Thursday HOTT

I went for some HOTT at the Gong Garage Gamers last night; I haven't actually played a game for a couple of months, so felt it was time to go back to what is a perennial favourite. Geoff was up for a game, as was June, who hasn't played before.

June's bus was delayed so Geoff and I set up a game to get the evening started. He used his Haradrim, whilst I used my sadly-neglected Garden Gnomes.

June turned up part-way through, just in time to see the spears holding my left flank get overwhelmed by Haradrim swordsmen. That left my general exposed.

I tried ensorcelling one of the mumakil to drive it off, but failed, then lost one of my terror snails to another mumakil. At that point my general was surrounded and killed. And easy win for Geoff who lost one rider.

We then sat June down for her first game. I played her whilst Geoff assisted. I selected my High Elves for her to use as they have a few basic troop-types with the option of some of the specials if you feel daring. June opted for four spears (including the general), four shooters, two riders and a behemoth.

I used my Tuatha De Danaan, with heroes, knights, warband, a magician and some hordes. There were a lot of rough fields in play. June set up between two of them and I attacked there, covering my right flank with the hordes.

June's position was a tricky one to attack, with strong archer support on the one flank and a nasty-looking behemoth on the other. I went for the latter with my heroes and hopes for luck elsewhere, pitting the knights against the spears and the warband against her archers.

I lost a chariot knight and some warband to the pesky archers.

Charge! The behemoth was driven back by Lugh of the Long Arm, whilst I got very lucky in the middle and rode down a double-ranked group of spears with a chariot.

June did some fine element shuffling to defend against the inevitable flanking attack on her general, but it wasn't enough. Although the odds were in her favour when the Irish magicians attacked, a loss on her part would be fatal. And lose she did. I lost 5AP (warband, knight, horde) whilst she lost 8AP (four spears), plus her general.

We set up another game. June wanted to try another army so I offered the army of Rama - two heroes, knights, warband and beasts. Impetuous, small but often quite effective. I used the army of Daenerys Targaryen in a low-dragon iteration (they were represented by a single flyer).

A lot of the fighting centred around a hill on June's right defended by some monkey warband. I sent Dothraki riders against it, backed up by the dragons. And got driven back.

I'd not been paying attention in my enthusiasm to get the riders and dragons into action, and missed June's bears in the wood. They charged out and attacked the Dothraki, putting them at a horrible disadvantage in the ensuing combat. Unfortunately June experienced her first 6-1 die roll and my rider - who was fighting on a factor of 0, won the fight, destroying its opponent. 

I'm not sure how my riders ended up like that, but June pressed her advantage and soon had them horribly flanked. Needless to say I lost one.

On the other flank the main bodies of each army had simply stared at each other up until now.

But we soon had a hero vs hero fight as June decided to see what would happen in that case. It was fatal to her hero, Hanuman.

June's warband were driving off the hill now, pushing my Dothraki back. Rama had been confronted by some Unsullied spears and had backed off into the woods.

Daenerys herself entered the fray. She was classed as a rider general on the assumption that she is a non-combatant but surrounded by a Dothraki bodyguard. With the help of the dragon, who had up until now simply been spectators, they polished off the remaining bears and warband.

Meanwhile my unopposed heroes (whose names I always forget - it was the old bloke and the friendzone guy in the series), had rampaged down Rama's line, killing more warband. This one was the final element needed to take June to half losses.

Daenerys picked up a 12-2 with, with her only loss being the element of riders.

It was nice to get back into HOTT again, with a fun mix of armies, and also good to teach it to a new player.

A Weekend In The Country

I'm always on the lookout for murder mystery games. We do like a nice murder mystery in this house so, naturally, it would be nice to extend our gaming in that direction. In the past my wife's written a couple of those murder mystery evenings, and they've been quite fun, and we've done  couple of commercial ones too. We actually went out to one a few weeks ago at a posh hotel, and had a great time, even if the solution turned out to be the most obvious suspect.

Anyway, aside from 'Cluedo' (which is a tedious waste of time) we've tried 'Rear Window' (where the mystery is really whether a murder has been committed at all), 'There's Been a Murder' (which is a great little card game) and 'A Taste For Murder' (a role-playing game that takes a bit of time and effort and gets quite dark, but is actually quite good). But the other day I came across another role-playing game - 'A Weekend In The Country'.

Strictly it's what seems to be called a journalling game, in that it's really designed for one player and you use the mechanisms to generate a story framework which you flesh out in writing. You can (and people do) run it with multiple players, but everyone is working together; there's no GM.

The setting is fixed (but see below). You are a famous detective. You have been invited to spend the weekend at the country estate of Lord Adler. Needless to say he is quickly murdered, and it's up to you to solve it. The suspects are fixed - his wife, Lady Adler, a friend, Lady Blakeley, another guest, Lord Entwhistle and Lord Adler's valet, Mr Cooper. 

The game is run using cards, a D6 and (believe it or not) a Jenga tower. Each of the suspects is represented by one of the court cards, and has a different suit (Lady Adler is the Queen of Hearts for example). The other 48 cards are dealt out into five piles, each representing a location in the house - Study, Bedrooms, Attic, Servants Quarters and Kitchen. To be honest they are arbitrary and are just used to colour the story-telling. The Jenga tower is set up to one side.

You play a series of turns. You choose a deck (location) and draw a card. You then find it in a chart in the rules, and read off the brief piece of text corresponding to it, note it down and then flesh it out a little. For example you may find a broken locket on the floor, or a bloodstain on the wall. Or Lady Blakeley will try and warn you off investigating the case. The higher the card the more intense the occurrence or find. Having documented your find, and out the card to one side, you roll the D6 and have to remove that many blocks from the Jenga tower.

If the Jenga tower topples then randomly determine a suspect. They are murdered. Their card is flipped over.

You keep going like this, but watch the hand of cards you are building up. At some point you will accuse one of the suspects, and your case is made up of the best five-card poker hand you can make from the cards you've drawn. So obviously the more cards you can draw the better. And, also, the higher cards with their intense encounters, are better as well.

You can accuse a given suspect if your hand contains a card of their suit. So, for example, to accuse Lady Adler, you need at least one heart in your hand. This is where some creativity is required; you have to assemble the deductions that led to your accusation by using the five clues the cards represent.

The accused then tries for an alibi or their innocence. They take their own card, and draw one card from each of the five piles. You make up the best five-card poker hand from the six cards they now have. If it beats your hand then you've made a wrongful accusation. That suspect is turned face-down and can't be accused again. If your hand beats theirs then they confess and you have won.

You lose the game if all of the suspects bar one are turned face-down - either through being murdered or by being wrongfully accused. The remaining suspect is the killer, but escapes.

The fun of the game is taking the bits generated by the mechanisms and creating a story.

Anyway, I tried a few runs to get the mechanisms sorted, then Catherine and I gave it a go yesterday.

We skipped the Jenga tower. One, because it was late in the evening and we didn't trust ourselves to be any good at it. And also because it's down in the garage and it was dark. But I'd found a couple of non-Jenga variants online for the Threat of Murder, and we went with one of those (a second deck of cards - you draw 1D6 each turn and if a Joker turns up there's a murder. Draw the next card to determine the suit of the victim).

We set the game in the classic Agatha Christie 1920s, and unironically called our detective Joe Bloggs. He was a former police sergeant who was simply too clever to be a copper at that rank and had gone private. 

I knocked up a couple of tables that told us where Lord Adler was murdered and how. They helped kick-start the story. 

In the first game Lord Adler was found defenestrated. We discovered that someone was blackmailing Lord Adler just before Mr Cooper was found with his head smashed in in the same room Lord Adler was hurled from. Lady Blakeley was very vocal in casting aspersions on Joe's abilities, and we also had a note from Lord Adler suggesting that someone might be out to get him. A maid reported that she overheard Mr Cooper threaten to expose Lady Blakeley for something as well. Not long after Lady Adler was also murdered in her boudoir. 

With only two suspects left we had a pair of 10s, and went for an accusation before one of them was murdered. We accused Lady Blakeley. She was having an affair with Lord Adler and he'd promised to leave his wife for her. However he'd gone back on that promise, and in a fit of rage Lady Blakeley had pushed him out of the window. Mr Cooper knew of the affair and was blackmailing Lady Blakeley. He confronted her after the murder, as he'd suspected she'd done it, so she killed him as well. Lady Adler also probably worked out what was going on and, as she was on a roll, Lady Blakeley did for her as well. She drew a poor hand and (not even a pair) and confessed.

So we won. But it was a short game and we wanted another one.

In the second game Lord Adler was found in an disused bedroom, poisoned.

We quickly found that he'd been using cocaine, but that someone had laced it with poison. We followed several clues and lines of inquiry - some marks of blood in a hallway, and a revelation that Lord Adler had changed his will and was possibly leaving a lot of the money that would have gone to Lady Adler to Mr Cooper instead. But the most promising line of inquiry was the rapid realisation that Lady Adler and Lady Blakeley were in a secret and intimate relationship. We found several clues that suggested that was the case. We had a fairly good hand building up with which we could accuse any of the suspects though, but before we could get the last card Lady Blakeley was found drowned in the lake in the gardens.

We picked up a couple more clues and were able to assemble a straight. We accused Lady Adler of the murders. Her husband had found out about the affair and was going to change his will to cut her out. She poisoned his cocaine. Unfortunately with Lord Adler out of the way, Lady Blakeley was putting pressure on Lady Adler to make their relationship public. But Lady Adler couldn't bear the scandal. The lovers argued by the lake and Lady Blakeley was pushed in, hitting her head. Lady Adler left her lover to drown.

Lady Adler failed to mount a defence and confessed.

In fact the cards we had would have allowed us to build just as strong a case against Mr Cooper - he had debts and had found out that he was now a major beneficiary of Lord Adler's will. He could have killed Lord Adler simply to get hold of the money. But we liked the story of the doomed lovers better.

We enjoyed our session and, of course, it's a game where you get out of it what you put in. From reading around it's fairly easy to create new settings for it; you just assign locations to the five decks and stick to the one suspect = one suit format (assigning each a court-card, since it gives them a head-start on building a good alibi hand). Some creative reinterpretation of the clues might be needed, but it's not hard.

You can buy the game as a PDF download HERE

And there's several sessions reported HERE with details of the card-play to show how the mechanisms work.

Boardgames Day

We had a big boardgames day at our friends' house on Saturday. 

Started late morning with a game of Hollywood 1947. We had six players for this, so got to use the Rising Star for the first time. The two Communists did a great job of keeping everyone paranoid and guessing who they actually were, and thanks to a couple of lucky early film draws managed a comprehensive 4-1 victory.

We then had lunch and switched to Carcassonne (with Inns & Cathedrals and King & Scout expansions). This was a five-player game. Claudia, Eric and I took a Commanding lead about two-thirds of the way through thanks to cooperatively building and completing a huge city with a cathedral. Eric and I look set to be the winners though, since we both got loads of farming points at he end. However Claudia managed to get both King and Robber Baron, and the extra points from that allowed her to pip me by one point for a win. The top three scores were around 180 and within 4 points of each other.

So on to the main event - a six player game of the 1992 edition of History of the World. We love this game but it takes a long time to play and needs full commitment from anyone who does take part. Here's the board sometime in the 4th Epoch; I think that the Vikings have just had their turn (some of the red counters). I was black; you can see my Arabs dominating the Middle-east, North Africa and Spain (or at least they had dominated Spain until the Vikings turned up). In fact the Arabs were the first empire I'd got that weren't either in China or India. Playing in those areas early on had given me steady points but not the kind of long-term presence across the board that you need to do well. I got another Spain and Russia afterwards, so finished up with a respectable mid-table score.

Maya (Green) finished last, having drawn three horse-nomad empires in a row in the middle of the game. But she did get to do a a spectacular Mongol sweep across the board, including a total domination of China.

Catherine (Red) finished first thanks to a steady presence around the world throughout the game, and a carefully played France on the last turn which allowed her to consolidate and dominate several regions at once. Marco ran her close but was let down by the failure of his Epoch II Persians in establishing anywhere as near as big as an empires as they should have done, and then by his being given the USA on the last turn, limiting where he could play on the board for those critical final turn points.

Star of the game was Epoch II's Etruscan Kingdom which somehow clung on in Northern Italy until the end of the game. Italy never became much of a battleground for some reason.

We all really enjoyed the game, but it took us the advertised five hours to play. I'd love to play again sometime this decade!

New Galleys

Before I went away to the UK I'd started a new batch of galleys for Galleys & Galleons. I finally finished off the bases this week, so here they are.

There's four hexaremes, which will mostly act as squadron flagships.

I also did three larger ships. In Galleys & Galleons everything larger than a hexareme is called as a 'polyreme' - powerful but slow and impractical. I did a couple of that looked conventional and another one with some over-the-top towers.

And, talking of over-the-top, I have this one on the go. Still a polyreme, but a double-hulled one for  the most ostentatious successor admiral.

The smaller vessel is a design for a penteconter I'm working on. The base is a coffee-stirrer rather than the traditional lolly-stick.

Big Battletech

The thing about Battletech: Alpha Strike is that the mechs and rules are massively simplified, which enable to play with far more toys on the table. Which is how, last night, we found ourselves playing a game with three players a side and over 70 mechs on the table.

Darren put together some lovely terrain. Scattered across the table are the red mechs - some kind of corporate samurai faction. This was their light company; off-table you can see the other two companies (medium and heavy) which would come on as reinforcements.

Opposing them was a group of mercenary mechs (the beige figures entering from the foreground). They had to fight their way to some objectives on the far side of the table. Initially all that stood in their was were the red light mechs.

Frankly we (for I was part of the mercenary team) made heavy weather of them. Specifically I did, showing a spectacular inability to hit them - for example over a couple of turns I took twelve shots at one opposing mech and score two hits. In one volley I rolled 2,3,and two 4s on 2D6 as my rolls to hit. It was pathetic.

We did manage to push forward on the flanks where there weren't so many enemy mechs.

Of course the reinforcements turned up before we'd even made a significant dent in the starter. Here two of Stuart's light mechs regret their decision to push forward so rashly, although you can just see a third that's jumped into the rear of the advancing reinforcements.

I sent a lance of heavy mechs down the other flank. They weren't fast, but with no opponents to shoot at they could sprint.

A view of the centre. In the foreground my other heavy mechs continue to fail to hit anything regardless of range. In the centre our other mechs gang up on some enemy lights.

A wider view. Top left you can see my flanking force pretty much at one of teh objectives, with the Red Perils reacting to it. Enemy lights are being mobbed in the centre, but there's a lot of heavier reinforcements on the way.

Weight of numbers (as well as weight of weight) actually does its work and a lot of enemy lights are finally polished off.

But this is what we'd now have to fight through. 

It was all a bit much. And it was getting late. So we called off the attack.

It was a fun game, although we were running a lot of stuff with some very inexperienced players, so the game didn't play as quickly as we'd hoped.

Thanks to Darren for putting it all together and to everyone else for an entertaining evening and for not mocking my terrible, terrible die rolls too badly.