Long lost treasures

A recent venture in the loft uncovered a  few long-lost treasures which haven't seen the light of day for many years (certainly not since we moved to this house back in the mid-90s)

The loft is a terrifying place full of chaotically arranged boxes of figures and games as well as years if accrued junk that, for some reason, we decided to put away... just in case...

So here are the excavated treasures...

Ogre... doesnt really need an introduction.  Giant robot/tank faces off against a range of more conventional troops and usually crushes them all mercilessly.  Like a lot of my early games, these games all came from the long-gone Games Gallery shop on Glasgow's Great Western Road.  This was played to death back in the 80s

Black Hole... another game from the Metagaming range. A great concept, these pocket sized games were a bit variable in quality but the range contained some real gems.  This game is set on a doughnut shaped asteroid with a black hole at its centre (probably best not to think about the science too much!).  Missiles launched off one side of the map reappear on the other edge circling the play area which always caused chaos.

Car Wars... another one that doesn't need an introduction.  It's gone through lots of evolutions since this first version.  I loved the ability to design your own cars and probably spent far too many hours doing that back in 1981.  Having played and enjoyed Gaslands more recently it'd be interesting to see how this hold up today.

Valkenburg Castle.  This one's a bit more obscure.  It was published by Task Force Games in 1980 and is very much in the Metagaming style.  It comes across initially as a dungeoncrawl but at its heart it's really a tactical wargame, exploring and fighting through differently levels of the titular castle. There are various scenarios and a campaign game.  I have a memory of mainly playing this solo.

It's interesting to look at the maps and counters in these games in  light of the quality components we now expect as standard... some of them are really quite rough and ready (definitely Valkenburg Castle!), and yet I had hours and hours of fun from these.  And all at a bargain price!

Ravenfeast

 There haven't been any blog posts for few weeks.  We had a blissful week away in North Norfolk (so good we immediately booked to go back again in September!) but returned to lots of shenanigans at work and some tricky family issues which have absorbed all of my time and energy.

Game-wise I played in an excellent ECW game at Eric the Shed's.  Incidentally if you haven't had a look at it, Eric has now launched a brilliant wargaming event business.  His blog post about it is here and the link to the Shed Wars Experience site is here.

Last night I played a fun Viking skirmish game using Ravenfeast... these rules are available as a free download here.  

The game is very much at the small end of skirmish gaming and our scenario challenged my Viking Jarl and his warband to break through to the coast and their waiting longship, while the Saxons were intent on stopping them.  I tried racing for the safety of the coast and avoiding a fight if possible (not very Viking, I know).. each player has a bonus card and mine gave me a turn of unrestricted movement in rough going so I'd planned to slip into a nearby wood and leave the Saxons in my dust.  

Sadly the Saxons very unsportingly mobbed my Jarl and prevented him from reaching the safety of the trees.  He made a very heroic last stand but eventually fell to the Saxon hordes.

The figures were Anthony's newly-acquired 40mm Vikkngs and looked great.  Ravenfeast aren't the most sophisticated rules but are dead easy to pick up and play with.