Turnip 28

Last night June introduced me to Turnip 28, a delightfully named skirmish game set in a Napoleonic post-apocalypse. The premise, such as it is, is that there's been an apocalypse after Napoleon was defeated at Austerlitz. I'm not sure what it was, but now there's a blight across the land driven by a disgusting turnip-like vegetable. Everything is generally grim, mutated and post-apocalypsy.

Look, the premise doesn't matter. Basically it's an excuse to do weird-arse things with mutated Napoleonics or, indeed, any figures you can lay your hands on. It's figure agnostic; there are no Official Miniatures. Just hack stuff around how you like. There are a few basic unit types and then the option of Cults, which are not unlike sponsors in Gaslands, each one granting your force some kind of special bonus (and sometimes access to unique units). 

It's a skirmish game in the vein of Saga or Lion Rampant in that you run a number of units with individually based figures. Units have from 3-12 figures, and there are individually based leader figures as well. Leaders, called Snobs, are used to scale the game. You decide on how many Snobs each player will field. One Snob is the overall leader (the Toff) whilst the others are underlings (Toadies). Toffs bring two units to the table. Each Toady brings an additional unit.

In our game we had a Toff and two Toadies each, for a total of four units. All units are effectively equal in points or, in terms of the setting, equally rubbish. We didn't use cults. It's not a requirement.

June provided all of the figures, and very nice they are too. One was a pirate-themes group based on heavily hacked around Napoleonics. The other were marsh-dwellers using GW Moria Goblins from their LOTR range. Here we are set up. I had the pirates and June had the goblins. There are five objective markers on the board. We were to play for four turns and whoever controlled the most markers at the end would win. Easy.

Here's two of my units. There are six unit types in the game: Fodder (large foot units of 12 ineffective figures), Brutes (small foot units of 6 more competent fighters), Chaff (4 skirmisher figures), Whelps (4 cavalry figures), Bastards (3 heavy cavalry figures) and Stump Guns (immobile and potentially explosive artillery). These units are Brutes. Each unit can be armed with either black-powder weapons (effective, but can only shoot once per turn), missile weapons (less effective but able to shoot multiple times) or melee weapons (great if you can get up close and personal). Obviously certain unit types are best with certain weapons; the cavalry types were made for melee weapons, for example. My brutes here are armed with black-powder weapons (left) and melee weapons (right).

A unit of Fodder, with black-powder weapons. A lot of the conversions are made up of sea-shells from the local beach.

Junes marsh-dweller were mostly armed with melee weapons, but she had two units of Chaff with regular missile weapons.

In the crows-nest on top of a hermit crab is one of my Toadies, currently commanding a Stump Gun. The cannon and boat are scratchbuilt. Did I say that June is disgustingly talented?

Some shooting.

Players take turn activating their Snobs. A Snob can then either act themselves or command a unit within their command radius to do something. Units can Volley (effective fire), Move and Fire (obvious), March (move faster) or Charge (move fast in a straight line towards an enemy). Before you act you roll a D6. On a '1' the incompetents blunder and don't do the order anywhere near as well.

Once each Snob has activated you get to activate units that they didn't give an order to. So out of command units always act later in the turn and, if they blunder, suffer a special penalty based on the scenario. More on this later.

June had grabbed the objective in the cover in the centre of the table with some Fodder. My Fodder had shot at them and they had run away. June sent in her Brutes. My melee Brutes charged them and came up short.

June's Brutes charged me. Charging is good as it gives you initiative in the fight; you get to strike first and the opponent only rolls for their survivors. In addition a charged unit has to take a morale test before the fight happens so may simply run away. My Brutes stood their ground and were mostly cut down, falling back afterwards.

One of Junes Toadies was feeling a little vulnerable (being the closest target for my cannon), and decided to run away, taking a shortcut through some dangerous terrain. Most terrain is dangerous. You roll a D6 for any figure entering it and on a '1' the figure dies.

Guess what happened. Go on.

Yup. The terrain ate the Toady.

More fighting. June's Brutes had been shot down but now her Fodder was after me. I got it eventually but all I was doing was killing units; June still held three objectives to my two.

My Fodder advanced to harass June's surviving Chaff unit. I think at this point it was the only unit she had left.

Toff Off! If the Toffs of each force come within a certain range of each other one of them can challenge the  other to a duel. Unlike Lion Rampant the challenge is always accepted. They then fight a melee until one of them dies.

I challenged June's Toff ...

... and emerged victorious.

June's Fodder was now out of command and on its next move blundered, activating the scenario-specific blunder. In this case the unit would lose 1D3 figures to cannibalism. June rolled a 3, and the Fodder unit ate itself.

So we were into the last turn. June had a unit of Chaff and a single Toady left. They hid in the cover. All I had to do was a rapid advance across teh board to grab one of her objectives.

My Fodder marched, but the extra move you get is random and they came up 1" short.

On the other side of the board my Brutes were in the same position. They blundered and barely moved at all.

So June won the fight, a victory that comforted the marsh-dwellers as they cowered inside the ruins.

This was a lot of fun to play. Aside from the daft setting the rules offer some interesting choices; you have to decide the best time for each unit to act but because of a requirement that shooting and charges are almost always made against the closest enemy, you have to be careful with positioning. 

Thanks to June for letting me play with her lovely toys and teaching me the game. I'd read the rules but, as I said above, there are subtleties to it that aren't necessarily apparent from a simple reading.

I confess I'm quite keen on putting together some forces for this game.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 8

Catherine and I continued our Tour de France last week, so I thought I'd better write it up before I forgot what happened.

We ran two stages, the first flat and the second mountainous.

The Stage 16 runs from Gruissan to Nimes, and there's little in it to trouble the riders.

Saying that we had a fair bit of weather - a tailwind early on, then a headwind  then a crosswind. To be honest this didn't really affect the race too much. I put my sprinteur into the breakaway. I'm still pondering how to do the bots in a breakaway; I still feel that they overbid a little and I also like the idea of one of the players getting into the breakaway despite a low bid because a bot decided to massively underbid.

Anyway, here we are, ready to go.

There was a tight pack at the start, although being out in front my sprinteur picked up a bit of fatigue.

Blue got well out in front, whilst my sprinteur got absorbed into the pack. My riders were just ahead of Catherine's at this stage.

The run for the finish. Both Catherine and I were out in front and it was an exciting sprint. Once again my Rouleur was pipped into second place by Catherine's, but my sprinteur finished third, a couple of places ahead of Catherine's. Blue got a fourth place, and red and white finished poorly.

This left Catherine and I neck and neck at the top of the table, along with white (who is consistent if nothing else). Blue's sprinteur let the team down and dropped their score a little relative to ours.

Stage 17 runs from St-Paul-Trois-Chateaux to Supedevolouy and, after a flat start, is a steady climb to the finish.

An early headwind slowed everybody down.

The pack stayed tight going up the first ascent, but Catherine was slightly ahead of me at this stage.

Disaster. Towards the finish was a long ascent with rain on it. And as Catherine broke away one of my riders crashed on the wet road, costing me a couple of places.

This dragged my sprinteur back (although Catherine's wasn't do well either), and my rouleur wasn't doing brilliantly either. Despite everyone running out of cards, Catherine dragged herself over the line in first place, with white and red finishing well too. I managed a poor 6th place with my rouleur and Catherine's sprinteur finished ahead of mine for once.

There are four stages to go and Catherine now has a decent lead. The team scores are now:

Green (Catherine) - 248
Pink (Me) - 240
White (Peloton) - 239
Blue (Bot) - 227
Red (Bot) - 206
Black (Gruppetto) - 88

I think red and blue are out of the running now - I may need to review the various rules changes I made there - but white could still be a danger. However if Catherine doesn't make any mistakes I think her lead is possibly enough to give her a win. I've got a lot of work to do in teh next couple of races.

Snow Tails Solo

First off I must apologise for the lack of miniatures games on this blog recently. I'm just enjoying boardgames more at the moment so I'm not getting my toy soldiers out at home as much.

Anyway yesterday afternoon, whilst my wife was doing some cake decorating for my son and grandson's birthdays, I fancied running a race game. However my copy of Flamme Rouge is currently tied up with our Tour de France (we keep exhaustion cards from previous races in the decks for a quick setup), so I wasn't keen on getting that out and messing it up. Instead I opted for Snow Tails, which I blogged about HERE last year. I'd printed off some dice-based solo rules for running bot sleds and wanted to give them a proper try.

I played one sled (the red one) and let the bot system run the others. Their movement is more unpredictable (although not completely so, thanks to a clever catchup mechanism), but they don't take any damage so drive more recklessly. I have to steer my sled and can lose it if I take too many risks.

Here we are at the start. I moved last.

I included all of the possible obstacles, as I wanted to try them all out. First up were the sapling. If you hit them then you take damage, but they sapling is then removed. I followed other sleds and let them do the impromptu horticulture.

My sled display, as a reminder of what they look like. The two cards at the front are added up to show the sleds base speed. The number at the back is how much braking is being applied. The difference between the two cards is how much the sled must drift. It drifts towards the higher of the two cards.

So in this case my base speed in 4+5=9. With 3 on the brakes I actually for 6 spaces. With a difference of 1 between the cards one space of my movement must be a drift to the right (the side with the 5).

When you play cards from your hand you can add up to three (one for each dog and one for the brake). But they must all be the same value. so you have to think ahead when planning turns and safe speeds for corners.

Anyway, after that digression you can see that we're all pretty much dealt with the first hairpin turn. Yellow and Black are in the lead and I am in a distant third. Blue got into a mess on the corner.

Through the trees and I'm still third, but still undamaged. Black and Yellow were taking the corner wide.

That cost them. Blue, Green and, of course, myself, slipped round on the inside and got ahead. We were able to get ahead of black through the chasm.

There's one last gentle curve before the finish and then a snowdrift to avoid. The option here is go wide n the corner but be set up to avoid the drift, of go round faster on the inside and then have to drift the other way to get past it. We all kind of went down the middle. I was in fourth place now.

Blue got stuck on the corner and Green and Yellow slowed. I caught up!

I had a clear line to the finish and managed to balance my sled for a fast run. A win!

My sled at the end. If both of your dogs are pulling at the same speed your sled is balanced. This means that you are allowed to apply a bonus move at the end of your turn; you get to move forward a number of spaces equal to your position in the race at the start of the turn. I was third, so I got to move 8 for the sled (5+5-2 (brake)), plus an extra 3 for being balanced. Eleven spaces was enough for the win.

Catherine and I might need to try a series of linked races of this once we have finished Flamme Rouge.

Alpha Strike - Clans

I ended up playing Alpha Strike at the club yesterday after the game I had arranged to play was cancelled. Darren had set up a fight between some Inner Sphere defenders and an attacking force of Clan mechs. Clan mechs are apparently nastier than the regular Inner Sphere ones we've used up until now, so they had fewer mechs the defenders.

I played some of the red Inner Sphere mechs. Darren took the advance force of lighter Inner Sphere mechs, who quickly got overwhelmed by the Clan force.

The heavier mechs (mine and, when he got in later, Caesar's) advanced on the flanks, laying down plenty of long-range fire with varying effects.

The Clan broke through and we found ourselves with a lot of targets, all of which seemed tough to kill. Saying that we did take out one with an ammunition critical that saw it blow up.

The heavier Inner Sphere mechs put up a good fight, but their Clan opponents were tough and fast.

They quickly occupied the two objectives, and were still holding them as we got onto the last turn.

But we hadn't realised how much damage Darren's light mechs had done at the start. The Clan mechs holding teh objectives weren't as tough as they looked and between us Caesar and I laid down some long-range fire and destroyed both of them, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

A very close game on Darren's lovely hex-based terrain.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 7

 Catherine and I played two more stages of our Tour de France over the weekend. They were both mountainous and very challenging. 

Stage 14 runs from Pau to St-Lary-Soulan and takes our riders up into the Pyrenees.

You know the drill; red and blue were in the breakaway (although I did try for it myself).

The remainder of the course. There's some long ascents in there, although they are alleviated by some useful descents.

I'm not sure how my pink rouleur ended up at the back, but he did. He never really got into the race. Catherine, however, got her rouleur near the front.

Red and blue dominated, and were out in front and unstoppable from the start.

This was pretty much how it went towards the finish. Red and blue came first and second, whilst Catherine picked up a third place. This helped her rouleur's individual score, but her sprinteur finished behind mine so the actual difference in points was low on a team basis (we both finished on 14 points, in fact).

Oddly enough we ended up burning all of our cards which actually meant we got rid of most of our exhaustion. A good job, since Stage 15, from Loudenvielle to Plateau de Beille was also a tough one.

It also took up a lot of space on the table.

This time the white peloton team was the one that got out in front. I got both of my riders up with them.

The finish. Catherine came second, and I came fourth. The gruppetto managed to finish before a lot of the other riders! Once again both Catherine and I picked up 14 points, but I think her rouleur, 15 points ahead of any other rider on 146 points, is going to be the individual winner.

So we have six stages to go and four teams (White, Blue, Green and Pink) within five points of each other at the top of the table. Catherine is in the lead but I am only one point behind her. There's everything to play for in the final stages.