Well the plan to blog once a week failed after 2 weeks back at work!
The team (minus Sylon) made a road trip to the wargames show in Plymouth. As a rule I have found the Plymouth show to be better than Exeter regarding traders and bring & buy, but this year it seemed a little bit flat - I managed to spend £5 (excluding entrance and food), Steedo £2 (but sold a number of boardgames for a tidy sum), DK picked a number of old boardgames to sell on eBay for a profit (well that's the plan to fund his Kickstarter habit) and Snake-eyes .... Well he got Star Wars Armarda to go with his X-wing collection.
However the show was a lot of fun - between us we played 5 games in the afternoon. So here is a run down of the games.
Rumbleslam.
This was a fantasy wrestling game - with nice minis. I think it had been funded on Kickstarter. The game play was fine and it moved along at a good pace. The demonstrators were keen and the art work was good - with the minis matching it.
But it was wrestling ..... Not my thing and I'm not sure on the replay ability if I am honest.
Then we played Tanks.
Now I have thought about buying this so the chance to play on Cornish Mikey's very nice set-up with the starter set was a good opportunity.
The game played smoothly and I managed to knock out the Snake-eyes Panther after Steedo sacrificed his Sherman! There was brief talk about all of us buying into this game .... But I'm not sure it is the right game.
Steedo, Snake-eyes and I them play Piston Pirates (I think it was called) - this game is still in development with the designer taking it around shows (this was the first outting) and hoping to get it to Kickstarter with a basic set price of £15 in the autumn. I have to say I enjoyed this game - the movement was similar to X-wing. The rather nice plywood ships had crew upgrades and there was a mission card for us to complete. Steedo had a naval frigate which Snake-eyes and I took on with a pirate sloop and Brig. Movement was fast and furious and after Snake-eyes had sacrificed himself i was able to board with the aid of a crew card and capture the frigate. A nice bit of fun and the designer has bigger ships, airships and sea monsters to add to the mix.
We then split up and DK used Jedi mind tricks to get Snake-eyes to buy Star Wars Armarda. They then played a quick Pathfinder game. Which was rather good on the table below.
Steedo and I played Outlands - a small scale (5/6 figures a side) sci-fi skirmish game. The ideas in the game reminded me of Rogue Stars. The initiative system was pretty cool and I think we might have another go with it (as Steedo picked the rules on PDF for £2). The aim is to collect a pool of dice by collecting objectives and wounding your opponents - these can then be coverted to credits to upgrade your squad in a longer campaign game. In our game Steedo collected 2 objectives to my 1, but I had put 4 out of 5 of this figures out of action! So when we came to the rolling the dice pool he managed to beat me 55 to 52 ... My only loss of the day!
As it was my birthday in the last week I have signed up to the latest Northstar Frostgrave pre-order.
Steedo and Snake-eyes very kindly got me They Come Unseem - a Cold War NATO versus USSR submarine game by Osprey - I hope to have a play of this soon. I have to say I have been impressed by Ospreys boardgames so far.
DK pick up Chosen Men - Napoleonic skirmish rules, as I have rattling on about doing something like that for years and years - a couple of Victrix sprues should do it. I have had quick skim and they look pretty good.
So with Dragon Rampant/SAGA/Frostgrave/Rogue Stars ... Kings of War/Maurice/Starship Troopers .... When is going to happen?
Plus the games they others want to get to the table.
Better get painting then.
Morts
