FWC Bootcamp 2014 - Sunday

The Fifth FWC Bootcamp, the world's premier (only) organised gaming weekend for 6mm Future War Commander, took place on 31st May and 1st June 2014 at the Tudor Arms, Slimbridge. Gloucestershire.

On Sunday there were 9 players, Colin, Graham, Gordon, Mark, Mike, Paul, Steve P, Steve from Caerphilly and myself

Sunday is traditionally the mini-campaign day and I put on A Stargate Too Far - details of the scenario can be found here.

With 9 players we set up 4 tables and drew cards to see what teams we were in

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4

The Teams
North Team was Graham & Steve from Caerphilly with EuroFeds, Mark with Neo-Soviets, Mike with Eldritch and I ran out my Pax Arcs again. We deployed the Eldritch on Table 1,  the Neo-Soviets on Table 2 and the EuroFeds and Pax Arcs on Table 4

South Team was Colin with a Star Wars army, Gordon with MacGregor Clan and Paul and Steve with Kraytonians.  The MacGregor clan deployed on Table 1, Star Wars on Table 2 and the Kray Twins on Table 3.

Eldritch forces take a hammering

MacGregors activate the Iris on Gate 1S

EuroFed come to the rescue

The Kray Twins

Table 1
Initially this was Northern Eldritch against Southern MacGregors who were both pretty cagey until the Southern Kray Twins turned up from Table 3 and started shooting the Eldritch to pieces. Northern EuroFeds came to the aid but the Krays shot them up as well. The Eldritch reached break point but refused to break and put up an astounding rearguard with a few infantry before teleporting to the security of Table 4. Therefore Table 1 was left under the control of the Southern Team

Pax Arcs teleport into the Star War force

Pax Arcs wish they hadn't

EuroFed teleport to the rescue

Star Wars close in for the kill

Table 2
As the Southern Star Wars  force was mainly infantry nothing happened until half the Northern Pax Arc force teleported into the Star Wars army to help the Northen Neo-Soviets. This was a big mistake on the part of the Pax Arcs as they were close assaulted by the Star Wars force and almost broken. The EuroFeds teleported in from Table 1 to help the Pax Arcs but the engagement ground to a halt leaving Table 2 contested.

Table 3
Only the Southern Kray Twins deployed to this table. As the Northern force was engaged elsewhere  no combat took place here

Table 4 
As this was only occupied by Northern Forces and with one of the Stargates locked down with an Iris and the other defended by Pax Arcs, EuroFeds and Eldritch this became a no-go area for Southern forces.

Outcome
Eventually a stalemate occurred as neither side could risk an assault on the other so we called time on it and counted up the Victory Points

Northern Team - 3 VPs - 1  for controlling Table 4 and 2  for 4 Stargate codes collected

Southern Team - 6 VPs - 2 for controlling Tables 1 and 3, 1 for breaking the Eldritch and 3 for 6 4 Stargate codes collected

Therefore a victory to the Southern forces

Conclusions
An enjoyable game with lots of choices to make about where to deploy, where to teleport to and when to use the Irises

We felt that having an odd number of tables would have been better as stalemate could have been avoided.

We also considered using more smaller tables, maybe 1 per player, with one Stargate per table and recycling the Chance Cards as they disappeared very quickly. The Stargate Irises made defending tables easy although only 3 were rolled on

You can never have enough FWC
We did have time to fit in a  final one on  one game using the forces from the Stargate game. My Pax Arcs faced off Gordon's MacGregor Clan on Table 1.

Playing on his evil but lovely hedgrowed terrain was a nightmare compounded by me rolling a blunder that took reduced my HQ from CV9 to CV6 for the whole game. Gordon took me apart with his flamethrowers.

I was glad to see the sun set on this game.

Thoughts on the weekend
Another excellent Bootcamp, great players, armies, terrain and scenarios and hardly any recrimination phases.

FWC is a wonderful set of rules but even after several years of playing it there is still a lot that is open to interpretation and, in my opinion, rules support from the author is minimal at best.

My thanks to all who played and special thanks to Shaun at Dreamholme for casting up the Stargates. I've had hours of enjoyment watching the Stargate film and TV Series for historical research  so...

Chevron One, encoded.
Chevron Two, encoded.
Chevron Three, encoded.
Chevron Four, encoded.
Chevron Five, locked.

FWC Bootcamp 2015 - same place, same format and almost the same time next year

More photos can be found here
The Saturday report can be found here