A Great Weekend of Gaming

 My younger mate Mark came over to stay for an annual gaming weekend this week.  We have been doing this for a few years now, Mark and his wife Kate, have two young daughters (now 5 and 7) and this provides an escape for gaming and adult company. To be fair, we have started a similar weekend escape for Kate. She is a history buff and enthusiastic about steam engineering. My sister Broni volunteers for our local heritage railway, so last year Kate came over for a couple of nights of drinking cocktails, then a day on the railway where Broni wangled her a private visit to the signal bow and a ride on the footplate of a steam locomotive.

Back to gaming, I had a packed schedule planned. 

Friday: Mark arrived, had a beer and settled in, followed by dinner, then beer and a game of Frostgrave.

Saturday: am Frostgrave, then Ian joined us for lunch, followed by more beer and a game of Zombie Stagecoach (wild west Zombie RV).

Sunday: More Frostgrave followed by lunch at a Turkish restaurant, before Mark headed home.

Great fun and a lot of laughs was had by all. Here are some photos of the games in no particular order.

Frostgrave first.

Mark's wizard channelling an ACW General. "Watch out for that crossbowman Master!". "Pah! he couldn't hit an elephant at that distance!"

Twang! Thunk! Ugh!

Three of Mark's warband close in on one of mine trying to collect a treasure.

But picking up the chest alerted the Giant Worm lurking beneath the surface. Guess who was closest?

Yep! That one's the starter!

and this one's the main course!

The Zombie Stagecoach. Mark and Ian each had a gang of survivors and I GM'ed the zombie.

The town looked quiet, too quiet!

It looks like Emily's in trouble!

Now is not the time for the shotgun to run out of ammo!

The melee just got bigger!

The reason there are noise markers next to the shed is that 3 of Ian's gang are hiding inside. "Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, we ain't hunting wabbits". 

They were hoping the zombies would follow little Timmy, who was running across the street screaming, after being startled out of his hiding place when one of Mark's gang searched the barn.

And it worked!

Ian's character Ol' George attracting the zombies attention before heroically leading them on a merry dance, allowing the rest of his gang to sneak up and search the last two buildings.

An excellent weekend. We are already planning the next one!

War of the Worlds Survivors 2

 The guys came over for another game in our periodic post-Martian Invasion campaign. 

Here is the table lay out. The survivors have ventured into an urban area for this game. Centres of population were the initial targets of the invaders, so they tend to be more ruinous that the country villages.

There are 3 shades wandering about the area at the outset. the light brown boxes mark search points and there are 3 manhole covers which mark shade entry points. The players will each enter from a corner, the two bottom ones and the top right.

Henry initially had problems getting his party to activate, but Mark and Colin both rushed forward and reached a search point each. On searching them they both found useful first aid kits! Mark displayed his usual inquisitiveness and opened the sewer cover closest to him. he didn't see anything in the dark below, but did not replace the cover, which would give him issues!

Just 1 shade appeared in turn 1, coming out of the manhole next to mark. I had intended that new arrivals would take their entire turn to emerge from the tunnels via the heavy sewer cover, but as mark had left his open I decided to let the shade activate this turn and it attacked one of Marks party, knocking them to the ground. This melee went on with another PC joining in and taking it in turn to be knocked down, then regain their feet before the foe could deliver the coup de grace. he fianally despatched the shade but another turned up and took one of his men Out of the Fight ("dead" but possibly not!).

The players were aided by the fact that I had appalling dice and in 4 turns I rolled 2 activation fails for the first or second figure I tried to activate (each figure rolls for up to 3 activations per turn, rolling 2 failures ends your turn and passes on to the next player). This meant that even though a scuttler and stalker arrived , as well as several more shades, for the first half of the game they just stood around looking confused.

Once he got going Henry moved across the table and searched several objectives, but was very unlucky and did not fond much. In panicked him a bit when the stalker turn up really close to him, bit it's dithering allowed his party to hide in the ruins.

Finally I got some Martians moving, but most of the shades had been picked off by now. The scuttler advanced on mark. His party blasted away, but only knocked it down. It got back up and killed another of Mark's men. Henry and colin had found almost no loot at this point, so Colin took some pot shots at Mark, hoping to nick some of his stuff while he was occupied with the scuttler. this was the first time there had been any exchange of fire between survivors. Mark decided he'd had enough and grabbed his fallen PCs and exited, dragging their bodies with him.

Another scuttler turned up on Colin's flank and he started taking fire from the stalker, so he decided to make a quit exit as well.

In the meantime, Henry kept playing hide and seek around the ruins with the stalker. A couple of shades did make contact and attack some of his PCs, but they killed them both. His party then ran off the table when Colin distracted the stalker momentarily.

A great game which got quite tense towards the end. Mark got the most loot, a rifle, a first aid kit, 1 reload of ammo and 1 portion of food, the other two found just a first aid kit and some salvage between them. One the other hand, Mark also had two PCs Out of the Fight.

In the post game rolls, both of Mark's PCs proved to be only stunned with minor injuries, so they will be fully fit for the next game. Because he retrieved their bodies he got to keep all their equipment and loot. If he had left them behind it would not have affected their survival roll, but he would have lost anything they were carrying at the time.

On to the next game! It will be interesting to see how the parties interact after Colin opened fire on Mark. Previously the survivors have ignored each other, and even picked off a shade threatening another group on occasion. But will Mark be out for revenge next time? 

Herts of Lard 2025 - A Great Day Out!!!

 Yesterday I went to Herts of Lard in Rickmansworth, the southern Too Fat Lardies play day. An absolutely brilliant day with 15 (well 14 due to illness) different TFL games running twice each during the day.

Firstly , a huge Thank You to Joe Bilton for organising the event and to the game hosts and other helpers for all their hard work. There were three Midgard running and I managed to get a place in two of them and was on the winning side in both!

My morning game was “The Cleansing of the Eyewash" a Middle Earth game run by Matt Slade. This was a lovely looking table and provided a really hard fought battle, with the orcs narrowly taking the day. Here are a some pictures of the game.

My afternoon game was  Too Eager! a battle between Romans and Ancient Britons run by Paul Cox, assisted by Grahame Wright. Another very hard fought and close bash, with the British literally snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in the last melee of the game! I used to periodically game with Paul and Grahame in Harrow in the dim mists of the past (Paul reckoned it was pushing 25 years ago!). so it was great to see them again and catch up a bit.

And here are pictures of some of the other games on offer. I took most of these at the start of the day, so some have not got their minis on yet. Starting with a 15mm Chain of Command game set in the jungles of Burma.

                                          

A really spectacular Operation Goodwood 28mm game in the ruins of Caen.

An intriguing Call of Cthulhu game using What a Cowboy.

Another 28mm CoC game, this time American paras in Normandy.

And a samurai game in 15th century Japan.

 

A 15mm WW2 1941 Eastern Front game of I Ain't Bin Shot Mum, nice to see those rules still in use.

Kiss Me Hardy Napoleonic ships.

Another Midgard game, this time the defeat of Varus' Roman legions in the Teutoburg Wald in 9AD.

Great fun, I met a fantastic bunch of gamers and play two really good game. I'd call that a result!