Society Meeting 12th February 2022

Andy does a quick photo roundup of last weekend’s meeting.

First off a game of Mortem et Gloriam, 6mm Pontic vs Early Imperial Romans.

Pontic Commander’s view
Pontic and Roman forces close
Light Cavalry clash

Andy and Stephen had another attempt at SAGA – Age of Crusades, 28mm figures, Crusaders vs Mutatawwi’a

Some of Andy’s crusaders
More of Andy’s Crusaders, red tokens indicate fatigue
Stephen’s Mutatawwi’a
Stephen’s Assassins, with priest and Warlord in support
More of Stephen’s Mutatawwi’a
Troops deployed for the second game, 8 points a-side, from the Crusader point of view.

Alan ran a big Chain of Command game, 28mm figures, with a combined British and Norwegian force trying to hold off a German advance.

All is quiet on the northern front
Germans advance
More Germans
British defenders
Norwegians
Light German Armour
German Heavyweight?
German troops hold the wall.

And finally, corporate clashes in deep space, Tony, Chris and Eric try out A Billion Suns. Not a straight up space battle, but operations spread across multiple tables with each player having different contracts to fulfil.

A pair of freighters

Approaching a jump gate
Two British Heavy Cruisers exit a jump gate
Rescuing some lifepods
British Destroyer Squadron

Starship Fleet

John Lambert gives us some background on his new fleet of spaceships…

Having enjoyed Gaslands, I was intrigued to learn that the Author, Mike Hutchinson’s next venture was going to be a journey into space, entitled A Billion Suns. I signed up to be a playtester and purchased some excellent American Republic spaceships from Brigade Models. Here’s the result:

What about the game?

I’d never been wowed by Space games that resembled a Naval game and this has many interesting ideas that I really like. Players act as CEOs whose game objective is to fulfil a contract. These are either Commercial or Military in nature and it looks like there will be 12 of each. Each player has an Admiral’s Helm which the player uses to boost his ships capabilities for the turn (seize initiative, speed, firepower, defence shields) and a profit and loss tracker. There are no fleet lists, players have to judge what to buy to fulfil the contract but will only win if they are in profit at the end of the game. Deployment is by jump point. These are placed by the player and ships enter and leave the table via these jump points. It allows for playing between two tables, which sounds great for multi player games as fleets can jump onto a different table! Gravitational effects are governed by Ship size and Planetoid size. We hope to get another game in at the second meeting in April.