Tis the season...Them! & Eight legged freaks

 

Recreate Them! and Eight legged freaks with these cheap critters. Under $2.00 each, for 12 ants, or 6 spiders, a good deal for frugal gamers!

Valor & Steel & Flesh game 2 AAR

 

The battlefield

So, our second go at the Valor & Steel & Flesh rules, with some changes from last time. As an example I revamped the vehicle rules adding some hit location rules. 

This time around the British had gotten hold of a defecting scientist and stashed him somewhere in the town. The Irish patriots aided by Rouge Noirs minions want the scientist for their own, of course the minions do not want to share. So the minions had a secret objective, if they got the scientist they could break off their alliance. Each of the heroes had their own unique aspect, one was a coward (but had to hide that fact) another British officer felt he had to prove himself  The junior minion leader believed in promotion by eliminating his superior, while one of the Irish leaders had a martyr syndrome.  

The town, held by the British forces

British reinforcements arrive from the left, the Irish & Minions come in from the small bridge

The Canadians aided by a Scottish unit defend the town & guard the prisoner. They also have a damaged armoured Land Ship,  a machine gun trike & an outdated Nordenfelt MG tractor.

The game started with an automaton assault against defending automatons. It was an even match and since they could no no fear, neither side retreated.

The minions are deployed in force, supported by their own Land Ship & a pair of Irish light armoured vehicles.

The Irish/minion forces were allowed to place barriers, either as road blocks or as cover for their units. They split up barriers fairly evenly. 

British Unilancers (actually Prussians subbing in) get bogged down in the grassy fields

As stated above the Unilancers got bogged down on the field. I have already updated the terrain charts, and reclassified what this terrain is so that it should not be that bad next time. (also rolling 3 dice for movement would have helped, I counted them as cavalry)

Main thrust of the British, 2 light MG Tractors, a land Ship , Hardlove suited troops & a guard unit.

Valour & Steel & Flesh game AAR

 

The table set up & initial deployment

So, the first game of V&S&F in quite some time, part of my quest for the perfect VSF game. We played on a 50" x 100" table with plenty of scenery(unlike some of my Mars games) The big terrain item was the manor house, an item I bought many years ago and had yet to use. Like the farm buildings, it came to me pre-painted and assembled (molded) I do not know the origin of either set of buildings, they were both bought at two seperate conventions. The windmill is from Sarissa, that building I painted.

Now back to the game. This game saw an Anglo/Franco force go up against a Prussian force that had some American steam walkers for support. The forces came in from opposite corners. The poker chips were deployment zones and objectives. The red near the British troops were deployment points those near the Prussians were the objectives. 

The Anglo/Franco left flank & Centre

Anglo/Franco right flank

Prussian main force in the centre

Prussian left flank & centre

General advance in the centre. French steam jump troops (Soldats Vapeur Saute)
 lept into melee on the hill in the centre

The dramatic start of the game saw the Prussians advance to the top of the central hill only to have the Soldats Vapeur Saute (Steam Jump troops) leapfrog  over everyone to engage them in melee. The battle did not go well as they were slaughtered by the hill defenders. However, somehow their morale did not break and they continued to melee there for the rest of the game, even sucking another enemy unit into the fray!

The Prussian mechanical troops got off to a slow start with some mechanical issues...

Prussian Jaegers advance through the dense forest to attack the manor

Canadian, Scottish & guards advance with support from a light mg vehicle & some French Militant Infanteriste Mécanique Expérimental (M.I.M.E)

Moon Colony Bloodbath solo play

 

So, we played three games of this last night, lasted until around 1 AM (we started late) so naturally I had a go at it this morning solo. Last night of the three games I played I won, tied and lost, so you know pretty even competition. In the solo game you are striving to get the 13th event card or as close as you can get to it. So far in our two player games we have yet to make it to that card, but we have been close. In today's solo play I made it to the 9th, 10th and in the last game the 11th event card. 

While there is of course a lot of randomness to the game, I feel I also made a few critical mistakes. I failed to restock my blood banks that would have staved off some colonist casualties. There were other errors, but they were mostly in hindsight. It is a game of choices and while they may seem sensible at the time sometimes, well, they just don't work out, and maybe some colonist suffer that might not have suffered had you chosen a different path.

A nice touch for solo playing is the extra starting card the you add to the deck.

It is a fine example of the sense of humour of the game creators.

Again this is a great game whether played solo or with others. There is humour in the 'frustration' of watching your plans, and colonists, sucked into the void, crushed by robots, irradiated by reactor leaks, starve to death etc etc.

New arrivals

 

So a few things arrived this week and one item was found at a flea market.

First arrival is this new paint shaker. This is a new device that is hands free, which is the main appeal. Saw it on Painting Panzers and it looked good. The big question is, is it actually any good? I have not yet tested it as I am going through funk phase and not interested in painting (also my painting table is a mess) 

It is an adjustable hands free unit.

I have been looking at Moon Colony Bloodbath for a while now. The art work drew me in first then the concept. Intrigued I watch a review by Shut Up & Sit Down and that was it, I needed the game. So here it is all ready to play.

We gave it a proper test and after the first try, played two more games right away. It is more fun than it should be, all your plans and attempts to settle the moon are all for nought as disasters and robots will inevitably destroy your colony. Great fun!

Dragons Down board game

 

So, Dragons Down is a really long game to play. We started around 8pm and finished up some time after 1 AM. Yet in its way it was a fun enough game. We played scenario 4 which saw us declare at the start of the game what we hoped to achieve, gold, fame, spells and or epic treasures. It reminded me of the old careers board game. 

So we dealt out the tiles and took turns laying them out to create our board. My opponent wound up with all three of the civilization tiles, which I thought was something of an advantage, but in the end it was only sort of an advantage. Take a look at the board, note how we managed to divide the board making it difficult to move east west. I started the game in the lower left tile, where the monster is in the picture. It might be tough to see, but if you can expand the image you will see that I can only advance on the six tiles to the left, then I hit a dead end in the caves to the far left. I could not reach the actual civilization in the civilization tiles even though I could at least touch the Sanctuary tile. To go north or east I would have to go south and slowly trudge through the mountain tiles! I chose not to do that. My opponent had far more tles that he could travel through and explore, many options. Thankfully I had luck on my side.

My hero

My opponent

So, while I did not have any easily accessible civilization tiles I did get lucky with sites.  At one point my opponent revealed a site, but because of the board layout he was unable to explore it, but I was able to and did. I also got lucky by finding two sites in one tile, with another right next door. This led to a lot of looting, which helped with my pregame victory conditions, as did the fame in actually locating these sites.

He did manage to get close to my hero, but this also meant that he was too far away to get back to civilization before the end of the game

I ran into some challenges, in this case 13 enemies ganged up on me, eight Orcs and 5 juvenile dragons!

For maybe half of the game I had two curses on me courtesy of two epic treasures.. One prevented me from sneaking or going on alert, this made it harder to hide from monsters.  The other curse was a monster magnet, that meant if any monsters were rolled for any surrounding tile, I would see those monster show up in my tile. What a revolting development that was.

In the end I was able to dodge (hide) from most of the encounters, but I did fight two epic battles that drained me a lot. Thankfully I had enough wounds/cubes to absorb most of the damage, but it was close. Fortunately I was able to retreat from the enemies to lick my wounds, and spent three turns just healing and hoping for no wandering monsters to find me, they did not.

So in the end, while my opponent suffered a penalty I was able to touch part of a civilization tile and not take any penalty when I retired. In the end it was all the treasure sites that gave me the victory. Out of the four points that we had to spend before the start of the  game I had put two in fame and two in epic treasures. I never did get any more money nor spend any money than what I started with. As for spells I found three near the end and never had a chance o learn any of them. 

Final Girl, finally played!

 

So, I have had this game for a few months now, even had it all set up, but just never got around to playing it, until now...

Final Girl Camp Happy Trails!

This works out to be a fine solitaire game with plenty of potential variety, be it within the scenario or due to there being many add on scenarios. Camp happy trails is a riff on the Friday the 13th movies, you are the hero trying to defeat the homicidal villain and safe some campers.

Well into the game, many campers have been killed by Hans, but I have saved 5 of them! Hans is the red meeple, I am the purple one.

The game presents you with many decisions to make. You can perform actions based on cards in hand, but fail to many actions and you will run out of time, if you run out of time you will be hampered in getting actions for your next turn. Also what do you do in a turn, do you save campers, gather equipment and weapons to counter the villain do you combat Hans or try to elude him? However you can rarely if ever do all the things that you want to. meanwhile Hans may move and or attack the campers or, gasp, you!

It took me some time before I actively attacked Hans.

After I took the fight to Hans.

Horror level low, well armed but outclassed by Hans. I was reduced to 9 health and when flipped the token indicated no extra life, I was dead, but Hans was reduced to 2 health!

It was a tough but fair game. I had my chances but also dealt a tough blow at the start of the game. The initial event forced me to only be able to rescue one camper at a time, this put quite the crimp in my plans.

I plan to try this adventure out again real soon before trying out some of the other movies.

Midgard Heroic battles, Undead vs Lizardmen August 23rd

 

I played host to two mighty armies, Jeff's Undead vs Braden Lizards. It was a 300 point game with four players. We had some challenges in the first game, an error by the undead player saw his forces slaughtered due to a mistake about how much damage they could take.

So, a reset and a second game...

Showdown in town, What a Cowboy! game six finale

Tuco's men take position at one end of town

 

While the Earp gang advances from the other end of town

Local pugilists conduct a donnybrook.

A lucky escape for Poole of the Earp gang!

Wyatt in action!

The Drifter observes Tom, a new found ally gun downed by Wyatt

Doc and Ike decide to move along their right flank

Ears still ringing, Poole decides it is better to remain in cover.

The local Undertaker senses an upswing in business!

By the last game the Earp gang was pretty much an unstoppable force. All of them had progressed to Gunslinger status with Doc just on the cusp of becoming a legend. Doc was the most successful character in the campaign.

As for the Tuco gang, well they had their challenges in the campaign. There were moments of brilliance but all too many instances of bad luck. More of their gang members were killed outright than in the Earp gang, This delayed their progress such that only a couple of them made it to the shootist level.

The drifter who was there to add some balance to the gangs appeared in the last two games but did not really factor into results. He was badly wounded in game five and ineffective in game six.

I enjoyed the campaign and I think the players had fun too. There is a lot of randomness in the game, that is for certain, but the randomness in its own way does add a certain charm to the game. This game is not for those who like certainty in how their figures act. Each turn brings a challenge for the player, they may have plans for their figures, but the dice are the ultimate determinator of how those plans will play out.

The penultimate What a Cowboy! game

Game 5 saw the two opposing forces conducting a vendetta against each other. The background was an old mining camp turned small town. Each side selected an opponent to be the target of their rage, and with no other objective they advance upon each other.

Both side took advantage of the terrain

Heavy fire from the Earps drove back their opposition

A Drifter (the man in black) was 'recruited' to fight the Earps and their allies

Tuco and his ally gang up on one of the Earps underlings