Wargames Weekend: Poseidon’s Song

Our final game of the weekend was a first outing for Lenin's Star Trek figures using Rattrap's Fantasic Worlds rules. Here's the brief:

The USS Hammersley, a scout class vessel, under the command of Commander Michael Flynn was on regular patrol on the edge of known space, when it suddenly detected a previously un-catalogued signal emanating from the planet P3X-866. This planet has only been surveyed from orbit and though it is M Class, no signs of current intelligent life were detected. However, ancient and uninhabited ruins were observed from orbit, so it would seem that the planet once supported intelligent life. Given that the majority of the planet’s surface is now covered in water, hence its unofficial name of Poseidon, the current theory is that rising sea levels eventually drowned this long dead civilisation. Poseidon is earmarked for a full planetary survey sometime in the next five years.

Using is own initiative, the maverick Commander Flynn beamed down to Poseidon with a small landing party to investigate this unknown signal, but on landing, the party discovered that the signal seemed to be jamming their communicators, thus preventing contact with the ship or beaming back. Lieutenant Blake, the Hammersley’s Science Officer, suggests that they need to locate the source of the signal and somehow turn it off, but before the landing party can start their search, the realise that they are not alone…

I played the Star Fleet landing party stranded on the planet and we began the first of the three "acts". Whilst searching the alien ruins we heard gunfire and, on investigation, discovered some ape astronauts who were also stranded on the planet's surface. In addition, we discovered a hostile indigenous species of "crabman". These creatures were quite hostile and pretty tough and our phasers didn't seem to have much of an effect on their carapaces.

Between us and the team from the Ape Astronautical and Space Administration we managed to triangulate the position of the signal which was interfering with our instruments and moved off in that direction.

Moving through the ruins we encountered some quicksand and several more crabmen but managed to find the entrance to the structure from which the signal was emanating.

Moving inside we were lucky enough to discover some buried controls for the alien device but not before stumbling upon some more crabmen. Our teams split up and tried to hold off the crabmen whilst the others uncovered the controls. We managed to scare one of the creatures away but another was quite a different proposition and was it took both the Captain and the Science Officer to keep it occupied. With the controls uncovered we just needed to discover how they worked. Fortunately the apes discovered some tablets (no not iPads!) with some instructions but unfortunately another crabman appeared. A running battle ensued with all of te Star Fleet personnel but my First Officer becoming incapacitated and the apes nearly suffering the same fate. IN a nail biting conclusion the apes managed to activate the controls and a landing party beamed down from the Hammersley just in time to save the day!

Gaming Weekend - Day Three

Clash of Iron, 1944

Our first game on Monday was a slightly adapted version of the Clash of Iron scenario from Super Science Tales, one of the expansions for .45 Adventure. Lenin shifted the action from the Eastern Front to the Western just following the failure of Operation Wacht am Rhein (the Battle of the Bulge).

The scenario is in three chapters using the characteristic Rattrap 2' x 2' board (which is all you often end up using on a larger table anyway!). In Chapter 1 my small German force managed to penetrate the American supply base and find one of their suits of Power Armour.

In Chapter two we had a much tougher time getting ourselves and the Power Armour back out. Particularly due to the intervention of a rather tough US robot. We took a few casualties but, thanks to a stray mortar round, managed to get away.

The final Chapter saw us pick up some other stragglers, try to break through the US front line, past another US robot and make it to the German lines.

Initially, the .45 Adventure system seemed a little fiddly but as the game progressed we got back into it. One of the key issues is remembering any special attributes any of the characters has and using it appropriately. This is tricky enough when you only have a couple of characters but is a handful when you have more.

“Bloodying The Nose”, 17 December 1944

We went on to try the first scenario from the new Two Hour Wargames scenario book for Nuts!, Peiper at the Gates.

This one had the German forces advancing onto the table and encountering a partially dug in US force. My job as the Germans wasn't helped by Lenin rolling up a snowstorm which reduced visibility to only 8 inches!


Initially, things went pretty well with the US missing my half-track with their bazooka and then withdrawing from the barn just before I demolished it with the Panther's main gun. However, our advance stalled when the half-track broke down, we encountered stiff resistance from the farm house and the Panther wouldn't move.

I found that advancing troops (even using a Fast Move) across open ground was rather too hazardous and chose instead to flank the farm house. After popping a grenade through one of the windows my assault was repulsed and the synchronised advance of the MG42 team was stopped by a hail of lead. This ended up with something of a stalemate until I managed to get the Panther going again and took out the whole building (Lenin and I agreed that we need to look at those mechanics in the rules as they seem a little too extreme).

I pushed forward again, following the US Engineer unit which had retreated from the barn but came unstuck when they successfully disabled the Panther with a well aimed bazooka shot (my fault for exposing its flank armour!).

At this point and having inflicted quite a few casualties the US troops melted away into the snowstorm.

It was a great opportunity to get my Artizan and BAM late war figures our along with my Corgi die-casts.

Tarzan and the Slave Queen

Our final game was a trial of the Rattrap Broadsword Adventures rules with Tarzan trying to rescue some villagers from the clutches of an Amazon like tribe of slavers.

Things started well but Tarzan got trapped by a man eating plant and needed help to escape. In the meanwhile the slavers managed to capture some of the village children. Fortunately, we saved some of the villagers and were in the process of finding some more when Tarzan was surrounded by the slavers.

Whilst he held them off, the village headman rescued the others. The rules worked pretty well and, if anything, rather better than the earlier game (of course simply having played the earlier game might have contributed to that!) so we're likely to be seeing these ones again.

I am in the process of sorting out the photos from the various games and will be posting them to a new album on picasa shortly.

Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizard

The latest supplement from Rattrap Productions has just made it's PDF debut. Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizard is slightly different from previous supplements as it's designed to work with several of their genre rulesets, in this case, .45 Adventure (pulp), Gloire (swashbuckling) and Fantastic Worlds (pulp SF).

Valley of the Thunder Lizard is 126 pages long and is intended to be the first of a series. In brief it covers adventures with dinosaurs, so the Lost World, anything with Doug McClure in it, time travelling tourists in pre-history etc.

It contains a few new rules, some new archetypes (one each for the 3 rule sets) a couple of new special abilities (Big Game Hunter and Tracking), stats for various dinosaurs (including info on how to create them), prehistoric mammals, neanderthals, saurians and scenarios for each of the three genres.

At $12 for the PDF it's pretty good value (especially with current exchange rates) and will make some interesting reading!

Gaming Weekend - March 08

Lenin paid a visit this weekend and we managed to get plenty of gaming in. It might not have gone quite as planned (no change there!) but it was excellent fun none the less!

Before "discovering" the benefits of the .45 Adventure system we had tried one or two of the scenarios from the Dragon Bones supplement using Savage Worlds (another of our favourite rule sets). We decided to try them using the rules they were made for and the two games went very well. Strangely enough the results were the same as when we played using Savage Worlds!

We also gave my eBay copy of Quebec 1759 a go. It was the first of the Columbia Games block games and certainly has a pretty simple set of rules; however, the game gives you plenty of things to think about. I took command of the French and was utterly trounced by Lenin playing the British - obviously my usual dice luck had some effect but it was more down to some poor deployment on my part and a well co-ordinated two fronted attack on his! Now that I have some idea what I'm doing I'd certainly like to give it another go.

Next we improvised a Back of Beyond game using Lenin's superbly painted Copplestone figures (along with a couple of Pulp Figures) using Savage Worlds as the rules. More than anything it was a test to see if Savage Worlds could be used for a game of this type and size. Lenin has a very sizeable collection of figures for this period and we have tried a few other sets of rules but haven't been happy with them. The result was a Russian victory - having repulsed the Chinese attack on the Russian dig site - and a decision to use Savage Worlds for future games of this type.

Having majored on 28mm we swapped down to 20mm for the next game, a WW2 scenario using Nuts! A simple take the bridge and hold until reinforced for a small Para jeep mounted unit facing a unit of German engineers (who had been ordered to destroy the bridge) - with a few pesky refugees to get in the way! It was an object example of taking and holding the initiative taking the day with the Paras having it pretty much their own way (it also demonstrated the power of automatic weapons to keep people's heads down under Nuts! - the "outgunned" rules).

Our final tabletop game was another improved Savage Worlds game - this time using 28mm Gripping Beast Normans/Crusaders/El Cid figures. Having seen that Savage Worlds could handle a large 20th Century game, we really wanted to see if Savage Worlds could cope with a melee heavy scenario. We probably didn't have enough variety in the troop qualities and so melee did tend to bog down a little (but this wasn't entirely unexpected or a-historical) but overall SW proved that it could manage to cope. With properly prepared unit cards and a little more unit variety I think we're on to a winner again.

We finished the weekend off with a couple of board games - the Crimissos River (341BC) scenario for Commands and Colors: Ancients and the first two player scenario for Friedrich (The War in the West - France vs Hanover with a little help from Prussia). The C&C:A game was a pretty close run thing but finally going to Syracruse (though not by anything like the margin they enjoyed historically). Friedrich turned out to be a lot of fun with plenty of challenging decisions for both sides. The French were doing well but the Hanoverians managed to cut their supply lines; however the French recovered and went on to capture their objectives just in time. An excellent game that I can't wait to play 3 or 4 player.

I've posted a few photos from the weekend below:

Gaming Weekend - Mar 08

First Look: Gloire

Gloire by Rattrap Productions is subtitled Swashbuckling Adventure in the Age of Kings and is a set of miniature wargames rules. Gloire is based on the mechanics of Rattrap's previous set of pulp rules .45 Adventure. As it says Gloire is aimed at Swashbuckling games and hence leans more toward the game rather than the simulation end of the spectrum.

I picked up a softcover copy of the rules at Salute for £10 but they are available as a .pdf download from either Rattrap or RPGnow for US$11 along with a few free scenarios, game aids and pre-generated characters. There is also a yahoo discussion group to support the rules.