Episode 301: Another Shabby Nazi Trick

Captain Mainwaring of the Local Defence Volunteers rushed out of his office waving a telegram.

"Listen to this, Wilson.  I've just received orders from Colonel Pritchard... An unidentified flying object has crashed just outside Walmington-on-Sea. The top brass think this could this be a new Nazi superweapon.  I'm to take my men and investigate as soon as possible.  There's no time to lose.  Don't worry about uniforms.  Gather the platoon and we'll meet near the woods.  Come with me Pike."

"I say, would you chaps mind awfully coming out for a bit of a manoeuvre?", asked Wilson, as he found Jones, Walker and Frazer sinking a few pints in the Red Lion.

The platoon quickly reached the saucer-shaped object and found a way in.

Mainwaring split the platoon and led (from safely in the middle) Walker and Frazer up the staircase.

Wilson did similarly on the other side through a strange smelling area with Pike leading the way waving his trusty cricket bat, with which he had once scored 23.

Sadly this time he was out for a duck as he encountered a strange grey hairless homunculus with large black eyes at the top of the stairs who promptly incapacitated him, and Pike fell from the stairs calling for his mother.

"Whatever will I tell Mavis", wondered Sergeant Wilson as he swiftly despatched the creature in revenge.

Mainwaring's men encountered similar beings who struck and then ran away into the bowels of the ship.  "They don't like it up 'em", cried Corporal Jones, chasing them down the gantry.

Then Frazer was set upon by a skeleton in a very strange costume.  "It's not like any diving suit I witnessed in the Navy", he exclaimed.

Recalling the tradition of parley, Frazer somehow managed to subdue the skeleton who then started fighting the grey creatures alongside the Home Guard.  Its help was vital as they were beginning to get outnumbered.

Mainwaring punctured a grey with his umbrella before turning to help Walker finish off another.  "Take that, you monochrome marauder!"

One by one the enemies were defeated providing some respite for the Home Guard to search some of the container boxes for technologies to take back to Army Headquarters.  They made their way back to the entrance, fighting off the last stragglers, before emerging blinking back into the sunlight of their seaside town.

After a minute's silence for Private Frank Pike, Captain Mainwaring turned towards his men and the strange skeletal creature who had joined them.  He tucked his thumbs under his lapels, drew himself up to his full 5ft 4 ½ and addressed the group: 

"Let us brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if Walmington-on-Sea last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was our Finest Hour.’"

[James and Andy were playing Perilous Tales, with figures by Bolt Action and Copplestone Castings. Scenery was the Galactic Core System from Battlesystems.  The Perils were Putrid Strench, Utterly Horrible and The Captain.  Villains were a lurking Master with 7 Wounds and 7 Skill, an aggressive Minion with the same, and a group of pack hunters with 5 Wounds and 5 Skill.  10 Victory Points were achieved for a "truly heroic performance".]

BKC Eastern Front

Another in our irregular series of re-booting Blitzkreig Commander.  After the debacle of Pendraken's botched update (version 3) after they bought the series a few years ago, we have decided to stick with version 2 rather than buy their re-worked version 4.

Andy set up an early Eastern Front game with Germans controlled by James attacking Andy's Russians in a defensive position around a factory complex.

Line of sight was broken up by hedges and walls preventing long-range bombardment from the start.  James generalship started well with a Command Blunder (a roll of double six) in the very first turn, depressing the command values of his HQs for that and the second turn.

On the right flank, command struggled and the lorries containing infantry didn't progress very far before being ambushed by Andy's tanks pressing forward, but in the centre the infantry did move up and started to exchange fire (admittedly as machine guns for a couple of turns before we noticed they were actually mortars - and then unfortunately too close to anything to be effectively utilised).

On the left flank, the minefields provided limited routes forwards and once suppressed, the tanks prevented anything else moving up.

As LOS opened up, Andy used his dug-in 75mm to great effect.  After our couple of hours time limit, there wasn't huge progress given our frequent consultation with the rulebook.  We still didn't get into using the Initiative Phase properly and got it wrong by providing Opportunity Fire multiple times within the same turn, but we are continuing to learn and re-learn how this game works best, and it was good to get the tanks out onto the table again.

Old School gaming

Over the last six months, John and I have had three sessions playing vintage board games from the 1960s.  Two of these were childhood games of John's and the third I picked up in a charity shop recently.  You can't really compare them with modern games but there is charm and nostalgia in re-visiting them, and certainly still fun to be had.

The first we played was Go.  Not the thousands of years old game with beads but a travel game from Waddingtons.

In this game, players travel the world by various means (after securing visas and tickets) collecting souvenirs.  A big constraint is only being able to make purchases in local currencies and there are incredibly about a dozen different types of "Monopoly money" to trade during the game.

Like several older games, you can be incredibly reliant on a particular dice roll so we made a house rule that made that easier in successive rolls after each time you failed, or else it is possible just to get stuck.

The game has an equivalent of "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards and the added bonus was that the stacks had been supplemented by extra cards devised by John and his brother back in the 70s!

The second game we played was Trek, an expedition game from Spear's in 1960.

The main attraction was the plastic four-wheel drive vehicles, although we were both disappointed to see these were modelled on Jeeps rather than Land Rovers, but they are nice components and complemented by mules and supplies.

James broke the market mechanism in the first turn by buying up most of the stock at the cheapest price which forced the price up to unrealistic levels for John.  Another rule we modified.  And then enjoyed racing from base camp to the unimaginatively-titled destination of "Camp 12".

Our most recent game was the irresistibly-titled Spy Ring, another Waddington's effort from 1965.

This is quite an unusual game.  Players control a spy and a control man who move around a city of sixteen embassies collecting secrets.  The secret cards have a couple of letters on which can be grouped to form the codeword FISH in different languages, with longer words (like POISSON) earning you more points than FISK.  And it that wasn't peculiar enough, when a player rolls a one, his spy has to contact his control man by sending a radio message.  This is signalled by placing an aerial in the spy's hat(!) making him vulnerable for a whole turn, and if spotted, the opposing player can steal a secret card.

The game ends when a player has completed two codewords but they may not win if one of their codewords is short and worth few points (e.g. single character Japanese) as it is the total score that counts.  A nice theme and a fun game to play.  We controlled two cooperating teams each so it would be good to try it with more players.

I've got another couple of 1960s games in the loft - one we played quite a bit 20 years ago, the other never yet tried - so John and I have more vintage gaming to come.