Elves Under Hoof

A solo game especially for the Christmas season.  Elves Under Hoof is a free print-and-play game from Dan Verssen Games.  It uses the hex grid and counter stacks of classic WW2 wargames but this time pitches Santa's reindeer against crazed Elves.  The counters have the movement, range and "to hit" stats just like an Avalon Hill game but, unlike AH, the entertainingly-written rules fortunately only cover a few pages.

The reindeers are equipped with Thompsons, M1 rifles, M1911 pistols and grenades (plus their hooves), and can pick up more weapons dropped by defeated elves.  They have cookies which can be discarded to negate a successful elf attack and eggnog which can be drunk to get an extra hex movement and additional attack that turn.

I've so far tried "An Igloo Too Far" where a small number of reindeer have to hold the igloos from an onslaught of elves until reinforcements arrive...

...and "E-Day" where a larger contingent have to storm Santa's workshop.

Still to play are "Saving Private Rudolph" and "The Big Red One".  All very silly but these are short fun games well worth a few pieces of printer paper and card.

Episode 202: Howling At The Moon

A supernatural episode of the A-Team...

The mission briefing from General Stockwell:

The objectives were Find The Precious, Flip The Switches and Escape.  The location perils were those of Sentinel Hill in the rules and the villains had the stats from the Wolfman.  

The threat markers were set up in the Aggressive pattern.

Straightaway Hannibal spotted the Wolfman threat and helped steer the team away from him.  BA bravely revealed two markers simultaneously - not difficult in the Aggressive layout.  A clap of thunder (Unsteady Underfoot) didn't perturb him but the Young Werewolf inflicted 3 wounds after just surviving Eyes Peeled shots from Amy and Face.

The next turn, BA finished off the werewolf whilst Hannibal was struck by lightning, taking 3 wounds and being knocked down.  BA then revealed a further two markers - a raging storm reducing visibility to 6 inches and a wolf, which was swiftly dealt with by the team.

BA started to search for the moon crystal as the team moved up in support.  He failed first time but did discover a wolf that pounced on him.

BA killed the wolf and found the crystal whilst Amy moved on to activate the first switch, accelerating the increase in threat level.  Another threat check saw Amy and Face fail their horror checks and retreat but a bigger problem - the threat marker that had been inching its way nearer finally got to within 6 inches of BA, and the Wolfman spawned on him killing him outright.

The Wolfman then used his Frenzy characteristic to immediately follow up with a further attack on Murdoch, again getting a killing roll.  Using the Last Ditch option to avoid losing a second teammate, the dice were rolled again and this time Murdoch survived.

With just one round to go, Hannibal failed to kill the last wolf with all three of his actions and so was unable to activate another switch.  Fortunately, Amy was able to activate one.  The Wolfman caused another 4 wounds on Murdoch and 6 on Face, but they survived.

At this stage, the team had earned 3 Victory Points for recovering the item, 2 VP for activating two switches, no VP for escaping, plus 1 for Hannibal surviving.  A grand total of 6 VP is graded C - "Adequate, I shall give you a shilling for it".

With the threat level at 10 or above, the game should end but it still felt like a cliffhanger before an advert break rather than the end of the episode.  So I played another couple of turns.  Hannibal finally killed the wolf but took two tries to activate the last switch, so couldn't then escape.  Face and Murdoch escaped from combat and Murdoch, along with Amy, escaped completely.  A surprisingly low threat check roll saw Face fail his horror check and fade into the fog.  The Wolfman consequently moved and attacked Hannibal instead.  In the very last turn, Hannibal escaped from combat and he and Face successfully escaped the map.

Following these two extra turns, the team had earned 3 Victory Points for recovering the item, 3 VP for activating two switches, 3 VP for escaping, plus 1 for Hannibal surviving.  A grand total of 10 VP is graded A - "a truly heroic performance".  But the team lost BA and three others were "marked" by werewolf attacks, so we'll have to see what happens to them next full moon.

Episode 201: The Search for the Yeti

First adventure for my Explorers this afternoon.  The history of the names I gave the characters is here.

This group of famous explorers were headed for the Himalayas aiming to find and photograph the creature known as the Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, and prove that it truly exists.  The three objectives in Perilous Tales terms were Leave No Stone Unturned, Get Evidence and Hunt the Fiends.

The perils were frostbite (equivalent to "a thousand cuts"), snow-drift ("mired") and ice cave! (disaster strikes) from the Arctic Camp location in the rules.

It was the first outing to the gaming table for the villains too.  They comprised my two Yetis (with special ability Abominable which gives Critical Hits on rolling 9 as well as 0), a Himalayan Brown Bear (with the Powerful special ability) and a pair of Wolves.

The layout had some large snowdrifts and rocks on one of my new gaming mats with a snow terrain.

Right from the start, Erica spotted the hidden ice cave and Charles was ambushed by the large Yeti, which failed to land any blows.  

Bill and Reinhold moved up to support Charles, whose double misfortune meant he didn't bother the Yeti.  Khumjo revealed a snow drift, fortunately on the top edge of the playing area.  The Noose Tightened further and the Yeti started wounding Charles.

In turn 3, Reinhold killed the Yeti and Bill attempted to take a photograph but sadly had his thumb over the lens the first time.  After a spot of frostbite, Charles and Khumjo headed towards the top of the area, whilst Reinhold headed down and revealed the second Yeti - falling over after failing a Horror Check.

Erica also failed her Horror Check and fell into the Ice Cave she'd spotted earlier, potentially inflicting 9 wounds in the process.  With only 8 wounds available, I took the Last Ditch re-roll option and she survived.  Then the wolves started to appear:

Fortunately, with some support to provide Advantage, Charles was able to take out two wolves in one turn.

Bill and Erica then pushed on to the last threat marker, revealing the Himalayan Brown Bear which attacked Bill.

Some shooting from Erica and Charles killed the bear and finished the game, with the threat level at 8.

Final scores were:

• Just 1 for revealing the last threat marker at threat level 7 
• plus 3 for taking the photo successfully of the master villain 
• plus 3 for killing at least 3 minions, making 7 for the objectives.  

Add 1 for the leader surviving and another 1 for losing no teammates gives a final score of 9, which gives the episode a grade B, "a tale fit for the telling".  Another fun game.

Explorers

Some more heroes from Pulp Figures, ready for adventures at the poles and in the mountains.

My plan for their first adventure is to search for the Yeti in the Himalayas so I've given them all names of individuals connected with that effort.

Charles Howard-Bury - explorer and politician who led a British expedition to Mount Everest. He spotted some large footprints and was told that they belonged to "metoh-kangmi". This means something like "man-bear snow-man".  When the expedition returned, a journalist called Henry Newman interviewed some of the members. However, he first mistranslated "metoh" as "filthy", then decided that "abominable" was even better, and his term "the abominable snowman" has endured. (1921)

Bill Tilman - Major Harold William Tilman, CBE, DSO, MC and Bar, (14 February 1898 – 1977) was an English mountaineer and explorer, renowned for his Himalayan climbs and sailing voyages.  Wrote a key book on Mount Everest containing an appendix on the Yeti (1938) 

Eric Shipton - a British explorer named looking for an alternative route up Mt. Everest found a footprint that appeared to be hominoid. He took a picture, and the mystery of the Yeti — a Sherpa word for “wild man” — cast a spell over the world.  (1951) (I'm using the name Erica Shipton for the female figure).

Khumjo Chumbi - a village headman who brought a supposed Yeti scalp from the Khumjung monastery back to London following Sir Edmund Hillary's Silver Hut expedition to the Himalayas, which was to collect and analyse physical evidence of the Yeti (1960)

Reinhold Messner - a mountaineer who is perhaps the most famous Yeti-hunter of all. He claims to have seen one in the Himalayas in the 1980s, allegedly even claiming to have killed one, and returned dozens of times to get to the bottom of the mystery. (1986)

I used the bicarbonate of soda mixed with watered PVA trick for the snow again and am really pleased with the results, especially after dusting with bicarb before the mixture fully sets for a nice textured surface.

I've also painted up some wolves from Andy - some based on snow for the next adventure, some based on grass ready to be supporting characters for a future werewolf adventure.

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

The first painted set from Andy's birthday present - Terminator Robots from Copplestone Castings.

There's inevitably not a lot of colour with these figures so I decided to really max out the red eyes and picked up two elements of the gun in a different colour - so at least individual robots can be identified if a game requires it.  I also made up some bricks to add a bit of colour to the rubble they are standing in.

Action!

One conceit of Perilous Tales is that the games are Episodes.  The rules don't go as far as Crooked Dice's 7TV in having stars, co-stars and extras for the characters but it is very much a homage to classic TV and B movie tropes.

So I figured I needed a film crew to record my adventures.  Bob Murch sculpts a range of excellent Pulp Figures, including a film crew comprising director, producer (described as "script girl" but she deserves a better credit), cameraman and clapper loader.

I created some "Perilous Pictures" stickers for one of the Lledo vintage vehicles I'd bought for Dad's Army games so that they would have their own transport.  I mounted the figures individually (and the camera) so that they can be used as characters in their own games but also created a diorama for them to be displayed in whilst I'm playing other Episodes they can film, and I can move them around together more easily.

9 card Print & Play games

I'd not spotted this before but BoardGameGeek run a number of games design competitions, including an annual one for print & play games using just nine cards - plus dice and counters already to hand.  I found this after reading about another solo game called Under Falling Skies - the winner overall from 2019.

Rather remarkably, this is a card game version of Space Invaders!  And it's really clever.  It has a dice placement scheme where you generate power, scramble jets to shoot down the invaders, and develop the research that will ultimately defeat the threat.  So you win by getting to the end of the research track and lose by your base being destroyed or the mothership advancing down to the final row.

Seven of the cards are lined up above each other to represent the alien invasion airspace and the player's underground base, which can be further excavated to provide the necessary extra placement spaces to fight the aliens.  Each of these cards is reversible to make 7 levels of increasing difficult.  Another card is the research track (also reversible) and the remaining just shows the name of the game.

It's fun to play and quite hard.  Some challenging decisions to make as using your high dice to generate power or make stronger attacks, results in the alien ships advancing down the same number of pips, so there's always a trade-off to be made.  Definitely recommended and apart from the cost of ink, it's free!

I thought I'd check out #2 from that year - which was also a solitaire game.  It's called 12 Patrols and is more of a puzzle game.  You have to place 9 cards (from a set now expanded to 12) in turn into a 3x3 grid, and then place Knights (D6 in three different colours) and Footmen (counters in the same three different colours) in the spaces between the cards, such that all the requirements on the edges of the cards are met e.g. in the rest of the row there are 2 different colours, or three items in total, or dice that sum to 6.  Each of the 12 spaces has to have a patrol - it can't be left empty.  Requirements on the edges of the cards that form the outside of the 3x3 grid are ignored.

It's tricky.  Even once you've got familiar with the cards, it's still possible to get to a point where you can't place one of the final cards successfully, or you might not have the right combination of dice or counters left.  But with more thoughtful placement of cards and a little bit of luck, solutions are achievable.  I got this one on my fourth attempt.

As you can see, the artwork is rather special too.  I think I shall dip into this list of games again.  And look at the 2020 winners as well!

Pick a card, any card

I've always liked producing cards for miniature games, hacking around in Powerpoint or Excel to get something looking half-decent.  Earlier this year, I discovered nanDECK, free Windows software written for game inventors, with the aim of speeding up the process of designing and printing deck of cards.  And of course, game players can use it to create cards for existing games.

It's a very powerful tool with an excellent manual and active forum on BoardGameGeek.  The software has both a visual editor and a scripting language (like HTML).  A lot can be achieved with the former (and it was a good place to start to learn about the scripting) but the latter provides more features and flexibility.

I'd originally started designing cards for Ronin, the Japanese skirmish game, shortly before lockdown.  When I had finished them, I found that the UK company I planned to use for professional printing had paused operations and a few months later, their website sadly disappeared so unfortunately they look like a casualty of the pandemic.

Another company highly recommended on BoardGameGeek was The Game Crafter.  This US company caters for all aspects of board game production - boards, tiles, counters, cards, etc - and has a very slick website for managing your designs and images.  Since I was now shipping from the US, I decided to make a load of cards for Legends of the Old West and some for Perilous Tales too, and place a bigger order.  They are very strict on printing anything you don't have the copyright for.  That wouldn't normally be a problem for a printer when it's for your own personal use but the endgame of Game Crafter is that people can then order your completed game direct from the website, paying for the printing with a cut going to the game designer.  So even if you don't plan to sell your work, they won't print it.  I had originally planned to use the cover of the rulebooks as the back of my cards.  But instead I designed my own with some free-to-use Shutterstock images.

The cards arrived yesterday and I'm so pleased with them.  Nice to see my designs on cards professionally printed and cut, rather than on pieces of card that start to curl and stick together!

I now have 51 cards for Ronin:

A surprisingly high number of cards for Legends of the Old West... 98!  Although this does cover 10 different factions:

And lastly, some cards for three of my Perilous Tales hero factions:

...with an appropriately evocative back:

It is very satisfying to bring some order (however small!) to a chaotic world.

Episode 108: A rose by any other name would smell as rank

Having just finished the Thorns of the Briar Queen, I pitted them against the Ghostbusters using the Perilous Tales solo rules.  It was also my first opportunity to use one of my new gaming mats and the ruined church I made in September.

The mission for the Ghostbusters:

Having saved the city, the Ghostbusters are now well-renowned and respected. They receive requests worldwide to deal with paranormal infestations.  The latest is from the Czech Republic.  There’s something strange in the neighbourhood of a ruined church on the outskirts of Prague.  Dr Peter Venkman, Dr Raymond Stantz, Dr Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore have been asked to investigate and clear the site of spectres.

The objectives were Kill The Master, Leave No Stone Unturned and Escape!  The villains and perils used the data for Ghast villains and Graveyard location from the rulebook.  The key thing about the villains were that they couldn't be wounded.  The Briar Queen (Ghast) had to be exorcised by three heroes in the same turn, and the Chainrasps (Spirits) immediately spawned 8" from the hero that had just successfully attacked them. The only change I made was to stop the Chainrasps re-spawning once the Briar Queen had been defeated.

The Ghostbusters parked up and entered the churchyard by two different entrances, Venkman and Zeddemore on the right, Stantz and Spengler on the left.

As they moved in, Venkman revealed the first threat marker and fell headfirst into an empty grave, causing a spectacular 7 wounds (a particularly unlucky early roll of dice including two zeros, which each cause 2 wounds) .  As the "Noose Tightened" following the Threat Check, Stantz revealed a Creeping Horror peril, which disadvantages some rolls with 6" for the rest of the game.

In the second round, the minions started to appear, causing minor wounds in their ambushes.

The team vanquished the Spirits but obviously others reappeared a bit further away.

In the third turn, Stantz revealed the Briar Queen behind the church.

Realising that the team had to re-group in order to take on the Queen, Venkman and Zeddemore used the Discretion trait and Escape from Combat actions to focus on getting across to help rather than endlessly battling Spirits.

By this time though, Venkman had picked up 11 wounds, just one short of being wiped out, so he took the long way out of danger to reach Spengler and Stantz, leaving Zeddemore chased by numerous Spirits.

Winston battled bravely but ultimately succumbed in turn 7 as the Spirits piled on.

Meanwhile, the three remaining Ghostbusters engaged the Briar Queen.

Venkman and Spengler successfully completed their Exorcism skill check but Stantz failed his role.  Fortunately, the "Last Ditch" rule allows one failed attempt in the game to be re-rolled.  This time it worked, and the Briar Queen was vanquished.

Pursued by the remaining Spirits, the team (sadly less Zeddemore) escaped from the villain's table edge.

The Ghostbusters earned 3 points for killing the Queen, 1 point for revealing the final threat markers when the threat level was at 7, 3 points for escaping, and 1 point for the leader surviving.  Eight points gives a final episode rating of B - "a tale fit for the telling".

Thorns of the Briar Queen

After many many years of painting miniatures, I've finally painted my first Games Workshop figures.  I've always preferred historical gaming to sci-fi or fantasy (even if I'm at the Hollywood end of historical with Wild West and Pirates), and was never interested in Warhammer 40,000 (Space Marines) or any of the fantasy stuff.

However, Perilous Tales has been nudging me into the fantastical with the supernatural villains, and when I spotted some amazing looking spectres on the Facebook group, I had to track them down.  I was told they were from the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar high fantasy range - a set called "Thorns of the Briar Queen".  Originally quite cheap, the packs of plastic figures were sold with loose leaf A4 sheets of painting guides and additional rules for just £7.99 but cost almost twice that at Games Workshop now.  I managed to get hold of an unopened pack on eBay for just a little more than the original price.

Being used to lead figures, I wasn't expecting an Airfix-style kit:

Unlike traditional Airfix, no glue is required, the figures all snap into place, including into the detailed bases.  There was a little bit of filing and gap-filling but not much.  The challenge was not snapping anything off - the figures are so fine and thin, something which clearly couldn't be achieved with lead, but it does make them a bit fragile.  Even the painting guide noted not to press too hard when dry brushing.  

In order to give them a little bit more weight, I filled the underside of the bases with Tetrion, and then primed and started painting.

I'm pleased with the final result.  Here are (from left) Varclav the Cruel, the Briar Queen and the Ever-hanged:

And the four minions called "chainrasps":

Here's a group shot which gives a clearer view of the excellent bases provided with the figures:

So who you gonna call to deal with these ghosts...?

Unlock!: Star Wars Escape Game

I picked this up as another solo game for lockdown.  Obviously it was the theme that pulled me in.  The box contains three missions:

Each mission contains a few dozen cards.  

As well as the cards, the game is played with an app which is the equivalent of the decoder ring in the Exit series of escape games, as well as adding music and atmosphere to the game.  The puzzles are very light, essentially spotting numbers in patterns on the cards, or combining two cards together to give the number of a third, so it's nothing like as challenging (or consequently, as fun) as the Exit games.  

Diverting enough given that you're playing in the Star Wars universe but not good enough to result in a recommendation - back to eBay with this one.