Anything can happen in the next half hour...

 As you can probably guess from the post title last night's game was Stingray (Stingray... Stingray... doo, de doo-doo doo-doo.  Sorry, the theme music automatically pops into my head!)

The rules were from the South London Warlords Salute game from many years ago.  Anthony has an  excellent collection of WASP submarines and Aquaphibian Terror Fish from Matchbox and Konami and must have stripped his local Pets At Home store of aquarium plants to create an excellent looking table.

Because this was designed as a participation game, the players are all piloting a Stingray submarine with the Terror Fish being activated and moved according to cards.  The objective is to get within range of Titanica city and destroy it with your limited supply of Sting Missiles.  Players select a variable number of cards each turn which determine moves and/or firing.  The Terrorfish then activate, following the instructions on their card...they're much faster than the Stingrays but are vulnerable to a well-aimed Sting Missile.  Of course, if you use all your missiles taking out the Terrorfish, you won't have enough left to target the city...

Each players cards allow them to choose from  a range of manoeuvres including leaping out of the sea and over obstacles. Damage is also determined by drawing a card which can cause various problems, ranging from losing a Sting Missile, reduced mobility and if you're very, very unlucky, exploding

In our game the opening turn saw a Terrorfish move straight towards my sub and fire.  I drew a damage card and my Stingray immediately exploded!  We decided that this was actually all part of a pre-game nightmare Troy Tempest was having... then he woke up and all was well.  We decided to re-set and draw a different damage card instead!

Both of us destroyed one of the Terrorfish before heading as fast as we could for Titanica, dodging the next waves of incoming Aquaphibians and mostly avoiding the undersea terrain (OK...that was me... I'm rubbish at plotting manoeuvres!) before unleashing our remaining Sting Missiles and destroying the city.

The game was clearly well playtested and comes in at about an hour max which is ideal for a participation game at a show.  One flaw is that once you have managed to get past a Terrorfish it's unlikely to manage to successfully turn round and chase you.  Instead it's likely to wander around the table rather aimlessly unless it draws a card which let's it reorientate towards a Stingray.  We discussed this and reckoned that with a few rule tweaks or a more complex scenario (eg the Stingrays have to make their way back down the table after achieving their goal) this could be fixed.  A good filler game with some lovely models... very nostalgic!