I put a game evening on the local gaming group, and the response was not massive. DK and Steedo (very late - domestic negotiations apparently), so initially I thought let’s get some miniatures to the table - a Rampant variant, Kings of War or even Maurice. If there had been 4 of us I was planning Risk - Europe, but it was not to be. However an unplanned early doors trip to the local put pay to the idea of a minis game - not enough set up time available. So off the shelves were grabbed Blackstone Fortress and Judge Dredd - DK hadn’t played Dredd (to be fair nor has anyone else for 2 or so years), so it was picked.
We started with the base game - DK being Slaine, Steedo was Nikolai Dante and myself Jonny Alpha and the Strontium Dogs.
Early game one with characters still to place - I think DK was making the early running, while Steedo was watching and working the game out.
The end of the first game was a win to me with 3 tokens of reality and 2 kills - nice to get one over Steedo as he expected me to do a run for a token rather than beat up tone of his characters. However this was my high point of the night.
For the second game DK the expansion king insisted on playing the Dark Judges. I changed to Dredd and Steedo chose the Strontium Dogs. The Dark Judges can only win by killing characters - which based on the comics is very thematic - killing a Dark Judge gets you 2 points, rather than the usual 1 for a character.
This time Steedo was on it - I was too busy worrying about the Dark Judges who were doing a good job of killing Mean Machine and others. It certainly seems if DK would take this one, but Steedo spotted an opportunity and went for Judge Fire (I think) and took the victory - nice win.
DK was a little frustrated, so want to play again with the same factions (I should have swapped to Slaine as the warp version might have been pretty good against the Dark Judges. Steedo was happy to go with the Dogs again.
This time I went for a different strategy of getting all of the Justice Department on the board early, so they could swamp the others, especially the Dark Judges - unfortunately this didn’t work. I also made a mistake with Judge Giant - I should have pick up a token, when Judge Mortis moved into the same space as him, rather than move and shoot, as he was going to die anyway. Annoyingly Steedo learnt from my error - so when it happened to one of his characters, he at least got a point before death.
This was a quick game with Steedo and myself keeping all of our characters fairly close together - I did this so I could use the group action ability of the Judges - but the cards didn’t come out in the right order. DK had also grouped his team, but on the opposite side to Steedo and myself, much to his chagrin. Steedo won this one with some quick grabs of tokens and killing Hershey and Anderson - I had a very poor game again - which I would like to blame on the cards …
Helter Skelter provided a good evening’s entertainment and makes me want to play it again - DK felt it was a bit like Unmatched, with your actions dictated by the cards in your hand. I might look to see if I can pick up some maps and/or adventuring parties from Wildlands (if your didn’t know Helter Skelter is a reskin of Wildlands), as the games are compatible.
We them spent about an hour and a half chatting before calling it a night.
Morts
