Riding through the glen

 

I got this much anticipated game for my delayed birthday gift from Louise last year although we didn't play it until the New Year.  It combines wargaming-style measuring sticks for movement, a Fighting Fantasy-style book for revealing the story, Advent Calendar opening doors for removable/flippable tiles which are built into the beautifully illustrated game board, a bit of roleplaying and silly voices, and uniquely a single bag for all the various bits that need to be drawn out during the game.

The development of characters and flipping of tiles within the game board means it is a legacy game - but one that can be completely reset and played through again.  Encounters are different depending on whether you are playing for the first or subsequent times through, and there is a branching narrative so there are two pairs of scenarios within the nine that are encountered by a different decision at some point.

It is really clever and a lot of fun.  Kieron, Stuart, David and I had played the first two chapters ("Escape" and "A Safe Hiding Place") a couple of months ago, and last night, Andy took over the Will Scarlet character from David (slightly reluctantly as Andy wanted the green figures of my Robin Hood character!).

The game doesn't have a rulebook as such with additional rules being introduced as players progress through the scenarios.  This works well for getting you stuck into the game straightaway and letting the depth of the game emerge but it does rely on a bit of memory between game sessions.

Consequently, we had a bit of a challenge with scenario 3 "Gold for King Richard".  We ran out of time but we also had collected objects we didn't know how to use which would have helped immensely, so we decided to treat our concluding the game in the one further round we played as a success.

For next time:

• The objects we collected can be used to get extra turns, extra movement and other bonuses as outlined on the inside cover of the book.  They are not carried over to future scenarios at this stage.
• The "Hope" counter drops rapidly during the game and we need the Bard to sing our praises - so it's important to defeat Guards and (especially) rob Nobles to ensure the Hope is regularly topped up, allowing more time to complete the scenario.

With the above in mind, I think we shouldn't feel under quite so much pressure in our next game.

Ancient Battles

 Andy and I got a few more DBA battles under our belts.  Last week we played Early Neo-Assyrian (I/25b) versus Early Achaeminid Persian (I/60c).

Andy lined up his Persians near the river I put down and advanced to the bank.  Leaving my horde behind to keep an eye on Andy's element in the fort on my side of the battlefield, I made my way towards the river.

As I reached it, I rolled a 6 revealing that the river slowed crossing, banks aided defence and only single elements or columns could cross.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Andy's 6s against my 1s saw his bow kill two heavy chariots before I even got a chance to cross.  And his superhuman horde even managed to push back another chariot despite being double-outflanked.

I soon lost my Psiloi and Blade on the right flank giving Andy a 4-0 victory.  I couldn't even kill one of the three hordes although as Andy informed as I was leaving, they don't count towards breakpoints anyway!

Yesterday we played Classical Indian (II/3a) against Graeco-Bactrian (II/36a).

I took another risk with the river and this time the river roll was a 4, slightly better but still reducing my Graeco-Bactrian knights to a feeble 1BW move as we waded through, and they never got in to the fight.

In the centre, battle was met but I didn't have the PIP dice to engage enough elements at the same time.  My elephant trampled one of Andy's bow but his Indian elephants did more damage.  Final score 5-1 to Andy.

We swapped sides for a rematch and I dispensed with the river this time.

My bow pushed up and killed a light horse.  There was a big battle in the centre with losses on both sides but elephants being able to quick kill knights gave me the edge, and after taking out Andy's general, I finally won a game with a score of 5-3.

Invading Italy

 Andy and I are trying to play more figures games.  A couple of weeks ago my Mongol Conquest DBA army invaded Italy, defended by Andy's Condotta.

The terrain was ploughed fields so James deployed across it as it counts as Good Going unless the first PIP roll of the game is 1.  Which Andy of course then rolled.  

By the time the Mongols had extracted themselves from the crops, the Italians had lined up a superior force of cavalry.  The match-ups were in Andy's favour and he rolled up all four of the Mongols.  In the meantime, James had taken a couple of elements in the centre and right flank, so Andy won the game 4-2.

Yesterday Italy was invaded even more improbably by Samurai.  Andy deployed an element in a fort which James thought he could take out early in the game.

Sadly, the dice were on Andy's side.  The three elements in contact with the fort were all able to attack, and all failed.  The same happened in the second round.  In both the third and fourth rounds, an attacking element was destroyed.  A 6-1 outcome on shooting saw James lose another element.  Finally, the Samurai actually killed a Knight, but a second 6-1 roll by a Knight killed a fourth Japanese blade to give the win to Andy 4-1.

In the rematch, James had more luck to start with, killing 2 Knights with bow fire, and a Light Horse in close combat.  Going in for the kill he surrounded a Knight with a Light Horse and his Cavalry General, but another extreme dice roll saw both of them destroyed, taking the score to 3-3.  Andy then took out another element winning the game 4-3.

This week's Rule 23 was clocking that command distance, and the terrain the General is in, does make a difference to the PIPs required to move elements.

Episode 208: More Trouble Than Tribbles

First game with the new Galactic sci-fi terrain.  Another Perilous Tale with John controlling (and role-playing) the Star Trek (Original Series) crew whilst I ran the game and rolled for the villains.

The context for the mission objectives of Kill The Master, Hunt The Fiends, and Recover Equipment was as follows:

The villains were a large group of tentacled aliens:

  

Uhura and Kirk checked out the reactor room whilst McCoy explored the central corridor, revealing the first of the baby tentacled aliens and receiving four wounds for his trouble. Spock and Scotty took the left hand side and climbed the stairs towards the gantry, whilst Kirk doubled back to help McCoy by killing the alien.

Kirk and McCoy pressed on up the centre, revealing another baby alien which Kirk killed whilst McCoy (on his second attempt) healed himself.  A Tempted Forward peril failed to tempt anyone.  Scotty and Spock avoided nearby threat markers and crossed the gantry to join Uhura in the reactor room.

They then explored sickbay where Spock found the first bottle of hooch.

Assorted bottles made from Lego were hidden inside the larger cargo crates for the Recover Equipment objective.

The crew failed to take Dutch courage from the bottle however and three of the five immediately failed a horror check.  But Uhura stayed put long enough to detect another peril (a Putrid Stench) emanating from the far right of the ship.  This meant the crew could ignore that corner and explore the higher central level.

Scotty prioritised finding more alcohol whilst Kirk and McCoy revealed another baby alien at the top of the ladder.  Kirk killed the alien and then continued upwards to explore another cargo container for a third and final illicit beverage. 

Scotty and Uhura met up on the lower gantry and were then ambushed by the Mother Alien.

The Mother Alien took a fair few wounds from them both before wounding Uhura and then retreating down the stairs (following its Lurker characteristic).  She received some more shots before the Threat Check enabled her to remove three wounds and then become Aggressive, charging back up the stairs and killing Uhura.

Scotty's horror check at the loss of his crewmate fortunately enabled him to pull back from the alien joining his other colleagues who all released a barrage of phaser shots, obliterating the Mother Alien.

In the background, Kirk, having already killed several baby aliens and now just one short of his 12 wounds limit, was ambushed by another baby alien.  John had plenty of misfortunes during the game (rolling 0 on the D10 difficulty dice) and he was going to finish with more.  Kirk took a swing at the alien and failed to even scratch him.  He tried again, and failed again.  With Kirk's final action, and John's last roll of the game, the dice came up trumps and the alien was killed outright.  The perfect ending to a Star Trek episode.

All three objectives had been achieved (3 x 3 points) plus a further 1 for the leader surviving.  No further bonus given the sad loss of Uhura so a total score of 10 giving a Rank A "a truly heroic performance".  Roll credits... 

Sci-fi terrain

I haven't really had many sci-fi figures in the past but since I've been playing Perilous Tales, I've bought or been gifted quite a few figures like aliens, robots, and characters from the major sci-fi franchises.  I've played a couple of games of away missions on dusty planets but wanted to get some scenery for sci-fi or spaceship interiors.

Back at Salute in November, I'd looked at terrain from Battle Systems.  They make very detailed double-sided printed cardboard terrain.  I bought just a reversible road and river set at the time but came back and looked at their sci-fi terrain, and selected their Galactic Core Set.

Over a third of the 334 pieces are the plastic joining clips but that still means over 200 pieces of cardboard terrain pieces and scatter.  These come in 18 cardboard sheets to be pressed out.

The set also comes with a highly detailed 2 foot by 2 foot neoprene gaming mat.

There's a huge amount of material here - dozens of walls with different configurations like small or large removable/replaceable doors and windows, gantries, ladders, stairs and lots of scatter like consoles, chairs and cargo.

 Here's an overview of what it looks like all put together.  I'm really pleased with it.

It will of course all come apart and fit back in the original box but that means fitting everything back together again to play with it each time, so my compromise was to keep it mostly together but break it into a small number of parts, stored across three boxes.

Overrun!

This was the first multiplayer game of Legends of the Old West since the train robbery back in 2015!  We played the Overrun! scenario from the Alamo expansion volume, although we played it as a big skirmish game rather than a battle with armies and companies that the expansion introduces.

The US Cavalry (Stuart) and Texas Rangers (Adrian) with 15 figures in total were being pushed back by the Mexican Army (Andy) and the Mexican Rural Police "Rurales" (David and James) with 19 figures.  The outer fence was about to be breached and the first turn saw the defenders drop back and take up defensive position ahead of the fort, as the Mexican attackers pressed up against the fence.  Subsequent turns were ordered by random player order (drawing our usual colours from a set of cubes in a bag) rather than by side which worked well and introduced more uncertainty.  Fame points were also used effectively to get the shooting advantage when desired.

There was no "Head for the Hills" morale check in this scenario.  The attackers had to kill all the heroes to win and the defenders needed to only have heroes of their own side in the fort at any time after the twelfth turn, but it was essentially a fight to the death.

There was one gate to the compound but each Mexican posse was equipped with a ladder to enable them to scale the walls.  Andy moved his Mexican Army up in smart formation to fire their rifles but left their ladder behind.  David had First Blood with some mighty fine die rolling on the right flank as he battled with Adrian's Rangers.  In the centre, James' Rurales tried to find what cover they could.

Shamed by the Rurales bold break from cover, the Mexican Army paused their long-range but limited impact shooting to press on the left flank.  A lot of bullets fly in this game but not many find their target, so a rush across open ground to assault defenders can be worth the risk.

Stuart and Adrian defended from behind cover dropping back as their opponents neared assault range, and the Mexicans started to take up terrain previously held by the US, piling on the remaining Ranger in the area.

On the other flank, Adrian had a poor run of luck (his six-gun fanning being more of a fandango) and his large group of Rangers were starting to fall to David's Rurales, and the shoot-outs were replaced by a series of fist fights.

Adrian had posted a couple of Rangers with rifles on to the firing step within the compound to cover the middle ground - "she's got good range but sadly nobody is in it".  Eventually James' Rurales were in range as they engaged the Cavalry captain and Hired Gun US Marshall in the centre of the table.

About to throw his stick of dynamite, James learned that a fumble (a roll of 1) would result in it exploding in his character's hand.  This is definitely not worth the risk when several allies are within the blast radius.  As the figure stepped away from his colleagues, he was shot by one of Adrian's Rangers.  Another Mexican picked up the dynamite and was also promptly killed.

James' General escorted the soldier with the ladder right up to the wall on the left flank, with David doing similar on the other flank the following turn.  Both managed to climb over the walls whilst Andy's ladderless soldiers swarmed around the remaining US Cavalry outside the compound, taking them out.

We played the last turn, the 11th, at 11 o'clock. With half the Rangers lost and all but one of the cavalrymen, but still a fair few Mexicans in and around the compound, we judged it was a win for the Mexicans even though the specific objective hadn't yet been achieved.

It was great to have a big game again and get figures and mostly new scenery out on the table, along with the bespoke character cards.  Although each time I use the cards, I notice more mistakes which is frustrating.  I think I need to print out some errata stickers for now but in due course, may get some more printing done.  Scaling up a two side scenario for multiple players worked well and I think will enable us to play these sorts of games more often, rather than my trying to formulate different objectives for every posse.

Hang 'Em High

Andy and I enjoyed a Wild West game this afternoon.  First outing for the cards I made as part of my COVID-coping strategy.  Andy's outlaws were trying to rescue one of their own before he was hanged by the Lawmen at high noon.  This was one of the rulebook's scenarios with special rules for moving bystanders, and cutting/shooting the rope.

The Lawmen started scattered around the town.  Andy split his Outlaws with the 2 stronger characters taking the top route and the other four along the bottom.  The four soon met a couple of Lawmen and took them out straight away.

Across the square, there was a sustained fistfight - one Deputy was lost and the Sheriff took out one of the outlaws.  The Lawmen wobbled over their "Head For The Hills" morale check but put their duty above their own lives and continued the fight.

At noon (turn 10), the guilty man dropped, taking his first wound.

The other Deputy emptied his sawn-off shotgun into the Outlaws attempting to rescue their friend but managed to miss everyone.  Shots continued to be exchanged but the Sheriff singlemindedly continued the fistfight, knocking the Outlaw nearer and nearer the john, and eventually taking him out.

As the game neared the end of the 12th turn with the hanged man about to expire, three of Andy's Outlaws took a bead on the rope and two of them managed to hit it, freeing the fugitive, and winning the game.