Hot Blood & Cold Steel

Category: games

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 07

    Dateline 3127.130-134 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia It is looking increasingly likely that there will be a cease-fire to allow political negotiations, but this is not yet fully agreed. More negotiations with local commanders about the evacuation of the Infantry Brigade near ENSEMBLE. The MAFC General still cannot give assurances. I order…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 06

    Dateline 3127.125-130 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia Political negotiations are proceeding at a fast pace, with the Earther Attache appearing to be playing the key role of middleman. From reading the news we appear to be coming out well, MAFC are attacked for causing needless civilian deaths and throwing their weight around.…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 05

    Dateline 3127.120-124 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia Having made sure that the INN reporters were fully briefed on what we had offered (and been rebuffed) we then offered to withdraw completely from the West continent and for that part of it held by us on 3127.100 to be declared a DMZ. We…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 04

    Dateline 3127.115-119 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia Following our previously agreed strategy the DRC Government wanted to appear ultra reasonable to external parties (and we’d spent some time working up our DRC Press Briefing and also making sure that we had briefed the INN reporters covering our war. On Cromwell’s Land (the DMC…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 03

    Dateline 3127.110-104 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia The Martians have landed! They made a major landing with most of a GF division just outside OLYMPUS. My shuttle landing reinforcements for OLYMPUS diverted to ENSEMBLE as the nearest friendly location. A major assault on OLYMPUS took place with indiscriminate bombardment by the Martians,…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 02

    Dateline 3127.105-109 General Buck’s advanced HQ on West Continent, Cydonia Operation VALKYRIE has been a major success! A successful seaborne assault by 3rd Tank Brigade has taken DEANVILLE cutting off the line of retreat of an enemy armoured division (although at a cost of 3,000 civilian casualties and ejecting an enemy infantry brigade West along…

  • Megagame: Invasion from Mars 01

    Invasion from Mars is one of Megagame Makers megagames, designed by Jim Wallman and played in Anerley Town Hall in south London. The Invasion from Mars website has the game rules and the map as well as some background info on the downloads page. I played the part of General Stanley Buck, a loyal and competent…

  • Another side of the COIN

    I ran my game of being an Afghan farmer “The Other Side of the COIN” at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group’s (CLWG) annual conference yesterday afternoon. This was its second outing, you can see my onside report from the first run here. Since the last outing the game has developed further to address some of…

  • What you missed at CLWG in September 2011

    Three interesting games and a load of cake! We started with Peter Merritt’s 1814 political game which looked at how Napoleon’s Marshals dealt with the oncoming defeat of France and the transfer of power. Following that Andrew Hadley brought out his game about the Athenian invasion of Sicily. We then finished with Rob Cooper’s game about…

  • Economics of New Colonies

    I often play in Jim Wallman’s hard SF games set in the universe he’s created. I’ve been thinking about how new colonies get set up and the sort of funding they need. There is a lot of infrastructure required to build a viable colony on a new system. Firstly you need to survey it to…

  • Ars Magica – Lumen

    Recently Lumen has been on a trip to Waddenzee with several of her friends from the covenant at Triamore. (See myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thelemur/ars/ars%20wus/1224b_april_wu.html for the write up). From her perspective the journey was mostly uneventful apart from: premonitions of the attack on the ship they were using (during which she mostly made attackers fall asleep); some searching…

  • The Other Side of the COIN

    An on-side report of how the first run of ‘The Other Side of the COIN’ went. In all a fun day with a lot of useful positive feedback on how to make it better for the next time we play it, and there will be a next time.