I played a great game this week using one of the Wiley Games 'Fistful of Lead' rules. In this case it was the Glorious Adventures in the Age if Steam rules and took us off to Mars.
The game set some High Martians against a British Patrol who were trying to rescue 'Miss Lucy', a spy who found herself stranded in the Martian badlands (Miss Lucy is the figure from the Temple of the Beastmen game). The Martians were armed with a mix of pole arms and bows but had the advantage of being able fly over the rough terrain while the rifle armed British had to pick their way around it.
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| The Martian Leader scoops in to capture Miss Lucy... |
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| ...while the British advance in pursuit |
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| The shaken spy is rescued! (After being shot by her rescuers!!) |
As usual the rules made for an exciting game which went to the wire. Casualties mounted on both sides and the Martian leader almost escaped off table with his prize but was slowed down when a redcoated rifleman unsportingly took potshot at him, hitting Miss Lucy instead, but thankfully not actually wounding her. The resulting shock slowed her down though allowing a better aimed shot to kill my leader and free his prisoner. Not sure that's really the way Anthony planned it but it worked!!
FFOL are probably my favourite skirmish rules... I've used them in settings from Ancients through to 19thC and they always give an exciting and fast moving game. In our post-game discussion I admitted that, while I'm an unashamed rules junkie with far too many unplayed sets filed away, I've been increasingly jaded with many of them. I guess ultimately there are only so many rules mechanics and often rulesets promising 'new innovative features' are a rehash of several other existing games. Like a number of gamers I've chatted with I'm finding that increasingly I'm narrowing down to a few sets to use more consistently rather that flitting, moth-like, to the next shiny thing. Doesn't stop my buying new rules though! More on recent acquistions in another post...
