Thursday, September 15, 2016
Monday, August 29, 2016
SoDT - Beaver Wars Playtest
Playtested a Scenario today for the upcoming supplement to Songs of Drums and Tomahawks - Beaver Wars. Great fun and 2 (yes, two) nail-biter endings.
But first, as always an apology to the writer, Mike Demana. He produces great scenarios, and then I do my best to butcher them up beyond recognition. Here's his map for the "horse raid" scenario:
And my butchered response. Don't have enough horses, so we'll use cows instead. Can't find the cornfields, so we'll use orchards instead. And half the Indians are still on the painting table, so it's now Settlers vs. Indians. But I did keep them as a tribe, not using SoDT settler archetypes.
Each band (232 points), had a leader, several warriors, and 2 youngsters along. The Indians were surprised halfway through their raid. In the first turn, most of the settlers approached from the North East.
Here in turn 2, one Indian is making away towards the wood with the prize bull. A lone settler enters from the South West and takes a shot. Miss!
The Indian War Leader, upset at the temerity, fires back. At long range he scores an amazing hit and takes out the first settler! (shown here before removal)
Since one of the ways to win is to collect scalps, the War Leader rushes towards his kill, dodging excited cows along the way. But wait...
Uh Oh! The Settler's partner enters the field. It's going to be a fight! Who will activate first?
The War Leader does! And gets a triple activation. He is able to rush up, scalp the unfortunate settler, and move into contact with the next one!
Action was occurring all across the board, of course. One of the Indian youths had frozen in the corral after missing a settler. He didn't miss his return shot, and rushed in for the scalp (blue dots).
Settler Joe hid in the center orchard and killed the other youth and scalped him as the cow wandered off, only to be killed by a return shot from the other cow-handler.
The rear guard Indian got grazed a few times, and finally rushed into hand-to-hand with a settler. He forgot it was the Leader of the Settlers! In the background, the 2 Settler youths started heading towards the cow that got away.
But catastrophe! The Settler Leader finally dispatched his opponent, triggering a morale check on the Indians. Both braves holding cows panicked and ran off the board (we ruled they lost the cows). The Leader calmly moved on, and ran into the settler boy just as he finished scalping his victim. This would be an easy kill for the War Leader (C3) versus the youth (C1)
But No! In an amazing feat of high-and-low dice rolling, the boy manages to score a kill on the Indian War Leader! It's a rout, a huge success for the Settlers. Tom (Indians) is inconsolable, Sara (Settlers) won't stop bragging!
Ending Two:
After enduring endless bragging, Tom realized he calculated the combat incorrectly! Ha Ha! War Leader wasn't dead! He demanded a replay, just like the Olympics. After pouting, Sara agreed.
The second fight went more to plan, and the War Leader killed and scalped the boy. But with more Settlers rushing forward, he wisely ran for the exit.
Final score was 4 scalps for the Settlers, 3 for the Indians, and no cows taken. Still a win for the Settlers, but not nearly as dramatic.
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Faustus Furius - Race 3
Today was the third race in the first annual Ventura Cup. A challenging course awaited our noble charioteers. You could take the safer but slower outside line, or risk it in the middle.
This time 6 chariots took the starting line. With 4 players, we added a wrinkle: Every 3 turns players diced for control of the red and blue chariot. Whoever had control ran them for 3 turns, then diced again. This caused much carnage and mayhem. And yes, I was on the outside, while Helen had the pole position.
Did I say carnage and mayhem? Right off the bat I had an early start, but Miles, running the blue chariot, rammed him into me, causing a double crash.
By turn 3 of the first lap things had settled out a bit, with every body behaving.
But a failed triple-activation had motivated a gang of hooligans onto the track! By the end of the race, 2 gangs were roaming around, looking for trouble.
Late in the game. Sara has a lock on the lead, looking to cruise to an easy victory. Where is Miles? There he is, half a lap behind, seemingly not even in contention. Some would give up now, but not Miles.
...And with good reason. Total carnage in turn 3! The Blue Chariot (me controlling) went on a suicide chicken-run. He took out Sara and Helen, Red Chariot (controlled by Miles), took me out in exchange. While everybody tried to get their chariots back on 2 wheels, Miles calmly cruised through the middle, using his "crowd favorite" to thread the needle.
And it paid off: Miles crosses the line first, while also getting "crowd favorite" again! MHI for the win.
After Miles crossed in first with crowd favorite, Sara also crossed the line with 3 successes. So we house-ruled that both got the bonus points for crossing the line as the favorite, as the alternate seemed mean.
The standings after 3 races:
Sara 10 points
Miles 10
Tom 7
Helen 5
This time 6 chariots took the starting line. With 4 players, we added a wrinkle: Every 3 turns players diced for control of the red and blue chariot. Whoever had control ran them for 3 turns, then diced again. This caused much carnage and mayhem. And yes, I was on the outside, while Helen had the pole position.
Did I say carnage and mayhem? Right off the bat I had an early start, but Miles, running the blue chariot, rammed him into me, causing a double crash.
By turn 3 of the first lap things had settled out a bit, with every body behaving.
But a failed triple-activation had motivated a gang of hooligans onto the track! By the end of the race, 2 gangs were roaming around, looking for trouble.
Late in the game. Sara has a lock on the lead, looking to cruise to an easy victory. Where is Miles? There he is, half a lap behind, seemingly not even in contention. Some would give up now, but not Miles.
...And with good reason. Total carnage in turn 3! The Blue Chariot (me controlling) went on a suicide chicken-run. He took out Sara and Helen, Red Chariot (controlled by Miles), took me out in exchange. While everybody tried to get their chariots back on 2 wheels, Miles calmly cruised through the middle, using his "crowd favorite" to thread the needle.
And it paid off: Miles crosses the line first, while also getting "crowd favorite" again! MHI for the win.
After Miles crossed in first with crowd favorite, Sara also crossed the line with 3 successes. So we house-ruled that both got the bonus points for crossing the line as the favorite, as the alternate seemed mean.
The standings after 3 races:
Sara 10 points
Miles 10
Tom 7
Helen 5
Monday, July 25, 2016
Friday, July 22, 2016
Faustus Furius!
First game of Faustus Furius tonight, the new (in English) game from Ganesha Games
Totally fun, very fast action, and as with all their games, you are faced with a plethora of tactical decisions.
The family plays one chariot game a year at the annual Con. They love it so much I made custom chariots for Sara and Miles. With this game, the chariots will be out a lot more often. The blue one I threw together today, need at least one more chariot so we all can play.
Heading in to the first turn, it's a tight race with Helen in the front, Miles swerving to miss, and the Jovi chariot bringing up the rear.
A tighter view of the turn.
And a double-crash! Both Helen and Miles roll their chariots. Unlike our other game, you are not done once you flip. You have a chance to get back in the race, and they both did. The white triangle is a turning guide I made.
Lots of action in Turn 2. Sara crashed into the wall hard. Miles took the wide line, after inciting a crowd onto the track, directly into the path of Helen. Mobs on the track are an imposing obstacle.
Turn 3 isn't any cleaner. Helen dropped a mob right in front of Miles, then Sara careened into the path. In the end, nobody hit the mob, but Miles hit the wall and never recovered.
This is a blast of a game, can be used for any sort of racing. Really into these rules, will use them for sorts of racing.
Totally fun, very fast action, and as with all their games, you are faced with a plethora of tactical decisions.
The family plays one chariot game a year at the annual Con. They love it so much I made custom chariots for Sara and Miles. With this game, the chariots will be out a lot more often. The blue one I threw together today, need at least one more chariot so we all can play.
Heading in to the first turn, it's a tight race with Helen in the front, Miles swerving to miss, and the Jovi chariot bringing up the rear.
A tighter view of the turn.
And a double-crash! Both Helen and Miles roll their chariots. Unlike our other game, you are not done once you flip. You have a chance to get back in the race, and they both did. The white triangle is a turning guide I made.
Lots of action in Turn 2. Sara crashed into the wall hard. Miles took the wide line, after inciting a crowd onto the track, directly into the path of Helen. Mobs on the track are an imposing obstacle.
Turn 3 isn't any cleaner. Helen dropped a mob right in front of Miles, then Sara careened into the path. In the end, nobody hit the mob, but Miles hit the wall and never recovered.
This is a blast of a game, can be used for any sort of racing. Really into these rules, will use them for sorts of racing.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Friday, July 01, 2016
Saturday, June 25, 2016
FreeJumper - Ships and Stations
Some ships and stations for FreeJumper. The single rule on building: Not one penny could be spent on this, it all had to come from leftovers. Stands and bases seem stuck on backorder forever, so these are work-in-progress shots.
First up is the Space Station Maytag, a small science outpost.
Next is the Space Station Copenhagen, a much larger habitat.
My ship, working name the Flash:
Sara glommed on to this one right away, and dictated the color scheme. Working title the Belkin:
And finally, Miles' ship the Py-Rat. He wants to violate the build directive slightly by installing a robotic rat tail onto the ship. Never having heard of Skavens, he came up with the same plot line and wants his ship crewed by rat-beasts with a low grasp of technology:
First up is the Space Station Maytag, a small science outpost.
Next is the Space Station Copenhagen, a much larger habitat.
My ship, working name the Flash:
Sara glommed on to this one right away, and dictated the color scheme. Working title the Belkin:
And finally, Miles' ship the Py-Rat. He wants to violate the build directive slightly by installing a robotic rat tail onto the ship. Never having heard of Skavens, he came up with the same plot line and wants his ship crewed by rat-beasts with a low grasp of technology:
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