Mayday 2013 Events

On this Saturday, I attended Mayday, our annual local gaming convention.  This year, we had quite a turn out, and there were more games than last year.

Various hosts ran individual games, and there were also two big tournaments, for Warhammer 40k and Warmachine.

I ran a Tomorrow's War scenario, where a hi-tech security company has to escort a convoy of important cargo through an area controlled by insurgents.  The asymmetrical game setup of the Ambush Alley game engine allowed an excellent game to be played.

The convoy started at one end of the table and had to reach the other side against opposition.  The enemy could pop up in various hotspots around the table, and outnumbered the smaller but higher-quality security teams.

However, the game went badly for the convoy from the very beginning - one of the vehicles was immobilized, and the other had its weapon destroyed.  From then on, the convoy had serious problems going through the town.

The vehicle that still could move tried to forge ahead, but was demolished by a large IED.  Only the foot security teams could protect the convoy now.

 

The men pushed on though, and managed to cause some casualties to the insurgents due to their high quality.  However, eventually they got beaten back and were overwhelmed by superior numbers.  Here, a shot of one of the last turns had one of the security teams all wounded and captured by the insurgents, while the other one was pinned with casualties.

The game ended with a major victory for the insurgents, and the scenario might need some more balancing.  I'll probably add a sniper team for the security company, to add some firepower and coordinate the beyond line-of-sight fire capability of the vehicles.

There were quite a few other games going at the same time.

Dave C ran an El Cid game using I believe War and Conquest rules.  It sure looked great with crusaders painted up in all their glory.

There was a Victorian Sci-fi game run by the guys from Calgary, and it looked quite fun.  I saw a funny looking steam tank, a dinosaur, and some sort of summoning of a giant spider.

There was of course the 40k tournament, which provided a lot of opportunities for nicely painted models to get shown.

There was also a nicely done WWII game, Command Decision I think.

Later in the day, I played in the DBA tournament, where all of us used armies that were historical enemies of Rome.  I had the ancient Spanish.

The first game, I faced off against the Seleukid army of Don from Calgary.  This was a slow game where we both maneuvered for position most of the time.  We only started engaging near the end of the time limit, and I eked out a win by killing his general from some lucky rolls.

The second game was against Dave's ancient Britons, and I was not so lucky.  The fairly open terrain didn't suit my army, and I deployed poorly, allowing his chariots to smash against a weak flank.  Add some unlucky rolls to that and I suffered several units destroyed, losing the game.

The third game was against Stu's version of the ancient Britons army, and I did better.  I managed to hang onto edges of steeps hills and attacked his army from a location of advantage.   This ended in a win for me.

I think Mark won the tournament at the end, winning all three of his games.

In the evening I played in a 15 mm sci-fi game using the Gruntz rules.  I played aliens trying to attack some human colonists protected by marines.

The aliens started in a power plant and had to attack humans on the other side of the board.

I eventually overwhelmed the marines through relentless alien attacks.  Here is a shot of the aliens breaking into the human settlement.

Gruntz is an interesting game system, where you roll two D6s for each figure, in order to beat a target number to hit and wound the enemy.  It played quite quickly even with a fairly large number of models, so it can be another rule set for me to try out.

All in all, this year's Mayday was a great success, and we all had a lot of fun.