D&D Night!

Took my PC in Kev's fourth adventure last night, and Beloc did well... 36 points of damage laid down in one round of combat - put that in your pipe and smoke it, Craddock! Last night was the culmination of the party's long trek across Forgotten Realms under Kev as GM. After cutting through wolf infested cursed forests, fighting off bandits and assassins, and being shipwrecked by a giant squid, we washed up at our destination island to help Radaghast's friend find his missing daughter.

What a lovely village of tree loving druids they were. Welcoming and ever so helpful, yet sadly turned out to be drugging, lying gits who lured us across half a continent toss us into a cave and sacrifice us to a giant sodding spider. The world is a dark place indeed...

Nevertheless, we got our shit together and kicked some ass! Beloc tore bits off it with his dual wielded footman's pick, whilst some other people were there to dance around and distract it... With the beastie gone, we made a fine haul of treasure (only a few poxy coins for our hero Beloc though *sigh*) and bumped into Ellendir on the beach who sailed us on to our next blood soaked adventure.

Beloc's Footman's Pick. Extreme ass whuppage has been dealt...

One day we'll bump into that treacherous clan of druids again, and tear those tree hugging bastards the new arsehole that they so richly deserve... Next GM up is Martin, and he's going for some Ravenloft. Good times!

SUMP CREW 'PUMPED'

Ooft! Five games into the Necromunda campaign and my Orlocks - the 'Sump Crew' - have already been royally gubbed and ground into the dirt! I played a 'rescue' mission tonight vs. Tam's Van Saars to retrieve one of my lads who'd been captured by his creepy lot in the previous hammering. He pitched up with 3 sentries against my entire gang and dished out raining death!

I managed to sneak up no probs but his heavy with a heavy bolter was able to stitch up my boss and another ganger before he jammed, and then proceeded to snipe off the rest of my lads from his tower like he was bloody Vassily Zietsev with a lasgun. Just about to reach my man and rescue him before reinforcements arrived when I failed the bottle roll... Alas, no rescue and my entire gang fended off by only 3 men. Epic fail!

To rub salt in the wound, of the 3 downed men, a ganger and then my leader choked it and died. With a 7 strong, skint assortment of cripples left, and a leadership battle imminent I decided to pull the plug. Sometimes it just aint worth it! So, South, Friendly, Bligh and Slim walk off into the slime choked toxic fog of the underhive, never to be seen again. So much for the Sump Crew! It was me that started up the campaign at the club and look where it got me!!

One day this shall be mine...

Ah, but now its back to the drawing board, which should be fun. After seeing Pollock play his years ago I fancy a Cawdor hand to hand bunch, or should I go outside the box and try some outlanders? Maybe I should take Tam's example and grow a beard for the Van Saars? Hmm, what will it be? Have been perusing the web and found this sweet conversion for some Van Saars and their rig. Would be good fun to get some vehicles into this campaign - I need to get my build on!

SPARTACUS BLOOD AND SAND - THE GAME

Played the new Spartacus board game at Martin's this week, and it was good, very good. Lots of nice components, all produced to a high finish. Very playable too, concentrating on the intrigue between the Lanesti rather than just repeatedly matching souped up brutes against each other.

Four phases per turn begin on 'upkeep', with players balancing their coffers with accumulated slaves bringing in income, whilst gladiators cost you upkeep. Next phase is 'intrigue' with each player dealt intrigue cards. These can be cashed in for gold or instead some of them may be played to hurt other Lanesti or thwart their schemes. Alternatively you get buffs, or 'guard' cards to try and protect yourself from other player's schemes against you. Players are actively encouraged to bribe each other to divert schemes away and onto other hapless players, which is good fun! Third phase is 'market' with four cards placed face down on the arena and turned up one at a time for players to bid their gold on for slaves, gladiators or kit to upgrade their minions. Finally, you bid to be the 'host', or he who gets to choose who sends gladiators down into the arena.

The final phase is the actual fight. All the show's characters can be brought for your gladiator school. We found Spartacus went down surprisingly easily to Crixus (that would have squished season two!) and Theokeles was the bastard of all bastards to fight - none could face him and expect to live! Before the fights, all players get to bet on the winner and the outcome (death or injury). Its surprising just how much gold you can spend in one round of the game, but it comes back pretty fast if you liquidate some assets and win a fight or two. Overall, all players are competing for influence, which you gain through the intrigue phase, winning 'host', or having your fighter win a bout in the arena. The first to influence '12' wins. We played twice, and I'm left wanting more. When I saw the limited number of figures I had doubts about the scope of this game, but the game play alone could see it run and run and keep the interest for ages, no problem. A brief scout on the web shows there are expansion cards available for more gladiators, whilst the manufacturers plan to release more models to represent the combatants.

Sourced it for a best price of £27 online, overall a winner for the price. If I dont grab a copy over Christmas, then hopefully Martin will let me play with his for a while to come!

Meh. What to do?...

At an intense loose end tonight. Knackered after work, just watched 'The Saint' with the missus. Yep, still a crap film but Elizabeth Shue still gets props! But what to do now? Free time is precious and there is so much to do, yet tonight we lack the will of the warrior...

 

Got plans down for kicking off a Necromunda campaign at the club. Got plenty takers and some good ideas. Seems there'll be a fair spread of gangs with the usual Orlocks, Delaques and Van Saars peppered with Orks and Arbites. Once the lads get to grips with the rules I've got some ideas for tunnel fighting, genestealer infestations and speeder races. On that note, going to float that idea at the club for the lads to design and build two speeders for their gang to use in some special scenarios. Plenty of scope for some cusomised modelling on this one.

Also noodling about with working on the Polymarch rules - a play by email campaign set in classical era Greece. I ran up the rules and started playing it in uni in 2000. Off and on it ran for 8 years. Since summer 2011 (when I got the shiny new PC with all the sexy new software) I've been redrafting the ruleset into publisher. One day I shall have a lush hardcopy to cradle in my hands...... On chapter 7 (sieges) at the moment. Projects, diplomacy, character rules and the reference section still to go. Had a look at pricings for the hardcopy on blurb - looking somewhat ching ching, but after a decade of work it'll be worth it!

This was the last map from last time it ran. After 14 turns, I'd planned to expand out east into Asia Minor and bring in the Persian Satraps, the Rhodians and the barbarous Thracian tribes as player options. Perhaps if I ever finish typing up the rules and launching this at the club, I'll go with this for the new starting map.