Salute 2021

Andy and I went to Salute 2021 yesterday at Excel.  This was the much delayed April 2020 show so the theme was 80 years since the Battle of Britain, with a nicely printed cotton bag featuring a Spitfire, the free model was a 1940s schoolboy playing with a model plane, and there were full-scale replicas of a Hurricane and a Spitfire in the exhibition hall.

The COVID controls weren't made clear on the Salute website and so we were among a number of people caught out by them.  Fortunately, we managed to get the NHS app installed on Andy's phone and were then both able to show our vaccine passports.  So a slight delay in getting in but reassuring that all visitors had to show this or a recent negative test, and a good proportion of folks were wearing masks like us.

Understandably there were fewer people than previous years (partly COVID, perhaps partly because Salute 2022 is only five months away) but pretty much the same number of traders.  The noticeable difference was a reduction in the number of demo and participation games with quite a few empty tables.  But despite that, there was plenty to see and we had a good day out.

Highlights included this pirate battle:

A battle in Mexico:

A futuristic battle, seemingly influenced by the video game Horizon Zero Dawn:

This nice-looking WW2 game:

A very impressive Stalingrad game with a lot of height to it and with the River Volga in the foreground:

A couple of parody games about Brexit...

...and Trump's wall on the Mexico border:

We caught up with Eric C of Anderida fame, and Andy met up with his old squadron leader...

...who unusually was playing a WW2 game when we stopped by:

Expenditure was minimal this year.  I bought a set of reversible road/rivers and a small group of figures from new-ish company Tangent Miniatures.  These are called "Cosmic Travellers" but have more than a passing resemblance to the main characters from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. 

Rummaging in the games cupboard

I've just been looking over the games I acquired shortly before or since the first lockdown, and thinking about future real-life games nights.

I have the following that some of us have played only once, and are worth replaying:

And these are the ones we haven't played at all yet:

Hope some of those pique your interest.  Plenty to keep us busy for a while yet!

Mosque Compound

More MDF scenery from eBay seller banksjohnedward.  This is a mosque compound comprising a large building with veranda and steps, a small building, a domed tower and a surrounding wall.  It was a lot of MDF and excellent value.

I did a dry test fit and it went together well.  I made a slight notch in the staircase to fit better with the veranda and I also filled in the holes where the walls were supposed to connect in the middle, as connecting it completely would make it very difficult to store.

I thought I'd experiment with textured paint on this model and after priming white, sprayed it with Rust-Oleum Stone Spray Paint in Bleached Stone.  The results are pretty good, the textured effect is reasonably consistent and the colour looks right (not quite as bright white as it appears in these photos).

The large building has interior rooms and all the roofs are removable.

It should be suitable for a range of games, especially if the tower isn't used.  Here's some examples, which also show the finish more clearly.

Mars Attacks: the figures

Earlier this year I blogged about my purchase of the Mars Attacks miniatures game.  All the miniatures came as unpainted plastic figures - different colours for the Martians, civilians and soldiers so they could quickly be distinguished on the playing area, but I wanted to paint them before trying the game.

The Martians were great fun to paint - bold colours and dynamic poses.  As you can see on General Tor above, the figures were supplied with separate plastic helmets to glue on.  I was expecting problems with these but they were already cut to shape around the rim and fitted well to the figures.

General Tor is supported by five commanders...

...who are supported by 18 Martian Grunts, two with Freeze Rays, the rest with Disintegration Rifles.

A good variety of poses, mostly duplicates, some triplicates, and they form a pretty impressive looking army.

The humans are represented by soldiers, heroes and civilians.  I painted up the US soldiers in an approximation of the country's Operational Camouflage Pattern which should look good in an urban setting.  10 different figures: a sergeant, two troopers with light machine guns, one with a missile launcher and the rest with carbines.

The heroes are an eclectic mix of characters, including a police officer, mechanic, survivalist and even a medieval knight!

The set I bought included a Civilian Slaughter expansion which included some dead soldiers and Martians (which I'm leaving in the box as I remain not keen on Dead markers) and five civilians to protect in some of the missions.

Lastly, the expansion set also included a herd of flaming cows as featured in the rather dubious opening scene of the Tim Burton movie.

Now to paint all the scenery...

Episode 207: John Carpenter's The Thing

 Another episode of Perilous Tales using the figures described in my last blog.

To game John Carpenter's The Thing, I used the special rules for "The Thing In The Ice" and the location perils from "Arctic Camp" from the Perilous Tales rules.  In the ruleset, the four minions are all "things that were sled dogs", so I created the following villains for the figures I'd put together.

Lars the Norwegian MINION, AGGRESSIVE, 4 WOUNDS, SKILL 3

Kennel-Thing MINION, AGGRESSIVE, 4 WOUNDS, SKILL 4

Bennings-Thing MINION, AGGRESSIVE, 6 WOUNDS, SKILL 4

Spider-Head Thing MINION, LURKER, 6 WOUNDS, SKILL 3

The Thing MASTER, AGGRESSIVE, 12 WOUNDS, SKILL 6

I also created two extra special rules:

Villain order: When Threat Markers 1 to 5 are revealed, the Villains appear in the following order, regardless of the number on the Threat Marker: a friendly dog chased by an armed Norwegian, Kennel-Thing (remove the friendly dog when revealed), Bennings-Thing, Spider-Head Thing and The Thing.

Det er ikke en bikkje!: the friendly dog moves 4” in a random direction each turn and will not attack the heroes.  However, Lars the Norwegian wants to kill the dog.  Unfortunately, he is a very poor shot and each time will instead attack the hero nearest the dog.  Due to Perilous Production budget cuts, Lars arrives by dog sled rather than helicopter.  If Lars dies, the dog sled will move 6” towards the nearest table edge and exit when it reaches it.

My ice mat was laid out with snowdrifts and some cargo containers to represent Outpost 31 and the threat markers deployed in the Standard pattern.

Blair spotted the Ice Cave in the centre of the map so the team split up towards the upper and lower edges of the playing area.  Lars the Norwegian arrived first.

Due to budget constraints at Perilous Productions, Lars was pursuing a dog by sled rather than the helicopter used in the movie.

Lars' poor aiming saw him inflict 4 wounds on Dr Copper before MacReady shot him dead.  Copper healed himself and Windows walked into a snow drift on the other side of the table.  With no other threats around in the following turn, Blair wandered into the Ice Cave and Copper healed the wounds that were picked up.  Avoiding the snow drift, Palmer revealed the Kennel-Thing.

They wounded each other whilst MacReady discovered Bennings-Thing.

Bennings-Thing caused 4 wounds on MacReady whilst the Kennel-Dog managed to kill Palmer.  MacReady and Blair managed to kill Bennings-Thing but it reappeared following the next threat check and killed Windows.

Bennings-Thing and Kennel-Thing were then picked off by some sharp shooting by the remaining members of the party.  But the Kennel-Thing was back after the next threat check and seriously wounded Blair.

MacReady pressed on and found the Spider-Thing.

As a lurker, the Spider-Thing attacked MacReady and then scuttled away to the top of one of the containers.

MacReady was able to shoot it dead and then revealed the master - The Thing.

The Thing caused a further 8 wounds on MacReady and the threat level clicked over to 10 - the end of the game according to the rules but not the right place to end the scenario.  I played one more turn and between them, Blair and MacReady were able to kill The Thing.

The Leave No Stone Unturned and Get Evidence objectives were not achieved (the camera was with Windows) but the three remaining heroes did Kill the Master.  With the leader still alive, this was worth 3 + 1 = 4 victory points.  This is worth a grade 'D' - "A near thing. Not the party's proudest episode".

But I was quite happy to have succeeded with more characters alive than at the end of the movie!

I had thought about a flamethrower rule for MacReady but as the figure was holding dynamite, I expected to use the Demolition Expert trait instead.  However, unless there is more than one villain to be blown up, MacReady can do more damage hand to hand than using the dynamite - so disappointingly I ended up not using it.

There is a lot of checking with the Is That You? and Paranoia special rules.  I modified the first such that a skill check wasn't necessary if the villain had already attacked a hero.

Great to have finally got this out on the table.