T is for Trek, No Star!

Another quick box-ticking of a board game, mentioned in passing a few times but it passed under my nose on it's way from the garage to a shipping container the other day so I fired-off a few shots, well; enough for a .gif (not spelled Jif!), and dug out some older shots which have been seen elsewhere, but not here before.

It is what it is; a competitive collecting of stuff for a final race type mechanism, but the 'stuff ' is of real use to war-gamers, being a large number of jeeps, pack mules and stores crates, so - bargain!

Playing pieces are 30mm flat explorers looking through telescopes, in a 'European Margarine Premium' style, made of a hard/brittle polystyrene, with provision for six players.

Jeeps are good-enough for 20/25mm war gaming, the pack animals are brilliant, but sadly only the one pose, so need to be mixed in with Atlantic (three variations?) and Pegasus (one or two?) or even cast-metal beasts of burden. Strangely, while the player-pieces are so brittle, the rest is manufactured in soft polyethylene?

The stores are so brightly-bright and yellowy-yellow you can't tell which way up they are or read the 'STORES' stamped on the tops, but painted or heavy-washed/weathered they would make useful vehicle loads or objective-markers in gaming.

With some conversions (Airfix ANZAC's married to commando legs) as a scaler, that’s yer' very actual Spear's board game; Trek, done and dusted!

V is for Variation on a Theme

I've pointed out before that two board games in particular (Monopoly and Cludo) have become marketing vehicles for the parting of money from fools, but others (Risk, Axis & Allies) get the multiple-version treatment, today it's back to Cludo / Clue.

With pop-culture dominating the non-work sphere of western or developed-world existence we will return to both as often as I find them in charity-shops - not being a fool, I wouldn't be seen dead paying-full for any of them, even if they did a Terminator Risk in 20mm with artwork by Moebius and figures sculpted by H. Geiger!

Un-boxing is easier as a .gif; there's a lot in here and it's been expanded to eight players, with three supports and 12 rooms, an expensive way of making a slower and more complicated version of an old favourite.

Endless (or 32?) alternate set-ups, but I think the positioning of the entrance hall/lobby may limit that choise-total, each is a separate card and there are some plastic crosses (x marks lots of spots) and magnifying glasses (which like the cracker-toy novelties do actually work!) that can be liberally sprinkled about the place like a fantasy games-master setting rat-traps!

The figures; only reason I care about the existence of any of these re-hashes, the three supernumeraries are the ones with square bases, the eight player-pieces get round bases, all nicely sculpted with parquet flooring - which matches . . . err . . . none of the rooms!

They are reasonable for 25/28mm gaming, and with the Victorian air, would suit Steampunk or the HG Wells/Jules Verne/H. R-Haggard anchored stuff, or even Edwardian 'Hardboiled' stuff.

Ably assisted - as always - by my late assistant, little did she know that 31 days later she would be joining the 99.9^r% of everything that ever lived, a message hidden there for the meat-faced loons who don't think we've entered the most serious existential-threat phase of our evolution? She is sorely missed.