Pumpkin Head

It's Halloween in the zombie infested city of Malton. And that normally means that the great creator Kevan the programmer has laid on something special.

This year it was Pumpkins. By going to the various parks in Malton, and dodging zombies along the way, a survivor can pick a pumpkin and carve it.

So my brave character took the risk and ducked out of the hospital in Dartside to wander to a park and pick pumpkins. Turns out that though extremely heavy they don't affect you encumbrance; I picked three and ended up at 150%+ encumbrance, which lead to a slight problem when I tried to carve the things.

Apparently a hand axe is no good for this, and with no knife there is not much I could do. There was no point in searching for one as I'm already over encumbered, so I decided to get creative and started attacking people with pumpkins! Turns out they're not one shot weapons and doesn't turn people or zombies into pumpkin heads.

Malton itself has gone a bit quite. It's increasingly difficult for zeds to go on city wide rampages and they are now restricted to certain districts and small travelling hordes. Nothing as fearsome as The Dead invasion.

I run both a survivor (part of Tikhon Medical) and undead (mainly acting feral and hovering around Grigg Heights) characters to keep some form of balance, but having both maxed out in levels things have descended into familiar routines.
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Battle for the Planets

An even larger battle then last week, as the combined collection of spacecraft from Paul's and Martin's fleet collide in combat.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

Although the ships on both sides were numerous they are not very good, in fact they pretty much expendable dregs. The better ships from their respective fleets are due to turn up in a couple of weeks for an even bigger battle.

Planets are there to be captured, whoever captures the most of the three wins.

The combined Good Guy\Bad Guy fleets include a varied mix of races, and lead to some match ups that would never happen on TV or at the Movies.

Inner System


Middle Planet


Outer System


In the end the bad guys won, two planets to one; the inner planet being the only good guy capture.
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Final Front Ear

A bit of a Sci-Fi theme on Tuesday as two separate space games were being played out. Graeme, Colin and Co were trying out the Star Trek game Federation Commander by Amarillo Design Bureau. Their family of ST derived games are based upon the original series and has branched into a different universe history, normally refered to as the 'Star Fleet Universe' than the follow-on series\films due to IP rights\limitations.

From Furness Wargamers in Space

A simple get to know the rules style encounter saw the Federation come off worse as Klingon drones made and exploited large holes in the shields.

Paul was organising a five player (later to be six) game of DTS, using his original rules which differ quite a bit from Martin's version. The main one being that the whole ruleset fits on 1/3 of an A4 sheet of paper!



As can be seen there's quite a bit of difference in fleet sizes between the games, despite Federation Commander being a fast-play variant of the legendary Star Fleet Battles. The more cinematic DTS has ships flying (and being destroyed) everywhere.

Some of the ships in DTS look remarkably familiar to those in FC! Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. (or at least one letter been changed anyway.)

A big multi-player bash is planned for the near future.
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Bound Again

Another go at playing Runebound and this time it was a success! (nearly)

From Furness Wargamers

Poor old Mad Carthos didn't get off to a very good start, having to spend his gold on healing when he eventually got to town. Decided it was best to get some distance between poor Carthos and the rest so headed north and over the mountains to a nice secluded zone, where he started to fare a little better. When he finally got some more gold he had a choice when he visited town; heal his three wounds or buy something explosive. The Bomb won.

The game did drag out a bit with there being the full complement of six players. There's only so much interest you can take in someone elses fights, and the distance between players can even make following the combat that much more difficult. It really is a better game when only four are playing.



Eventually we ran out of time and as a last gasp effort I moved onto a red counter and, despite being underpowered, took on a bad guy just for the hell of it. Didn't do too bad managing to get them down to two health remaining before getting put down.

So we never managed to finish it, think at least a couple of people were in with a shout of knocking out one of the Red level beasties, especially Colin with his before combat hits and cannon fodder followers.
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Runebounder

Attempted to play 2nd edition Runebound which Graeme had brought in. Played the 1st edition a couple of times a few years back with Ian and Co., but long enough ago to make the rules fuzzy, and the new edition changes were unknown to me.

Cock-Up with the dice as we were all rolling only the one; it was only after checking the combat example that it became apparent that both 10 sided dice should be used. In the original edition it was a single 20 sided die, other changes are on the FFG forum.

Have never played it with six players before and it did seem to slow down a bit as you wait for your turn.

Everyone sort of agreed to try it again next week, hopefully using the right rules this time.
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Uncharted Jabberwocky

A big multi-player game of Uncharted Seas on Saturday, hosted by Jabberwocky Games to celebrate 'International Talk Like A Pirate Day'. Starter fleets only due to the large number of first time players. A bit chaotic trying to keep things in sync as people wandered around and other spectators asking questions, plus a noisy kid shouting out the same things repeatedly as if you couldn't hear him the first time (why didn't the pirates keelhaul him?)

My elves were put on the left flank and given the job of taking out a Bone Griffon fleet. First time I've played against them but I had already heard about their perceived deadliness at range. Also no Star Cards in this game which knocked back the elves due to the negation of their magical trickery.

The sides line up
with the 'bad guys' winning initiative and moving first.

From Uncharted Seas

from bottom to top...

'Good Guys' (right)
Thaniras Elves
Iron Dwarfs
Thaniras Elves
Bone Griffon
Dragon Lords

vs

'Bad Guys' (left)
Bone Griffon
Shroud Mages
Shroud Mages
Bone Griffon
Imperials

Fortunately all the troublesome Orcas were placed on one side with an island separating them from the rest of the fleet, so I had a pretty much unobstructed path towards the cruisers and the rock chucking battleship with my own cruisers and frigates, and the bonus of a couple of isles to shield my battleship as it moved forward.

Split the Kipper
risking going out of control radius.


Didn't have to worry to much about being out of command as the lead cruiser soon slide beneath the waves. The other cruiser was soon decrewed as well.

After a disastorous ramming attempt by three Orcas, that resulted in them getting wiped out, I finally managed to get my battleship in close range of his. Since it was an all trebuchet layout I had only the plague gun to worry about. Even with some crew damage my ship was still able to put 14 dice of shots into the undeads ship. The opposing player was a bit disappointed that he didn't get both the trebuchet and broadside dice to play with, if he had known I don't think he would of been so keen to bring it so far forward. I don't recomend the Bones for a first time player, too many extras to take into account, best to get the basics nailed first.

Just before the rake
speed bump frigate to stop his turn.


Some how the opponent managed to get his battleship stuck against the edge of the world and my frigate effectively locked it in place for a turn. With his one remaining cruiser sailing away and being harassed by my other remaining frigates, and his other squadron of Orcas being dealt with by the neighbouring dwarfs there was no rescue for the big ship.

And with time running out and people having to run off, the game was declared as a narrow good guy victory, primarily due to the taking out two of the bad guys battleships in the final turn.
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Bad case of the DTS

I didn't feel too hot so decided to sit out and watch a few games instead.

Martin had brought along his spaceships and was organising a game of his still unreleased DTS rules. These rules have been in various stages of development for over 5 years now and are based on an original idea by Paul.

From Furness Wargamers

Unfortunately he had forgotten the fleet record sheets so had to reuse some existing ones. There is actually over 20+ fleets to select from, but given that most are derived from well known TV shows it's doubtful that anything would get published.



A close game with Colin just being shaded out. A collision between his own ships might of been a deciding factor. The players were suitably impressed that they requested further games.

Also at the club a GQ3 WW1 game was under way with a battle between the German and Russian navies in the Baltic. A couple of games of 40K and a single WH fantasy game, plus the usual role-players and a table of Card gamers.
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