The Night The Reindeer Died

The Bill Murray movie "Scrooged", a 1980s version of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", is quite a lot of fun but for those of us who grew up watching "The Fall Guy", the highlight was the featured trailer for a Christmas movie called "The Night The Reindeer Died" starring Lee Majors.

So earlier this year, I started thinking about hosting a Christmas 7TV game based on the fictional movie.  I had a handful of suitable figures already and I'd been adding to them over the last couple of months.  I recently started looking at profile cards and thinking about the scenario, and then happily Crooked Dice dropped their The Night The Snow Turned Red scenario in Wargames Illustrated, based on the very same movie trailer.  This provided a set of new profiles, prop cards and excuses to buy more figures.

I increased the casts from 32 to 49 points and adapted a number of the cards to match some the figures I had.  For example, Mrs Claus became Buddy the Elf, the Easter Bunny was replaced by a Yeti, and the evil co-star The Twizzler became The Ruin-deer.  I renamed attacks and special effects to more appropriate names for the replacement figures.  As well as the new profiles, I used some from the Fantasy Genre Guide and adapted the Water Elemental to be an Ice Elemental for Jack Frost.

The Nice Listers comprised:

and the Naughty Listers were:

Here are the group shots:

And I put a teaser trailer together featuring all the figures:

A couple of days after Christmas I put the game on for my friends - Kieron and Adrian were the Nice Listers, and Stuart and Andy took the Naughty List, with me as gamesmaster.

The gaming area was around the North Pole with plenty of trees, snow drifts, a couple of igloos and some rocks, along with the remains of Santa's Workshop.

I raided my Lego Winter Village to provide the North Pole marker and presents that would serve as objectives.

Collecting a present would be worth 1 Victory Point and unwrapping it would yield an extra Prop Card to add to the two randomly allocated at the start.

In our game, the Naughty Listers won the initiative and cracked on towards the presents.  The Nice Listers' well-drilled soldiers paraded forwards in support of Lee Majors with the Elves sneaking up the other flank (hidden by trees in image below).

By the end of the Villains' second turn, they had secured three presents and were marking two more, and the Nice Listers had yet to collect any but the Elves were lining up to scare the wolves away.

The end of the Naughty Listers second turn was also the end of Act One, and they gained a victory point by sneaking a single Evil Elf onto the North Pole marker.

In the Heroes' second turn, they picked up their first present and spilled the first blood on the snow, taking out the Evil Elf and one of the Frosty Snowmen.  The Heroes' Polar Bear charged at the Yeti, with Santa's fearsome "Ho! Ho! Ho!" ringing out of the forest, and the combination took the Yeti out of the match - a blow for the Villains as it was the Unit Leader for the Snowmen.

However, the Villains' collection of presents was boosting their ability to collect more.  Jack Frost deployed some Toy Soldiers who assaulted a Nutcracker Soldier allowing Jack to pick up a fourth present.  The Frosty Snowmen unleashed their snow cannons on the Polar Bear in revenge for losing their commander.

As the end of the Second Act came to close, Buddy's Elves took out the Wolves, allowing them to claim a second present.  And Lee Majors bravely stepped up to the North Pole to give the Heroes another victory point.

Although ahead on points, the Villains had taken more losses and were worried about their cast being axed.  They reincarnated an Evil Elf and the Ruin-Deer retreated and took cover.  Their Penguin waddled into action and tommy-gunned a Nutcracker Soldier to splinters.  Buddy and his Elves went into berserker mode, killing three Snowmen in quick succession.

Preparing for the last act's occupation of the North Pole, the Villains' final moves were to deploy four figures to hold it.

The Heroes had two more opportunities to gain some victory points, in the hope of bringing the score up to a draw.  The first was to rush the North Pole with four figures and attempt a push attack on the Penguin to get the majority.  It almost worked... but with four figures each, nobody got an extra VP.

On the other flank, Buddy and his Elves unleashed a storm of bullets at the remaining half-dead Snowman in an attempt to axe the cast.  Remarkably each of the six shots missed him.

At the end of the game, the Naughty Listers had gained 4 presents and occupied the North Pole once, and the Nice Listers 2 presents and also held the North Pole once.  A score of 5-3, giving the Villains a Decisive Victory despite their notably greater losses.

Judas Haul plants the Haulmark Films logo firmly atop the North Pole. The company sets up a new headquarters in the wreck of the Grotto, using it as sets for their upcoming films. Santa has escaped, but the rest of his Helpers are captured and used as set decoration when the new movie demands it. The Ruin-Deer reigns as a capitalist puppet and Christmas is changed forever.

An excellent scenario from Crooked Dice, with some really entertaining Attacks, Special Effects and Prop Cards.  The Nice Listers will get a chance for revenge in a rematch in the New Year...