Warhammer Dark Ages and WWII Naval

I got to play some Warhammer Dark Ages for the first time recently and really enjoyed it.

If you've ever played Warhammer Fantasy Battles before this game will be very familer, it's essentially WFB without magic and monsters. 

I've played very few historical games in the past and I can't really compare any historical systems with the Warhammer system.

I'm sure fans of historical gaming may point out that the Warhammer system is not historically accurate.  Fortunately I'm not to concerned about historical accuracy.  I'm more then happy to sacrifice accuracy and realism for smoother game play and thats pretty much what I found in this game.  Game play was easy to learn lots of die rolling to keep you guessing.

Different troop types had different strengths and weaknesses that came into play throughout the battle.  Cavalry was hard hitting in a charge, the Vikings had berserker's and blood thirsty troops that could cause tremendous damage if they could get into melee combat.  These strengths were balanced out in different ways.  One of my Viking units was equipped with two hand weapons and could then double their attacks once in melee combat.  These were balanced out by a weak unit of slingers that practically wiped them out as they crossed the battlefield.

The scenario we played was set up as Vikings against Normans, with heroes bearing names like Harold, William and Sven the Beer Belly (I think).

Over all I enjoyed this game.  I don't see myself picking up the rules, but I would definitely play this game with frineds or at a con.  

If you own this game and figures you could easily use them as an Empire, Britonian or Norse army with a few additions such as wizards, monstrous hosts etc.

After the Dark Ages game we played a WWII naval game created by our host.  

His game is based on Axis and Allies and set up for double blind movement to introduce an element of uncertainty.  Each side had a hex map representing the main, full sized battle area and counters representing ships and aircraft.

  

As combatants detect each other their models are placed on the main battle map where battles are played out.

We had a lot of fun trying this game out and our host graciously listened to our suggestions for possible improvements in game play. 

The double blind movement scheme was the most interesting aspect of this game.  It forced players to really consider how best to their limited search resources in order to find the enemy.  Once the enemy was found players would have to figure out how to conduct an attack while at the same time protect their own ships for enemies seen and unseen.

The game mechanics were easy to learn and only thing this game really needed was some polish to work out minor details; I see this game becoming con favorite.

Thats all for now,

Screech