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.

Gaming Mats

Continuing my lockdown policy of Pay Now, Play Later...

In recent years, more and more companies have been producing gaming mats with very detailed images printed on vinyl, cloth and (best of all I think) mousemat.  I keep coming back to them and had been looking recently at Deep Cut Studios.

They provide a custom service where you can provide the images for them to print.  I was interested in a set of 2x2 feet gaming mats for DBA, Perilous Tales and other 28mm skirmish games.  They aren't cheap but then I had a cunning idea.  How about ordering a double-sided 6x4 feet mat and cutting it up myself?

I bought 12 very high resolution gameboard images from DriveThruRPG and then stitched them together using an open source graphics package into two images with 6 maps each.

This was uploaded to Deep Cut and in just over a week my double-sided mat had been printed in Lithuania and delivered to the UK.

Inevitably (and in fairness, as warned by Deep Cut) the two images didn't precisely line up so when the mats were cut (by my expert resident fabric wrangler) there was a little bit of wastage - but to all intents and purposes, I now have a set of twelve 2x2 feet mats for a range of scenarios.

I have (left to right, top then bottom) Lonely Road, Badlands, Snow Field, Wasteland, Desert Outcrop and River Valley.

Plus Borderlands, Ice Wastes, Cobblestones, Deep Desert, Lowland Plain and Highlands.

I'm really pleased with the quality of the printing and definition of the images (the photos above don't really do them justice) and this approach was less than half the price of ordering them as pre-cut 2x2 mats.

Abominable!

I painted up a few more of the figures that Adrian got me for my birthday.  The first are some fantastic Yetis from Copplestone Castings.

They are a cheeky pair...

They are also my first snow bases.  Having looked at lots of the products online, I also found a few recommendations for a simple home-made version.  The snow is a mixture of PVA, white paint and baking soda - with some more soda sprinkled on as the mixture was drying for extra texture.  I'm pleased with how it turned out.

The other figures, also designed by Mark Copplestone, are "The Accursed" - a splendid pair of werewolves.  More great additions for games of Perilous Tales.