first. happy Sunday y’all

It’s the XLBS Show! Happy Sunday fellow CoG’s….

Well, I’m still working on my modern warriors from Spectre Miniatures. Also finally getting around to building my HMMV’s and MRAPS plus Techincal vehicals with weapons to be mounted in the back. I’m also waiting on some terrian from ‘Black Site Studios’.

Currently playing with the rules from Spectre Operations 2.0 and now after lessening to the SITREP Podcast folks from their Twitch cast ‘Generals SHow’ a week ago, the rules from ‘BATTLESPACE’ by Robert Salter. Pretty cool for playing SOLO or Co-Op games. Thanks go out to @stvitusdancern and @oriskany and the rest of the crew at SITREP for sharing the info of this wonderful game. In thier lastest podcast this week, they interviewed Robert Salters.

Also, who all managed to get an ‘Indomitus Box’ ordered? When the Pre-Order weekend happened I was “you know what out of luck” as the folks I was ordering from had their order cut by 75% right before the weekend of ordering… When it all went down I thought to myself, “I can live without this box and I shall”. I had pretty much laid that event behind me. But then this week several of the folks who did get boxes ordered started putting them up for sale at only a $10 to $25 markup. So I looked into it and did order one for $15 over the US $200 set price. I’m looking forward once again to tearing into the ‘Indomitus Box’ to kick off 9th Edition properly.

Of course, I would have preferred to order from https://store.ontabletop.com/ but as I live in the USA that is forbidden!!! Stupid GW rules……..

I’m clearly up to late painting Uruk Hai pikemen!

Is it just the radio version this week as the screen is completely black for me?

Glad our Army manuals are a good resource for ya @warzan.
Gotta crash and catch the rest tomorrow gnight all!

Happy Sunday!

Just think either how much more Warren could fit into his D&D dols-lhouse, or how much less space it would take up if it were 15mm? 😉

Happy Sunday 😁 awww I missed the radio show weds and love alternate timelines. Love the Harry Turtledove alternative history World War novels, that’s the series where alien space lizards with modern equipment decide to conquer earth right smack in the middle of WW2. Will go back and listen.

In the Iliad of the Ancient Greeks, we see a poem by Homer set during the ten-year siege of Troy. From these writings, many characters thought to be both fact and fiction have been born. Agamemnon and Achilles, Paris and Hector and of course Helen. Whilst this poem of old features many Human characters it also features things less believable too. We see the Gods of that era Ares, Hermes, Hera to name but a few. These beings of power seem to be looking down from the heavens nudging and seducing playing games with the Humans of the time and finally, we have my favourites the Monsters, I won’t name any and you will see why in the next paragraph.

I have to admit to being super impressed with just how quickly you have been getting the codebreakers recently and know that you are keen researchers and fact finders and many of you may already have access to or own the Iliad, so with that in mind my riddle it this.

Which monster are you looking for?

So the thinking behind this riddle was to use the Illiad as misdirection but with the key components written in the text using it as a reference. The first part of the first sentence is written to look like “In the IIiad of the” this looks like three :eyes: for the word Iliad, the last human name and god name in the following sentences were both known for their beauty. The saying Beauty is in the eye of the……to lead to Beholder was what you were looking for. This was the very subtle clue to the answer. Other pointers to Beholder are “looking down from”, “you will see”.

The final one is in the last question, “Which monster are you looking for? You looking would be a Beholder.

The Saturday Weekender kinda had Warren nearly give it away too and the subject matter fo the D & D giveaway.

Warren wanted a tough one. If this makes no sense I can only apologise guys. Lloyd said my XP would be split to go to those who solved it so when Boredsnores got it I put in the answer to bump my XP up so there would be more to go around.

Thanks, @templar007 . 😀

Other modern skirmish systems we’ve talked about, and even demo’d once, is CONTACT FRONT.

Good job on the fire teams, @warzan . Indeed, two fire teams in not infantry squads (at least US Army infantry squads, which I’m assuming you’re using since the M-16 family weapons you have and the use of US Army TM / FMs), + a Sgt squad leader.

The third fire team is usually a US Marine thing.

For those who don’t have time or drill to through Army TMs / FMs, we went through some very basic infantry formations in this OTT video here. Granted, it mostly squad-based, and for WW2, but the fundamentals are the same.

I like the cooperative angle of your game ideas as well. Given the extreme asymmetry of these modern engagements, Modern War operations are very tough in most traditional wargames. Who wants to play the insurgents, and be mowed down by enemies SO MUCH BETTER than yours?

Also, insurgents usually have very asymmetrical victory conditions. The two sides are literally trying to do very different things (i.e., they are NOT just trying to kill each other or take / defend a given objective). The problem sometimes is that insurgent / terrorist “objectives” are often very unsavory in a fun game. It’s often fun playing the villain, but maybe not when you’re charged with blowing up a hospital, set off a chemical bomb, massacre civilians, etc.

Better when everyone is playing the “good guys” in a cooperative system. 🙂

Never tried a d24. Interesting.

Regarding sunlight and darkness and so on …

VERY important part of modern ops. Special operations guys (or even regular Army as far back as Gulf One) engage at night.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/liveblogentry/scorpions-of-the-desert-infantry-movement-types/

AH-6 and MH-6 are modern variants of the original OH-6 Cayuse, which goes back as far as Vietnam.

Shared Resource concept – this is epic! Other games also use similar ideas … like grenades or other “support expendables” in Valor & Victory. For personal ammo, as much as they can, these units use weapons that all take the same ammo loads in the same mags, so mags can be tossed back and forth to keep overall weight of fire and suppression best for the group. Never mind military or tactical realism, we see stuff like this happen all the time in movies, e.g., “I’m out!” “My last mag! Make ’em count!”

Speaking of suppression:

I really like the idea of successful suppression / fire superiority checks NOT taking a resource point, but failed checks costing one. Perfect. A good suppression has sights on the enemy (who for some reason fails to relocate / displace) and every time he pops his head up, a round snaps by over his head. The WHOLE ENEMY SQUAD (I use that term loosely with insurgents) ducks down, terrified. Others can speak on this with more authority, but in more recent Iraq / Afghanistan / Syria conflicts we see time and time again whole mobs on insurgents pinned down simply by the THREAT of one sniper, marksman, or GPMG.

As opposed to the wrong way to do it, where rounds are just hammered out at cyclic ROF. The enemy can TELL it’s panic fire, and rush out through some blind spot. Not only are you burning through rounds WAY too fast, but accuracy is for shit after round 5 or so … and your a-gunner crew now has to change his barrel … Oops.

Great project! I wish it was public so I could put some points on it! 😀 😀 😀

Does the redemption page need resetting for this week’s code?
Edit: Fixed!

Yay the lunacy of the XLBS can begin.

Ooh the mythical cogites tribe nice.

You wouldn’t think homer was a secret author to seems such as cluts in the cartoon?

It may be the time they have satellite coverage of enemy blindness @warzan

Good to see that military security is alive and well ? Lol

Was that not in a fast&furious film @avernos

A Firefox II mission. @warzan

https://youtu.be/9IdsUpgGlf0 @warzan Lol

That reminds me of the mobile town’s in the something kingdom film @avernos
Nope it’s Mortal engines.

More great work from button winner’s.

Thanks for the golden button, I am super excited about it.

Sunday! Coffee! XLBS! Huzza!

The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen Chinook helicopters transport in their slings is a Giant. Or half a dozen giants.

Thinking about the D24 (PSA: don’t google D24 you only get a lot of weird diesel cars) you could do it with a coin and a D12. One player flips the coin to determine AM or PM and the other player throws the D12 for the hour of day 😉

Gerry and Ben’s reaction to the drawers mirrored mine 🙂