The Grizzled

I haven't had time or inclination to do much in the way of gaming this past week, mostly because of some work commitments. However one of these did take me up to Sydney and whilst there I popped into a games shop and came out with a copy of 'The Grizzled: Armistice Edition'.

'The Grizzled' is a card game that is set in WW1. That said, it is not a wargame, but rather a game set during a war. The players take the roles of one of a group of friends who have joined the French army. It is about friendship and survival during the trials and traumas of war.

As you might expect, it is a co-operative game; the players are working together to see the group through to the end of the war.  It's designed for 1-5 players, but looks like it's best with 3-5; playing solo or with 2 players requires special rules, and does change the dynamics of the game, as you'd expect.

I played a couple of games with Catherine on Saturday to get used to the mechanisms, but yesterday evening I had a go at the solo mode, and that's what the pictures show

The game has amazing artwork, and a miniature for each of the six available characters. In fact the miniatures almost have no purpose in the game; they simply mark whether a character is currently active in a mission or has withdrawn from it.

This review (one of many) explains the game as well as I could: The Grizzled: Rise Together, Fall Together.

Here's an early mission - a failure because there are three cards with one type of Threat on them in the centre (Snow in this case). So those cards go back into the deck for the next mission.

Further into the game, and my trio of friends have suffered some Hard Knocks and are showing signs of mental stress - two have phobias, and one has a negative trait.

Some Support from the squad helps clear Charles' phobia, but in the meantime Lazare is wounded.

Later in the game Lazare is recovered, but Charles is showing signs of stress. The trick with the game is for the players to make sure that the characters that need support and friendship get it before their accumulated Hard Knocks drag everyone down. But you also have to succeed in the missions in order to drive the Threats deck down.

A final successful mission sees the Peace card exposed and the team with an empty hand of cards - they survived the war and won the game. It was close, though. There's a second deck of cards that feeds into the main deck, and if that is ever exhausted the teams' morale collapses and they lose. There were only two cards left in that deck; one badly failed mission at the end  would have seen the team lose.

So here's the figures again ....

... and the other three characters. I think Gustave is my favourite.

The theme and execution of this game works very well. Maybe not one for regular outings, but certainly one to get out from time to time. The Armistice Edition basically covers the same ground as the original, plus its expansion, but adds some new stuff of its own (Helping Hands and Recruits, which we've not tried yet), plus it has a campaign mode, where each game is a chapter in the story of the whole war; the players take their squad from the first mobilisation in August 1914 to the Armistice in 1918. The campaign introduces the rules as you play, and adds little quirks and wrinkles at each stage. 

There's an extra poignancy to this game; the art was done by one of the cartoonists killed in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.

Tri-, Tri-, Triremes Again

For the past couple of years all of my ancient naval battles using Galleys & Galleons have concentrated on the larger vessels I have been building - the quadremes, quinqueremes and so forth. But I had a hankering to try a classic action using just triremes, so yesterday I did just that.

As ever, Athens faced Sparta. Both sides had ten triremes, split into two commands of five vessels each. All of the Athenian ships had the Expert Rowers trait, whilst one command of the Spartans had Drilled Soldiers.

Here they are a move in - Spartans on the left and Athenians on the right. 

The Athenians sent a flanking force around the island, but the Spartans chose to ignore it, turning their allied command on the flank towards the main Athenian force on the other flank at high speed.

The Athenians picked off a straggler in the first ram of the game.

The action hots up. The Athenian flanking force (blue vessels) is chasing after the Spartan allies (green vessels). Meanwhile the main Athenian force (white and yellow) is beginning to engage the main Spartan command (red vessels)

The first Spartan ally vessel to be rammed surrendered after being boarded.

The Athenians ram the main Spartan command.

Another Spartan vessel is lost, sunk by an Athenian ram.

A Spartan ship surrenders after being boarded, despite their edge in such actions.

The main spartan command had initiated boarding actions after the Athenians had rammed them, but the Athenians fought like demons, and two Spartan vessels struck in the same turn. 

This meant that the Spartans had lost five of their ten vessels, which mean the Athenians had won. The Athenians didn't lose a single ship.

A short game, but a fun one. Fast and free-wheeling with no real shooting.

Battletech

I tried something new (to me) yesterday - Battletech!

It looks like we have a few closet Battletech nerds at our club, and one of them proposed a game. A couple of us decided to give it a try as hangers-on.

Since we had learners, plus people who hadn't played it in years, we kept the game simple - Darren ran it, whilst Caesar, Colin, Bailey and myself played two mechs each - one light and one heavy. We played as two teams - Caesar and I ran some red ones, whilst Bailey and Colin ran a quartet of ones that weren't red.

To be honest it was something of a learning exercise for two of us, and an exercise in revision for the others, so we played fairly slowly, but I think we picked it up fairly quickly.

Here's out mechs making their initial advances. One of ours wasn't actually red, thanks to a last minute substitution. In the distance can be seen our opponents.

Into range, and the shooting starts, albeit not very effectively. The different dice next to the mechs show the combat modifier their move gives them, with the colour denoting the type of movement (red for running and blue for jumps).

And the white dice were for walking; obviously the better option if you want to hit what you're shooting at. 

My little mech got stuck right in, firing its lasers and missiles at anything it could whilst hiding from counter-attacks behind hills and woods. 

Caesar's smaller mech suffered a small setback when the opposition blew off its right leg. It spent the rest of the fight unable to get up.

I jumped my small mech into a nice position behind Bailey's small mech, and avenged Caesar by shooting off its right arm. The one with most of the weapons on it.

By this stage we were running out of time - there's a lot of tables and number-crunching to get to grips with - and called the last turn, which is a shame because we were just getting to the point where some mechs were starting to suffer issues with overheating and might have had to calm down their combat activities for a turn or so in order to cool down. 

However Last Turn Syndrome prevailed, and with nothing to lose I ran my smaller mech straight at one of its heavy opponents, and unloaded every weapon I had at it, overheating be damned! That close its unpleasantly large and powerful weapon was less effective or, at least, far less likely to hit me, thanks to it having trouble tracking moving targets at close range. I inflicted damage, but those big mechs have a lot of armour.

And that was it. We had a good time playing this, especially those people like Caesar and Colin who had played before and were getting right back into it, glowing with nostalgia. For me it was fun moving around big stompy mechs, although I felt that the game would be more fun with some giant reptiles using atomic breath  weapons as well. Mechs need monsters ...

Chariot Race

With the women's World Cup football coming to a climax, and Australia still riding high, our house is currently sports crazy at the moment, which is a rarity. Anyway, it made me feel I needed to play something sporty, so I got out my Celtic racing-chariots and set up a game of Faustus Furious.

I went for the full set of six competitors.

The course was roughly triangular - two laps up past the white horse, along the back and around the sacred grove, between the rocks and the hill and around to the horse again. The finish line was midway along the horse.

Turn one saw all of the chariots make a strong start. Blue got enough actions to begin its turn, whilst Yellow chose to use their spare action to attack Green's chariot, causing its spooked horses to pull it even further ahead.

Turn Two - Yellow attacked White causing it to spin out and end up stationary, then shot into the lead. Blue and Green followed closely behind, whilst Grey and Red were a little slow lining up for the turn.

Turn Three - Yellow maintained their lead, and everyone else pretty much followed suit. White got moving again.

Turn Four - The chariots were all passing the sacred grove now heading for the final straight and turn of the first lap. Yellow extended their lead, whilst Green took the turn too wide and lost ground. Red and White came up strongly from the back. Grey was still struggling.

Turn Five - Yellow prepared to turn into their second lap, whilst Blue took second place. Green, White and Red vied for third position, and Grey brought up the rear.

Turn Six - Yellow completed their first lap and went into the harder second lap (you lose one fresh action die, replaced with an exhaustion die). Blue and Red were looking strong in second and third place, whilst Green and White were lagging behind a little. Grey was still struggling.

Turn Seven - Excitement as White misjudged its run and collided with Red. Red's chariot flipped over, whilst White veered wildly off course.

End of Turn Seven - White was badly out of position, whilst Red got their chariot back into the race, albeit having lost some ground. Yellow was still ahead, naturally.

Turn Eight - Having to be more cautious about its actions, Yellow lost some ground to Blue, who was now challenging the lead. Green started the second lap, whilst Grey had caught up with Red

Turn Eight - More action saw Blue collide with Green, causing Green's chariot to flip over and Blue's to run off the course. A mob of outraged spectators entered the field (the brown counter). White was struggling to get back into the race.

Turn Nine - Yellow's lead extended as Red, Green and the newly returned Blue crashed into each other after the first turn. Grey managed to get through the mess unscathed.

Turn Ten - Another mob entered the field, Red, Green and Blue all failed to get their chariots back into the running and Grey was now well-established in second place.

Turn Eleven - Yellow lapped the struggling White chariot. Grey continued to run in second place, and Red, Green and Blue all got back into the running.

Turn Twelve - Grey came up fast and attacked Yellow!

Yellow spun to a halt, bouncing off White which veered wildly off course.

(I missed taking a photo of Turn Thirteen, which saw Yellow start moving again, but Grey move up to the run for the finish).

Turn Fourteen - Unopposed Grey made an easy run to the finish, for the win!

Yellow followed on behind, a close second.

Blue, Green and Red were all vying for third place.

Blue attempted to cut in front of Green ...

... but Green executed a perfect sharp turn to speed over the line in third place.

Blue and Red finished close behind. White was nowhere to be seen.

So an epic win for the Grey chariot, who came from the back thanks to them avoiding the pile-up on the second lap and a willingness to attack the leader just before the finish. Yellow was unlucky to finish second, having pretty much led the pack for most of the race.

I might rummage out some spare 6mm Celts to make a few mobs - they'll look nicer than the brown counters.

Galleys & Galleons Markers

I was asked whether I could make the markers I use for Galleys & Galleons available for download.

I have converted them to a PDF, and you can find them at the bottom of my FREE STUFF page.