Wooden Wars: DunDraCon after action report

Bromhead: You mean your only plan is to stand behind a few feet of mealie bags and wait for the attack?

~ Zulu movie

1st interplanetary Regulars lead by an officer mounted on a V-Rex

Baron Bomburt's Grenadier Clampers!

General on personalized mount

This past weekend was DunDraCon, where I ran two scheduled and one invite-only games of  Wooden Wars, the Queen Victoria's Robot Wars variant. The timing was a bit tough with me working scads of hours on Neverwinter Online, and then pulling a couple of full on all-nighters to get troops painted. But I made it through, and said troops will be shipped out next week as one of my Kickstarter reward armies, after I get some close up pictures of them, that is -  and all in all were a joy to paint. I am happy that they will be going to a good home!

Special thanks to my good friend Peter Grose who also painted up his army of QVRW for the convention. His work is stunning, as you will see below.

This posting is chock full of pictures of the game in action, and light on narrative. I hope you enjoy! 

Tesla gun battery by Peter Grose

Steel Dragoons

More Steel Dragoons!

The Battle of Hypzig II

The two scenarios I ran were classic Wooden Wars "capture-the-enemy-flag" set ups, with the additional objective of capturing and holding the ancient "alien ruins" in the center. If players captured a flag, they got the medal sitting next to it. Likewise, whoever had possession of the ruins at the end of the game got the medal for that as well.  As you will see, many a unit was sent to the knocked-over pile over a piece of shiny.

A hard fought battle for the prize

O'Rourke's A'Drift 

Very hasty defenses!

Later in the evening  we did a playtest based upon Rourke's Drift. As I had forgotten my wooden blocks, hasty works were created with some cardboard and stones found in the hotel's garden. One side was made of all humans, with two units of infantry, two batteries of Tesla guns and one squadron of Steel Dragoons. The attacking force was comprised of three robot units, one squad of Steel Dragoons and 25 reinforcement tokens to replace troops. I also allowed the first robot unit that was fully wiped out to come back on the board.  

The Domino Formation lives up to it's name!

Dragoons charge a square

The aftermath- only the foot officer remains.

One unit of elite Robots were armed (literally) with nothing but attack clamps (claws). This unit could not fire, but did twice the attacks in melee - very scary!  Thinking that speed was the best bet, the commander of this unit kept putting it in march column, aka the "domino" formation, with not unexpected results. Said commander has perhaps learned his lesson, although now thinks that with a Mounted Officer in front to take the brunt, this tactic is still valid. Only time (and pointing and laughing) will tell. 

 I'll run this again, but next time we need at least 100 robots and two cavalry on the attacking side.

That's all for now - thanks again to all that came to play, watch, and cheer in general.  Thanks also go out to the staff at DunDraCon, especially Roderick, who were super accommodating.