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.

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!