Xmas Games 2025 part two

Having completed Saturday's Gangs of Rome game I had to try and get my brain around a second set of rules in four days! Fortunately What A Cowboy is a game I've run several times previously so I had a head start in understanding author John Savage's modern adaptation, What A Cartel.

The new version (published in the 2026 Lard Magazine) adds altered rules for ammunition tracking and automatic weapons and covers vehicles and anti-tank weaponry. As such it was a fairly easy job to convert to a sci-fi adaptation that I'm calling What A Traveller.

I designed the scenario based on the old Traveller RPG taking elements from:

• Mongoose Traveller (second edition),
• Reft Sector, and  
• Double Adventure 5: The Chamax Plague / Horde.

I really enjoyed writing the background to the scenario as if I were designing a Traveller adventure. I've no plans to go back to running RPGs but this has, for a while at least, scratched any itch that was there.

The scenario took place in the planet-side starport on Zuflücht, a somewhat isolated world on the edge of the Islands Clusters.

Andy S ran the crew of the Serendip Belt-registered free trader Vital Spark who were infiltrating the starport's bonded storage facility to try and steal some valuable crates of Darrian brandy. They deployed from their recently-landed ship's boat, the Parra Handy.

Matt C and Gus W represented the Imperial Navy who had put together a small tactical team to retrieve vital intelligence data from a cargo module also in the bonded storage facility. They entered the table from behind the radar tower.

Arthur W was responsible for the small staff of the starport and the local civilians who turned up to help them. Starport administrator Mitla Farina and security guard Stanlie Molotoff deployed around the security building.

I umpired the game and at a suitable point unleashed the acid-secreting Chamax aliens onto the scene!

The scenario began at night (requiring an additional Spotting Dice beyond 12" for characters without image intensifying goggles) but I gave Arthur the option of turning on floodlights when the alarm was raised if he had a character in the security building. This he immediately did.

Matt really enjoyed the Advanced Combat Rifle's underslung grenade launcher...

An ACR grenade explodes against the
liquid helium condenser

Stanlie Molotoff patrols the bonded storage area

The Navy are here (in plain clothes as they don't
want their mission to be associated with the Imperium)

Aulogia Illahunty and Bay Falango of the Vital Spark

 

Retired Marine special forces operative
Skor Sethkowsky was the highest-level
character in the game

Laguar von Tenno of the Navy
confronts Stanlie Molotoff

Matt has now discovered the joys of the smoke grenade!

Free trader crew scatter as Irgi, the Navy's political analyst,
drives through the smoke! 

When I deemed the time was right I started deploying the Chamax, acid-secreting aliens that had hitched a ride in cargo module 2 and that now emerged to eat whatever flesh they could find. 

One of the Chamax - actually a "Phug" from Peter Pig

As more and more Chamax emerged, grudging co-operation between the players became the order of the night. Whilst fighting to survive, the Free Trader crew managed to explore one of the cargo modules (but unfortunately not the one they wanted) while the Imperial Navy helped to evacuate the wounded.

At the end of the day neither of the infiltrating groups had managed to achieve their objective but we had a good time playing the game. What A Cartel looks worth further exploration. I just have a few questions:

• Do grenades really have a six inch blast diameter?
• How long does smoke last?
• When a character gets into or out of a vehicle, how do you transition between using the character's Action Dice pool and the vehicle's?

More reading and perhaps a message to Mr Savage will follow.

Fresh off the workbench

Regulars at The Land of Counterpane will know that I always try to run couple of games here at Stately Counterpane Manor over the Xmas holiday period. This year it's Gangs of Rome and a version of What A Cowboy based on the Traveller RPG. I've been working on models for these two games.

I designed my own Roman roof tiles after our visit to Arbeia and I've recently re-roofed the home-made foricae... 

...and the horreum from Warbases. 

I wanted to add a couple of additional gang members for GoR so that the players in the Christmas game could see how the character creation process works and hopefully have more personal engagement with their gang. A couple of German slave-bodyguards have already appeared here and the last couple of bodies from the Wargames Atlantic pack gave me these two:

For the Traveller game I've 3D printed a couple of cargo modules from Thingiverse.  They'll play a significant role in the scenario. This first one's been painted in Vallejo Medium Blue with a couple of decals from the spares box (I suspect from a 1/48th scale Israeli Sherman tank kit I owned about fifty years ago).

I've painted a couple of Pulp figures (Bob Murch designs) that might find a role in the Traveller game. The particular setting has a Firefly TV series feel so they wouldn't be too out of place.

Finally for now, and not destined for use in either game is this person:

They are another of the Gamma World RPG models that I've had for decades. I suspect I bought them at either Games of Liverpool or Games Workshop in Sheffield in the 1980s. If I'd kept the original Grenadier Miniatures packaging they'd probably be worth a fortune now!

Steel Lard 2025

Saturday was a long, tiring, but ultimately rewarding day as dozens of like-minded gamers converged on Patriot Games in Sheffield for the latest Steel Lard gaming day.

Seven different Too Fat Ladies games were presented and all of them proved popular with players. In fact every game received votes in the "Best Game" category of our awards (of which more later).

The most popular game in terms of pre-event expressed preferences was Ken Welsh's Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death! This was an American Civil War Sharp Practice affair depicting a period of hard fighting during the First Battle of Bull Run.

The Louisiana Tigers' battle line

The Louisiana Tiger Zouaves (a bunch of reprobates from the wharves and docks along the lower Mississippi) played a major role in the action.

A grey-clad New York regiment advances
across a wheat-field

Ken's terrain made great use of varying ground textures.

The Stone House - now an historic
monument on the Bull Run battlefield 

A unit of US regulars crosses a wheat-field

By coincidence my own game at Steel Lard was also based on First Bull Run (or First Manassass as the Confederates knew it). Regular readers of this blog will have seen the development of Running From Bull Run over recent months.

This time I set the game up on a four feet by twelve feet table. The reason was two-fold. Firstly I wanted the option of running a large, multi-player battle across the short dimension of the table in the event that any of our game runners was forced to withdraw at the last minute.

Mainly, though, I thought it would be fun to have the retreat run from the battlefield to the Cub Run bridge in the morning and then go on from the bridge towards Centreville in the afternoon.  

The morning set up with Union wagons
lining the road to Cub Run bridge

The other half of the table, in each case, was filled with spare troops and vehicles, some of which would appear in the active sector according to card play during the game.

Running From Bull Run uses a card-driven system to represent the forces of Fate as they make life more and more difficult for players who represent Union officers trying to establish some kind of coherent rearguard from a fleeing rabble.

Because of complicated scheduling and one of our attendees crying off due to illness, I had only one player, Chris Clark, during the morning session.

And you know what? It worked brilliantly. Chris ran all of the Union leaders and I drew and played Event Cards. 

Maddened by thirst on the hottest day of the year, Range's newly 
rallied man dash to the Cub Run to fill their canteens

When suddenly the bridge comes under
Confederate artillery fire

Some US Congressmen (and a journalist) have come
out to observe the battle

In the afternoon session, by contrast, I had two Union players (Terrry Pilling and Stewart Goldthorpe) and two (Ned Willett and James Crawley) representing the Forces of Fate. A different experience but no less enjoyable. 

In this game my own Louisiana Tiger models saw action in a victory for the Forces of Fate.

Elsewhere we had a repeat offering of Ian Garbutt and John Elwen's It's a Shit-Show, a very pretty late WW2 game using the What A Tanker rules. Since this game was offered at last years' event it has seen some development work. Jagdtigers made a menacing appearance!

The results for the Americans were perhaps predictable...

Dex McHenry put on a lovely-looking game of Chain of Command 2 based on the Japanese amphibious landings at Mauban in the Philippines in December 1941. 

I understand the fighting was hard in both games. I believe the Japanese were thrown back into the sea in at least one of the actions.

Rather like 6mm games, the terrain really dominates a 15mm Chain of Command presentation. Dex's was very impressive.

Incredibly popular at many Lardy Days are the Kiss Me Hardy 2 games presented by Charley Walker.  This time we had The Battle of Pantry Bay.

I'm not a huge fan of naval games personally but Charley's offerings are always over-subscribed with players engrossed in the detail of stern-rakes and weather-gauges.

Printed game mats have transformed the look
of modern miniatures games

Ian Hemingway gave is his What a Cowboy-based post-apocalypse game What a Scaver. 

I'd seen this recently at Ebor Lard. Very impressive terrain! The son and heir was one of several attendees keen to give it a try.

Last and far-from-least of our games was Mike Wilkins's The Eagle Has Larded. This was a Chain of Command 2 game based on the BBC TV series Allo Allo.  

The terrain was terrific and I understand the game-play was fantastic. Madame Edith playing her piano on the back of a truck may well have constituted a mobile war crime! 

This game was voted as winner of the Wee Derek Award for "Best Game". Congratulations Mike; well deserved!

I should mention in passing that the Wee Derek "Spirit of Lard" Award went to yours truly. I'm deeply touched although I suspect voting chief Dex may have lobbied on my behalf given my stated intention to pass on the reins to him. Kind of like one of those late-career Oscars where the Academy suddenly realise, "Hey, we've missed out so-and-so". Thanks guys!

Afterwards we repaired to El Paso; a Mexican restaurant not far from the venue. It was loud but the food was tasty; thanks to the Barnsley gang for finding this for us.

Finally beers were taken and tales were spun at the Rutland Arms near the station and another day of very satisfying Lard gaming was complete. My heartfelt thanks go out to all who attended and especially to Dex for agreeing to carry the torch forward.

A Barn Full of Lard

On Friday, Stella and I drove down to Bristol so I could spend Saturday running the Harpers Ferry What A Cowboy game at Lincombe Barn. This was the first of what will hopefully be a series of Lardy Days rejoicing in the name "A Barnful of Lard".

The day saw five Too Fat Lardies games set up in the Barn's main hall. As usual I was too busy running my game to get more than a few snatched photos of the games.

Lloyd Lewis ran "Bejabbers I Want That Cuckoo" a Peninsular War Sharp Practice game involving attempts to capture, recapture, and, on one occasion, re-re-recapture a French eagle.

Next we had another Sharp Practice game run by our host Carole Flint. This time it was a 15mm American Civil War action.

I'm not usually keen on smaller figures for Sharp Practice as they can end up too widely spaced. However I think for ACW, where firing lines were increasingly "loose" it's probably believable.

Brian Shipp ran a 15mm Chain of Command game with two US platoons, supported by Shermans, attacking against a single German platoon.

Brian and I had a good chat at lunchtime. Lardy Days can be a great opportunity to share ideas on scenario design.

The scenario was from the Pint Sized Campaign 29 Let's Go.

A very nice-looking Star Wars game was run by Kev using modified Chain of Command rules.

And finally there was my own Harpers Ferry game, seeing its third outing at a Lardy Day.

The players in both runs of the game were mostly new to What A Cowboy so things ran somewhat more slowly than they did at Posh Lard but all involved seemed to enjoy it. This was despite my forgetting to allow the victims of the first couple of hits to dodge!

A highlight of the day came in the second game. The player in charge of the townsfolk of Harpers Ferry had struggled to get his head around the use of the "Other Townsfolk" activation card. Eventually things clicked into place with this exchange:

Umpire:    The Other Townsfolk card!

Player:       What can I do with that?

Umpire:    Lay down covering fire, remove opponents' covering fire, or perform a Task.

Player:       What's a Task?

Umpire:    Anything you like.

Player:     Could we build a bomb to blow a hole in the wall of the engine house?

Umpire:    Sure that'll have a Task Value of...  

<grabs a couple of 12-sided dice and rolls them>

Umpire:      ...seventeen! Roll me a D6 to get started.

Player:       One!

Umpire:    OK, the townsfolk are one-seventeenth of the way to building a bomb.

After three more trips though the game deck and three more d6 rolls by the player concerned (all of them ones) we got as far as:

Umpire:       OK, the townsfolk are now four-seventeenths of the way to building a bomb!

Needless to say the bomb didn't get completed before the insurrectionists completed the job of moving their hostages into the engine house. 

Each time I run Harpers Ferry I come up with a couple of tweaks to improve the design. This time I gave Mayor Fontaine Beckham a musket rather than a handgun. The longer range made it more likely that his player might deploy him to the railroad trestle where, historically, he was shot dead by Edwin Coppock.

I also firmed up the rules for what happens when either side tries shooting near the hostages and misses! A table in the rules now allows for the death or wounding of named hostages or non-player insurrectionists including one of John Brown's sons.

Shotgun-armed Thomas Boerley (foreground)
heads towards the hostages...

... who are escorted by "Emperor" Shields Green,
Oliver Brown and Jeremiah Anderson.

In general I was pleased with how the games went. We didn't get to Act Two (the US Marines assault on the engine house) in either case but the What A Cowboy rules engine always gives a fun game. I think the players appreciated the research that went into providing the historical context of the events at Harpers Ferry.