We’re back from Fall-IN! and I will be doing two blog posts on the topic, This is Post 1, the games I ran at Fall IN!, of which there were two.
Friday
Friday I ran a game of BIG DANGED BOATS, my 15mm fantasy naval rules set. This was my event write-up.
F-110 “Fun and Games on the Middle Sea”
It’s a 15mm Fantasy naval extravaganza. Pilot a dubiously seaworthy, slightly ridiculous ship in an all hands battle for domination of the Middle Sea! Rules are Big Danged Boats for 15mm fantasy naval combat. If you’ve had a hankering for a naval game where you can take to the seas riding on a giant steam powered cheese, fighting evil squid headed cultists riding the foot of a dead god (and who hasn’t?), this is the game for you!! Rules are dead simple and aimed at fun rather than statistics. Children welcome, but 12 and under requires a parent to play along with. ROLE PLAYING IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. If you can’t summon an evil nautical Sea Dog persona for this game, please go play Flames of War! They’ll take care of you!
This game was, by my reckoning, maybe the third or fourth game received by the Events coordinator for Fall-IN! 2013. It represented a significant effort on my part as it’s a bit labor intensive to put on. Accordingly, I asked for standard table size of 5 x 8, with a side table to help me set up with. Somehow, when I showed up with my boxes of stuff an hour early to set up, the table became a table that no less than three events were scheduled to use the same table simultaneously! And no side table! Since the tables had no numbering on them, it became a logistical chore of the first order to unscrew this problem. Sadly I think I stepped on the guy next to me since my tables weren’t remotely ready, and HE had to move. I apologize for this, whomever you were. I attribute the problem to (perhaps) miscommunication on my part with the event coordinate, but apparently I was not the only person who had a table misadventure. Organizational Note: Numbers on tables helps. Printing the map of the table layouts so people can read it helps. Proofing the Convention book helps. Guidebook Note: break Distelfink map into two maps, North and South, so they are more readable.
The Game Itself
BDB is a pretty easy game to play, but it has tons of components, ships, crews and whatnot to set up, all of which takes time to break out. I’m going to an hour and a half setup time, because clearly, an hour isn’t nearly enough. I am not happy with the rules as written so I haven’t really thrown the printed rules out there for a game, preferring to run it from my tablet computer. I had some gentle criticism about not having a lot of paper charts for everyone to refer to. I’ll fix that.
After being rattled during setup over the table fiasco, I didn’t get going until ten minutes after start time, and so it goes.
Factions were: The Gnomes of Battenberg The Iron Dwarves, the Bone Brigade, the Imperial Navy of Stahlhelm (making its debut), the Cult of F’Vah, The Sea Elves, The Orcish Revolutionary Council or O.R.C. (also making a debut), the Rat-Men of Ingoldsby and The Pirates of Stinkwater.
Deployed, but not selected, were the Wood Elves of the Father Tree, The Seng, the Holy Brothers of Saint Brendan.
Like most games we started with the ships entering the battle area from the surrounding ring of the table side. As a special incentive there were two maxi-kegs of Boom Powder on Skull Island to bring the action into the center. It was minimally effective.
The Rat Men steamed for the island, and got into a little contretemps with the Bone Brigade, firing on them and causing more holes in their wormy hull. The Bone Brigade in turn did their best to fight the Gnomes of Battenberg, killing more crew than they did damage.
Stahlheim’s Imperial Ram avoided direct confrontation and chugged up the starboard flank, turning sharply to bring on an engagement with Bone Brigade.
Some long range shots were fired but it didn’t deter the fight between the Bone Brigade and the Gnomes; boarding and counter boarding was attempted, decimating both crews. Neither the Gnomes nor the Skeletons of the Brigade enjoyed the experience, as the counter-boarding by the Gnomes broke off and they ran back to their ships, leaving two gnomes on the Bone Brigade Galley behind them. Presumably, to a fate worse than unDeath.
The Siege Machine Chugged onward to inevitable confrontation with the Ram of Stahlheim, and for the first time in the engagement deployed the fearsome Big Bopper ramming weapon to moderate effect.
Through a chain of circumstance mostly brought on by reckless over-gearing and stressing their steam engine, the Gnomes then had a critical overload in the engine dept, instantly annihilating their craft. You just don’t get a better result than that, and even the kid who rolled 12 on the critical hit table (exploding his boat) recognized the Ragnarok-style entertainment of the moment– especially as he had an action card that stated “from Hell’s heart I stab at thee”.. which was perfect for this moment– it almost took out the ship next to it..
The Iron Dwarves fought a somewhat isolated battle with the Sea Elves and the Dread Rot Pyrates at the far end of the battlefield. The Pyrates did what they could do which was mostly gun fire. The Sea Elves actually got involved in a boarding action (on the receiving end) after taking a lot of casualties.
That was quite late in the game, and good news for the Dwarves. The Elves tried to ram the dwarves and missed… sliding along the edge of the Red Menace and setting up boarding conditions perfectly.
Meanwhile, the O.R.C. player had deployed his Revolutionary Martyr rafts with their hand held spar torpedoes. The rafts sailed up to the Cult of F’Vah player and torpedoed the Foot, blowing themselves to mist in the process.
The Cultists Summoned the Squid God (for free, using their card). It did lots of damage to the O.R.C. ship, but it was still afloat and pouring iron into the Foot. The Cultists can continue to summon the Squid God for 2 Magic Points per turn until they are depleted, but at that point they have to start sacrificing crew to bring their Magic Points back up again. The Cultist player was undeterred (perhaps some of the beers helped his belicose attitude) and consigned one of his crew to the altar of sacrifice with a casual “Ah, there’s plenty more where he came from…”.
About this time, we had to pull the plug for time reasons. I performed the new victory point calculations. Did anyone sink a ship? 5 points. 2 ships? 10 points. 3 ships? nobody sank 3 ships. How much damage have you taken? Who has the least? 3 point bonus. Did anyone perform a successful boarding? 5 points. How many Shining Moment Coins are left? Add them in to the total on a 1 for 1 point basis. Our victor was the reluctant Cultists of F’Vah (Player: Scott Landis), who was doing everything in his power (including donating coins!) to give the victory to one of the younger players, which just made him even more nice. 😀
Summary: I got a little rattled by the truncated setup due to the table fiasco, which was too bad because setup is important in BDB. I think we all recovered nicely. I had a great time playing it and I think the players had a great time too.
Game Two, Saturday 1400 to 1600 (approximately)
The Great Big Diabolical Dukeroo!
Distelfink (apparently on the table we were assigned)
Rules: The Magi (home rules)
Blurb:
In the long years since the disappearance of Graros the Unspeakable, your standard Vanished Evil Dark Lord that seems to be in every one of these stories, there have been many promising characters to step into his wormy shoes. The semi-annual Wizard’s Duel attracts many aspirants to leadership. Will you survive to become top wizardly dog? Oh, we’ll see.. We’ll see (evil laugh). Rules are “The Magi”, a miniatures variant of a very old postal game called Waving Hands, a game of casting spells with hand gestures. In this game, players will ALSO be using hand gestures to cast spells that do various things good or bad. Can you fire off that Lightning Bolt before your opponent casts an Impervious Shield? Was that a Shield spell, or does the Caster have Saint Vitus’ Dance? It’s all in the hands…
Simple rules, Children welcome (though 12 and under I’d wish to have a parent playing too).
Essentially, this is a wizard’s duel game where movement and combat are standardized and the focus is on casting spells. Dice are not used. Instead, the wizard players use HAND GESTURES which are dealt to each of them on cards. The player builds the spell in front of himself, and casts it when it’s ready. At all times you have to to keep close track of what the other players are doing and when they do it, as well as keep something building and up your sleeve at all times. This game started as WAVING HANDS (a pencil and paper postal game) in England, and I adapted it (with kind permission from its creator, Richard Bartle) to a miniatures format. I love this game– it’s visual and easy to grasp, yet very challenging. There are three versions of the game I run, based on the audience. I ran the medium version, which requires spell cards to play face up so the opponent can see what the player is creating (or trying to) on the other side of the table.
Rules for everyone fit on index cards so it was astonishingly simple to teach.
We had a nice turnout, about six players which is about right. Garrett (my son) played a wizard as part of that group. We ran OCK THE CAVE SHAMAN, WEENUS BITTERKINS, ELRIC FIRETHRONE, SELIM THE MUSSELMAN, SPLENDORA DEATHFIELD, and DOCTOR FATE in this game. I’m contemplating a campaign game of sorts, where frequently reused characters get a small bonus as their “Experience” at the start of the game– the same wizards get chosen so frequently. Essentially they all started on the edges, sidled into the centre, started fighting each other as fast as possible. The thing about this system is to get spell gesture cards put down as quickly as possible. EVEN IF THE OPTIMAL SPELL GESTURE CARDS AREN’T COMING ALONG. Something will work out, there are dozens of spells, and I’m going to add more. Players are slow to pick up on this and spend too much time trying to get the optimal combination. Shorter, tactical spells are often more effective than that Finger of Death you’ve wasted much of the game setting up for your ONE shot spell.
Oh well. It was a blast. Here’s a small slideshow, click on the picture below to see.
So that’s the games I ran. Overall it was a very enjoyable exercise, though BDB could have been a fiasco with the gaming table situation. Fortunately the guy whose spot *I* usurped was cool about it. See you all at COLD WARS 2014!
Third Point of Singularity 
Hey Walt, my son Jack played the Gnomes in your Sea Battle and had a great time, he was talking about it all the way home! Thanks so much for a wonderful experience and hope to see you at another con!