As the stores close & everyone heads home to enjoy time with their families & friends. I wanted to wish you all Merry Christmas.
Soon we will have new things to occupy our hobby time, & I look forward to seeing yours. Thanks to all who follow my blog throughout the year!
This eve was our last club night for 2022. Evan brought out The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31. Funny enough the local weather added to the thematics as it was a balmy -35C w/o windchill.
So we had 7 brave souls travel to Red Claw to participate. As you can see from the background....there was noone else at the store except the staff!
This was most of the players first time with this game, so we needed to rely on Evan to keep us in line as there is a lot to take in.
If the mission is successful, the room token is flipped to see what is within. In this case it was "The Thing" & a battle with it would ensue. The goal of the missions is to collect needed equipment. Of course the requirements differ for each mission & as the cards played by the team members are shuffled...the guessing & blame game begin once the sabotage cards start showing up.
It smoke is detected, it will need to be dealt with. There are several ways to lose the game & having 4 rooms destroyed by fire is one of them. Just hope someone has a Fire Extinguisher!
If the mission succeeds the token is flipped...great its the Thing again!
And again! Failure to defeat the Thing, causes all the tokens to be reshuffled & distributed again on the on searched rooms. Adding to the fun, is that more infected blood cards get dealt out as certain milestones are hit, this creates more unknowns until the Flame Thrower is found & people are flamed! Hopefully not the humans amongst them.
Thanks Evan for bringing this out, we look forward to seeing it again!
On Sunday we played our next Stargrave Campaign scenario - Skymine.
As prep for this I needed to find some scenery pieces to represent the 'holes' in the station. Once again Thingeverse came through, with some created by Studio_Bulwark. After printing & painting them, I added images from Neptune as the surface below mounted to cardstock & glued to the holes.
We had 5 crews enter the Skymine & sadly had not a single player roll a 1or 2 for initiative.
We played it that the entire scenery piece was 'the hole' so anyone stepping onto it would require to roll to see if they fell through.
I also added 4 'mine maintenance personnel' (treated as Ruffians for stats) who wouldn't do anything until attacked. (They were busy trying to fix the station).
We also rolled each turn on the Random table, treating any rolls not being a human/robot, as a further roll on the Unwanted Attention table. This generally led to 2 rolls on that table per turn & we had all sorts of nere'do'wells arriving.
As is typical, there were a lot of smoke grenades launched & they tended to hang around for several turns.
Due to our number of players, the next time we play this, we will likely increase the odds of the Gusts by 1 for each turn of play. We had already decided that any smoke grenades would have required to roll again for dispersing if a gust occured. Failing dispersal, it would then move the 2" in the direction rolled. Any Smoke that ended touching a hole, would be sucked out & removed from play.
We also had it that if any player who was carrying an objective token failed a test, they would drop the item which would then also roll to see if it was moved. Further, we played it that if multiple players rolled to have a gust occur, then failed TN's would move the figure by 2" per gust roll. Thus if 3 players had rolled to cause a gust, figures would move 6"
All in all a good game, which while we didn't have any gusts occur, the holes provided a great escape for figures that had grabbed objectives & needed to get out quick.
OK so I forgot the actual name of the scenario, but it was a 4 player game of Congo, hosted by Bruce, that pitted basically 3 factions against each other. Factions were determined randomly & I got the Tribesmen.
Then there was a force of Adventurers / British troops holed up in a fort, however their supplies were limited & amongst them was the Damsel in Distress who was worth many VP's to the group who controlled her at the end.
A Paddleboat was attempting to rush supplies to the Fort & had British Marines & some firepower to deal with the nere-do-wells attempting to storm the fort
The last faction were Zanzibari Slavers (I think) but I didn't get a photo of them as they deployed at the far end of the table.
Scattered across the table were various counters of different colours. Some offered treasures worth VP's, other's equipment & the red ones were ammo, which if desired, troops within the fort could sally out to snag.
My young warriors fall upon some Jetpack troops & managed to slay one, sending the others reeling back.
Meanwhile my scouts had found some dugouts & I was attempting to use them to block the river to slow the steamer. Sadly the dugout was crushed by the steamer & the scouts all slain.
By this time I had gotten my cannibals onto the bridge overlooking the river gap...now it was just a matter of...
Crap, I hadn't selected the correct action cards for the turn before the steamer got beneath & then beyond the range of the rocks I could have hurled atop them as a shooting action.
So the Steamer did manage to get to the fort, however most of the forts defenders had been slain.
The Zanzibari's were wiped out to a man (again thanks to my Ruga Ruga's)who shot them down & then rushed to snag the treasures that had fallen.
Certainly an enjoyable scenario, with a lot going on to keep everyone busy. Each token can in effect be carried by 1 man of a group, so if their numbers drop, so too do the tokens carried.
Thanks to those who braved the insane cold temperatures to participate.
I was invited out to participate in some LOTR Miniatures gaming today. There was going to be 2 scenarios running. The Battle of Helms Deep & Pelennor Fields.
I assisted by bringing my 2 GW Fortress sets - Helms Deep & Minas Tirith, which were used. For Helms Deep I was scrambling last night to set up extra wall pieces & then had to come up with a plan to have the gate house raised. This in turn led me needing to make a quick ramp. Its amazing what can be managed at crunch time.
Here are the images from the Helms Deep game, which I didn't play in.
From what I heard, it was a hard fought victory for the forces of good.
On the second table, where we played the Battle of Pelennor fields, things were looking grim for the forces of Sauron as Theoden arrived with his mounted troops, while on the other flank Aragorn arrived with the Grey Company & the Army of the Dead.
We were able to take down Aragorn, though it drained most of Gothmogs abilities.
Eventually the second wave arrived in the form of 3 Mumaks & the Easterling Cavalry. The Mumaks turned the tide, and we were lucky enough to win Priority when 2 of them went berserk & trampled.
At that Point the Witch King had arrived & with the stampeding Mumaks, destroyed the Rohan mounted troops & many of their Heroes thus winning the day for Mordor!
Made for a good day of gaming! Thanks for inviting me.
Today was our next Stargrave Campaign game where we played the 'Data Vault' scenario.
Again 6 crews descended into the undervaults to access the data that lay within.
Craig was quick to get to the first of the data columns.
Scotts crew taking up supporting positions as his droids made for the columns.
Let the Hacking begin!
To say that the fella's like to smoke is an understatement. We also ran out of all the force walls I had, so basically had to no longer allow people to use them until some were destroyed.
Watching their backs as more Pirate Shock Troopers arrived (Not visible in the image)
Chris's crew continues to advance
Although his carbine had been disabled, the Pirate Storm Trooper continued to be an annoyance.
We got our data, time to leave...
I think everyone was able to escape with data tokens. So some thoughts on the scenario the next time we play.
For todays game we made it that if an explosion hit one of the columns, say from a Frag Grenade, then the electrical arcs would extend a further 2" & Attacks would increase by +1.
Going further, any explosions will destroy the column which will also explode. Any data loot would be destroyed if on them. We will also limit each column to a single figure to activate it, as there is only 1 console to access on each.
