Fightin' Fungi!

As my follower knows, I'm a big fan of Ganesha Game's popular Song of Blades and Heroes, so it was no surprise to see their first Kickstarter, Fightin' Fungi, being quickly backed. 

Not only do we have a very entertaining new range of beguiling characters to play with, we'll be getting the much anticipated new rule expansion for Magic, new attributes tables such as individual weaponry and most intriguingly, a Reaction system! 

The play test rules are available to backers. SoBH just gets better and better!

Return to Fury

Continuing our foray into the WW2 tank-to-tank rules, Hell Hath No Fury, Arabianknight and I returned for another taster game, this time using a larger contingent of tanks – or at least those we had available – so we could continue our familiarisation of the basic rules.

As my German Tiger 1 tanks from the Plastic Soldier Company had only been delivered a couple of hours before we planned to play, I rashly opened up the box and pulled out a set of four neatly packed sprews, thinking ‘Och, this looks easy, I’ll just get them quickly built and onto the table…’  Well, after a good half hour, inflected with outbursts of Top Gear James May-like “Oh Cock!” whilst trying to get the lower and top set of tracks to line up – on a single tank – I gave up and went off to unglue my fingers, muttering all the way. Totally my own fault of course; never try to assemble models in rush.

Bluff and paranoia aboard the Battlestar Galactica

My first visit to my local gaming club, LivingstonBattleground, for 2015 so after the round of belated 'Happy New Years' I was quickly subsumed into a five player game of Fantasy Flight's Battlestar Galactica board game. Having never played before my fellow players soon had me up and running with at least a basic understanding of what I was supposed to be doing. 

"Each player is secretly assigned his or her loyalty at the start of the game. Players will either be loyal to the humans, or to the Cylons. Humans and Cylons have specific and conflicting winning objectives. The human players win by reaching Kobol, but the Galactica will be threatened by a host of challenges along the way. Only through the cooperation of the humans will the ship (and fleet) survive. The Cylon player(s) wins by either destroying the Galactica with attacks from the Cylon fleet, or, through sabotage, by reducing one of the necessary resources (Food, Fuel, Population, or Morale) to zero."

The game is designed to be played cooperatively for 3-6 players. We had five players, so there were two Cylons amongst us - but who?  It quickly became a delicious game of bluff and paranoia, with each player drawing and playing various skill cards,  all done exhibiting their best poker faces. 

For example, my character was the Chief Engineer, Galen Tyrol, who somehow seemed to spend much of his time in the ship's brig - apparently my fellow players all somehow suspected him of Cylon tendencies. Not sure how to take that! On my turn my fellow players can pool some or all of their skill cards in their hand to help me escape the brig, but as it's done without revealing what they've actually played in the skill test they may be surreptitiously making it more difficult for me to reach the required pass score!
 

First contact with Hell Hath No Fury

Down at Arabianknight's fine gaming establishment we had our first contact with the Hell Hath No Fury WW2 tank to tank rules from 2Hour Wargames.

You can choose to command a single tank, including the individual crew (gunner, loader, driver, bow gunner) or a much larger force with multiple platoons. It's based on 'reaction' tests, rolling against the crew/commander depending the situation. Individual crew can also be given specific 'attributes' to further enhance the RP element. The rules come complete with 10 scenarios which can be played as one-off battles or a linked campaign. These rules can be can be combined with Nuts! to add in infantry to the mix. You can also play solo or cooperatively, with rules for non-player enemy forces or 'PEF', (Possible Enemy Force), also included. All that is required to play are a few D6 , a measuring tape and your choice of any suitable models of a constant scale. 

The First Law's last stand

Galan and his elf retinue, the Woodland Guardians, have been commissioned by a very shady business-man from the Gurkish Empire to acquire potential 'human resources' from an number of small, weakly defended locations - including Ostenlet. Thankfully for the townsfolk, The First Law crew are billeted in the town and are certainly not about to let themselves and the poor wee townsfolk be snatched. However, the frightened peasants will fiercely fight off any attempts to enslave them but unfortunately, due to their panic, might also resist any assistance from their would-be rescuers!

After they failed to rescue Frederik dan Ferengis's caravan from both the Ogre attack and Galan's scheming elves, the First Law warband made a slow and dissonant trek back from The Wilds to Ostenlet, where the crew were planning to disband the expedition and depart on their separate ways. Unfortunately, The Wilds lived up to its name. A poorly concealed hunter's trap whilst they were negotiating a thick patch of wooded undergrowth, seriously wounded an unusually distracted Ferro Maljinn. It was likely to be back to the mud for the ex-slave from the arid Gurkish south. However, Bayaz was curiously instant she recovered and resolved to get her back to Ostenlet.

Caravan of Forlorn Hope

Happy New Year!

It's been a few weeks since my last post, what with all the annual holiday festivity malarkey creating the usual distractions. Now normal service is slowly resuming, with the long, dark wintry Scottish winter well into its stride and limiting me to mostly indoor activities, I can look forward to embarking on my hugely over-ambitious gaming projects for 2015. Some of which will no doubt be encouraged by my first trade convention visit of the year to York (Vapnartak), down in Englandshire, at the end of this month.

The first After Action Report of 2015 is actually from the last tabletop rumble of the old year - battle 10 of our long running Songs of Blades and Heroes campaign between my 'First Law' humans and Arabianknight's Guardian elves. This scenario, The Lost Caravan, was taken from Hour11's excellent scenario conversions  The scoring was 1VP for killing an Ogre and 1 VP for every 20 points of the opposing warband taken out. Most VPs wins...