.

A Tank’s eye view showed the tulip of love above a Tripod ! 😀

It wasn’t reciprocated as the Infantry were wiped out.

That said, the last tripod goes down fighting near the red weed and Martian Pyramid.

The humans won the battle through luck with rolling 10’ds on the damage chart for Tripods and my bad luck on damaging them.

Still it was all fun and it lasted about 1.5 hours for 750 points or so. A very fun game with quick but very good mechanics.

AQMF: Our first game

Year before last, Byakhee Richrad persuaded me to take part in a Kickstarter for All Quiet on the Martian Front. To quote Rick Priestly, one of the authors of the games system:

The background spins off from the H.G Wells book – the game is set ten years after the events described in the book and is based on a ‘second’ invasion. Although the events of the intervening +10 years are – of course – entirely made up – we based many of the events and characters on real events and people of the day. For example, the (real)story of the Ford Peace Ship is turned into an effort to mediate with the Martians – the (real) offer of Annie Oakley to raise women Sharpshooters is worked in too, together with her famous (real) quote about women handling firearms as naturally as they handle babies. The diary entry about the coroner examining the Martian Zombies is based on real people and real places that existed at the time – same for the piece about aerial warfare (though I doubt the airfield I mentioned was an airfield quite so early on).

A lot of the industrial history is also either accurate or based on contemporary developments or theories – which was interesting for me because my parents both worked for derivations of the company that made the first tanks in WW1 – in fact my Grandmother actually worked on the assembly lines that built them. So – yup – quite a lot of research went into it really. But we definitely made up the Zombies. Amongst other things:)

I’d got my first tranche of stuff before Richard, but as things happen we’d arranged a gaming day, before he got his stuff, and then his stuff arrived, so we decided to have a game or more of AQMF.

The set up, a 4×4′ board, the red weed bases were done ASAP in the morning !

Similarly, the MarkIII Baldwin tank, in resplendent grey plastiuc was stuck together in 5 minutes before we started the game. As it was very much an ad hoc game, many of the miniatures were being painted ‘in ganme’, so apologies for that, but it didn’t detract from our enjoyment of the game.

The human forces advanced.

The Martian tripods also advanced and were first in range.

The first heat ray attack destroyed a tank and a stand of infantry. The tank unit routed. As they strode over the hill, they continued their attack and the martians fought off the tanks and the infantry uniut, before being assualted by the second infantry unit.

The right hand tripod took damage from the tanks on the other side of the table.

So the threesome (!),. took steps to stop such nonsense.

The American HMGs, finish off the Martian Tripod, only for Rich to roll a 10 and for it to blow up destroying pretty much everything within 6 inches of it !

They didn’t last long these last three tanks !

Comments from the first game:

• The rules are very easy !
• The Martian Tripods are hard to kill, unless you concentrate fire.
• Human forces must make use of (but rely upon) cover.
• Don’t pick things up when the paint is wet !

More to follow.