Snake-eyes and Steedo popped over for a couple of games (turned out to be 3 actually), which was nice. We started with a game of Judge Dredd - Helter Skelter by Osprey Games. This was the first time we had tried this reskin of Wildlands. The game is set in a fractured 2000AD universe where your teams have to collect 5 points to heal reality (or win). This is done by picking up tokens or killing members of the other teams. You can pick from Judge Dredd team, a Strontium Dog team, a Nikolai Dante (this is a character from after I stopped buying 2000AD in the 80s) or a Slaine team (we didn’t try these out as the rules for warped Slaine might have been too much for us).
The game works with each team having an asymmetrical set of cards which activates different actions for different characters - so choices have to be made straight away when planning moves and attacks. Also deployment is done by being dealt 10 cards - each with a location on it, picking one for each character, then passing the rest to the player on your right as their fragments of reality (tokens to collect) - this mechanism can also cause some serious choices to be made at the start of the game.
The first game was Snake-eyes as the Judges, Steedo as Nikolai Dante and myself as Johnny Alpha and the Strontium Dogs.
This was a “learning” game where there was a fair amount of fighting - my good self causing the damage only for the other two to conspire to let the other get the kill and therefore the point. A close run thing in the end with a win to Snake-eyes, 2nd Steedo (4) and myself on 2 or 3.
As the game had played pretty quickly, we had another go (with the same teams - I would have changed but the others won the dice off …). This was quite a different game. The way the map cards were dealt to me meant that initially I was going to spread my team around to board only for me to realise that the remaining cards I had would place all of Steedo’s tokens on one quarter of the board, which would not do … so I had to swap that around (although Steedo’s own deployment but his characters in the diagonally opposite corner … but how was I to know). Steedo did put 3 of Snake-eyes’ tokens in a nice line for him though - d’oh!
There was little fighting in this game as no one wanted to give points to the players following them … however due to Steedo’s line them up Snake-eyes won again this time I was second and Steedo last. It was only about half the time as well
We all enjoyed the game - the different abilities of the teams and characters make it a challenge - I have the Dark Judges expansion, but will look into getting some extra maps from Wildlands and possibly the adventuring party as you can play the Helter Skelter factions in Wildlands.
So after the very quick second game we thought we would get a game of Raiders of the North Sea in (as Snake-eyes hadn’t played it).
This is the third game of Raiders I have played and I like it, the place do action, pick up do action is simple to get. The strategies to play are interesting - Steedo and Snake-eyes went for the raid big stuff as soon as you can but their crews were a bit light, so they weren’t getting the big victory points. I went for the offerings and attacking the harbours (with a character who give an extra VP for attacking harbours) and cheap crew as there were quite a few Valkyries in the harbours (who kill crew).
My strategy paid off in the end, as although I wac last going into the scoring all the offering cards and a maxed out Valkyrie track give me 63 points, Steedo had 49 (and no Valkyries) and Snake-eyes 47.
So a good evening’s gaming (with no beige snacks consumed and limited drinking - very civilised).
I have to admit to playing Judge Dredd without painting the models because … I have other things to do and I wanted to get the game to the table. Due to the backlog I don’t think they will get painted to be honest. Although I have been experimenting with Speed paint so I hope to post on that in the next couple of days.
Morts
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