Annual Revenant Hunt

 

 

The Baron invited me to his annual Birthday/Octoberfest/Halloween game last weekend. I've had several invites over the years but this time I was able to go! The Revenant Hunt pits 6 teams of four Victorian-era Zombie Hunters against, well. . . zombies, and each other in an infested Gothic ruin. Rules are Wiley Games' Fistful of Lead: Tales of Horror. There are six Spawn Points in the ruins and each noise made - chiefly the use of gunpowder weapons - spawns and attracts zombies. Each zombie "killed" awards a team one point. There are bigger threats that can be attracted, too, like werewolves and ghosts, which are harder to kill but award five points. Destroying a Spawn Point is worth five points, too, and eliminating them is the key to surviving the game.

 

 

Here is my intrepid team; characters and cards created by The Baron. Actually, everything in this game including the terrain and painted minis are courtesy of The Baron.

 

 

My starting position was on the left side of the center ruin so the team headed off to the left away from the other teams. The yellow bursts represent noise from shooting, which causes zombies to spawn and head toward the news. Here they come, from two local Spawn Points, the graveyard and the idol.

 

 Clementine was given the job of destroying the idol but zombies kept spawning from it. . .

 

 

I never had to face a werewolf but did have a ghost harass us for awhile until it left on its own. Two of the teams faced off against each other for the right to destroy a spawn point. When the game was called I ended up in the middle of the pack points-wise, and never got that idol destroyed.

 

After a chili-dog break The Baron set up another game for us. This was a pulp-era aircraft game a la Crimson Skies. The Baron and I both love the old school Crimson Skies universe and the boardgame, but the game takes a long time to play with more than two players. You can do it, as I proved when I lived in Tulsa, but the games turn into day-long marathons because of pre-turn plotting and the graphic damage tracking. The damage tracking is fun if you get into that but it is inherently unrealistic as neither pilot would have access to that info in "real life." You can check out some of the earlier posts in my blog re Crimson Skies.

So The Baron has adapted the post-apocalyptic auto racing game Gaslands (with help from the internet) to play with the Crimson Skies models. I've never played Gaslands. The adaptation gets rid of both the pre-game plotting and the detailed damage tracking, using a staggered turn sequence with initiative and move templates to direct movement. This game was not as pretty as the Revenant Hunt - except for the pretty airplanes - as it is still in play-test mode, but it was great fun to have the Crimson Skies models on the table again!

 

The aircraft from Dixie (think re-branded Confederacy) were supporting a bombing run into the Industrial States of America (think "Rust Belt" states). I controlled the Behemoth - the bomber - and the Valiant. The Behemoth is a big slow beast with a lot of hull points that can absorb damage while the Valiant is a fast, nimble little fighter. . . that didn't last long in this fight. Our opponents from the ISA:

 

 

My Behemoth's job was to make a slow (no other choice) straight run down the gauntlet to the bombing target. My team mates were to clear the path of ISA interceptors. Here you can see the planes beginning to engage amid the various templates, each matched to the current speed of the aircraft, that one can choose to maneuver the planes. 

 

At one point in the game an ISA plane flew directly in front of my Behemoth; I did not expect to have such a clean opportunity for a shot since everyone knew I had to basically fly straight forward as much as possible. The Behemoth has machine guns AND six rockets. . . and I immediately flashed back to a Crimson Skies game I played in Tulsa YEARS ago in which I was flying another lumbering bomber, a Phalanx, loaded with eight machine guns AND eight rockets. I found myself - inexplicably - directly behind an Ace pilot with a perfect bead on his plane. My dilemma: it was early in the game and I had a long bombing run to fly and if I used my rockets now I wouldn't have them later. . . and what if I "needed" them later? So I unloaded with all my machine guns to little effect and then watched helplessly as the Ace "Immelmanned" behind me and blew my bomber, with its full complement of bombs and rockets, to bits. I vowed then and there I would never waste an opportunity like that again. I related this story to all at the table as I readied eighteen dice worth of potential damage - six rockets at 3D6 each - let all 6 rockets go and rolled eleven hits, 2 of which were saved, which left nine hull points - and the aircraft - destroyed! A very satisfying salvo that cleared the way ahead, while my team mates shot the last ISA fighter off my tail.

 

And here is how I immortalized that little story about the "Big Bomber That Couldn't" all those years ago:

 

 

 

Battles & Brews

 

Last weekend Wiley Games hosted its annual summer Battles & Brews. Four games were played, and for a change I played in all four of them! No games outside this year; it was too damned hot.

 

The first game was "Tiny Triremes." We were play-testing a new fast-play ancient naval game, still in development with prototype models, for a friend of The Baron's. Six players, three per side (red and green), each commanding 4 galleys of 3 different sizes. Red and green dice tracked strength points, white dice tracked hull points and turns were controlled with the wooden "compass." I commanded 4 Red galleys on the right flank.

 

 

The small islands really constricted maneuver so the battle devolved into shooting and boarding actions which reduced crew strengths quickly.

 

On my flank I was finally able to ram and sink an enemy ship, but at the cost of two of my own captured and one sunk. The gods of the boarding action dice did not favor me. One of my captured ships was torched because my opponent didn't have the crew strength to hold on to it. A fun battle but Red lost.

 

Next up was the Battle for Endor using Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. Two teams of two players: two units each of five Rebel scum attempting to infiltrate and blow up an Imperial Bunker defended by two units each of the Emperor's Stormtroopers. I commanded the Imperial Scouts sent into the forest to attempt to "spot" the Rebels, represented by hidden movement markers, some of which were dummies. This mission was critical because the second unit of Stormtoopers, in the bunker, could not deploy until the Rebels were spotted. AND I didn't realize until the battle was fully joined that my Scouts were only wielding pistols, as opposed to the rifles everyone else had. On top of that, I have never rolled so many "out of ammos" in one game!

 

Look! There's Han and Chewie!

 

Sadly, their stories end on Endor. I was able to hold them up long enough - mostly via melee due to being out of ammo so often - for the bigger guns deploying from the bunker to end their rebellious careers. The Scouts lost all but their commander.

 

 

Though I didn't get any photos of the final Rebel rush of the bunker that resulted in the "blood alley" typical of Fistful games, it happened right in front of the bunker with the Rebels all dead and the bunker saved. Long Live the Emperor!

 

The third game featured Mechs. I believe a "MechWars Lite" set of rules was used but not being up on Mech Lore and not intending to play - I was setting up my Red Alert game (you can see it at the top of some of the following photos) while this was going on - I can't say for sure. Maybe someone who knows will see this post and comment.

 

 

But play I did; I took over for another player who got got called home for dinner. I commanded the Red and Black Mechs facing the Green and White. I can tell you the green dice tracked movement and the red dice tracked heat generated by the Mechs' actions.

 

My Big Guy took out a Mech lurking at the edge of the woods and then I lost a Mech to a two-on-one "hand-to-hand" brawl. Our side lost (I believe) three destroyed Mechs to two.

 

Our final game of the day was Red Alert, a space fleet action game using the Commands and Colors system. There are three classes of ships - Fighter, Strike and Capital - and several sub-classes within each class. Each unit has a numerical value towards victory points ranging from one point for a Fighter Unit (Fighter Class) to eight points for a Flagship (Capital Class). Most units consist of three or four ships and each "hit" rolled against it eliminates one ship. I am in the process of converting this to hit points (shields, anyone?) using 1/2500-scale Star Trek models and a D6 die to track hits. I only had enough models completed for one complete side, so in this game you can see the green and red ships as provided in the game on one side and my new models opposite.

 

 

Game play is controlled by hands of cards and the use of Star Tokens. We had two players on each side; so one player acted as the Fleet Admiral and controlled the card play and the units in the center section while the second player controlled those units in the two flank zones. The first side to eliminate twenty-one points worth of units, or eight units regardless of points, would immediately win.

 

 

The Star Trek side won initiative and did some early damage with their Fighters. The Red/Green side (my side) played aggressively but was frustratingly countered at almost every attack by a Combat Card that seemed tailor-made for the situation.

 

On the last turn of the game, the score was closer than it seemed. We were behind on points but had eliminated 7 enemy units, so only needed to destroy one more unit. But the Trekkies only needed one more point, so any kill would win the game. And they got it.

 

Thanks to Wiley Games and the Basement Generals for a fun day of gaming!

 

My next post will be more about the Star Trek models and the Red Alert physical game conversions.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cluck Amok Retired!

I made it. I'm retired. I'm three weeks into official retirement. Not much fanfare. . . I just stopped going to work. Still have some work to do on our little project ranch house and yard but now the plan is to get the "gaming life" back on track, too.

The first game I got to play. . . in retirement. . . was a little "Grim Dark" Sc-Fi skirmish action a la Galactic Heroes (Fistful of Lead) from Wiley Games. 

The Baron invited me over; his friend Jay was putting on a game featuring Crimson Fist Marines against Planetary Defense Forces (PDF) in a "defend the refinery" scenario. The Marines were superhuman in every way and the PDFs were Grunts that were able to respawn after being killed until the Marines destroy the Spawn Points. 

 

I led a unit of 3 teams of 3 PDF Grunts. 

 Here we are bunched up behind cover awaiting the Marine onslaught.

 

"Bunching up" turned out to be bad tactics. The Marines had grenades (who knew) and numbers weren't much help in melee, either. After dying, we "re-spawned" in a more spread out formation.

 

Spreading out was a better tactic to be sure, but in the end we gave up the refinery. Those Marines are superhumans!