Alter of Freedom

We have played a lot of Blitzkrieg commander and Cold War Commander recently and we have really enjoyed the quick play big battle games and with the 10mm Pendraken stuff made it possible to filed big armies without the need for huge tables and lots of expense ,so after looking at the Pendraken ACW range I looked for a set of quick play period rules and found Alter of Freedom by Greg Wagman . The Rules cover large battles using Divisions with smallest unit being a brigade ,the game is historical scenario driven with emphasis is on the commanders with each one having traits representing how they behaved at the actual battle. Players bid points to get to move first and also to control the game clock which when thye have control of it they can manipulate it to shorten or lengthen the turn. There is no casualty removal or record keeping a unit is either combat effective or broken , the game only uses a D6 for each side and a D8,10 ,12 etc to represent the clock , the actual type is shown on each scenario. The scenario comes with a map ,instructions where to set up allowing slight chnages to the actual battle and comes with a sheet showing each commander their strengths and weaknesse ,what brigades they control and how many points they each have to influence the game .Another thing I like is each scenario comes with a printable sheet of lables to attach to your bases so you just change the lable for each scenario The rules come with 4 scenarios and are supported by 2 scenario books each with another 14 or so scenarios and a web site with lots of free downloads, videos and after action reports . Altough the rules are meant to be played for historical battles there is a section on how to build armies for points driven games and non historical games . From read throughs and looking at the videos and after action reports I liked what I saw and have started painting and basing some figures below are acouple of test bases I did a infantry brigade and an artillery battery .

Figures are Pendraken

Blitzkrieg commander British v Germans late war

Had a game of Blitzkreig commander with my late war Brits versus Johns Germans , a series of incredibly bad command die rolls meant very little happened and when it did it made more of a whimper than a bang after seven turns of action I had lost a 6pdr ATG and an armoured car and John lost a command vehicle ,I did have great luck in calling in air strikes but the the first caused minimal damage to Johns panzers and the next two attacks were driven off by AA fire . Still great fun and we are both off to alter our army lists and practice rolling D6

Irish Guards Battlegroup

After our games with Pendrakens Cold War Commander we decided to try their WW2 version Blitzkreig Commander which we tried using my korean war armies and we were sold ,so we chose late war with myself doing the British . We chose army lists to start as a base for our armies ,I chose the Irish Guards Armoured Brigade for September 1944. I have now finished my basic army but with the sad news arrowhead miniatures are closing down I have ordered quite abit of stuff so I have afew options to choose from. Battle group HQ

3rd Armoured Squadron

1st Armoured Squadron

2nd Armoured Squadron

2nd Infantry Company Group

Air Cover

Hopefully these will go into Action with the next couple of weeks ,Toys are a selection the Infantry and some Shermans are Victrix the other Shermans and most of the other vehicles and the 17pdr ATG and tank riders are Arrowhead , the reaming vehicles are either pendraken aor Butlers Printed models , the Typhoon is Butlers

Korean War Project -nearly there

A few things got in the way pf my forgotten war project ,then Pendraken brought out a specific supplement for Korea which changed the army lists slightly and also took the war from the cold war commander rules to the blitzkrieg commander set ,luckily i have both sets so n0 issue and then Pendraken released loads of new toys for the period included a Psy ops set , so a big order went in. Any way about 80% finished now so some pics of my painted stuff on hills made by myself ,more than a pretty face hey.

12mm British ww2

a few test figures for Blitzkrieg commander ,these are all 12mm Victrix plastics ,painted as generic Brits or commonweath troops for late war Europe

Greeks and Viet Minh a bit of holiday wargaming plus a lost airfield

managed to get away for a bit to the coast and got a lot of wargaming in . We managed a couple of games of Mortal Gods , the first game was a straight out victory for Athens the 2nd game was mush coser but still an Athenian victory ,most of the pictures are from the first game , the second game we managed to get outdoors .

. We also got a game of cold war commander in using John's Indo China stuff in 10mm , I managed to scrape anice victory for the viet minh , we have become hooked on the cold war ? blits=zkrieg commandeer rules again only remembered to take one game oic so added one of my rules sets .

Also again thanks to Debs and John managed to visit a lost gem R.A.F Strubby most of the buildings are still standing but very rundown but some nice info panels and a wonderful monument to the crews that flew from there .

cold war commander trial game

Did a quick trial game of cold war commander ,set in the Gulf War using 15mm toys all provided by John G with very little terrain to get in the way ,we even forgot to put the play mat down . We basically lined everything up and started heading for each other to try and get used to the rules , we picked them up pretty easily and I learned the hard way you need more than onee command unit rolling some awful dice and only twice managing to issue orders any damage I did was with oppurtunity fire and Johns Iraqi army well and truly kicked my ass