Happy Christmas one and all - Sub Terra played

 So Christmas 2025 has happened and the New Year is coming. Not much to report on the making and painting side of things (I have started some Confrontation Goblins and nearly finished a Drakon rider … but haven’t). 

The collective managed to get together last week for a game at Board in Isca, and good fun was had by all. Sylon picked the game, was pretty much ideal for a couple of hours in a board game cafe. 

Sub Terra is a tile placement game set in a cave system, created as you go by picking tiles (strangely enough). You take the roles of various cavers trying to get out before the event cards do. You have to avoid “cave ins”, floods, gas, ledgers, slides and horrors. We played on easy mode and ignored some advice given by the cafe manager as he explained the rules. Which was being followed in the top picture here early game.

The game played fairly quickly with minimal errors (but obviously some) on our part. You had 2 action points to play in a turn which could be spent in various ways - scouting, moving, exploring (which was a combination of the previous two but you had to go into the new tile), healing or a character ability. We managed to tidy up a real flood when DK knocked out Steedo’s beer … Steedo took the spillage remarkably well. The turns go character actions, horrors actions (I think we might have been doing something wrong because there weren’t any…), flip hazard card - could trigger flooding, “cave ins” or horrors etc. The bottom picture shows the end game as Tiger-King, Snake-eyes and Sylon won the race to find the exit tile with DK, Steedo and myself on the other side of the system … should have left DK’s Leader (who no one had followed) by himself … flashbacks to the 2018 UK Games Expo where Dk “wandered” off … Although 3 cavers out was a win for the party. 

So a pretty tight game which I think non-gamers would play and enjoy. Also time limited. Issues - the contrast on the tiles between the path and walls is difficult to see and the game can spread a bit on the table. However Sub Terra 2 is out and has dealt with these issues (although the setting is different ish). 

Anyway a good little game - enjoyed it. 

We then managed a couple of games of Coup - nice to play again. 

A good evening and nice to catch up with the collective before Christmas. 

Christmas has been and Santa has brought me the 5th Edition of Talisman and a £20 GW voucher to spend …

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and best wishes for the new year!

Morts 

Back to the Blackstone Fortress

The better half was off for a day, so I tried to organise the collective for a game … unfortunately many were unable to make the day. However Steedo and Sylon could make it. After much dithering Blackstone Fortress was decided up on - hopefully with a game of Imperium Classics to finish. 

We decided to have a “recap” expedition into the Fortress and pick the heroes to take in. Steedo took the Amallyn Shadowguide (Eldar), Sylon Pious Vorne (the fanatic with a flamer thrower) and I took the Janus Drak -rogue trader. The 4th hero were the ratling twins Rein and Raus. We had a couple of challenges, then an ambush!

Above is the field of play - Spindle drones and Ur-guls were are opponents. We charged about with some good shooting to take out the enemies and had a good recap of the rules. We followed up with a couple more challenges, where we pushed are luck … which was a mistake because a couple of characters lost enough health so we weren’t able to visit another challenge in the fortress. 

We now decided that we would go on a stronghold mission - this meant taking characters with clues (4 are needed to go to stronghold). The chosen this time were Espern Locarno the Navigator, Thaddeus the Purifier, Dahyak Grekh (Kroot tracker) and Pious Vorne (for a second run of the evening). 

We read (scan) the rules and decided that to try and run 4 exploration cards before hit the stronghold would be suicide and would take too long. We were up against Obsidius Mallex and all of his minions (2 chaos warriors, 4 beastmen, 4 Negavolt cultists, 14 traitor guardsmen and 2 rogue psykers. However the guard and Obsidius (marines and psykers) could move until we moved into a chamber … the guard would shoot if we stayed in particular hexes at the end of an action. 

The game started well - we cleared out the beastmen and cultist pretty easily. Steedo came up with a plan to move Obsidius towards us using Espern’s power … we think we played this right… so we could blast him to pieces at range. This worked … however we were taking damage from the guard … we moved quickly from a position of looking like the whole team would get out …to would any of us get out! Espern in a moment of madness or over confidence by Steedo, who thought his psychic shield would save him was blasted to bits by a Chaos Space Marine … Thaddeus was overwhelmed by reinforcements of traitor guard. 

After spending a turn trapped in the grinding room Dahyak and Pious made a sprint to the escape portal!

Then we had to deal with the aftermath … Thaddeus survived his roll on the death table … unfortunately Espern Locarno was less lucky and now has a mortis card meaning he is dead and out of Blackstone Fortress …

The check through also picked up that the traitor guard could have been more active if the explorers were more visible to them … that could have made it a bit tougher, as would actually looking at the legacy cards in the little wallet … but set up was a bit rushed for some reason - I just wasn’t on it. Anyway good fun was had I am planning another visit to the Fortress soon - we need more clue tokens to get back to a stronghold … I will to much better prep next time. 

I also found some rules for Kill Team 2019 for Blackstone Fortress characters and for using the tiles … I think that will be developed (by me … GW are 2 editions on by now). 

As it was we didn’t manage a game of Imperium Classics - another time. 

Morts