Rocky Mountain Retreat 2025

 I headed off to the Rocky Mtn foothills last Thursday to partake in another year of the RMR! An invite only gaming event which lasts for an extended weekend. 

With the camp chefs keeping our energy up with an excellent Brunch & Supper each day, with plenty of snacks as needed in between. Its enough to make a gamer think they've entered Nirvana.

 Our numbers of past atendees was reduced with the passing of one of the originals & several other of the 'Old Guard' dealing with life's other little adventures, however we had a few new recruits to the group to keep the numbers up & bring in some new blood.

Upon arrival & having set up my sleep space, I pulled out Alien Fate of the Nostromo, as it would be a fairly quick game to teach & finish prior to our meal of Schnitzel & Spatzle (one of my favorite German Meals)

 

We got off to a horrible result, which had us defeated quite quickly.

 

So we reset the board & gave it another go. While initially doing very well, we did succumb in the later game.

 

I then joined another couple of people to give it another try. This time we did complete the Final Objective & won the game.

 

In the evening we sat down for our annual Eldritch Horror Game. We had 5 players, which seems about the perfect player count.

 

We did however but heads with the Great Cthulhu.

 

We had randomly determined our characters & I was running Daniela the Mechanic. By the time we had lost the game when Cthulhu arrived, I had quite a few conditions happening!

Friday morning I sat down with Brent who had brought The Elder Scrolls system. I had seen the Kickstarter, but didn't really pay much attention to it.

 

This game does require a large playing area, as the characters alone take up a good chunk of real estate, with Race, Class, Skills & player board.

 

Players are denoted by their character chip, with their health placed beneath them. Creatures are drawn from bags based on levels

 

Of course each of the critters has special abilities to keep the game interesting.

Friday evening it was time for some Imperial Assault. We did a Hoth mission that would require us to snag 4 ogjective tokens & flip them to rebels.

 We started out by zapping the 2 Empire Leaders & just as our hopes began to rise, were engaged by a Hover Tank. My Wookie was bloodied & then slain by this monster. However the remainder of the rebel characters succeeded in flipping the objectives for a win!

 

Saturday Morning was time for a session of 5th Ed D&D. We had a party of 5 2nd level characters off to solve the mysteries of Sokul Keep.

 

Starting in a town, we had to seek our several individuals of import to set us on the path.

 

Arriving on the island, we soon discovered the caverns below.

 

We did have a tussle with some Animated Armor, which by the time it was over, had drained my druid of spells. Good thing I had made some Good Berries.

 

We pressed on through more cavern chambers.

 

Eventually finding a room filled with water from a sinkhole & then the main chamber, where an Evil alter & Statue (which oddly isn't in this image). A climatic battle was held, against Zombies, Skeletons & Ghouls.

We were victorius & awarded by the greatful town.

 

Saturday night it was time for Unfathomable. This year Tim had the Expansion painted up & added.

With the addition of Boons, Allies, etc, it made for a much tougher game. The Hybrid Traitors won out without revealing themselves. We had some nasty Mythos cards & an untimely ritual (performed by one of the traitors) that wiped out 3 passengers.

 

Thus ended RMR 2025. As I had to depart right after Brunch Sunday, I didn't get into any games. Thanks to Brent & Steve for running this event!

 

EWG invited to Gobfest!

 

This year our club, the Edmonton Wargamers Group, was invited to bring out a couple of lighter miniature games to Gobfest 2005. I believe this is the 10th year of this group running a boardgames convention here  in Edmonton.

 This year they wanted to expand their offerings, so I agreed & asked Bruce if he would also like to participate. I ran 2 sessions of Frostgrave while Bruce ran his 1920's Gangsters

Friday Night:

I ran Frostgrave for Colin, his son Will & Darek. Both Colin & Derek are Gobfest Organizers. Perhaps at this point people were still not sure what our games were about. I filled the last wizards spot. So we had 4 warbands pitted against one another.

 

Although after we set up the table, it got lots of looks by the folks attending. As a side note - lighting in the venue was great compared to many other community halls we've run in. Kudo's to that!

 

So the best part about running these games is for players who have never played them before. Everything is 'new' & exciting. They don't know whats going to happen next. 

 

Alas , we didn't get anything too monstrous this running. Pretty much dogs, skeletons, a boar & a ghoul. 

 

The game I ran on Saturday afternoon had many more of the larger critters showing up. 

On Saturday Bruce ran his Gangsters game using the Fistful of Lead rules. Again, 4 factions were trying to locate the illegal still before the arrival of the entire police force. 

 

There was one force of 'Crooked Cops' in the game. We had a young girl come up to the table while Bruce was setting up. She asked if she could play, so I told her she could join me as the cops.

 

This made her very excited.  She got to move her figures around as we began to search the buildings for the still. Just adding in, that her name was Matilda.

 

She even got to drive her motorcycle over a gangster before she had to head off for something with her mom. Alas that MC got a bit our of control & ended up driving off the board, but it was a lot of fun!

 

Meanwhile the gang that owned the still was gunning down the FBI agents. As well they were facing off against the other rival gang, which led to a vehicle crashing into a building. 

 

Pure Hollywood! 

All in all a successful convention. We now await to hear back from when they do their survey to determine whether we will be invited back to host games next year. Maybe we will see about running 3 games per day if we can get some more commitments on our side of things.

Sunday I hauled the boardgames I was hoping to sell to the event for their Flea Market. I arrived early to snag some prime parking & was just getting set to read my book. Matilda from the day prior saw me sitting there & ran up to me, giving me a hug & asked if I would play a game with her. How could I refuse?

She pulled out Magical Kittens & away we went on an adventure to find a lost doll.

Thanks for visiting.

 

 

Muskets & Tomahawks at EWG

Tuesday night, Richard ran a game of Muskets & Tomahawks. Set up for 4 players, we only had 3 as a few folks cancelled just prior to the game.

 

This was a battle set during the AWI with Provinicial Troops attempting to clear the Fallen Woods. Pitted against them were several units of natives & some Canadian Militia dressed up to look like natives.

 

The entire board was considered light cover, which added lots of sighting issues, with the various column shifts due to class & skills of the elements.

 

However once the lead began to fly, the smoke made things a whole lot easier. The natives did succumb to the skilled firing of the provincial troops, who held their own. The Provincial forces did have their militia beat a hasty retreat, but then that was to be expected. Thanks for running the game Richard!

Stargrave - The Last Prospector Scenario 7

Today we played the Infestation scenario of the Last Prospector campaign.

While patrolling a region of the first asteroid belt, an emergency distress signal comes from a nearby UMI mining facility. The message is garbled & panicked but it appears the miners are under attack - not from another faction, but from something within the asteroid itself.

 

15 Miners are around a central shaft that has been dug further into the asteroid. However 4 more 'holes' appear & swarms of Strice emerge & begin closing in on the hapless miners.

 

The crews having arrived enter via doors in the mine walls. Its obvious these miners need rescueing.

 

With the crews arrival, they were able to whittle down the Strice numbers as they moved towards the miners. Rather than have designated amounts of miners per player, we changed it to having make base to base contact with one of your crew to have them join you (and thus allow you to earn xp)

 

Otherwise the miners would activate between the players & creatures phase to move towards the nearest exits, avoiding combat as best they can.

 

We also made it so that the lowest 3 players would deploy 3/2/1 Strice at the various holes during the creature phase.

 

We had lots of instances of Strice swarming players, but they did seem to die a lot. I think everyone had their quota of Creatures Killed xp filled out.

 

The central area was filled with walls of force.

 

Kurt's Grenadier gets mauled!

 

Most of the crews successfully grabbed loot & minors & made a break for the exits. 

 

So some thoughts about the next time we run this scenario. We will start the game with the large central shaft that the minors have bored into the Strice pockets.

Rather than have other holes. we will use a smaller 30mm or 40mm circular base which will be placed anywhere on the board by the players with the lowest initiative. They will then place the 3/2/1 Strice numbers emerging from them. The player with the highest initiative will then place a 3 Strice Swarm around the edge of the central hole. This will certainly add some more excitement to the game, as players won't know where they will emerge from & lone crewmen can be targeted by savvy opponents.

Thoughts?

Thanks for visiting. 

Prep for Gobfest & a workbench update

We are now 3 weeks away from the Gaming on Board (Gobfest) convention. A horrible name I know. However this year something new has happened. We had one of their members approach our club about trying some miniature games at their event. So Bruce & I offered to host a couple of sessions each, just to see how it is received by the attendees.

I attended for my first time last year & enjoyed it, as it allowed me to try some boardgames I hadn't seen before.

I have offered to run Frostgrave for them & have just figured out the table layout I will use for it.

 

It will be 4 players, with pre-built Wizard bands of roughly 8 figures. I've also gotten my figures all set aside & ready to go. 

I've also gotten some more work done on the building commission for a local store. The first level of one building is completed

 

The stairs have been built  & added. I had to do some Youtube watching to get a good method to build these.

 

The upper floor has been built & painted, so just need to complete the second floor walls & roof for this one.

 I've also completed the lower walls of the second building, which will otherwise mimic the first in size & build. 

 

So thats about it for today. I will be sure to add a finished build photo with a figure for scale when completed.