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.