IPMA Annual Show - Fjord Serpents

This weekend was the annual show of the Illawarra Plastic Modellers Association. As with previous years our club was invited to put on some demo game over the two days it ran. This year we embarked on an ambitious project to put on two different games each day

On the Saturday the 'main' game was Fjord Serpents, with a secondary game of A Fistful Of T34s. On Sunday the main game was a huge Team Yankee game spread over two tables, whilst the secondary game was Battletech: Alpha Strike. 

On the Saturday I was involved with the Fjord Serpents game. We had three players - myself, Ralph and Caesar, whilst Darren hung around and chatted about the game and the club to anyone who came to have a look. 

We ran the race scenario we'd been trying out for this show, with each player having a small, nimble karvi and a larger faster snekkja. Here we are at the start. Ralph and Caesar are on the left, whilst I kept my vessels together on the right. 

Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Never mind the ships! What about that amazing terrain?". Darren made all that. The waterfalls are gorgeous. 

Another shot of the ships on the start-line. 

And straight from the off Caesar decided to employ violence, ramming the stern of Ralph's karvi with his snekkja. 

Here they are fiddling with the troops on board as the grapples fly and the boarding action commences. On the left my ships were plodding down the fjord, although I had to engage in a little bit of maneuver in order to stop my fast snekkja running into the back of the slower karvi. 

The boarding action didn't last long. Caesar's initial collision had badly damaged the smaller karvi, and once they were grappled the two ships drifted. This meant that Ralph's karvi ended up on the rocks of an island and was destroyed. Caesar ungrappled and went looking for new prey. 

Caesar's new prey - my snekkja. 

I was rammed, and took a fair bit of damage. Top right you can see my karvi, now forging ahead in grand style. 

Caesar and I got into a boarding action, and I came off worse. At the top left you can see Ralph's snekkja. He's rammed Caesar's karvi in an act of revenge, and started another boarding action. 

Thanks to my ship having a skald on board my inspired crew were able to cut grapples and escape from being slaughtered by Caesar's crew. 

Thar is until he came in again.

A view down the fjord. My fight with Caesar is on the left. On the right you can see my karvi. I put in to shore to pick up a bit of treasure. Near the island at the top is the fight between Ralph's snekkja and Caesar's karvi. It was not going well for the smaller ship. 

My karvi loaded up treasure quickly, backed oars and prepared to round the island and head for the finish line. However my snekkja had once again broken free of Caesar's, and Caesar's vessel had forged ahead, unable to resume the fight. It was hardly worth it anyway - I was down to a skeleton crew and only had one hull hit left. But Caesar's snekkja was now at the top end of the fjord, and I had to get my karvi past him in order to finish the race. 

At this point I managed to miss taking a pile of photos. Somehow I managed to evade Caesar's snekkja - we exchanged some archery as we sped past each other, but that was it. I cut around the island and went for the home straight. Caesar had a chance to cut across the middle and sill intercept me, but he misjudged a turn and ran onto some rocks. 

To the left you can see the result of Ralph's attack on Caesar's karvi - the karvi crew was wiped out, with Ralph taking no loss. He put a small prize crew on board and sped off to intercept my karvi. Meanwhile his snekkja closed in on Caesar's

My karvi heading for the finish. But with it heading into the wind it was slow going. Meanwhile my crippled snekkja had put into shore and grabbed some treasure. It was still sailing, so I decided to keep moving and try and complete the race as best I could. The first problem was escaping destruction at the end of the fjord. When ships turn their sterns swing out, so you have to be very careful turning when close to land. I had to row slowly and cautiously, which all takes time.  

Some serious pointing from Ralph and Caesar as Caesar's snekkja quite frankly got what it deserved. 

Victory for Ralph. 

So now Ralph had two ships (his undamaged snekkja and a captured karvi), whilst I had a badly damaged snekkja and a fairly fresh treasure-filled karvi. Ralph's captured karvi cut across the bow of mine, forcing us to a collision and boarding action. It also delayed me for a few turns.

The boarding action went the way you'd expect - Ralph's skeleton prize-crew was destroyed and I cut grapples ready to run for home again. But Ralph had gone into race mode as well. His snekkja had speedily rounded the island at the end of the fjord, cut my crippled snekkja in half as it did so, and was now in hot pursuit of my karvi. Snekkjas move faster than karvis and Ralph kept the wind on his beam for as long as possible whilst I was forced to beat slowly down the fjord. He was catching me up!

But as he closed the wind veered in my favour and I could sail at full speed. Ralph was still gaining, but with everything moving faster he ran out of turns to catch me in, and I crossed the finish. 

The winner! My one ship collected three treasure from the board and nine for winning the race. 

Runner-up. Ralph's undamaged snekkja picked up six treasure for coming in second. 

The game attracted lots of attention, especially the terrain and the painting of the teeny-tiny crew figures. And the game itself was exciting and full of swings of fortune. I was pleased that my race to win strategy paid off, although it would have been nice to get my snekkja home as well. 

Thanks to Ralph for organising the scenario, Caesar and Ralph for providing ships and especially to Darren for the terrain. My sole contributions were some initiative cards, and my great sailing skill. 

In the next post I will cover the Alpha Strike game on the Sunday, plus a few (very few) pictures of some of my favourite models in the competitions. 

Treasure Hunt

Three of us played Fjord Serpents last night. We tried the Salvage scenario, and adapted the initiative sequence for three players. Each of us had one big snekkja and one small karvi.

Here's my ships set up. 

Terrain was two islands towards the edges of the board and one shipwreck in the centre. The islands had one loot counter each, whilst the wreck had lots. In the background Ralph's ships head towards the wreck. Caesar and I sent our little karvis to the islands for a quick pickup. Our snekkajs headed for the centre. I could see that Caesar was aiming form my snekkja with the intention to board, so I raised the sails and sped away from him 

I passed alongside Ralph's karvi.

Caesar rammed it and initiated boarding, with his berserkers to the fore, led by a hero. The hero dies in the first round of combat.

Ralph was collecting loot. I ran aboard his snekkja with mine, looking to capture it and take the loot he had collected. 

A couple of long fights ensued. Caesar slowly whittled down the crew of Ralph's karvi with weight of numbers. Meanwhile Ralph and I saw our snekkjas locked in a stalemate of a fight, with neither side inflicting much in teh way of casualties. My hero sang heroic songs and inspired his crew, but couldn't translate all that work into actual hits. Ralph's hero let his crew fight and simply repaired damage. 

Eventually Caesar took Ralph's karvi. And Ralph scored some hits on my crew. But at that moment my karvi came up in support ...

... and we had to end the evening. Caesar and Ralph had both collected a fair bit of loot each, but Caesar looked set to wait for the fight between Ralph and I to end before swopping in and taking stuff off the victor. 

It was all good clean fun, although the lack of frequency with which we play this game meant that we still had to look a lot of stuff up. The rules are a little unclear in places, and the mechanisms for combat, whilst clever, do take a bit of time to get your head around. 

It was nice to have a break torpedo boats for an evening.

Fjord Racing

Last night was our final normal club-meeting of the year, so as is traditional we played a single large game. Because our these of the week was Naval, Ralph came up with the idea of playing Fjord Serpents. But we did something a little different - a race rather than a straight battle.

Each player had one fully-crewed ship, either a small but nimble karvi or a large (but slightly faster) snekkja. Because they are slightly faster the snekkja started further back.

The goal was to race down the fjord, round the buoy (blue marker) and then head back to the finish-line. The winner would get 3 treasure, second-place 2 and third-place 1. But scattered around the terrain pieces and shoreline was more treasure, so a ship could win by going slow and collecting treasure before finishing. Or stealing treasure from another ship.

It all looked pretty straightforward, but the area we were sailing in was, shall we say, somewhat constricted, and it was obvious that there wasn't going to be room for everyone without some conflict.

And they're off!

This snekkja with the green and white checked sails was mine. I got to start close to the shore, so didn't have to worry as much about a possible scrum in the centre.

Daniel (blue stripes) and Ralph (red stripes) moved ahead with their karvis. But Daniel collided with Ralph and we had teh first damage of the game. In Ralph's case it was considerable.

Five ships sailed to avoid a log-jam in the fjord by going through the main channel. Other Daniel (red sail karvi) and I went through the gap. Other Daniel ran inshore to collect some treasure. He had decided to focus on the race, not other ships.

Craig's snekkja headed along the other shoreline and collided with Ralph's ship, sinking it. We were now down to six competitors.

Caesar's ship (white sail) broke through into a lead. Behind him you can see Other Daniels ship against the shore, and mine against the log-jam, both collecting treasure. 

Here I am, stocking up on loot. The idea was that we didn't have to win the race if we could collect lots of stuff first.

And this is why it wasn't worth getting too far ahead in the race - as Caesar rounded the buoy one way, Craig was rounding it the other and there was a collision.

Collisions in Fjord Serpents can do a lot of damage to both ships. And you can see Daniel and Keegan's ships heading towards Caesar's intent on doing as much as possible.

Aerial view. Caesar and Craig were locked in a boarding action, whilst at the bottom of the picture Other Daniel was on the move. His plan was to go past the buoy and come back in through the gap in the two islands, hoping that, by then, all the other ships would have sunk each other.

Another shot of my ship and its heroic crew.

And here it is deliberately colliding with Keegan's ship. Which sank. Mind you, it left my ship pretty beaten up as well.

Yes, my plan was to go round the buoy by just smashing through all of the ships in the way.

Other Daniel can be seen beginning his turn bottom right. Meanwhile I was preparing to bash Caesar's ship out of the way. But wait! Is that Daniel's karvi comin up the middle of the scrum?

It is! I smashed into that and it sank.

Other Daniel joined in, comin in between the islands to smash Caesar's ship to pieces. 

At that point we had to call the game. Other Daniel and I both had two treasure, whilst Craig had nothing. But both Craig and I had ship that were close to sinking, whereas Other Daniel's had taken no damage at all. He'd played a nice safe tactical game and deserved to be considered the winner.

Thanks to everyone involved for a fun evening, and to Ralph for putting together the scenario.

Tracking Things In Atteint!

Sometimes I have shower-thoughts on things that weren't even on my radar when I got into the shower.

Probably too much information, but this post is the result of one. The other day I started thinking about my jousting game Atteint! in the shower, and was reminded that I hadn't really got a way to track the bits of in-game information that I liked. I've tried using a sheet for each player with counters that track various values, and I've tried simply doing it by writing on a piece of paper. The latter works best, but some statuses - the Marshal, Favours of the Ladies' Court and the knight's current Focus - change in a way that's awkward to track.

Anyway, my shower-thought was that I should go all Euro game on the problem, and use a ton of counters. I made a few counters for tracking some of the stuff and then switched to my coloured counters for the rest. A couple of days ago I tried it all out, and this is the setup:

White counters are Aim, blue are Balance and black are Force. Each knight starts a pass with one of each. As they add to the values they add counters to their pile. There are card counters marked 'Aim', 'Balance' and 'Force'. They are used to show the knight's current focus. The counter with the heart on it is the Favour From The Ladies' Court. You can only ever have one of these at a time. I also added a track for the Marshal; that starts at 0 and then slides one way or the other as knights gain points,

The above picture shows a pass at the start. This next picture shows a pass a couple of turns in. The White Knight already has a Force of 4, whilst the Purple Knight has 3, but has Aim and Balance of 2 as well.

This shot shows the first pass of a joust. White has nothing but Force to show for it, whilst Purple has 3 in each of Aim, Balance and Force, as well as a Favour.

That said, both knights missed and no points were scored.

The second pass. Both knights had good scored in their attributes, and Purple still has a Favour. You can also see that White has one point in his favour with the Marshal.

Purple has two yellow tokens. I use those to show points. In the second pass White missed again, but Purple scored a hit and managed to break his lance too.

The third pass. Purple piled on the speed hoping to force the pass as quickly as possible. With two points in hand he could afford to miss so long as White did as well. White didn't really get his act together. Both knights missed, so Purple won the joust 2-0.

On the whole this wasn't an exciting joust, but it did show off how the markers work. Yes, it's a lot of clutter but it was straightforward to use and a lot easier than moving stuff around on a chart or crossing things out on a piece of paper.

I ran a few more jousts afterwards, some using skills, and they did manage to be more exciting. And all ran smoothly thanks to the counters.