Dr Price, I presume? - a 7TV report

On Tuesday I had an extremely fun game of 7TV with George and Nick. George kindly provided the figures and the game was played out on G3 terrain. The scenario was basically a re-work of our 3 way cowboy games but updated to a 70s TV theme. The dastardly Guru (me) was out to get the United Radionics team (George) for selling dodgy fembots, while they were after Tweedy Mattison (i.e. The Doctor played by Nick) for non-payment after delivery of sonic screwdrivers. Tweedy was determined to end the machinations of his arch-nemesis the Guru. Cracking stuff!

The episode opened on a shot of a deserted shopping centre! But soon, out of the shadows the cast of heroes and villains appears.

The villainous Guru is escorted by his sinister, black-clad guards!

The Man in the Lead-lined Suit grunts as United Radionics make their way into the mall.

A dapper, charismatic fellow leads a group of burly Department X troopers out of...nowhere!

Each of the groups was also intent on finding Dr Price who has fled to the shopping centre with the secret to a doomsday machine. Who will find him first?

The Guru manages to blend into the background and approach the United Radionics goons unnoticed (he has the Infiltrator characteristic which lets him deploy near the enemy, but they can't target him till he gets close). He then offers them a cigarette but they are all stunned by the sleep gas it emits! Muahahahahaaaa!

But Department X also have their infiltration specialists! One of these Guru guards searching for Dr Price is actually a UNIT officer in disguise!

Tweedy and May Killian, his ever present companion, search a groovy record store!  The penny token turns out to be Dr Price!

Meanwhile, the Guru's guards fan out across the concourse!

And suddenly May Killian leaps out on an unsuspecting guard! A fierce struggle ensues during which the girl proves she is as fearsome in close combat as a new-born kitten! Luck is with her, though, and she finally cleaned his clock, only to be casually gunned down by the faceless Guru guards that surrounded her! The cads!

Meanwhile, in the climactic scene of the show, Doris, the United Radionics fembot, sashays towards the nearest Department X trooper, attempting to lure him out of his cover! But, as she draws near he flips open his Pocket Watch Jammer and she whirls out of control! The supporting troopers draw a bead and Doris is soon fit only for the scrap heap! 

As Doris crashed to the ground, the Guru guards swarmed forward and took out the hulking Man in the Lead-lined Suit, whose hideously mutated hide could not save him! As he slumped to the ground the United Radionics boss, Lancelot Cray, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and slunk away into the shadows. As the credits began to roll, Dr Price was shown through a door that led nowhere by the charismatic stranger while the Guru cackled as he throttled one of the hapless goons that was stunned by his sleep spray. Many children were found hiding behind the couch as the episode finished!

What can I say? This was one of the most fun games I've had in ages! 7TV is a fantastic set of rules with tons of scope for making up your own characters and this time we played with gadgets which really added to the fun! The sleep spray and the pocket watch jammer had amazingly thematic and entertaining impacts on the game and were definitely worth including. Also, we saw this out in about 2 hours flat, as the rules are very easy to get to grips with, but give you plenty of tactical headaches as you can't activate all your figures. If you enjoyed this report I'd thoroughly recommend checking out the 7TV rules as there are scads of supplements to be had, from Harryhausen inspired escapades to underground Bond villain lairs! Brilliant!

TRWNN - Dead Man's Hand!

Tonight George and I played another iteration of the 3-way shootout scenario that we I blogged about late last year. This time we had different third player, Paul, who brought his gang of ranch hands who we designated as the 'mercenary' crew. George played the corrupt lawmen, which left me with the dastardly outlaws. Therefore, my gang was gunning for Paul's ranchers (as they are the richest crew), Paul was gunning for the lawmen (as they want to take control of the town) and the George was gunning for me (as the rampaging outlaws are bad for business). The objective this time was a meek lawyer who is hiding in the outhouse of the hotel in the middle of the table. He has the will of a recently deceased land owner and the deeds to his land which is rumoured to have gold in it. So, each faction is out to snaffle the documents for themselves so they can seize the land. In the end, the Barons (my outlaws) manage to get their hands on the documents and also managed to gun down most of the ranchers for a resounding victory!

The town is deathly quiet as the combatants approach!

The major change in this game, though, and the focus of this post, was the card play VP layer. I decided to tweak this a little to make it a bit easier to collect cards, but also more worth spending them. The aim was to make it possible to win by cards alone, but have the objective still important enough that it could swing the result and introduce a bit more of a poker feel to the whole game. I think that this version of the meta game worked exceptionally well, so I'll present it as rules here:

You will need a deck of ordinary playing cards. Cards are worth victory points as follows:

• 2 to 6 = 1VP
• 7 to 10 = 2VP
• J to K = 3VP
• Aces = 4VP
• Jokers = 0VP, but are wild cards for making hands (see below)

Cards are awarded by wounding characters (for our 3 player game we played it you only get VPs from your 'hated' faction - so outlaws only get them from mercenaries, for example. This prevents ganging up.):

• A flesh wound earns 1 card
• A severe wound earns 2 cards
• An outright kill earns 3 cards

Cards can also be played for advantages during the game as well. To play your cards you must make a proper poker hand from them using Texas Hold 'Em style rules:

• At the start of the first turn shuffle the deck, including the jokers, and deal 2 VP cards face down to each player. 
• Then deal 3 cards from the deck face up onto the table. 
• At the start of each subsequent turn deal another card face up. 
• A hand can be made up from the face up cards on the table and your VP cards. A hand must contain cards from your VP cards.
• When playing a hand, the VP cards are immediately discarded into a discard pile. The cards on the table remain untouched.
• When playing a hand for an advantage, any opponent player can play a better hand to negate that effect (by better I mean higher ranked or the same hand with higher values - a pair of eights beats a pair of fours).
• The hands and their advantages are as follows:
• One Pair - allows you to force a re-roll of a single die. This can be yours or an opponents.
• Two Pair - allows two re-rolls or the prevention of an out of ammo/jam result.
• Three of a Kind - allows you to add 3 dice to the shooting dice pool.
• Straight - allows you to adjust either the location or effect of any hit against any character by 1.
• Flush - allows you to remove 2 flesh wounds or 1 severe wound from a character.
• Full House - allows you to automatically hit a target and adjust either the location or effect by 1.
• Four of a Kind - allows you to gain an extra activation for one character and also pick one of the previous effects.
• Straight Flush or Dead Man's Hand - you may bring a single dead character back to life!
• A hand may be played for its listed advantage or any advantage from a lower ranked hand (so a flush could be played to gain the advantage of a straight).

An example from our game played as follows - my outlaw Scooter Baron ran out of cover and blazed away at one of Paul's ranch hands. I rolled my dice and came up with two sixes and three ones! So Scooter misses and is out of ammo! But in my VP cards I had a pair of fours and a nine with another nine face up on the table, so I played a hand of two pairs, discarding the fours and nine (3VP worth of cards) for two re-rolls. I re-rolled two of the ones and came up with two twos. So now I had two sixes and only one one, so Scooter hit his target and wasn't out of ammo. He caused a serious wound and I immediately got two cards back.

The thing I really like about this system is that you have to seriously consider the benefits of burning VPs for the advantage gained. Also, whether it's wise to cancel out a hand. Another play in the game saw me playing a single pair of eights for a re-roll. Paul could have beaten my pair with a pair of Jacks, but he would be burning 6 VPs to cancel a re-roll that cost me 4VPs. Both Paul and George thought this VP system brought quite a bit to the game and we all had a lot of fun. I certainly saw a lot more playing of cards than last time, as the players tended to have more cards in their VP pile to play with and the advantages are certainly worth the playing at critical points in the game. 

Feel free to try it out, anyway, and I'd love to hear from anyone if they have improvements or just what they think of the system.

Beauregard Baron moves into cover and blazes away at the ranch hands.

The Ranchers take position where they can see the outhouse!

Death In The Ruins! A guest Infinity report!

Anyone that follows this blog will have seen the name George pop up quite often, as he is my main gaming buddy! We played a game of Infinity against each other for the first time on Tuesday night and I thought it might be an idea if he wrote up a wee AAR of the battle and his thoughts on the system as a guest blog post, so here it is! (The pics are all from my side of the table and I added the captions)

Hi,

I'm George and I'm one of Ian's regular opponents.  We've both tried Infinity and enjoyed it so on Tuesday we had our firstgame against each other, using 200 point forces.

 

I fielded my Haqqislam force which consisted of 3 ghulams, a naffatun, a hunzakut, a janissary, a ghulam doctor, a ghulam hacker, a ghulam with HMG, and a ghulam with a panzerfaust.

Ian fielded his Nomads and while I can't remember the exact composition of his force it included a reverend moira and what I think was an intruder with an HMG.

The board was set up to represent an area of ancient ruins with a large stepped pyramid in the centre.  On the top of the pyramid was a smaller pyramid-shaped object.  The objective of the game was to take and hold the small pyramid-shaped object and the game length was six turns.

I split my force into three roughly equal parts and deployed them in ruins on my left flank, centre, and right flank.  Ian had a strong presence opposite both my flanks and worryingly, at least three men in some sort of camo, meaning they only appeared as markers.  My hunzakut also deployed in camo as a hidden marker.

The field of battle! Infinity needs a lot of terrain!

The game basically evolved into one of two flanks.  On my left flank, Ian made excellent use of his intruder and more or less wiped out my group.  On the other, I had more success and was able to eliminate some of his men and advance towards the objective.  My centre group and the hunzakut essentially did nothing for the whole game apart from the centre group despatching my doctor to tend to my wounded HMG gunner in my left flank group.

The Nomads follow their leader...to their doom!

Luckily, before my left hand group was elimiated, it killed Ian's reverend moira, which turned out to be his lieutenant.  The loss of his lieutenant severely affected Ian's order pool and had a key influence on the game.  I was able to capitalise on this with my right flank force and killed a couple more of Ian's troops.  This put him in retreat and we called the game at that point.

Pew! Pew! Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!

The game was very tight and could have gone either way at several times and I was very lucky with some of my shooting.  I really enjoyed the game and found it both tactically challenging and very entertaining.  Line of sight and careful positioning are crucial aspects of the game, giving it a very realistic feel and the way your opponent can do AROs means you have to be careful about what figures you move and how you you move them.  You always have to balance the risk of taking action with the likely consequences.

The Haqqislam flank my position and the game is up!

This was my second game of Infinity but will be far from my last.  Frankly, I think it offers about as much fun as you can have for an investment of 10 figures (or less!).

Fast and furious - Dreadball in a nutshell!

Got to try out Dreadball last week and I thought I'd share some views on it. First off, there's not really a lot of competition in the future/fantasy ball game genre. The obvious main contender is Blood Bowl and that's a game that I spent a lot of time playing in my teens and early twenties. So, how does Dreadball (DB) compare with it and what can it bring to the table that Blood Bowl (BB) fails to deliver?

1. Speedball! Remember that game? I used to love it on the Megadrive and DB really conjures the look and feel of that game. Despite there being Orcs in DB it feels much more sci-fi than BB.
2. Speedball 2! Actually, what I mean by this is that DB puts some speed into the game. Despite never having played it before, George and I managed to get through a whole game in a couple of hours, complete with much thumbing through of the rules. You will definitely finish a game of DB long before a game of BB ends. Why? Well, that's really down to the number of players on the board. In BB you play with 11 players, while DB sees only 6 on the board. So you immediately half the number of pieces you need to manage. On top of that, you can't actually move them all in DB, as you only have 5 'action' tokens, so rather than pondering 11 moves, you are only pondering 5 at the most (not counting the small hand of cards you have that can grant extra actions).
3. Gooooooaaaalll! In DB it is much easier to score. Mostly this is because the board is a lot smaller and there are 3 'goals' in which to score, 2 of which are about halfway up the opponents side. Another key factor is that the ball is launched back into play as soon as a team scores, without resetting the play, much like the way the ball is launched in Rollerball. So, you may find that the ball simply lands on a player who catches it and a score can be made that turn. Scoring in BB is a much more labour intensive task with most games only seeing 2 or 3 touchdowns, especially as the play is restarted after each TD and, more importantly, half time (which DB doesn't actually have). So DB is more like basketball in terms of scoring and ebb and flow of play.
4. Dream team! Actually, this is one of the points that I think DB falls down on. The models are lovely, but there's a real lack of diversity in the teams as they come out of the box. The greenskins, for example, have only two types of player, the humans having three. There is a definite theme for each side, with the humans being much more about running and throwing while the Orcs just want to smash and bash, but it would have been nice to see some variety, or more choice in team selection. This is one point that BB stands head and shoulders above DB. However, I grant that these are early days for DB and I'm sure they'll release more stuff in due time.
5. Final score! So, how do they compare? DB is definitely a quicker game, but it's not really any more lightweight in terms of tactical depth and decision making. DB seems much more suitable for a club night or a casual game for a night round at your mates. BB is a longer undertaking, for sure, but it feels more like a big marquee game. If you factor in player progression and the fact that skills are built into BB then the league game is where BB is really at. I have to admit that I didn't get time to really inspect all the rules in DB, but nothing leaped out at me as being designed for team progression. It may be there...I just didn't see it! I guess the big question is, is Dreadball worth shelling out £50 for? Well, Blood Bowl is actually very similarly priced, so I would say it really depends on the gaming group you're a part of. If your mates are all up for a decent league and want a good variety of teams and players, then Blood Bowl is still pretty much the best choice. If you are just looking for a nice, easy entry into the fantasy football genre that doesn't require too much effort to play and can be brought out and played comfortably in an evening, then Dreadball is probably the choice for you. 

Both are very good games and very engaging and fun, so on that criteria I don't really think I could separate them. Whether DB evolves into a serious competitor for the league play only time will tell, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on it.

First look at a tournament

Yesterday saw a Malifaux tournament happen in Glasgow and I managed to go down and watch. The organisers also had a second room for demos and friendly games which was cool. So I took my Perdita and Zoraida crews with the intention of trying Zoraida out. As it happened I ended up playing Zoraida against Perdita, which was nice to see all my models on the table. But it also meant I learnt how damned hard Perdita is to play against! The highlight, though, had to be Zoraida casting Obey on Papa Loco who charged Santiago and flipped the red joker for damage. The resulting explosion took them both out in one cataclysmic BOOM! :)

The real draw was the tournament, of course. I've never taken part in a tournament, but I think it would be an interesting experience, so I wanted to take a look and see what if was like. I watched most of one game where the Dreamer tore up a Lilith crew and the quality of play was a cut above. Okay...the Dreamer player was the #1 ranked player in the UK! So, I'm intrigued enough to want to enter the next one if I can make it. Just need to build up a few more options for one of my crews.

Apologies for no pictures, but it was such a busy day!

Second crew complete!

Well, all but for some decoration on the bases and a lick of varnish!

Here are some extra shots of the Hag herself:

I'm determined to just get on with the Malifuax stuff I've had lying around for ages, so next up is Colette and her Showgirls. Of course...I need some Coryphee and some Mechanical Doves and some...!

More alliteration - March, Malifaux, Magua and Muskets & Tomahawks!

Painting wise I've been splashing away at Zoraida's crew and have basically finished Bad Juju. That only leaves Zoraida and finishing off bases, and both of those tasks are well under way. So, all in all, it looks like I'll be in a position to take Zoraida to the Malifaux event on Sunday, which is great news! I've also ordered a couple of extra minions for her (which is allowed, as per my oath...extensions are fine - additions aren't), but the Post Office seem incapable of delivering them, which is most annoying. But, I have to say, my oath is being stretched to it's limit and there are figures I really want out there. In particular, I realised that I actually don't have a crew per faction in Malifaux as I thought. I don't have an Outcasts crew, so I'm seriously considering picking up Leveticus. That is mostly based on the fact that I can reuse lots of models from the other crews, rather than having to buy lots of extras. So...perhaps just a *tiny* purchase may be allowed...ahem...! :)

Bad Juju - pretty much ready to go!

An odd model to paint. Basically he's just a huge mud pile!

Also, on Tuesday night, I got to play in my second game of Muskets & Tomahawks. Sometimes it's amazing how randomly generated plots can seem to tie into an overall narrative! In this game, the British forces were the raiders and the Indians/Canadians were defending their patch. So we decided that the British officer from the first game, let's call him...say....Duncan, was called a coward by the lady who was his ward in the first game and she has left him. Enraged, he decided to track the Magua to his stronghold and make him pay. His side plot nicely tied into this and demanded that he personally take six scalps! Magua, on the other hand, was to ensure that no enemy forces would get into his log cabin and steal his whiskey and glass beads!

The battlefield!

A column of Rangers approach from the left flank.

The Indians continue to dance around the fire, unaware of the approaching danger!

Officer Duncan leads his raiding party.

Duncan reaches Magua's cabin undetected and starts to lay fires!

The Rangers engage the Indians! The hornets nest has been disturbed!

The Ranger column deploys from the left flank and takes the enemy from the rear.

In the end, the Indians and Canadians were put to flight by the pincer movement and Magua's cabin was burnt to the ground. The Indian reserves were obviously too busy hunting some beavers to come and help as the game ended before they arrived, but the Rangers had failed to completely burn down the second building and so the game was a draw! Neither officer managed his sub plot, so after some licking of wounds I'm sure they will re-ignite the feud to see who comes out on top! All in all, another great game of Muskets and Tomahawks. I'm really liking this system more and more!