The Commander Series Forum

Yes folks - it's that time again ... FWC BOOT CAMP … “want to know more?”

The 2016 6mm Future War Commander Boot Camp is being held at the Tudor Arms*, Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, UK over the weekend of Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd May.

Even if you are an experienced veteran Galactic Overlord ... you really do need to attend this event, even if just to keep-up your FWC Continuous Professional Development qualification ...

This year’s activities will include a number of interesting and mind-bending scenarios – including the return of the much loved and topically updated multi-player ‘Mad Max – Fury Road’ scenario and also (by request) a 1:1 head-to-head Encounter game round. More details will be published nearer the time, so watch for additional posts… rumour also has it that there might even be a ‘bounty-hunter’ scenario in the pipeline – man v machine !!!

Main games are Saturday and Sunday, but if we get enough takers options will be considered for structured activities on Saturday evening, or even the Friday evening as well … let us know your thoughts?

Register your interest in attending here first on this very forum, along with any questions … more details will follow. So keep a watch out.
I thank you

*Good quality, value for money B&B accommodation available at the venue, along with lunch and evening meals (& good beer). There's lots of parking and even a bird sanctuary within walking distance (wow!). What more could you ask for ...??? (Well, there's always that lottery win I suppose!)

See info on last years fun gathering in the post below this one

REpating yourself methinks....

IanS

Indeed - a good book can always be read more than once

Also - there are those dedicated 'ard corp FWC players that only read the FWC part of the forum.

Will you be joining us this year purchance?

Am I really the first/only respondent to this? Is it still going ahead? I have a couple of 6mm sci fi armies that have yet to see action - 1 human hover & 1 nasty big roboty thingummies. Can they come and play please?
MarkJ

Mark,

Yes indeed,we are still going ahead as planned. You are more than welcome along with you armies and any terrain you wish to display to share with all.

Drop shedman a line, his email is at the bottom of this link

http://twomarshals.blogspot.co.uk/p/fwc-bootcamp.html

or you can contact me here

Yes it is on and you are welcome to come along either for one day or for the weekend

The pub does accommodation and i believe Paul "Dropship" Stanton is already booked in.

No doubt there will be the mad-max style game plus other scenarios on the saturday.

On Sunday I'm thinking of doing a Capture the Capital mini-campaign.

Definitely no Star-gate games this time round

Alan

Sounds excellent, thanks!
I shall look at pub, etc. at the weekend.
In the meantime, I'd better get the toys out and have the odd practice, buff up me hover bovvers and shine the chrome on me robots!
Markj

Mark,

Check with the pub but worth noting the pub have instigated a policy only booking a Saturday night if you opt for a Friday night too unless it's within a month of when you want to stay.

Not sure if it's just a mid to late summer policy but clearly they use it to maximize occupancy levels.

Mention to them you are attending our gaming event as they usually allow us some leeway.

Steve

SCENARIOS:

We have 3 games planned already -

1). A 'Mad-Max' Gastown Run multi-player game - a homage to Fury Road ... build your 'War-Rig' and join the madness - get those Scavengers out on the dusty road!

2). A 2,500pt 1:1 Encounter Game (scenario 7 in the book) - vanilla lists and we'll probably play more than 1 round of this

3). A Woken Furies - deCom assignment multi-player game: "making New Hok safe for a New Century" ... destroy 'mimints' and collect points ... and we all know what points make!

Want to know more? ... then message me here and I'll arrange for the full briefing pack to be emailed to you

Mark (Caratacon) - are you joining us???

Don't miss out - "Big Badda Booom!"

Sadly, I can't make it I'm due to be working in the North East the week before and after, which is 200 miles the wrong side of home from you guys - and home is 100 miles away anyway. *sigh* maybe next year Have a great time
MarkJ

Count Down to Boot Camp ... only 3 more days to go.
Final list of events is as follows:

Friday Evening: a Scenario 11 (from the book) multi-player game.
Each player brings a 1,000pt army (no CO but at least 1 HQ) and then we randomly select two matching point armies and one is allocated as attacker and one defender.

Saturday Morning: Mad Max Fury Road: Gas Town Run.
1,100pts of Hunter-scavenger lists per player. No off-table artillery or Orbitals or Preliminary Bombardments. Players must include a 50pt War-Rig in their list. Objective is to get your War-Rig to Gas Town, fill er up and get back again safely. This is a multi-player free for all game.

Saturday afternoon: Scenario 7 Encounter Games. 2,500pts 1:1 games - vanilla lists straight from the book or website.

Sunday: Woken Furies - deCom teams - multi-player game with all players with 1,250pt deCom teams (restricted tech) against umpire controlled 'mimint' demented robots ... fought out in the ruined city of Drava on New Hok.

If we have time on Sunday afternoon ... more Scenario 7 Encounter games.

Full scenario briefings will be posted here after the event with photos

Well gents, thank you all for participating fully & wholeheartedly in this years FWC Boot Camp.

We redeployed from the pub on Friday night to Rodger's Control Centre @ Nymphsfield (due to unforeseen and over-running building work in the pub skittle alley) to play a 3,000pts a side Scenario 11 Surgical Strike scenario game. Only to all be investigated horribly by Gordon's Grey Aliens up the Kyber Pass on Rodgers fantastic N.W.Frontier planet.

Oh how Gordon laughed as with Rodger as his Human ally, he took Graham's Species X31, Al's "Clan" and my 'Humans' to pieces in surgical fashion. I am not sure Al had recovered fully from being 'mind-warped' by Saturday morning ... but that might just be what he looks like early on a Saturday morning anyway!

Saturday saw us all line up, engines roaring for Mad Max Fury Road , Gas Town Run, or as it quickly became known "Wacky Races"! With 6 Hunter-scavenger armies all lines up on a 6 foot wide table edge to race 8 foot across to Gas Town to re-fuel their War-rigs, it was all bound to end in tears, especially as all being 'blood-thirsty' they all ended up attacking each other in the the first or 2nd move of the game!

Hmmm ... note to self, maybe having Gas-Town in the middle of the table and all the clans starting in opposing corners or sides might have been wiser in hindsight ... hey ho!
By the end of game move 3, 3 of the 6 armies had torn each other the pieces leaving Paul, Mike and Steve to stumble forward for another turn before breaking, and not a single army or 'War-Rig' had made it to the half-way point to Gas-Town. Ah well, fun was had by all but maybe next year we'll go for the alternative deployment, as it might last a turn or two longer.
We saw a few fantastic War-Rigs, so this is a theme we can build on.

Saturday mid afternoon we played 2,500pt 1:1 Scenario 7 from the FWC book.
This saw Graham & Al fight it out to (a 25% casualties inflicted) draw on Gordon's Ice world. Gordon had Red Guard and Al had an American Republic army.
Rodger's Human's took on Paul's Khazari on a Red Mars world, where after a few unpleasant experiences with a Khazari mining machine, Rodger's superiority in hover armour brought the Khazari to break-point.
On the Soviet Garden City world table, Steve's Kraytonian (with 2 massive gunships) and not much else, took apart my Neo-Soviets in clinical fashion ... with not even a scratch on that garish pink pain work. This was despite a brave attempt by a solo neo-soviet gunship crew, flying into the jaws of death when only a double 1 would allow them to pass their command roll & they did it! But to no avail.

Saturday later afternoon Steve & Rodger played Paul and myself on the Soviet Garden city using 4 contemporary armies at 1,200pts each. This saw Rodger's Humans almost left in the lurch as Steve's Marine Corp failed to deploy - for two game turns in a row - as the jaws of Pauls' PacFed and my neo-soviets tightened around Rodger's throat. But in true Marine fashion, just as Rodger was facing certain doom, in rode the Marines to save the day. With Paul's Pac Fed below break-point and the Marines starting to take chunks out of the neo-soviet APCs and infantry we called it an honourable draw!
Al & Gordon were still playing the Scenario 7 Encounter game, as the weather closed in around them and at 20cm visibility on a 4 foot by 6 foot table it was bound to be a slow and cautious game!

Sunday morning saw Gordon and myself Umpire Woken Furies, as 5 intrepid deCom teams set out into the Uncleared, with 1,250pts worth of restricted tech forces, to root-out & destroy Mimints (blood-thirsty demented war-droids) and undertake various tasks of deactivation or reactivation in abandoned fascilities. Mike's Eldar made rapid progress but fell foul of a massive 'mimint' ambush as he tried to enter an abandoned Corporate HQ to recover long lost code to deactivate the defencive satellite orbitals, taking out his force but his CO made it safely back to the green-zone. The remaining players all moved forward into the Uncleared, conducting sweeps, destroying mimints, and tagging buildings as cleared.
The deeper they went into the Uncleared the more Mimints they disturbed and the bigger and nastier the Mimints got with Steve's Marines and Al's Squats both disturbing a large Co-op Cluster and a number of very aggressive and nasty 'massive' Mimints in the process. All remaining deCom teams discovered valuable Code or in Rodger's case took down some rather unfriendly archaeologists and found an alien artifact of interest to Mandrake Corp. Paul's PacFeds cleared a large tank-farm, with some interesting cloning facilities, but went over his break-point forcing his with-drawl to the green-zone. In the final sweep of the tower block area, Al's Squats fell foul of two nasty big mimints that took out his only transport, leaving 12 stands of dwarfs with the prospect of a very long walk back to the green zone through the high radiation area, with no chance of survival, but the Marines came to the rescue with 3 free spaces in their Landraider's meaning that through careful rotation all of the dwarf infantry could be saved ... so fellowship between man & dwarf was confirmed ... as Rodger's humans legged it back to the green zone as fast as their hover-tanks would allow!
Great game all, and the mechanisms worked well ... I'll try and capture them all in writing so we can play it, or something similar again in future. My thanks to Gordon for his co-umpiring that made the game flow smoothly and relatively swiftly.

Another great Boot Camp ... plus some good ideas for next year. The Massive House Rules worked ok and for a change the recrimination phases were few and far between!
Great to see Dave briefly & watch him eat ... he still couldnt be tempted to play FWC (yet).

I'll post up a few photo's on my blog "Aetius-last-of-the-Romans"

Thanks, Gordon, Mike, Al, Graham, Rodger, Steve and especially Paul for making the journey up and staying over to participate.

Cheers
Mark

Cracking stuff

And here is my blog of the weekend

http://twomarshals.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/...

Looks/sounds ace

What were the House rules for Massive's? We were just considering saying only fire from other Massive units could suppress them...

We ran some general principles for the weekend (see below) which supplemented the House Massive (remix) Rules:

BOOTCAMP GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

Only FWC Rule Book or web-site Battlegroup lists allowed
No 5% leeway on points in any games or scenarios
No Bug or Swarm lists
All Infantry (other than Bikes & Buggies & Infantry Support) on a minimum of 30mm frontage
All troops in Built-up-Areas (BAUs) - target hit on a 5 or 6
All troops in Hard cover such as a Protected Building or Bunker Complex are hit on a 6
Flank and Rear shot modifiers do not apply to elements in BAUs or Hard Cover
All Smart Missiles are capable of hitting Air targets as well as Ground targets (regardless of any designations in the lists)

MASSIVE HOUSE RULES:
- Independent - No command penalty for distance
- Stubborn - Never fall back
- Elite - No command penalty for Assault
- Save against Smart Missiles (after Shields are destroyed) - evasion still applies
- No auto-suppression from artillery
- Only suppressed on 6s
- * weapons have no effect (not even for suppression)
- Shields may be recharged via initiative or after a successful command order

In reality we had very few Massives (other than those very tiresome Kraytonian Air Massives) in the 1:1 games.
In the Woken Furies scenario there were a few deployed & I allowed them to assault out of ambush - making them especially dangerous, but even with the tech restrictions in the scenario and smaller deComm forces, none of them lasted more than a game move.

It's a difficult one to get the balance right ... the one Massive that survived longest (at was never destroyed) was Gordon's Grey Alien Mothership in the Friday night Scenario 11 game. It survived 4 game turns worth of 36+ smart missile attacks ... but then it was Gordon himself as All Powerful Supreme Evil Master of The Universe at the controls wha, ha, ha, haaa! (I quote).

Cheers!

I like the idea of only fire from other Massives will suppress Massives, it's certainly worth a play-test.

Seems to work well enough and was easy - our main issue was Massives get shot by EVERYTHING and go "Turn 1 - shields down, suppressed, Turn 2 - no action or dead, Turn 3 - dead"