AT-43: Small-table action

Last night Justin came around for a few games of AT-43 with Marc and myself. Sadly I was exhausted due to a lack of sleep after my night shift and had to retire to bed - but not before taking a few shots of the action. The lads decided to play downstairs on a card table found earlier on the footpath... I must remember to confirm with my neighbour that it is unwanted!

Marc's Karmans (to the left of image) break cover from their sandbags to advance on the ruined building while Justin's Red Blok lurk in the shadows (to the right of image). Justin has been busy making very impressive terrain since I last saw him!

Marc and Justin decided to play small unit actions on the recently acquired table so restricted themselves to take only infantry in their forces. The intention was to see how AT-43 plays when heavily armed and armoured vehicles are not stomping around the field (I must check with them to see how that went). I know my tendency is to take the biggest and baddest pieces available to my army but this tends to create games that become too familiar - as your opponent is forced to bring the same 'big guns' to deal with your same 'monstrous armour' each battle. In this case the restriction was simply limited to "infantry only" which still leaves room for creativity, however there are different measures that could be limited such as stating a maximum value for armour rating or weapon strength to alter battles in different ways.

This idea has already been applied to 'historical' games such as Field of Glory (Ancients), Flames of War (WW2) and Lasalle (Napoleonic) which encourage match-ups that are thematically appropriate by providing army lists that share a common theatre of war or exist on nearby dates in history. This tends to chaff science fiction and fantasy gamers who prefer the idea of more freedom and creativity with army choice and force selection (despite tending to take bring the same favourites to every battle, see previous paragraph). The idea of Early French fighting Late Russians may be appealing but the game you get tends to be fun for only one player!


Before I sign off I'll share an action sequence that depicts Marc's Karmans catching Justin's grenades...

1. Karman warriors begin to cross open ground as they seek the cover of a nearby ruined building:
2. Karman warriors sense a shadow loom above them:

3. BOOM! ...remaining Karman warriors begin to fail pinning and morale checks