More boardgames: Undaunted Normandy and Lock'n'Load

[apologies...the photos in this post are more rubbish than usual...too much glare!]

Oops.... another couple of weeks without a blog post!  If only work wouldn't keep asking me to do stuff life would be so much easier!

I managed to get in another couple of boardgames over the last 2 week's (boardgames seem to be something I play more than ever at the moment)

First up is Undaunted Normandy from Osprey Games.  I picked up a copy of this a month or 2 ago and hadn't had a chance to give it an outing.  It's a small and quite simple card driven WW2 squad level game set, as the title suggests, in Normandy, and features US and German squads fighting it out in the bocage heavy terrain of Normandy.

Incidentally Osprey have just announce the next game in the series which is set in North Africa and features the LRDG and adds vehicles to mix.

Players hold a deck of cards representing their infantry and scouts as well as squad leaders and a platoon leader.  These don't appear on the board but allow you to reinforce or reactivate your troops .

Each turn players draw 4 cards and play these out.  As well as  allowing you to activate your squads or leaders your hand may also include Fog of War cards.  These don't do anything except take up vital space in your hand and can quickly become very annoying.  Your Scout units are also able to add FoW cards into your opponents hand to slow them down.

The catch is that infantry teams need to be able to get to objectives to take control of them (and win the game) but they can only move onto tiles which have already been scouted by Scout team, and each time you scout a tile an extra fog of ward card gets added representing increasingly difficult command and control as the battlefield expands... clever...

The leader cards let you move cards around between your hand, the discard pile and from your supply cards.  As units take casualties cards get removed from your deck although some of these can be replaced by leaders

It's a nifty little system... one of those games which is simple but makes a good job of representing squad level combat.  There are 10 scenarios in the book...later ones introduce MGs, mortars and snipers.  Scenarios take about an hour or so to play through and can be linked as a campaign.  We played #1 which is a straightforward, even match between 2 patrols.  We quickly found that getting caught in the open is painful and that Scouts are really vital to open up paths across the battlefield.

A really neat little game which I'd highly recommend.

I also played another game of Lock'n'Load which I thought I had played recently but when I looked through blog posts I discovered it was almost 2 years ago (doesn't time fly!).  My original post is here.

The game is a relatively simple ASL style game but without too many confusing optional rules...at least in the starter set: I suspect as you play additional modules it could become more complex.  The starter set which can bought at a real bargain price of around £13 online, includes scenarios for WW2 and for Vietnam.  As we'd had a go at the WW2 version I was keen to try the Vietnam scenario.  The rules appear to be the same for both games: again I suspect it gets much more varied in the full game.

In the scenario a US patrol played by Andrew advanced towards a village defended by a few VC troops.  Of course the Vietnamese had a sneaky ambush ready and the first US troops that advanced into the open where quickly hit with MG and small arms fire and driven back to their entry point.

The US forces then took a much more cautious approach although they were under pressure as the scenario has a time limit.  Very unsportingly they called in a couple of artillery strikes which caused a lot of damage and the VC forces were whittled down piece by piece.  I had a pretty powerful VC sniper lurking in the jungle who proved rubbish at actually hitting anything and was eventually wiped out in a US bayonet charge.  On the last turn of the game the last US objective was stubbornly defended by a VC officer manning the remaining MG but a concerted round of fire wiped him out in a heroic last stand and the US were able to liberate the village...I'm not sure there was a lot left to liberate after the artillery fire though!

It's a really nice little system which plays out easily in an evening and I'm looking forward to trying out some more advanced scenarios with vehicles and support weapons etc.