Temple of the Beastmen

 A bit of a different game this week, and one which had passed me by completely despite loving the VSF/Space1889 genre.  This is Temple of the Beastmen, produced by GDW waaaay back in 1989.

The game is a bit of a dungeon exploration game with different characters wandering through a series of levels in the palace of Martian King Gnaashriik.  The palace consists of a central shaft which players can gonup and down, and 5 levels, each with a number of hidden rooms and passages ready to be explored.  And, of course, these are filled with Beastmen, traps and (hopefully) treasures and slaves to be rescued.

Each character has their own skills and objectives.  In our game I randomly drew Lieutenant Arthur who has the advantage of a pistol, allowing ranged combat, and who gains bonus points if he can rescue the missing Ambassador.  Victory points can also be obtained by finding treasure and rescuing slaves.  My opponent, Anthony, drew Miss Lucy who begins in the depths of the palace at level 5 and without any resources, but who gains bonus points for exploring each level.

As you explore, payers turn over the face down tile to reveal a passageway or room.  Some rooms are better than others... the Barracks are more likely to have Beastmen, the Slave Quarters will (not surprisingly) have slaves to be rescued, and woebetide if you come across the Throne Room and King Gnaashriik (I did!!).  Once tile is revealed a card is drawn to reveal what it contains... good or bad.

Interestingly characters can never die... they begin with a number of servants who bravely take a bullet/spear to save the character.  But don't worry... you can always pop back outside the palace and recruit a few more (and presumably avoiding awkward questions about exactly what happened to the last group of servants that accompanied the character a few turns earlier!!)  In our game I bravely battled my way down to level 3, acquiring a band of rescued slaves, running away from King Gnaashriik and his pals, and picking up some valuable treasure.  All was looking good until I came across a 'Nameless Horror' and all my servants ran away!!  Miss Lucy meanwhile was racking up the points by checking off all the levels in the Palace.  On almost the last card of the game I turned the Ambassador card and bagged 17vp's and won the game by a single point!

The game is great fun... it works well with 2 players but I can see it would be even better with more.  There are options to move Beastmen onto your opponent or to fight each other and in a multiplayer game the opportunities for shenanigans would be high!  It reminded me a lot of 2 games I played a lot back in the 80s... Sorcerors Cave and Mystic Wood.  Anthony had also picked up some really nice original miniatures which were produced for the game and which really capture the feel of the characters.

500k!!!

 Just spotted that the blog has recently crossed the 500k views marker (yes... many of these may be bots, but I don't care!! ☺)  

I started this 12 years ago when blogs were much more of a 'thing', mainly as a way of recording my gaming and hobby thoughts for my own benefit.  Over the years it has brought me into contact with lots of lovely people, some of whom I've even met in real life!  And it introduced me to my regular gaming group for which I'm truly grateful.

Blogs do feel a bit 2010s these days.... maybe I should start a podcast or a vlog (although my son has threatened to disown me if I do!!), but I still enjoy reading the ones I follow and jotting down my ramblings.   So many thanks if you're a real person who pops by occasionally or even if you're a Russian bot!

Lobey Dosser

 Back in September I posted about a book my mum had helped collate and type back in the 1950s...Arnhem by Major General Urquhart.

It seems only fair to share a book that my dad had a connection to and I recently picked up a copy.  Not a book as such, this is a collection of comic strips, and he didn't have a hand in it's creation, but he loved the strip and used to talk about it incessantly, so although I'd never read it, it seemed very familiar to me.  

The comic strip is probably unknown to most people outside of Glasgow and to anyone under about 80 (unless they had a parent who banged on about it!) but it has a bit of a following and, indeed a statue to the main character was erected in the 1990s in the city.  It began in 1949 in the pages of Glasgow's Evening Times newspaper and ran for several years in the 50s.

The strip is Lobey Dosser, the adventures of the Sheriff of Calton Creek... a wild west town populated by suspiciously Glaswegian characters.  His arch enemy is Rank Bajin who only ever appears as a black silhouette apart from his eyes and teeth.  The dialogue and the humour is very Glaswegian... lots of weegie colloquialisms and puns that rely on a passing acquaintance with the dialect.  For example a Lobby Dosser is someone who would doss in the hallway of a Glasgow tenement and a rank badjin is someone who is very bad or evil.

Actually it holds up pretty well and is a funny, entertaining read, although I'm conscious I may be viewing this through rose tinted spectacles!

Lobey and Rank Badjin riding El Fideldo, Lobey's 2 legged horse.

As a loose link to wargaming, my cowboy games rake place in the town of Calton Creek... I must get a town sign made up!

Warfare 2024

 Made it to my only wargames show of the year last weekend... Warfare at Farnborough.  It's a busy show spread over 2 days at exhibition centre at Farnborough Airport.  

As well as the usual traders and demo/participation games there also a host of competition games taking place.  I've never quite got competition gaming but folk seemed to be enjoying themselves. Here's a small selection of photos, I missd loads of the games... as usual I've mainly forgotten to note who was putting them on so apologies to all the clubs who I haven't credited....

Huge What a Tanker participation game

Franco-Dutch War hosted by the Ardhammer group

Excellent Space 1999/UFO style game by (I think) South London Warlords

The moonrise game has inspired some thinking among gaming friends of a multiplayer game with different factions fighting on the moon and has sent some of us off down a 15mm sci-fi rabbit hole!

The show is also a chance to say hi to folk from my old games club at Guildford who were running a fun 'Shoot down the Zeppelin' participation game.  

Based on a real incident where a Zep went off course and ended up bombing Guildford, this was a perfect participation game.  Easy rules to pick up and it only takes 15 minutes or so to have a go.  I was pleased to report that I managed to at least damage the Zeppelin in my plucky fighter, even if I didn't bring it down.  Every year I promise to pop back into the club for a game... maybe this is the year!!

My shopping haul was pretty modest.  A few paints and tufts and some nifty dials counters from Warbases

I also picked up some terrain templates from Deepcut Studios... I guess these are off-cuts from their mats but at 7 pieces for a tenner they seemed pretty good value and will make excellent jungle areas with some new jungle pieces I acquired recently...

And lastly I got a copy of Chris Peer's Death in the Dark Continent rules at a knock down price...

Midgard has arrived

 The posties called this afternoon and dropped off my pre-order of Midgard.  It didn't come as a great surprise as social media seemed to be full of people posting photies of their new rulesets.

These are the latest rules from the Too Fat Lardies imprint Reisswitz Press, designed for fantasy but lots of people seem to be planning ways to use them for historical games, especially Ancients and Dark Ages.

At first glance they look great and there are lots of videos online explaining the mechanics.  I don't actually possess any fantasy armies but I'm thinking of trying these with my Arthurian figures and maybe my Wars of the Roses armies which are quite Game of Thrones-ish, or ven my 2mm Romans.  And I've spotted some very nice 10mm figures online which are calling to me... 

More on these once I've had a chance for a read

Castles in the Sky x 2

 After my recent dabbling with Sky Galleons of Mars, I've been down a bit of an Aeronef rabbit hole.  I'm pretty sure I had some Aeronef ships years ago and sold them on, so of course it must be time to rebuild!  Luckily Brigade Models are very reasonably priced, especially their Flotilla packs.

Osprey produced Castles in the Sky in their 'Blue book' set of rules in 2022.  They're more Diesel-punk than VSF but the rules seem pretty adaptable and easy together to grips with.  Mechanics are fairly straightforward and not too different to many naval rules... ships have speed and turn ratings, gun batteries marked Bow, Port, Starboard etc and armour ratings to offer a bit of protection.  Where they offer a bit more flavour (apart from the altitude ratings of course!) are in the initiative and command ratings, and in how damage is applied.

Each ship has its own Command score and the lead ship rolls this number of dice to.determine initiative.  Extra dice are added for Escort ships like Destroyers, frigates etc to reflect their.scouting role.  

The highest number of successes (on a  4+) wins initiative but the number of successes also gives a number of Command dice which can be used to give a bonus to movement, turning, firing, damage control etc.

Hits from firing have to check to see if they penetrate armour but even an unsuccessful hit will cause 'Friction' which affects the ships ability to move and fire.  If a hit gets through the armour then the results can be pretty bad, from losing some of your precious armour, losing a weapon or steering/engine damage, to exploding! Obviously that's very unlikely and probably won't happen... erm... will it...???

I played it twice in the last couple of weeks, with quite different results.  Both games were a simple encounter with a couple of Cruisers and a couple of Escorts per side. In game #1 Anthony took the British.  We kept a reasonable distance apart and quickly found that the fast moving Destroyers were very hard to hit, although they wouldn't have lasted long if a shot actually found it's mark.   Although we  slugged it out for some time there was little major damage (some armour lost on kne of my German Cruisers) and the friction points were generally removed at the end of each turn, so thr game was heading for a draw.

The British fleet

The dial made keeping scores easier

Too many dice!

In game #2 I took on the British and Andrew played the Germans.  This time we both got in close pretty quickly and damage (and friction) mounted quickly.  The Duke of Edinburgh cruiser lost a lot of armour to torpedo hits from the German destroyers and was at the point of having to test each turn or it would strike it's colours, but then the first of those unfortunate damage rolls resulted in the Scharnhorst exploding!  This was followed soon after by a 'Crippled' result on the Magdeburg and the loss of a German Destroyer, handing the British a convincing win.  The short ranges definitely made a difference and we also found that the increased Friction points were proving harder to remove which affected movement and firing significantly.

The Germans close in on the British Cruiser

The Scharnhorst explodes!

Friction everywhere

All in all I thought the rules worked well.  The biggest problem we had in game #1 was the amount of markers that each ship needed.  You need to record speed, altitude, friction points and any specific damage.  We'd used dice, which inevitably got knocked over or moved.  Anthony had some nifty dials which we used which were better but there was a lot of clutter on the table.

The revised fleet sheet

In game #2 I revamped the ship data sheets and marked a space by each ship to place the dice.  This kept them off the table which really helped... only had friction markers to worry about and these could also have gone on the sheet if need be.  We also found that 4 was a pretty optimum number of ships to handle... maybe with more familiarity with the rules we could handle bigger fleets but I think we would have been bogged down in the detail.  Good fun, and of course I'm now perusing the Brigade Models site... hmm... those aircraft carriers and dirigibles look fun...