Hotlead 2026 some of the games part 1 of 2

 

There were a lot of games at Hotlead and sadly I only have a few pictures of a few games. Next year I must remember to take more  pictures especially of the whole venue and the mass of people that surround the bring and buy.

Up first. a dungeon crawl where the players were the monsters. 

A gorgeous game! The dungeon was well built and the various monsters well painted. Judging by the noise and laughter it was a very enjoyable game.

Up next, a caveman game

Six tribes fought it out with spear and rock. They spent sometime hunting the various beasts (and in turn were hunted by various beasts) and at times they took on each other. There was some grunted communication between some tribes in an attempt to form an alliance.

 There were mammoths, sabretooth tigers, hominids and bugs that were hunting the cavemen.

Two sided dice (rocks, one side black one side red) were rolled to resolve anything that needed to be resolved. Movement was determined by sticks, short, medium and long, and each tribe had a clan disk that was placed in a bag and drawn to determine turn order.

A fun looking game with plenty of flavour. Simple but excellent terrain added to the charm. 

Next up a game that I did not see much of, but that really looked good. A War of 1812 attack on York naval game. Nicely crafted ships which had slots to accommodate the slotting in of different troop types. I really liked the look of the game. 

A couple of ACW games.

More to come...

More treasure from Hotlead

 

So, I went a little crazy, and picked up twelve 3D print buildings and a bridge, 1 old school (heavy) resin buildings and a bunch of scatter terrain last weekend at Hotlead. The 3D print buildings came from BEAVER AND BROADSWORD while the resin building (lower right) was from the bring and buy. 

Recent board game night: Invincible

 

So, Noah brought over a new to us board game, Invincible The hero building game. We do play a lot of superhero games and this one had intrigued me for some time (I was very close to buying it myself) so I was fairly happy to him show up with it.

For the first game we used only 3 heroes, that changed to 4 for the next two games.

The game is pretty straightforward and easy to play. It does convey some feeling that you are in a comic book fight and it offers plenty of options through random car draws and random colour chit draws. Yes there is a lot of random elements to the game, but you can mitigate this to some extent buy selecting the right powers and using certain cards to gain you new coloured cubes.

Your selected powers are enabled by placing coloured cubes blacks are wild, but draw 5 black cubes and your hero crashes.

My characters crashed a lot (drew 5 black cubes) 

So, we lost the intro scenario but then won the rematch and the next chapter in the mini campaign. It was an amusing, lightweight game that I would happily play again.

Treasure from Hotlead

 

So, I came back from Hotlead with quite a few items, so much that it will take a few posts to cover everything. The bring and buy was excellent as usual, plenty of great deals on a wide range of stuff. John got a massive East Africa WWI lot of painted troops, civilians, objectives etc. For my part the only painted figures that I found were two 28mm well painted British Napoleonic to be used in Silver Bayonet. 

I did find a lot of 20mm WWII resin vehicles for the Germans, Russians and Americans. I also picked up some boardgames. I also bought a lot of 3D printed buildings and scatter terrain, more on that later.

The highlight of the convention for me happened at the last minute on Sunday, just as we were getting ready to return to Ottawa. 

Another boardgame night, another loss to Cthulhu and his fellow elder Gods

 

So, we had our 5th loss this year, which means, going back to last year, that we have played 14 games and only won twice, very bad record. We have recently decided to each play two investigators in an attempt to boos our chances of succeeding, so far it has clearly not helped.  This time around we each lost a few characters and were soundly trounced by an epic monster that sped the doom track at an alarming rate. We lost our previous game due to a different epic monster that could only be stopped by a specific magic artifact, an artifact that did not appear in time for us to have a chance to win. In fact we failed to even complete one mystery.

The challenge with this game is the extremely random nature of the game. By this I mean not so much the random skill rolls or the random monster draw, but the instant kill draws that one can make. Things that instantly kill you without even a chance to avoid such a fate or the epic minster that pretty much guarantees that the players will lose. This lessens the fun of the game. While I accept randomness in games it is still nice to take actions and gather items that will somewhat mitigate the vagaries of fate. While it may emulate the nature of the source material it makes for an annoying game.

We also played yet another game of Sentinels of the Silver age and then pulled down a game that we may have played once  or twice, Star Trek the deck building game.

Bad rule book but an okay game. We played this after losing in Eldritch horror. It was late in the night when we started and I really did not feel that much like gaming; I was tired and still annoyed by Eldritch. In the end it was a good way to finish off the night as the nostalgic nature of the game did much to offset the ill feelings conjured up by both the rule book and the previous game. 

First miniatures game of 2026 - Pulp Alley

The original plan for the game

So, I ran a Pulp Alley game at the OMG Library meeting on January 11th. The picture above is what I set up at home as I plotted out the game. I brought along my usual assortment of leagues and one of the players brought their own  league of shapeshifters. It was a quiet day at the library with only five of us showing up, just right for four teams and a ref!

The modified layout, with walls and a different major plot point.

The major plot point, was a wild eyed high  priest performing a summoning ritual. Each of the leagues started with a plot point, each plot point needed to be placed in a specific location to disrupt the incantation. Once placed the league would be able to close with the high priest. To add some extra challenge, cultist kept showing up to engage the leagues. The game was a variation of the Fantastic Device scenario.

The plot points were placed by completing a normal plot point challenge. Competing leagues could interact with a placed plot point to disrupt the enemy leagues and to gain points. In theory this meant that leagues should guard their placed plot points.(or prevent the plot points from being stolen prior to placement) Not everyone went after the other plot points and for the most part they congregated in the centre of the table. 

It was a tough battle but the playing of a parlay card part way through turn 6th sealed the deal and ended the game.

Even more ruminations about Fantastic Battles rules ideas

Some more ruminations about tweaking Fantastic Battles. While it is a great set of rules I am looking at ways to modify it to fit what I want in a game.

What a Tanker meets VSF

British Monitor vs Japanese monitor off in the distance 

This was our second game of What a Tanker! You can find the first game HERE The first game went so quickly we figured we could get another couple of games in, but that was not to be! This time around it was two monitors fighting it out.

Both  had armour/strike 8/6. Both also had slow turrets, with the British also having a turret with a reduced traverse. The British tank also had heavy armour.

The Japanese find cover but are driven back by the British fire.

Turn four sees the Japanese race down the road finding some cover.

Pulp Alley game at the OMG Library location

 

The four monsters deployed 12" from the centre

So, the mission was for each league to track down, capture and return a monster to the windmill, where Dr Frankenstein was waiting. The leagues entered from the edges.

The leagues, the two left most did not participate 

The leagues were, the mad scientists, the monster hunters and the angry citizens. Two new players and one veteran fought it out to control a monster. The mad scientists and the angry villagers were both able to capture a monster and move it to the windmill, and thus were both able to go for the main plot point.

October 30th game day Franco Prussian Wargame

 

A rare excursion out of my basement to someone else's basement. In this case I went to visit George for a Franco Prussian war game using the Chassepots and needle guns rules. I was on the French side commanding the centre (centre right in the above picture). I had one brigade and a battery of three cannons. In the foreground you can see a skirmish of light infantry vs light infantry.

My forces begin to advance

Another board game night, a space theme!

 

A real blast from the past, this game has not seen the light of day for 2 decades and yet I was able to remember many of the rules, needing only to scan them to get playing. I did not select this game to play and he who did was not convinced what we opened the box. It looks very much a product of its time, a large board, lots of plastic figures and Styrofoam storage trays. It looked an awful lot like A&A! Happily it does not play like A&A. The really big thing about this game is the solar system map that dominates the centre of the board.

Every turn you must advance the planets and asteroids on their respective tracks. Each planet moves on its own track at its own pace. As a result planets will become closer or farther away from each other each turn, thus impacting on ones strategy for conquering the solar system.