Undaunted 2200: Callisto

Bruce and I have played the first two scenarios in Undaunted 2200: Callisto. This game is the sci-fi adaptation of the Undaunted WW2 series and centers on a fight between miners and mine bosses in outer space.

Callisto is a boardgame that you can play right out of the box but, of course, Bruce was keen to miniaturize it. He even did a set of troops and then replaced them with even better sculpts! The only thing we haven't done (yet) is to physically represent the different elevations (we're just using the visual cues on the game boards).

Overall, this is an easy game to learn and involves tough choices about building your card deck versus taking action on the table. 

There are some changes versus Normandy and Stalingrad, including the use of elevation (which affects the size of the dice you roll: d8, d10, d12). The scenarios also can be won through control of objectives or through attriting the other side (attrition does not carry forward into future games like it does in Stalingrad).

Of the three games we've played, they have all been closely run. The ability of the units to perform different tasks takes some time to learn but rewards careful play.

Below, you can see the elevated walkways joining the rise portions as well as the mine pits (which vehicles cannot get down into).

Overall, a fun game and maybe the first game I've played where a labour dispute is the heart of the game narrative.

Hobgoblins and some terrain

Just a quick fantasy painting update his week. First up are some hobgoblins (I think). These guys ended up a bit pinker than expected (a lesson I learned doing washes on some AWI tunics with cherry red only to create an entire 54mm unit of militia in pink (arrrrgh!) but, apparently, promptly forgot). Anyhow, pink is as legit a colour as any in fantasy.

These are more of the figures Chen gave me and they have really good details, at least for my style of painting.

I also messed around with a fire elemental, trying to do washes with lighter colours. Meh. It's okay.

I also had to do some quick terrain making for a game. I needed some magic symbols (in this case, basically light switches for the button punchers in the party) so I filled in six washers, painted a rock pattern, used a sharpie to put some black lines down, and then painted blue over top. Good enough for the girls I go with.

I also needed six brazers, which I fabricated out of sculpty and baked before painting. And I needed like 20 coffins so I cut, etched and drybrushed some foam core. Not perfect but it conveys the gist of what I was after.

Up next: I have some adventurers on the paint table. They have been stuck there awhile since I vapour lock whenever I look at them and try to make colour choices. I may just need to sit down and not get up until they are done one day in order to move on.

Fistful of Lead Fantasy rules

A few weeks back, Bruce kindly let me take him on a play through of Wiley Games' Fistful of Lead fantasy rules. I'd been keen to give these a try, mostly to find out if they were a suitable set of mechanics to run some kind of Dungeons and Dragons game. The rules span three booklets (melee, magic, and monsters, respectively) and basically treat magic-use like a task role in the basic FFoL game engine.

To give these a test, I used The Barrows dungeon from Dire Den (link is a video explaining the dungeon, there are links in the comments to the maps) since this looked like a sensible dungeon crawl for low-level characters. I then banged up four basic characters (warrior, magic user, cleric, rogue), making them all level 1, except of the magic user, who I made level 2 using the premise that he'd brought together a new group after his old group suffered a TPK (total party kill).

The dungeon starts at the entrance with three doors to choose from. They all lead into a burial crypt wherein there lie zombies. The basic rules work just fine. We had to figure out some house rules about passing others in narrow places (-1 movement per crowded hex) and movement when there were no monster visible (a la Crossfire) but that was about it. The zombies are an easy encounter to explain the combat mechanics. And, unlike most FFoL games, it was mostly melee (there was more magic use in my playtest than in the game I ran with Bruce).

Once through the main level, players drop into the basement where more and fiercer baddies lie. One feature of the rules is that melee is competing d10 rolls and that can create some really swingy results (e.g., a healthy fighter attacks a downed skeleton and rolls a 1 to a 10, then the skeleton rolls well on the wound table and poof, your fighter is out of action). This effect can be attenuated a bit with magic (potions or spells). Whatever you think of that, it is dramatic and the effect runs both ways.

We skipped through the roleplaying aspect (since neither of us is really into that) and just tested the movement and combat mechanics. We had three fights (zombies, rats, and the big boss) done in an hour including me explaining the fantasy chrome to Bruce. I'd guess with some role-play, you could move through this dungeon crawl in two hours.

Bruce's observation was that role-players likely wouldn't be all that interested in the miniature gaming elements of the rules. I'd agree that you'd need a group that was at least a bit oriented towards miniature gaming (versus storytelling). I'd think the rules would work just fine if you wanted to have two players skirmish with separate armies (and are likely meant for this).

In both games, the adventurers won, once convincingly and one barely, relying on a fireball spell cast in the same room they were in (cough, cough)! Now maybe we know why the magic user was a veteran of a TPK!  Overall, the vibe was very reminiscent of the 1977 D&D basic box set (which I liked), with low-powered characters, basic monsters, and not a lot of chrome.

Undaunted 2200: Callisto

For Christmas, Bruce kindly bought me the new game Undaunted 2200: Callisto. This is a sci-fi variant of the Undaunted series (I think we've played Stalingrad, Normandy, and North Africa) based around a labor conflict (exploited miners go all deny, defend, and depose on the bosses).

While it comes as a complete board game (eight scenarios), cardboard isn't really our style, so Bruce included some mechs (bosses quick resort to mil-tech to keep control) that I painted.

He then added a bunch of bases for the bosses, as well as the equipment the workers repurpose.

And some infantry bases for those. So I hope together this on the table sometime soon! If you can zoom in, the bases Bruce did are pretty good.

Up next: Maybe back to fantasy figures for a bit.