So this evening we made a start on the first adventure in Heroquest. We Actually only managed three rooms as we started late and needed to go through the rules.
Luckily no-one died, but our duce were not really in our favour. Evidently Zargon had cursed them for us! We enjoyed it though and luckily found enough healing potions to help keep us alive.
We shall carry on soon.
Last night Carnage took place in Shetland. We got our first game of ‘Death Roads: All Stars)
The game uses cards to allow actions as well as having driver actions. Each time you get to do two. Eg you can change gear and lanes or something like change lanes and shoot. Each of these uses up handling anywhere from one to four points (well in my cards).
When everyone reaches zero on their handling then the round is over. You can drop below zero, then bad things happen. Skids, veering, fire or being stunned all can happen at once. Just before I exploded in a fireball I had two stun, two fire and a skid to deal with.
It was a fun game… but on the way back Joe and I were discussing it. We both had a feeling we were doing something wrong. We are going to have another game tonight to try and iron out the wrinkles
Well yesterday when I got home there were two parcels sitting on my kitchen table. A book sized one and a 5kg box. I opened the book one as I was interested to see it. As I was knackered I left the box until today.
So here we have it in all its glory!
This was successfully funded on 28th July 2021. I now have it in my sweaty mitts. Yeah it’s a bit delayed, but to be fair to the Knights of Unity they have kept everyone up to speed on how things are going. Some people, (cough, cough), didnt really follow things as religiously as others… I am a pretty trusting kind of a guy.
So as part of the kickstarter we did get some add ons…
I could have spent more money on extras but decided against it.
The quality of the artwork and design is excellent…
The boards are double sided and there are lots of cards (183) and tokens (100+) I haven’t got a clue what to do with them yet!
The base set from the kickstarter comes with seven cars and two motorbikes. I thought they were going to be quite small…nope they are actually quite big…
The board itself is 55cm x 40cm, it uses a system where the cars move forward or backwards in relation to each other. If they hit the left hnad side they are classed and far behind and the right means they are far ahead…
I am going to paint the vehicles as I think they will look a whole lot better, especially the black one as there are no details visible due to the colours.
Here is a quick shot of the back of the box…
I will let you know how it plays out. I will see if Joe can get to the club on Thursday. If not there is a Billy no Mates solo option as well as a downloadable game on steam.
My daughter and I had a bash at making a Start on the Harry Potter Miniatures.
Somehow I had to do Hermione and she had a couple of Death Eaters. It’s a pretty naff photo but they have a dark purple top and will all have black cloaks. The Contrast paint is ideal fit her as she is able to get stuff painted and shaded all in one go. I decided to add white to the grey undercoat on the Baddies to add a highlight to the black cloaks.
I also had a quick test on a Hussar horse. The blue has helped me as I have now decided on colours for them…
Uniform jacket will be the same as the saddle cloth with the pelise likewise. I will probably go black fur on it too. Shako will be black with a blue top. I was thinking grey breeches with black boots.
Tomorrow Morning I evidently have to paint Ron and Harry, all before 11.00 am. Taking the youngest two to see the original home alone film tomorrow and then off to the club to play Aliens.
We played the game again today. We had good fun even though we got rammed by a destroyer!
Yesterday we had rain, today we had a storm…
We had a go at the deck gun too…
We didn’t half get a shock when the convoy escort fired a gun at us, A Big explosion and a sudden warning klaxon. Our first necessary crash dive, luckily everyone was at the correct station. We avoided him and held our breath as we heard the depth charges warning.
We went deep as he charged off, but came back up to take a shot at the convoy. Sadly we forgot to pause the game as we looked up a certain rule and we got rammed by the escort.
My German is crap…. but tonight we managed a bit of Submarine warfare…
I played the Navigator and the Captain and my daughter, the First Officer and Chief Engineer.
We had a bash at the training mission and managed to sink a merchantman…
We fired all 4 tubes in our excitement! All four exploded so down she went.
The app shows the weather and time of day…
The observers were pleased when the watch changed as they would have been very wet.
We headed to another quadrant to find another lone merchant and somehow lost him! Then off we went to hunt a small convoy.
We managed to get to a nice firing solution even with a major electrical fault and the crew somewhat fatigued.
We were set up like this, we paused the game to take this photo the the app took us right back to the start.
We probably did loads wrong but we did have a good time.
We are off into Middle Earth tomorrow night, but will probably have another bash at this on Friday.
On a totally different note, I printed off a domed two story house today. It took 5 hours 6 minutes to finish. I also managed to add the tower to a building and will print it off tomorrow.
It has arrived!
As it was only my second Kickstarter I was worried that something horrible was going to happen, but nope, a couple of months delay and it is here.
The sub is 90cm long and comes with 16 crew miniatures.
Colours relate to player roles:
White – captain
Blue – first officer
Green – navigator
Brown – chief engineer.
I also got a plethora of Kickstarter goodies… resin parts for the sub as well as equipment and condition tokens. These include leaks, fires etc.
There are some nice plotting sheets, I.D. Sheet and an enigma code sheet.
Each player gets a baseboard and crew roster board, this is double sided to show first and second watch.
Lots of counters 😂
But the ship ones are replaced by the resin ones I got….
These little ships are plotted on the squared part of the Navigator board above. His target track device can be seen in the three disks above (this needs assembling).
The sub itself needs to be punched out then assembled. It will fit inside the box as it comes in three segments.
If I felt the urge I could add in my own insignia
I reckon it might take a while to decide on which one.
Finally the game works with a downloadable app that works in real time…
Based on the rules this is not a ‘learn it in a night’ kind of game, and it isn’t meant to be. The rules aren’t actually that complicated, but as an example, the Navigator has to understand, enemy course and bearing bearing as well as his own course. He/she must be able to plot a suitable firing solution…
Each assigned tole has a cheat sheet and it also comes with a tactical guide of 18 pages covering
The Rules themselves are only 50 pages, so not a hefty tome by any stretch of the imagination. There are also videos of gameplay and rules support online.
The production value on this game is excellent. I am not sure how the Kickstarter version differs from the retail one. But they certainly cracked their target. They were after £65,000 and ended up with £686,000. So a very successful campaign.
Am I excited, yes I am. I even forgive the delivery guys for not shutting the back door properly. Luckily it didn’t rain and the sheep didn’t get in and the the dog didn’t escape.
It does however mean that I have even less chance of finishing off my elves 😱
I have a crew planned for an inaugural mission coming soon.
Well No-one else wanted to join in, my wife found her knitting more exciting and the kids were building things on Minecraft. So I had to go solo!
I hauled out my ancient copy of B17 Queen if the Skies. It probably hasn’t seen the light of day for twenty years. I had managed to get to the 13th mission, so I carried on. Mission 14 was a nice little trip to Amiens. The dice were with me so I managed to get there and back with a full crew and a hole in my Starboard wing where a flak shell went through it.
Fighter cover wasn’t too bad, a total of nine enemy aircraft attacked me, but thankfully they all missed, they weren’t so luck as my port cheek took out an FW190 and the Ball turret despatched a ME110.
Bomb run managed a 30 % accuracy so not brilliant, but 11 more missions and I can officially return home 😉
Fighter cover was Extreme on the way back…
We shall have to see where we get to tomorrow.
I suddenly found something on EBay I played years ago and just had to have it.
I had this and PanzerBlitz years ago and remember enjoying it. Hopefully I am not viewing my recollections through rose tinted spectacles!
I must have played through the various missions numerous times. (The problem is I can’t remember the reason why I got rid of it).
The map boards (x4) are basic but they do the job. From what I remember each represents 250 metres.
Finally the counters show the unit type..
The numbers show Attack strength, range, defence and movement. The letters show weapon type.
I will have to give it a go and see how I get on.
Bogenwald 