Conan and the Princess

 This week we dug out a game I haven't played for a few years... Conan which I bought as a Kickstarter several years ago.  It has languished unloved and forgotten in the loft for too long so when Anthony and I were discussing it recently we decided to dig it out and have a game.

Conan pits a number of players against one who controls all the 'baddies' using an interesting resource management system.  Players use coloured gems representing energy levels/health to perform actions and in theory can do as much as they want in one turn until they run out.  Of course it only recovers slowly so players need to manage this carefully. The GM (or Overlord) uses a similar system but once a unit or character has activated it moves to the end of his row and then costs more to reactivate.  This forces the Overlord to spread his activations around different units or spend his precious gems to keep reactivating the same one.

Actions, combat , magic etc are all pretty intuitive and we quickly got into the game.  We played the 1st scenario in the book.  Conan has been asked to rescue a princess who has been captured by the evil Zogar Sag and is about to sacrificed.  She is hidden in one of a number of huts in the village.  Conan also has to bring back Zogar Sag's head!  He has brought along a couple of pals to help... Hadrathus, a wizard, and Shevatas who is a more nimble thief-type.

If read various opinions on how to set this scenario up and whether all of the Overlord's figures should start on the table.  I thought it was much more fun to have most of them hidden until Conan and his gang looked into a tent or I chose to bring them out.

The village seems strangely quiet apart from a couple of Picts and their pet Hyenas...

Nice doggy!   Shevatas decides to avoid fighting the Hyenas and nimbly runs away to another part of the village

oops... our heroes weren't expecting to find a giant snake hiding in the tent!

Shevatas finds the Princess guarded by some Picts who are quickly despatched

Conan had already wounded Zogar Sag and Hadrathus finished him off with a blast of lightning

Grabbing the enemy's head he teleports to the edge of the village and off to safety.  Shevatas has also escaped with the Princess winning the day for our heroes

In true Robert E Howard style,  the Princess is completely passive and exists purely to be rescued by our manly hero... slightly problematic!!  I'd forgotten what a good game this is.... some clever mechanics and well thought out scenarios really capture the feel of the books.

An unexpected seaside find

 Last weekend we took advantage of the unseasonal sunshine and popped down to Ferring in West Sussex to take the dogs for a walk on the beach... turns out everyone else had the same idea and it was absolutley hoaching with people and dogs.  Ferring has a nice beach but more importantly has an excellent dog-friendly cafe, The Bluebird Cafe and is a mecca for pooches and their owners.

On our return walk along the beach to where we'd parked the car we walked past this square building which I'd missed on the outward walk.   Turns out to be a WW2 pillbox, sited on the coast to defend against enemy invaders...

There's a whole rabbit warren of information about pillboxes here!  And here's a picture of Cleo guarding the beach against any potential invaders (unless they've brought snacks in which case she'll happily surrender!)

Bad Day at Calton Creek

A return to the wild west last week with a game of Fist Full of Lead. Having played Gunslinger a couple of times recently (see previous posts) this is a very different game. I guess if you want to know the specifics of each pistol and break down the action into seconds Gunslinger gives that really granular feel, but for this week's game we wanted something much more cinematic and fast moving and FFOL definitely suits this style of game.

We went for a simple scenario... In the town of Calton Creek Johnny Fingers and his gang of mean desperadoes have stumbled out of the saloon looking for trouble... at the other end of the street Marshal Knutt and some concerned townsfolk have gathered to put an end to the trouble  (bonus points for the name references!)

Johnny Fingers and his gang hit the streets looking for trouble

...but the Marshal and concerned citizens are determined to stop them

Little Heap and Short hit the dirt under a hail of gunfire but somehow survive.  Short mainly survives by being... erm... short... and harder to hit!

Johnny Fingers climbs onto the saloon roof but eventually is hit and collapses,  His gang scatter now the leader is dead.

A very different cowboy experience and great fun... it felt much more like a scene from a western!

Gaslands

 

Last week we gave Gaslands a rare outing as Andrew hadn't had chance to try them before.  To keep things simple we had a couple of cars each and raced around a figure of 8 track... I possibly made the track a bit too big but I was worried that my rubbish driving skills Andrew's lack of experience would make negotiating tight bends a bit tricky.  In hindsight a smaller arena would have upped the level of carnage which is always a good thing in Gaslands!

Each vehicle's weapons don't activate until they've gone through the first gate so Andrew took advantage of this by speeding through Gate 2 and immediately dropping mines in the gateway!

We'd decided to award points for completing a lap but more points for wrecking vehicles.  Andrew's lead car sped round the course and took the 1st lap before deciding that racing wasn't as much fun as concentrating on attacking enemy vehicles!

I spent a lot of the time trailing behind Andrew's lead car while his 2nd vehicle, a truck, struggled to get up to speed... his dice rolling was pretty atrocious for a lot of the game until he managed to line up a shot on one of my cars and managed to roll this...

... 6's count as 2 hits so this was pretty devastating, immediately destroying one of my cars!

He then proceeded to execute a very neat reverse turn and blast my other car into smithereens... I'm putting this down to beginners luck and definitely not my rubbish tactics!  Excellent fun and a game that I ought to get out more often

Mosaic

I've always been a big fan of the PC game Civilisation... I hate to think how many hours have slipped away on various versions of the game. So I was intrigued when Mark suggested trying his newly arrived boardgame Mosaic which draws a lot of inspiration from Civ. This was the Kickstarter edition which comes with lots of nice components... I guess the standard version won't be quite so flashy but still lovely I'd assume.

The game takes place around a map of the Mediterranean although each Civilisation isn't restricted in where they can place cities and towns. These allow you to start gathering trade goods which is one way to gain gold and buy your way to victory. But the joy of Mosaic is that there are.multiple ways to advance and win. Each player takes one action per turn including 

working to produce those vital.resources like food, stone and ideas: some serious thinking is required to access the next important resource... Technology. Claiming different forms of Technology is vital in gaining more points. You can also Build things... not just cities and towns but also roads, baths and a host of things that enhance your civilisation.

Players can also build Wonders, create different styles of Government and claim different Achievements, allow which add to your victory point tally.

Scoring is carried out at various points in the game depending on when the Score cards turn up in the different decks of cards. In both of our games I came last but I really didn't mind... I loved the game and was pleased that I'd improved my score in the 2nd game (even if I was still last!). It's always a good sign when you mull over the game the next day, thinking about what you might have done differently.  

One of the things I really loved about the game is the huge variety of ways to win. There are lots of different strategies that can lead to a victory... I just need to find one!! Highly recommended.

Gunslinger - take 2

So New Year's been and gone and I've managed to fit in one game so far... another outing for the old Avalon Hill game Gunslinger which I played just before Xmas for the first time in ages.

This time we moved out of town to a scenario out in the country with John Wesley Hardin being hunted by some US cavalry troopers.  Unfortunately the 15 year old Hardin has managed to get the drop on them and has a shotgun!  One of the troopers quickly fell to a long range shotgun blast and spent most of the rest of the game slowly bleeding to death on the ground.  In Gunslinger wounds also cause delay points which limit your actions, so this poor trooper was never going to be able to get up again!

The other trooper put up a much more valiant long range fight against Hardin and his companion, trading rifle fire and managing to wounding Hardin in the leg and putting him on the ground... unfortunately he was still able to fire with his pistol from here and the trooper eventually fell to a bullseye result.

The game definitely holds up despite its age but it's a very different experience to, say, Fistful of Lead or Dead Mans Hand which are much more heroic and cinematic.  Each round in Gunslinger lasts 2 seconds and is divided into 5 0.4 second segments so we're talking very detailed!  If you like to know exactly which type of pistol your character is carrying and fine tune a fist fight then it's a great game but it's not fast moving and I think most people would struggle with more than 2 characters per player.

Still good fun but a very granular sort of game

2022, and some 2023 plans

 So that's Xmas and Hogmanay all over and done with and depressingly I'm back at work tomorrow. Which means it must be time for the traditional look back at the last year...

Firstly, my well-placed pre-xmas hints to the family were successful (not so much a hint...I just sent them a list) and I had a couple for game-related pressies at Xmas. A set of Xenos Rampant, the latest version of the Rampant rules family...

...and the European Birds expansion for Wingspan which I'm looking forward to trying out.

There's also a copy of the Deluxe revised version of Never Mind the Billhooks on its way which was my present to myself! I'll post more about all of these as they get played.

So how was 2022 and did any of my plans which I foolishly committed to at the beginning of the year actually happen?

Games-wise it was a good year... I tend to have one gaming night a week and I think most weeks this year featured some kind of in-person game.  As usual the range of games and settings varied enormously... I'm too much of a games-butterfly to stick to one period or rule set... and they ranged from Star Wars to ACW naval, Romans (late and early... Dux Bellorum and Strength and Honour) to WW2 (Blood Red Skies).  Boardgames also featured heavily with several games of War of the Ring, Tokaido, Terraforming Mars, Star Trek Ascendancy, Eclipse and Wingspan.  I'm also still playing in a fortnightly online RPG with a group consisting of a couple of old friends from my uni days and some new ones from across the world.  This started in 2020 as a lockdown game and has carried on with no signs of stopping.  Initially we were playing the old SPI rpg Dragonquest, but this has now morphed in a playtest for a new set of rules and is great fun.

There were lots of games at Eric the Shed's (do check out his blog for all the news about imminent changes to an even bigger and better shed) as well as regular games at friends (Andrew and Anthony)... sadly I don't have space to host games in my tiny dwelling but I'm blessed to have a great circle of friends who are happy to put up with me and for which I'm very grateful!

Last year I posted about some plans for 2022 in an attempt to shame myself into actually doing them...so did any of my plans actually happen?  The usual answer to this is pretty much always 'no' as I'm terrible at sticking to a plan (don't tell my boss!) but for once I can say I've surprised myself and actually seen several projects that were on the list through from planning to a proper game or 2.  I managed to 'complete' my Arthurian armies and have a few games of Dux Bellorum with them and I finally painted up my 1/600 ACW Ironclads and got some games out of these as well.  This was particularly satisfying as these had been hanging around for several years.  I failed to do anything with my WW2 ships (again) but I did get my WW2 planes into action which again was a project that had been in limbo for a long time.  Not on the plan, but nice unexpected diversions were repainting some 30 year old Laserburn figures and then adding a lot more, and discovering Strength and Honour and putting together 2 x 10mm Roman and Celt armies 

So... what's on the cards for 2022?  

#1 paint up the box of Picts I purchased last month at Warfare (and add a few more) to add to the Arthurian armies

#2 Get some games in with Xenos Rampant and my new Laserburn inspired 15mm scifi figures

#3 Once Billhooks Deluxe rules arrive I want to dig out my very old 15mm Swiss and medieval European armies which haven't seen the light of day in many years and see if they can be repurposed for the Burgundian Wars

#4 add a bit more to the 10mm paper Romans

My wargaming stuff is all stored in the loft and it's a place of nightmares so a major project is sorting this out and hopefully getting to a point where I can more easily find things without risking life, limb and the bedroom ceiling!

I hope everyone had a good Hogmanay and the post-xmas break depression doesn't hit too hard!!