Burrowing and badgering

Burrows & Badgers is a fun little skirmish game, and I'm enjoying using my friend John's figures to play. Over the course of our campaign, I acquired a new member of the warband, Linda Lou Shrew.

I got a lot of mileage with my spellcaster, Tommy Tu Toad, who served as the warband's second-in-command. He even learned a new spell!

My warband leader, Roger Rabbit, had trouble going against John's shrew knight mounted on a stag beetle (which uses the stats for a wildcat).

And after one game in which he was taken out of action, my poor toad failed his survival roll and ended up permanently dead! Luckily, I had enough treasure saved up to purchase a replacement: Tommy Tu Toad II.

Anyone else playing this game now?

The Fifth Frontier War begins

GNN News Alert: The Zhodani Consulate has invaded the Third Imperium. Fighting has broken out around worlds in the Jewell, Lanth, Regina, and Vilus subsectors in the Spinward Marches. Traveller News Service reports that Vargr and Sword Worlds forces have also violated Imperial territory.

My friend Joe has a copy of Fifth Frontier War, a massive wargame in the same background as the Traveller roleplaying setting. I'd acquired the rules to this game some time ago, but I had never seen the actual box in person. So when I asked if we could play it sometime, he agreed--because who doesn't want to play a complex board game with hundreds of counters and written orders? So we set aside seven hours one Saturday to play as many turns as we could. After about an hour of setting up, placing counters and writing orders for fleet movements, the game commenced with the Zhodani invasion, commanded by yours truly.

The first turn was successful for my Zhodani and their Vargr stooges allies. The Consulate's 35th Fleet captured the planet Frenzie, while Elasin fell to the 67th Fleet, Ruby succumbed to the 17th Colonial, and the two Vargr fleets secured the world Dentus. Things did not go as well for the Zhodani 16th Colonial and 68th Fleet, which met heavy resistance at Mongo and failed to take the planet. Likewise, the Joyeuse Fleet out of the Sword Worlds was repelled from its attempt to land on Vilus. They would need help from the ZC 35th Fleet to capture that planet.

It went like this for nine more turns, with fleets meeting and planets falling. My fleets slowly made progress into the Imperium, but Joe's forces held their own on many worlds. The Vargr's ground and space forces attempted to take Pixie from tenacious Imperial Marines, while mercenaries chased the aliens off Dentus. Most significantly, the Zhodani's 35th Fleet defeated the 18th Imperial Fleet at Frenzie, destroying two battle squadrons, two cruiser squadrons, and numerous transports--and killing the Duke of Regina, who was commanding the 18th. The Zhodani and their allies captured several more worlds, but Imperial system defense boats at Efate managed to hold off the 17th Colonial. Turn 10, our final round of the day, saw the Imperial 213th Fleet beat the Sword Worlds' Gram fleet, while the Zhodani 68th Fleet cleared out 90% of Allele's SDBs, allowing the 17th Army to make its way to the planet's surface, while the 17th Colonial kept up its bombardment of Efate. It was getting late at this point, so we decided to break until we have a chance to play some more.

Sure, the game is very complex and fiddly, with written orders, multiple combat odds tables, and lots of math--and the small hex and counter sizes don't help--but I love the sheer grandiosity of this game: clashing starfleets, planetary invasions, psionic troops, and grand strategy. It's the type of space opera I loved as a kid, and I'm having a blast as we play out this interstellar war. Luckily, Joe can leave the game out until we play again, so I'm looking forward to picking up where we left off.

FnordCon day 2

The second day of FnordCon started off with heavy rains and flooding in the area, delaying my arrival. All the events I wanted to sign up for were filled, so I was just watching the nine-player Salvage scenario that took place on all four Ogre Designer's Edition maps.

I did get in a pickup game of Ogre, defending against a Mark III with six GEV escorts. Once I took them out, some lucky rolls allowed me to quickly wear down the Ogre before it could reach my command post.

I also got a chance to play The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, a fun little board game that came out in the early '80s.

The convention wasn't perfect--we couldn't register for events online, and the schedule didn't indicate how long anything lasted. But I had a good time and will probably go again if they have another.

FnordCon day 1

Three weeks ago I attended FnordCon, the first-ever convention put on by Steve Jackson Games. That morning I ran a game of Triplanetary on one of the open play tables, attracting three other players and even luring Steve Jackson himself over to ask about the scenario.

We were playing Nova, where the Eastern and Western blocs try to stop aliens from orbiting the sun to detonate a nova bomb. Although the alien players were at first worried about the distance they had to cover, we all quickly learned that Newtonian mechanics made it hard to catch the invaders.

I was playing the Russians (red counters), and I even managed to destroy one of the four ships. However, in the end, two ships slipped past the Americans to blow up the sun.

We also got to check out Ogre--including this huge cardboard Ogre cutout (with the game-sized version for scale).

It was the basic Mark III attacking scenario--but on a new orange map. We got to playtest the game and give our feedback to the Ogre line editor. My opponent was my gaming buddy HoldFast, who attended Saturday with me.

My command post was toast, and when we switched sides to play again, I killed my opponent's CP. It was fun playing on the new map and providing our opinions.

I talked Holdfast into buying Melee and Wizard, and we got in a game of Melee before the end of the day.

It was a quick battle, but notable in that both our fighters ended up dropping their weapons on poor rolls, and after a halfhearted grappling attempt, grabbed the ones their opponent had left on the ground.

All in all, a fun day of gaming.

The debut of the war rig

Our most recent game of Gaslands had my newly completed war rig trying to get from one end of the table to the other. Spoiler alert: It did not happen. I gave my tractor-trailer combo (Shiny Happy People towing Big Money) 75 cans of equipment and upgrades, facing two teams of 50 cans each.

One of the teams was Notorious RBG, with Red Rain, Blue Monday, and Green Manalishi (with a two-prong crown), their paint jobs toned down from what they looked like straight out of the package. Each vehicle was a standard car with front-facing heavy machine gun.

On the other side of the table was Men At Work, with the heavy truck Overkill and the regular truck (Who Can It Be Now?). These vehicles had crew firing rifles and grenades or Molotovs.

No plan survives the first turn of play, and my war rig ended up spinning out after gaining too many hazard tokens--and a lot of machine gun hits from Notorious RBG. Now I was pointed to the side, instead of down the road where I wanted to go. And I drove into a work zone.

The Men At Work were in my way. There's no point in arguing about who ran into who; let's just say there was some contact between Shiny Happy People and Overkill.

Let's also just say that the piledriver attack the big rig has is fun--you push the other vehicle the length of a short range template in any direction.

And because my rig had eight crewmembers, there were plenty of bullets flying at Who Can It Be Now?, which then wrecked. And exploded, thanks to all those grenades, damaging Green Manalishi (but not the two-prong crown).

And as I drove past Overkill, I got cocky. First, I laid down a smokescreen to cover my getaway. Nice, but I couldn't leave well enough alone.

Even though I could have made my getaway, I decided to open fire (all those crewmembers with guns, remember?). And yes, I took out the vehicle. Which exploded (I want to say on a natural 6).

And since I was close enough to shoot Overkill with my handguns, I was close enough to be affected by the blast. Now the explosion didn't finish me off--I still had two hull points left--but every hit from a blast that you don't evade gives you another hazard token.

This was enough to send me into a jackknife, spinning the rig around and making me roll a four-dice attack against myself. I did four points damage, which was more than enough to kill the war rig--ending the game and giving credit for the kill to Men At Work (even though they didn't have anyone left to savor the win).

I had fun playing the war rig, and I hope to get it onto the table again soon. Meanwhile, I'm working on more vehicles. I think I'm addicted to this game.

Ambush among the animals

Our recent game of Burrows & Badgers saw us playing the second scenario in the rulebook, Ambush the Camp.I played the defenders, set up in the middle of the board.

My opponent quickly moved his figures to the center of the table and started wailing on my guys. He had some heavy hitters like a wildcat. Still, I was able to get multiple characters over to his figures, including a sparrow.

While I damaged his guys, he took out a couple of mine as well, including a new character that my warband had picked up: Linda Lou Shrew.

And it's hard in this game to get a hit on a figure with the Ferocious trait, like the wildcat. That animal was able to hold off--and take out--the rabbit leader of my warband.

With my top figure out of the way, he was able to raid my group's equipment pile in the middle of the camp, one of his objectives for the game.

Thankfully, my warband all recovered, although not intact. Rolling on the injuries table after the battle, the shrew rolled up "horrendous scars"--which gave her the Ferocious trait. Now I get to see how that works.

The Fantasy Trip has arrived

My copy of The Fantasy Trip, part of a Steve Jackson Games Kickstarter, arrived this past weekend, and the box is huge! Not Ogre Designer's Edition huge, but huge nonetheless. The box contains, in addition to the role-playing rulebook, In The Labyrinth, the two pocket games that started it all: Melee and Wizard, along with the Death Test solo adventure and its sequel.

I received electronic copies of everything as part of the Kickstarter campaign, so I've had a chance to play these games recently. Still, it's nice to have the actual physical components, including fold-out-maps and counters in the smaller boxes. And the main box also has a four-panel GM screen that gives you plenty of room to put all your notes, while the landscape orientation makes it easy for you to see your players.

And there is a whole box of die-cut hex geomorphs, suitable for putting together your own labyrinth. Although I find the Heroscape tiles more aesthetically pleasing, these chipboard map parts are much more convenient to transport and assemble.

I'm glad I bought this, and I look forward to spending more time In The Labyrinth.