AQMF - The Night the Ground Exploded.......

August 12, 1910. 
Dateline: Bedford Township, Michigan
     Today the Martian Invaders unleashed a devastating new weapon against our brave boys in the field.  In what appears to be a 'Suicide Attack' a Martian Tripod destroyed 4 tanks and 6 motorcycles...........

Fact or Journalistic Propaganda?  Read on and judge.........

With summer drawing to a close Kevin's son Matthew wanted to end with a game of All Quiet on the Martian Front.  He decided he was wearing 'big boy pants' and so he chose to take the entire Martian Force himself...

 



This left Matthew's dad Kevin, my friend Mike and myself to run the Human forces. 

The field of battle, pre-deployment:

The Martian objective, destroy the Human Command bunker in the upper right corner of picture.

 

The Martian deployment wasn't too fancy, the plan being advance and overwhelm.  Once the Human defenders were swept away the bunker could easily be dealt with.

 

 

I took the Mk. III Steam tanks and the regular Infantry in the trenches

 

 

Kevin took the 24th Michigan

 

 

Mike took the rest of the US Army units.  While Kevin and I were to slow the Martians down, Mike held himself back to attack break thrus......

 

The Martians quickly advanced to the trench line, Matthew hosed down the trenches with 'Black Dust'....Matthew LOVES the black dust.....But while he was preoccupied with my Infantry, my Mk. IIIs opened up with a 6 dice fusillade of 3" shells on his Scout, causing it to catastrophically explode, also damaging a nearby Assault Tripod.

 

 

With 2/3rds of the 24th Michigan burning, Mike's tanks and 'Rough Riders' move up to try and stop the Martian advance.  The last of my Infantry unit flees the trench and my tanks roll out to bring more guns to bear......

 

 

But Matthew crosses the trench and sweeps my tanks...destroying 2 of them.

 

 

The end of the game moved rapidly.  Ignoring the last of the 24th, the Martians turned it's attention to the Human Command Bunker.  As it's Heat Rays reached out to incinerate (scoring a couple of hits, but rolling crappy to destroy for the win) Kevin moved his last tank in to assist Mike's Mk IIs and Rough Riders.  The motorcycles assaulted and attempted to wrap up the Martians legs...and SUCCEEDED!!  Kevin opened fire and bounced.  Mike's 3 tanks blazed away....and then it happened....Mike scored 2 of 3 hits.  Then rolled damage on both hits.  The two hits caused a CATISTROPHIC EXPLOSION!!!  In a flurry of dice rolls and shouts of 'BOOM!!', all 3 of Mike's tanks, all 3 stands of Mike's Rough Riders and Kevin's last tank detonated from the Tripods massive internal explosion!!

 

When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, the Humans had held off the Martian attack.  But at what price.....?

The Martian Overlord was last hear to say, "All I wanted to do was win...."



Maybe next time Matthew....maybe next time.......