The Halloween Game

Dark Age Lion Rampant: all that rebasing pays off

With their dull coat still drying, my 300+ Vikings and Normans made the precarious journey 40 minutes south to christen one of our Basement Generals new game rooms.
It was an honor and a privilege to be the first to bloody Nick's new game room.
The Viking horde was quickly bearing down on a small Norman village. The local lord was tasked with trying to save all the livestock, treasure and important personages before they fell into the pagan's hands.
Vikings got the first move and everyone was able to move the close to 200 miniatures forward.
The Normans, failed miserably to motivate their troops.

By the end, the Normans were able to finally get moving. Several leader challenges later, only one Viking commander was alive. On my flank, my leader and his Norman counterpart fought 3 times before he finally won.
It ended up being a Norman victory, but I didn't care. Everything looked great, the beer flowed freely and new war room got broken in.

The Rebasening

It happens far too often. A great rebasing of a huge amount of minis. This time due to ruleset I really like, Lion Rampant.
My Dark Age minis have sat too long, gathering dust on their multi figure bases in my insane hope I would use them that way. Now, I have an upcoming game deadline to get me motivated. I spent the last week of evenings carefully prying them from their bases and remounting on washers, gooping them with my secret goop and now flocking.
Birthday cigars at the ready and leftover summer beers at hand, I step outside on a lovely fall day to flock 300+ Vikings and Normans.

GASLIGHT: The Thin Red Line

"Bring me the head of Sir Percival Armstrong".
With that simple command from the sultan, the sword wielding forces of Derkaderka charged the British walls.

as if a horde of sword swinging fanatics wasn't enough, the other side of the battlefield presented a whole new set of difficulties for British. A German assault force had landed via airship a few miles away and was entering the fray in hopes of capturing Professor Standpipe and his newly acquired alien artifact found in the desert a few days ago.

With the modern forces of the German Empire on one side, and the fanatic hordes of the Sultan of Derkaderka on the other, it looked grim for the stalwart defenders in their small dusty village.
For this scenario, the British, outnumbered 2-1 had to either break the attackers or get both Sir Percival Armstrong (Gentleman adventurer) and Professor Standpipe off a defended table edge.
The Tribesman had to kill or capture Armstrong, while the Germans wanted the professor alive.

It started with a mad charge by the Derkaderkastanees. A shot from the British Tricycle artillery rocket destroyed most of the tribesmen in one lucky shot.
As the redcoats shouted a loud "hurrah!" the Sultan's steamtank swept the parapet with gatling fire, driving the British from the walls.
Thus it went. Mad charges across open terrain, horrible casualties, and then bombardment from the attacker's guns.
The Unicycle Uhlans managed to cross the bloodied terrain unscathed, making a mad charge at the British guns. They slaughtered the crew and were in the midst of scaling the walls (pretty tough with lances and unicycles) when the Naval landing party blasted them to bits from the village rooftops.

Throw in the deadly sniping by Sir Percival's manservant Mpopo and the at last the attackers quit the field.
It was a close run thing, and a lot of fun.

GASLANDS: along the post apocalyptic highway.

To me, finding those perfect Mad Max style, road warrior rules has been a white whale. Car Wars is too complicated. Axles and Alloys doesn't do it for me. Dark Future was over as soon as your car left the pavement. Outlander takes for-ever and has some design flaws.
I was lucky enough to get in on the play testing of Gaslands (don't like the name, but whatever) an upcoming Osprey title. It has bits and pieces from other games, but overall unique in it's design.
I didn't post many pics because I haven't painted up any cool Hot Wheels conversions, and I didn't want to give too much away about the mechanics.
We ran an ambush along the hiway scenario where 2 players had to get off the opposite end of the board. Lying in wait were the other players.
The cars were vanilla, packing MGs and dropped ordinance and essentially the same.
It ran great. ambush-ees almost made it.
The mechanics are simple. It uses templates for moevment, but not enough they are restrictive. The special skid dice are a nice idea.
There are some flaws, however:
- Physics are kinda out the window in some cases like collisions.
- Going 100mph on anything but a nicely paved road would be suicide in the real world.
- the building mechanism for vehicles needs some work.
Other than that, a nice start. The author has a sheet for submitting playtest suggestions and I have done so. Lets see where this goes.