Lots of miniatures gaming at PAGE tonight. First up, Colin and Anthony played out their match for the second round of the 40k Combat Patrol Tournament:

Colin and Anthony prep the field of war!

The forces of the Hive Mind are ever-present!

Boo!

We also had seven people playing Battlefleet Gothic! This was by far the largest showing for BFG so far at PAGE, and especially noteworthy as none of the Harmons, our regular fleet commanders, were involved. Steve Smith and Matt Lechtenberg provided the models, but I think they made several converts for future fleet admirals!

Steve Smith's converted Space Marine Battle Barge.

It's minor compared to the paintjobs, but note the precision hatches cut into Steve's bases to mark fire arcs. Very neatly done, and helps playability a great deal.

The fleets begin to mix it up! Note the Thunderhawks delivering all manner of lethal assaults unto the renegades!

Part of Matt Lechtenberg's Chaos fleet, and crazy awesome space board.

I really could have sworn I took more photos of Matt’s fleet and amazing space board, but I guess somehow I whiffed on that. Probably too focused on getting hammered in my own game. Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead! Literally… Some of the first damage in our 3-player game came when a torpedo shot made its way around the sun, my Infidel escort narrowly escaping early game disaster, but my Hades cruiser boosting full speed ahead, directly into the torpedos! Blindsided by the shot across the sun, the ship was wracked with explosions, but they only served to auger its wrath further!

Although I’d read the rules some time previously, this was my first game of BFG. Initial impressions were very favorable. It’s pretty streamlined and seemed to have a good amount of tactics. I could believe it will also become even more strategic with a larger fleet—we kept things very simple for a first time out, merely a cruiser and an escort each in my game. My biggest concern game-wise is that it’s fairly fiddly with models. As facing is important, and straightline trajectories critical for many aspects, precise movement and measuring is important. Measuring stem to stem is also frequently a bit more difficult to spot than simply base to base. But, among friends, those are minor qualms, and the speed slowdowns are recouped by the relatively low numbers of models. Although backlogged on models and going into a typically busy period of the year with little gaming, I’m looking forward to playing this again and perhaps building up a small fleet.

Finally, in closing, boardgaming also happened! Perhaps most interestingly, Kurt and Jeff continued knocking out round after round of playtesting for their new WWII commandos game.

More photos from the evening are available in the Flickr set.