Perilous Tales is a solo or cooperative skirmish wargame of thrilling tabletop adventures. Beta versions of the rules are available for playtesting at the Planet Smasher website. The rules really appealed to me with hidden markers and programmed actions for the enemies, like a simple figures version of Ambush!, and I was keen to try them.
The essential mechanism in the game is the Skill Check. A difficulty dice is rolled - two if the figure has Advantage or Disadvantage, and then the lower or higher respectively is taken as the difficulty target. Then a number of dice equal to the figure's skill are rolled and success is every die equal or greater to the difficulty target. A few twists on this: ones always fail, zeros (10) is a double success and sometimes there is a minimum difficulty target.
There is a similar threat check that takes place between the heroes and villains' turns which increases the threat level and can result in threat marker movement or additional villains spawning.
The rules are designed around the pulp fiction and horror genres, and only require a handful of figures for each side. I thought they might work well with Dad's Army and ran up some cards using Nandeck with special abilities for each character that reflected their personality in the TV series.
I made cards for Walker and Frazer too but just used these five for this episode.
The idea for the enemy was that the main villain was a nun turned against England by the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw. With a mad scientist, she had re-animated skeletons from Saint Aldhelm's graveyard in Walmington-on-Sea and was disrupting the plans of the local defence volunteers.
The Home Guard didn't know any of this of course. They had simply received orders from Colonel Pritchard to investigate why the searchlight had failed. This also included three specific Objectives from the thirteen offered in the rules.
I adapted the Voodoo Cult from the official Villain List to create my Crazed Nun list:
All Perilous Tales games are played on a 2x2 feet square area which was easy to set up on my workbench since I was playing solo.
I printed out the markers included in the rules. Eight are numbered for the five enemy figures and three location-related events, others represent the switches, radio and other devices not used in this episode:
The playing area with markers in Aggressive formation and initial deployment of the heroes looked like this:
Here's how it played out:
The essential mechanism in the game is the Skill Check. A difficulty dice is rolled - two if the figure has Advantage or Disadvantage, and then the lower or higher respectively is taken as the difficulty target. Then a number of dice equal to the figure's skill are rolled and success is every die equal or greater to the difficulty target. A few twists on this: ones always fail, zeros (10) is a double success and sometimes there is a minimum difficulty target.
There is a similar threat check that takes place between the heroes and villains' turns which increases the threat level and can result in threat marker movement or additional villains spawning.
The rules are designed around the pulp fiction and horror genres, and only require a handful of figures for each side. I thought they might work well with Dad's Army and ran up some cards using Nandeck with special abilities for each character that reflected their personality in the TV series.
I made cards for Walker and Frazer too but just used these five for this episode.
The idea for the enemy was that the main villain was a nun turned against England by the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw. With a mad scientist, she had re-animated skeletons from Saint Aldhelm's graveyard in Walmington-on-Sea and was disrupting the plans of the local defence volunteers.
The Home Guard didn't know any of this of course. They had simply received orders from Colonel Pritchard to investigate why the searchlight had failed. This also included three specific Objectives from the thirteen offered in the rules.
I printed out the markers included in the rules. Eight are numbered for the five enemy figures and three location-related events, others represent the switches, radio and other devices not used in this episode:
Here's how it played out:
- After initial moves, Pike triggered the first skeleton on the right, which attacked him but missed.
- Jones joined Pike to give them Advantage in their attacks and they killed the skeleton. The threat check resulted in Creeping Horror and Bats! events in front of the church, the latter wounding Wilson.
- As Jones and Pike pressed forward, the rest of the platoon moved up to the fence line on the left and Wilson climbed over, discovering another skeleton.
- Mainwaring kills the skeleton whilst Jones discovers the Crazed Nun near the searchlight who wounds him.
- In classic George Mainwaring style, the Captain then falls into an open grave taking significant damage. Godfrey heals Wilson, whilst Jones and Pike slug it out with the Nun, and the Mad Scientist makes his first appearance, lurking around the gravestones.
- Around the back of the church, Mainwaring and Wilson flick the first two of the three switches revealing a further skeleton and an extra skeleton spawns next to Godfrey.
- Mainwaring and Wilson kill the skeleton near them and the former shoots the Scientist with his Officer's Pistol. Jones finishes off the Nun but is then surprised by another skeleton.
- Godfrey and Jones kill the skeletons they are engaged with.
- Pike interacts with the third switch, making this the final round.
The heroes earned the following victory points: +3VP for killing the Crazed Nun, +3VP for interacting with the three switches, none for radio as that wasn't activated, +1VP for the Leader (Mainwaring) surviving, and +1VP for not losing a single teammate. A final score of 8 victory points is ranked B - "a tale fit for the telling". And now I've told it.
I enjoyed playing this game and look forward to playing it with others when we can share the heroes out and take on some new villains. The rules seemed robust and the game flowed well.
