Since I picked up a couple of the old Steve Jackson Games Metagames range from the 80s last year (Battlesuit and Olympica), eBay keeps tempting me with more suggestions which of course are hard to resist. Some of the Metagame range go for silly prices, or at least the sellers are asking silly prices... I doubt many of them actually sell. Being a frugal Scot I tend to ignore most of the expensive games but a couple of real bargains came along recently which I couldn't resist.
First up is Fury of the Norsemen from 1980. The cover art is... erm... very much of its time... I'm not sure a game would feature the same illustrations today unless it was in a knowingly ironic way! The game looks interesting and focuses on raiding and pillaging a village which is depicted on the map.
While the Viking player gets to raid and pillage, the other player has some relatively inferior infantry and militia to guard the monks, livestock and treasure which is scattered across the map. With rules for setting fires, random livestock events and pillaging, it's a bloody but fun game which looks eminently convertible to the Tabletop.
And as if one nostalgia purchase wasn't enough, along comes another one!
Ram Speed (1980) is a 'bronze age' naval game of Mediterranean sea battles. The map comes with a bizarre, and quite annoying, watermark design of a coin for some reason. The game also comes with 40 counters of various ships and markers for damage, fires etc.
Attacks can be made by missile fire, ramming or shearing off oars, and boarding. There are also rules for ship mounted catapults etc which, I suspect, might be a bit of a stretch historically but sound fun. I don't think it's the most complicated or strictly accurate set of ancient naval rules but, a fun portable game and again probably very adaptable.
