Microgame madness!

 Due to space constraints, last nights game needed to be something small and compact and that could easily fit on a kitchen table.  Step forward a couple of Microgames and an evening of late '70s nostalgia (and a lot of squinting at tiny cardboard counters!)

I've posted before about my love for the old Metagaming Microgames series and I've acquired a few via eBay.  As a game series they are very much of their time and production values are pretty low, but that was kind of the point.  The games were cheap and cheerful ($2.95 according to a couple of the games sitting on my desk... according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator this is the equivalent of a hefty $16.22 today!)  and, although some of them don't always work as game systems, there are often some really interesting mechanics and ideas in there. I think we've become very spoiled by much higher production values these days and I can't imagine a game with a folded paper map, tiny flimsy counters and all packed in a ziploc bag would sell today.

For our 1st game of the evening we went with GEV... the  sequel of sorts to the classic Ogre.  GEV has a bigger map and introduces terrain features and is much more of a conventional wargame.  Each side has a mix of Tanks (heavy and light), Missile Launchers, Howitzers, Infantry and of course, GEVs.  Steve Jackson clearly thought the future of warfare was hovercraft!  There's also the option to deploy Ogre's as part of your force (the cybernetic tank... not the grumpy monsters).  The mix of troops types as well as the terrain features make it a slightly more complicated game and add an amount of depth.  We played the Breakthrough scenario, where a small force of GEVs has to make it's way off the northern board edge,  while the opponent has a mix of armour and infantry.  

The route to the northern edge of the map is cluttered with swamps and woods with pathways through it, giving the defenders a chance to predict where the GEVs will try and force their way through.  Conveniently there's also a large lake and river which is handy for the hovercraft but is likely to be well defended.  I managed to get several GEVs off the table but at quite a cost with over half my force being wiped out.

As this was a fairly quick game we opted for more nostalgia and played a game of Starfire.  This game, prodced by Task Force Games in 1979 is a proto-Star Fleet Battles, written by Stephen Cole who also created SFB.  I spent may long hours playing Star Fleet Battles back in the 80s, usually at my friends flat in Glasgow's West End with games punctuated by trips out for fish suppers and beer.  It was a great game but did sink under the weight of an ever-growing complexity as more and more supplements emerged.

Starfire is a very simple version with, initally, a limited range of weapon options and very simple damage system where each hit simply crosses off a feature of a ship (shields, then armour, then hull etc)... each ship has a line of letters representing these features in a variety of orders.  Interestingly the scenarios in the book are linked and as you progress through them the technology advances and more options are included.  It's easy to see the beginnings of SFB in the game, albeit in a very simplified, but very playable way.

Tiny, tiny counters... don't sneeze or bump the table!!!

The scenario has one side attacking a defended Starbase.  My defending ships were all either destroyed or left weaponless but the Starbase remained unscathed.  I now have a real hankering to dig out my copy of Star Fleet Battles!

I have been to... the London Mithraeum

 I had an hour or 2 to kill in London last Sunday afternoon while my wife was at an appointment so I finally got round to visiting the Mithraeum which is located within the Bloomberg building in the City of London.  I've been meaning to do this for years but never got round to it.  It's free to visit but you need to book a time slot online.

The Temple of Mithras dates back to the 3rd century CE and was uncovered in 1954 during an archaeological dig.  The museum comprises the remains of the actual temple itself, accompanied by a sound and light show which, to be honest, didn't really add a huge amount.  There is a great display of some of the artefacts found in the original dig, and then when the Bloomberg building was being built in 2010.

These are all displayed on a single wall with interactive tablets letting you find out more detail about each one.  It includes some fascinating items and, as usual I found myself drawn to the more domestic items rather than the military ones.  A large part of a wooden door, a paddle from a boat, shoes, writing tablets... one of which includes the earliest dated hand-written document known from Britain, a financial document of 8 January AD 57... all offer a fascinating glimpse into daily life.

The entrance lobby also features a really interesting art installation.  All told I was there about 30-40 miuntes... it's not the biggest museum but it's really interesting and free.  So if you find yourself with a spare hour in the City it's well worth popping in.

Back to Boardgames!

 Well there's been a bit of a gap in blog posts since my last post back in September.  Lots of excuses... work has been pretty manic, lots of family 'stuff' going on, a trip back home to Glasgow for a few days (and an epic 13 hour trip back on multiple trains thanks to Storm Amy), but also thanks to a general lack of enthusiasm for everything that has descended this year.

Still, I managed to perk myself up and have been out for some great boardgames in the last few weeks including a couple of games of Kingmaker, Crusader Kings, and another game of Battle of Hoth.  Kingmaker and CK are great games and create really narrative stories.  In our Kingmaker game the entire Lancastrian royal family died of plague in a single turn thanks to a very unlucky plague event!  Lord Percy was able to calmly march into York, announce that he was just been appointed an Archbishop and crown Richard!

In the Battle of Hoth this time round I played the next scenario in the book and took the Imperial side for a change, where I discovered that ATATs aren't the indestructible monsters I'd hoped they would be as the rebel scum blew mine up quickly in the game.  

The game was very close but the Rebels managed to nick the last victory point and I guess run back to their base to prepare to evacuate, while Darth Vader asks some serious questions of the Imperial Commanders!!

Battle of Hoth

The new Richard Borg game has recently landed and it seems all the cool kids have a copy (or at least 2 of my friends have and I'm counting them as the cool kids).  Using the very familiar Memoir 44/Command and Colours model this is the Battle of Hoth game, complete with snowtroopers, Speeders, and of course, AT-ATs.

I guess of all the Star Wars settings this is probably the most iconic for a large battle rather than skirmishes, and the game mechanics common to Richard Borg's games are ideal.  I'm guessing just about everyone has played one of the Borg games with cards activating squads or vehicles in the Left, Centre or Right section of the board, and special dice determining casualties or causing units to retreat.  It's one of my favourite game systems and perfect for snowy battles on Hoth.

The game is very quick to pick up and games last about 30 minutes... we managed to squeeze in 3 games comfortably in an evening, in amongst chatting.

Out initial game was the 1st scenario pitting 2 infantry patrols against each other (with a couple of probe droids on the Empire side for good measure).  We then followed this up with a Snowspeeder scenario, where the Empire come tooled up with an AT-AT  as well as infantry squads.  In all the games the Stormtroopers behaved exactly like you'd expect, repeatedly failing to hit anything thanks to some very unlucky dice rolling by Darth Andrew.  

The Snowspeeders proved really effective, zipping around and wiping out multiple Imperial squads.  The AT-AT is a tough beast, slow but powerful and very hard to damage, so I decided to ignore it completely and concentrate on the Stormtroopers.  The final game (a repeat of the Snowspeeder scenario) was very close with the Imperials almost claiming the win, but let down again by some unlucky dice... clearly I was using the Force to influence the dice rolls!

Great fun and I can see this having lots of  replayability.

1 Hour Skirmish Wargames

 

I've played a couple of games of James Lambshead's skirmish rules recently... one set in the Russian Civil War, and the other using the Ancients/Medieval version.  They're a card based system with no dice at all.  Each player has a deck including a Joker. Cards are drawn to determine initiative, to activate figures with a number of points (from 1 for an Ace to 13 for a King) and to resolve shooting, melee and morale.  Drawing a Joker ends the turn and players go through their card decks pretty quickly.  But this does mean turn length is unpredictable and figures may activate multiple times or not at all in each turn

 I failed to take any photos of the RCW game (always a sign of a good game!) but remembered when we played a 2nd game last night.  The original book goes from the 17thC onwards, including rules for Pulp and SciFi games.  The 2nd book takes it back to Ancients through to Medieval times.

In the 1st game my Bolsheviks attempted to overrun some dug-in British Interventionist troops.  The turn limit meant I really needed to press home the attack.  Hand to Hand combat gives an advantage to the attacker, but instead I got drawn into a long range firefight which got me nowhere and gave the British the victory.

The Ancients/Medieval version is very similar but with enough differences to cause us some initial confusion.  In this version there's an extra step where your opponents  armour makes it easier to hit them but they're more likely to shrug off the attack.  Cavalry also have some advantages in combat and can also break off freely from a melee with infantry, ready to charge again.

As you'd expect from Skirmish rules the scenarios are quite themed and detailed... no simple encounters here.  They range from battles among rocks to a Robin Hood tax collector raid.

In the original Napoleonic scenario the French and British are squabbling over an abandoned cannon.  We shifted the action slightly... a Saxon raiding party have stolen Arthur's  cows and Aelswine the prize pig.  These have stubbornly ground to a halt  in the middle of the table, allowing Arthur and his troops to catch up.  We stuck with the victory conditions from the original scenario in which the Saxons have to end the game with at least 1 figure within 6" of the animals, while the Britons have to drive them off.  In hindsight this was never going to work... it really needed the firepower the Napoleonic setting would have brought, or for us to start much closer (games are usually 3'x3' or 4'x4').  My fault for not thinking the scenario through.

The Saxons sensibly drew back, maximising the distance and, although Arthur and his knights charged home they weren't able to make much headway.  The scenarios have a tight turn limit (5 turns in this case) and it didn't help that my 1st card was a Joker, meaning turn #1 was over before we'd moved!  Despite this I enjoyed the game.  

The rules work well.  The armour rules mean that light troops are still effective... often in games like this they are spear-fodder but their nimbleness means they are actually very effective, although if they fail to dodge then it's game over.  Cavalry feel right... charging, pulling back and charging home again.  So with a better chosen scenario these are definitely on the regular gaming list.  Next might be something a bit more modern....

Therapy stickers

 I've been very demotivated with painting  and organising figures recently... I go through phases of this from time to time but lately it's been a real issue.  I've got some figures out to paint and then they sit looking sadly at me and making me feel guilty for not picking up the brush. It'll be back in the box for a while for them I think.

In an attempt to make a little progress I decided to have a go at sorting out the wooden tiles used in Commands & Colours: Medieval.  When I bought a second hand copy recently I also got the Crusades expansion.  The previous owner had kindly put the stickers on all the core game tiles but hadn't played the game, and hadn't touched the Crusades set... maybe the hours of stickering and organising had left them with no enthusiasm for the game.  So last night I stuck on some music...Public Service Broadcasting since you asked...

...and began sorting out the different tiles by size and colour, and then the long job of applying the stickers.  And it was just what I needed!  Turns out it's a very mindful, relaxing activity... sort the cubes apply the sticker... make sure it's straight (my ASD tendencies meant that was really important!)...occasionally stroke a dog and ask him if he thinks the stickers look straight...

Yay... more stickering tonight!

Blogging - more alive than you might think

A slightly navel-gazing post today.. 

I started my blog back in 2012, more out of curiosity than anything else and as a way of tracking games and my glacial progress at painting things.  Blogs were very popular then and all the cool kids seemed to have one.  Compared with many other blogs I have a relatively small amount of views (and some of them are definitely bots!) but it was never about numbers, and the blog has connected me to lots of great people and a whole real-life gaming group.

Since then times have changed and it has felt like blogs have fallen out of favour...these days the cool kids all have Substacks, podcasts and vlogs and people post directly to Facebook and Bluesky (and... god help us... Tiktok)

 I've always kept my personal posts on FB largely separate from my gaming life but it's a great way to connect to companies and specialist groups. I've used Bluesky more recently as a platform and it seems pretty good (@red3584.bsky.social‬) .  X/Twitter seems have been largely abandoned thankfully.

But.... I had a bit of a delve into my Blogger reading list which had crept up to over 160 blogs and decided I would cull the ones that were no longer active.  I'd expected this to be a lot but to my surprise found most were still thriving.  I removed ones that had no posts more recent than 2024 and found this was only about 25% of my list, so maybe the Blogosphere is a lot healthier than I'd first thought.  Most blogs had posts in the last month and we all seem to be enjoying playing games, painting toys, and rambling on about it!  A nice uplifting moment!

I'm considering a bit of a tidy up of the blog and playing around with the layout and look... time for a freshen up.  Although there's a always a danger I'll break something if I do that!  Maybe a change of name too although I'll keep the address.