Gladiators At MOAB

I made a couple of trips to MOAB this year. On the Sunday I popped in for the afternoon to look around the stalls and games. Picked up a few figures, some more paints and a copy of an out of print sled-racing boardgame called 'Snow Tails'. It was too hot to do much else though.

On the Monday I'd said I'd go up to play and help with a demo of  'Blood On The Sands' gladiator rules, that I've blogged about here a couple of times (most recently last year). When I arrived three games were in full flow:

My first game saw a thraex get beaten up by Victor's murmillo.

My next game was with Damian. By this stage I'd got the hang of what I was doing and we had an epic fight between my secutor and his retiarius. A couple of times we both had our opponent on the ropes, and both of us were sliced up and bleeding by the end. I managed one last desperate attack before I was due to pass out from blood loss and sliced off the retiarius's head.

My final game saw me beaten to a pulp in just under a turn by a very aggressive thraex. The less said about that the better.

Here's a few more pictures. 

A hoplomachus and a murmillo.

Frank (the author) and Paul discussing some finer points of the game.

Frank's fantastic arena. You can read about how he built it HERE, HERE and HERE

I'm really quite taken with 'Blood On The Sands'; it flows really well and is great if you want a crunchy detailed game that's actually not that complicated. Still no word on when it's likely to be published though.

Blood On The Sands

Last night Victor and I did some playtesting for a gladiator game called 'Blood On The Sands'. This has been in development, on and (mostly) off, for around ten years now. Indeed I played a game of it at MOAB back in 2013.

Victor brought along his 54mm gladiators, for that extra spectacular feel.

Blood On The Sands basically uses the same action dice system as does What A Tanker. A gladiator has six dice which they roll at the start of each turn. Each individual score is a type of action - 1: Movement, 2: Defence, 3: Recover 4: Attack, 5: Special Attack and 6: Laurel (Wild Card). Some gladiators can convert one dice to a particular type - the hoplomachus, for example, can convert any dice to Defence.

Attacks are an opposed 2D6 roll, with a hit rolling for location and then how serious the damage is. Hits are recorded on special sheets for each gladiator type.

Anyway, we started off with a murmillo (me) against a thracian (Victor).I started off OK, but didn't manage my defences very well, took a nasty wound and got backed up against the wall. Collapsed with exhaustion in the end.

In the second game I used the murmillo again, and Victor switched to a hoplomachus. The latter can attack at a distance with his long spear, which was a pain.

However I got lucky with an initial attack, scoring a critical hit with my first strike that saw the hoplomachus drop his spear and start bleeding heavily. He recovered his weapon, and nearly tripped me when I fluffed another attack. But I kept up a sustained attack on my opponent's injured arm, and eventually injured him enough (via another critical hit) to defeat him.

Best of three. Victor switched to a secutor and I used this heroic retiarius.

Victor attacked quickly, rushing in low and seriously injuring the retiarius.

I never recovered. I took three serious wounds and literally bled out in a couple of turns, having barely troubled my opponent.

Blood On The Sands has a fair bit of detail, and there's a few tables to consult, but it does offer plenty of decisions, and each gladiator type (the game comes with six) feels different. The activation system works very nicely, producing equal measures of frustration and triumph. It looks like it will be a good game for those people who like a bit of chrome in their games. Each bout took about 45 minutes, but we were looking up a fair amount of stuff as we played. Once familiar with the rules I can see games lasting 20-30 minutes.

52 Games - Game 42

Gladiators at MOAB

As part of MOAB this year, Victor invited myself and Frank of 'Adventures in Lead' to come and run our respective gladiator games, as either demos or participation. My own rules are quick and easy to learn, and lend themselves well to public participation. Frank's are more detailed and difficult to teach, but make a gorgeous demo. So after much email discussion we decided to run short games of 'Munera Sine Missione', plus an extended demo of Frank's 'Blood on the Sands'. To break the day up, Victor provided a couple of chariot-racing games - one a boardgame whose name escapes me, and the other being 'Charioteer!' from Two Hour Wargames (a game I was keen to try).

The start of the day - a referee checks the arena, whilst the Emperor appears to have turned up early.

An early bout, a thraex defeats a murmillo.

Two bouts at once, as we get ambitious ...

After the first session of 'Munera Sine Missione', Victor ran a chariot game whist I trawled the bring and buy. Then we set up Franks 'Blood on the Sands'. I had a thraex - a left-handed thraex, doomed to die, which made him a desperate man.

The data sheets for Frank's game are really lovely; he's produced some great components for this game.

My thraex faced a murmillo, being run by Victor.

Steadily, over several turns, I sliced Victor's murmillo to pieces. Each mark on the figure is a wound, four of which were bleeding heavily. Basically, being left-handed meant I was a difficult opponent to hit or dodge, and being desperate meant that I had some useful rerolls which stopped Victor exploiting certain advantages.

Finally I closed in for the kill ...

... and got it. The crowd spared the murmillo, though, as he really had put up a good fight.

Victor ran some more 'Munera Sine Missione', whilst I played another game of 'Blood on the Sand', using a secutor against a retiarius. This time I was slaughtered.

Finally we set up a five player game of 'Charioteer!'. I really enjoyed this chariot-racing game, with its innovative passing mechanism. Enough decisions to keep it interesting, a dash of luck and not too complex ...

... indeed I liked it so much that I bought a copy.

After that we were all too hot to do much else, and my family turned up to collect me anyway.

Thanks to Victor and Frank for making the day so enjoyable, and to all the players for taking part.