Tuesday, November 11, 2014

4th Annual Rememberance Day Gaming Afternoon.

This year was a frosty 4th year of hosting my Remembrance Day Gaming Afternoon. Having observed the moment of Remembrance to honour those who have given the ultimate sacrifice & reflect on those whom I served with who have also passed, it was time to spend some time with friends.

This year I opted to run a game of Pirates using the rules from Flagship Games.

 

Since first playing this game at Fallcon many years ago, I became a big fan. So today I hosted Chen, Jonathan & Bruce to sail the seas & lay waste to one another.


I had hoped to have had six players, but as I only had the 3, I gave them each 2 ships. The scenario involved sailing to the wreck, grabbing the treasure chest located there & make it off the board with said treasure.

Here we have the landlubbers of Arrrrrr!


By turn 2, the blooding began. Jonathan's ship (Blue/Green Sail) & Bruce's ship engage.


A critical had a fire start on the Orion.


Meanwhile at the other end of the table, Bruce had his ship run aground whilst rushing headlong at a speed of 10. This sundered his mast. Another of Jonathan's ships was managing to avoid the shallows & was quickly closing on the island.


Back to the previous fight, the Zephyr swung around in front of the Orion & was rammed in the rear. A shot from one of Chen's cannons took out its mast & it began to sink. Meanwhile the fire continued to burn unchecked.


 As a boarding battle ensued the ship sunk, dumping all the combatants into the water. The thrashing of bloodied sailors brought forth Chomper! A Huge Shark.


Again to the far end, rowboats had been lowered & started moving towards the island.


Which is about where Chen arrived with his gunboat & began hammering the rowboats with cannon fire.


Another view of the mess.


As the Orion also sank beneath the waves, Chomper moves in on the rowboat. Chen sent a shot at the rowboat, causing 4 structure points making it immediately sink, sending even more men into the water.


The boat that had run aground, finally sank, with some crew making it to the island. Looking close one can see the effects of musketry & pistol fire on the rowboats, which now had a Captain as the sole occupant of each.


As one of Chen's rowboats made landfall, several skeletal Pirates appeared on the decks of the wreck.



Meanwhile Chomper was enjoying the feast, eating first a Captain...


Then a Navigator.


After receiving some cannon shot, Chomper then moved onto bigger prey.


Chen had managed to get 2 rowboats to the wreck & now mustered an assault on the Skeletal Defenders. He was quick to see however, that he would smash a couple to splinters only to have more rise up. (This was an ability of the Skeletal Captain, who could forgo attacks to reanimate crew).


After several turns of rowing by himself, the Captain picked up the remainder of his crew & continued to the Wreck.


By this time Chen had managed to smash the Skeleton crew & was gathering up the treasure chest. Only to have Bruce's crew land & assault him in hand to hand.


After a hard fight, Chen's crew was defeated and Bruce managed to steal away with the treasure.


At the beginning of the game, I had each player spin the dial so that it was a random amount of treasure. There was even a chance it was trapped & would have provided NO loot.

The tally before the chest opening was at

Jonathan  - 102, Bruce - 120 & Chen - 163. However Bruce stole the game with an extra 925 points from the gold. 


Thanks to the guys for making the trip out to enjoy a good day of gaming.

Cheers.

6 comments:

  1. Terry this looked like so much fun! I nearly spat my tea out when Chomper made his first appearance - priceless! I see that there is no honour amongst thieves with the firing on the lifeboats, shocking behaviour.

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    1. Hi Michael, yes Chomper has literally been chomping at the bit to make it to the table. This has been the first game since I bought him, that people were swimming. Most just perish to bouncing cannonballs.

      As for shooting up rowboats, they really are a last ditch option to escape a sinking ship, as the odds are your not outrunning a sailing ship. The funny thing with rowboats is their movement is dependant on number of people rowing, so those 2 that had just a captain were moving at 1" per turn. A swimming person moves 5" but has a 50% chance of drowning each turn.

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  2. Great looking game, Terry. Good to see the pirates and ships getting some action!

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    1. Aye Will, always a good game & I finally got to use your old skeleton crew! Still need to get them on the round bases though, they kept toppling.

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  3. The game looked great fun to play. Nice idea for a sea too.

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    1. Hi Bob, cheers for that. I had the issue of finding a cloth big enough to cover my ping pong table & after looking at what it was going to cost me to buy cloth, went for the much cheaper & easier to get blue tarp. It does often give the sparkling effect of water at the right angles in photos too.

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