G&G XIX : Fort Revenant

Our first marquee event at Gaming & Guinness XIX last week was presented as a bank robbery in the town of Fort Everett, in the Territory (doesn't matter which one, really). The premise was that we would have two teams of four players - two each for the bank robbers and the law posse. Each player would control a hero and a henchmen, and eight models a side seemed a tidy number. A classic gunfight scenario!

But after getting the group picture taken and getting the town set up, I threw in a monkey wrench, and got the leader of each side to read a short script to set the scene:

After having everyone split up to search the town, I queued up the playlist I had made and while suspenseful music played, I outlined the gear everyone had found: a Buffalo gun in the post office, a scoped rifle in the upper floor of the hotel, a LeMat pistol in the bank, and so on. 

I then dramatized how one of my my two bank robbers had found a man in the cells of the sheriff's office who had bitten him!

Earl's excellent Sheriff's office, with cells

Following a stunning transformation, I revealed the plethora of zombie models I had brought with me, including a number of classic zombie gunfighters from Wargames Foundry.

Then I outlined the real scenario: desperadoes and lawmen must band together to survive the zombie outbreak by getting to the eponymous Fort 'Revenant' and closing the doors before being overwhelmed - no mean feat with characters spread all over the town.

A handful of zombies started on the board in random locations, with more appearing randomly each turn, the majority by the cemetery I had built on the sly, and the two burn piles Bryce had made for me as a gift (he also lent me his sweet NWMP outpost!).

The idea for the scenario was that the defenders would drop a fair amount of zombies (wounding them on 5+ or even 4+ on a d6) but they would get up again the following turn on a roll of 3+. Rolling a 6 to wound represented a headshot, removing the zombie permanently. 

But in the first few turns, it seemed the gunfighters either missed the zombies entirely, or rolled sixes to wound, taking them off the board! Where's the fun in that?

With three zombies in the Emporium Saloon, Marhall Cole elected a strategic withdrawal

I did catch a couple of gunfighters at the far end of the street, but only managed to kill (and turn!) one of them. 

And another human fell to friendly fire when the defenders found the gatling gun in the stable, pushed it into the street and fired into the mob in a desperate attempt to the thin the numbers of undead. A devastating weapon, killing almost a dozen zombies over two turns but also jamming each time.

They also managed to repulse a couple of attacks on the machine gun to boot! Both the gatling and the unfired cannon (loaded with grapeshot) were also loans from Bryce - thanks pardner!

All the meanwhile, an inexorable parade of zombies (with models drawn from four different games) was shambling their way from the graveyard to the fort, which was far better than a ticking clock in terms of maintaining a sense of tension. 

In fact, after Marshall Cole fought his way from the Emporium Saloon at one end of the street to the fort on the other end (but alas, not his deputy, Fergus), the defenders quickly deemed the rest of their comrades as a lost cause and sealed the doors of the fort after him.

"Welp, I'm callin' it - close them doors!"

All in all, it was a pretty fun scenario but I would change a few things if we played again; 

• move the stable and gatling gun away from the fort
• make the zombies Grit 2 instead of 3 to they get wounded by sixguns more easily, and can thus get up more! (thanks Scott!)
• give everyone sixguns so they can move and fire (rifles, shotguns and heavy pistols impede movement)
• leave scoped rifles in the fort and let players know they are there so they can get in early and offer covering fire
• make sure someone goes to the assay office and finds the dynamite!
• put more starting zombies between the defenders and the fort

And to be honest, I was hoping the zombie reveal would provoke more of a reaction, but after a zombie outbreak ocurred in the previous night's game of Bang! The Dice Game (courtesy of the "Undead or Alive" expansion), maybe it was inevitable. Or maybe it was when the bluegrass version of "Thriller" came up early in my playlist. 

Or maybe I just have to face the fact that after all the years we have spent playing together, the lads have just learned to expect the unexpected when playing with me? (Sigh.)

Well, at least they liked the t-shirts!

Tables of the Reconstruction

It wouldn't be the weekend before G&G if I wasn't feverishly painting models or scenery three days before our nineteenth get-together kicks off. 

This year we return to the Old West for a good ol' fashioned bank robbery scenario. The robbers start in the center of town and have to get off a table edge, while the lawmen come in from two other edges and try to stop them. 

I have a enough buildings for a very decent looking street, but nothing behind it on either side, and with 8 players and 16 models, big swathes of open ground will make the robber's job pretty much impossible.

So I am borrowing a few pieces and asked Jeff to print me a few more, which he did and brought them over Thursday night when he came to watch the hockey game. I primed them Friday, and started painting them Saturday afternoon. They are pretty rough, but done enough!

The troughs and outhouses will help break things up a little too, and the fences will make it a lot easier to do OK Corral-type scenarios to boot.

Totty and Earl and I did a run through of the bank robbery last weekend, and it felt good to get the rules back under us. Legends of the Old West (from the now defunct Warhammer Historical) is a fun, simple system that draws heavily on GW's Lord of the Rings game system.

But in the end, any excuse to push toy posses and outlaws around a miniature town will be taken.

As you can see though, even a wide thoroughfare resulted in significant bloodshed in very short order (at least one of which was a potentially innocent bystander shot by my ruthless marshall - or perhaps a collaborator undone by keen instincts? We'll have to wait for the inquest.

Don't be fooled by the bonnet - that's the ringleader!

At any rate, hopefully I will have more and better pictures of a bigger town (Fort Everett) next week following G&G XIX!

Serenity Gulch Stories: The New Kid

Beauregard regarded his gang’s newest member uneasily. He sat alone at a corner table, watching the other saloon patrons from over a warming mug of beer, his expression varying only as it shifted from disinterest to disdain. The young man was still dressed for riding, or work on the range, wearing his batwing chaps in the saloon, seemingly oblivious to the looks and snickers it generated.  He was clean shaven except for a carefully trimmed patch on his chin, and a long, dark lock of hair fell across his face, nearly obscuring his right eye. His red linen shirt had probably been considered fancy when he’d bought it, and was still one of the most colourful items worn in the Emporium that evening. Well, worn by men, anyways. 

One of the saloon girls strode over to the table and asked him something, but whether offered a stronger drink or the promise of companionship, he only shook his head.  Rose shrugged and began to return to the bar, but saw Beauregard beckon her over with a subtle raising of his chin.  She sat at his table and reached for the bottle of rye at its centre, pouring a glass for each of them while pointedly ignoring the others already sitting there.

“Doesn't seem like he’s much interested cher,” the gang leader drawled, drawing a snort from his right hand man, Cole.

Rose didn't rise to the bait. “Not in much of anything, so it pays not to take it personal.” She downed her whiskey and pushed the empty tumbler towards the table’s center. “He was talking a little bit earlier.”

“And about what, might I ask?” inquired The Daragh, the thoughtfulness of his question contrasting to the leering grin that seemed a permanent part of his countenance.

“How much better everything is in Missouri, for the most part,” replied Rose. 

Cole nodded.  “Just like Kansas City used to,” referring to their recently deceased partner.

The saloon girl shook her head.  “Not this one, he's from a ranch in East Missouri, out by Chesterfield.”

“Mopey bastard,” chortled Cole.  “The only folks say they’re from Chesterfield are ones what don’t want to say they’re city slickers from St. Louis.”

Rose smiled without showing her teeth. “That’s possible too.”

Beauregard frowned and scratched his jawline under his beard. “I might draw some exception to that remark, less’n you think Baton Rouge is sufficiently rusticated fo' y'self. Or maybe you think I’m soft too, eh?” Two seats to his right, Lafitte, sensing tension, stopped his endless card shuffling and sat back in his chair, hands dropping softly into his lap.

The significance of the other Louisianan’s posture either went unnoticed by Cole, or he wisely decided to pay it no heed.  He raised his glass to his lips saying, “Keep your shirt on, gumbo; everything is tougher in them swamps, present company included,” gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb at Lafitte. This garnered a chuckle from the sharply dressed man, who visibly relaxed but still left the cards untouched in front of him.

After a short pause, The Daragh spoke up. “Sure and does everyone in East Mo’ cut their hair that way then?”

The table erupted in laughter, but trailed off as the kid, who had obviously heard them, stood up from his table, purposefully, but without haste.  Beauregard noted for the first time that the young man wore his Colt in a cross draw rig, cavalry style.  A subtle and familiar click from beneath the table told him that Lafitte had thumbed back the hammer on at least one barrel of Heloise, his trusty sawed-off. Cole regarded the cowboy dismissively, while the grin never left The Daragh’s face as he locked eyes with the kid.

For his part Beauregard was content to see how events unfolded; a man can’t abide willful disrespect, but calling someone out over a comment on their hairstyle was the kind of prideful recklessness the Cajun’s particular brand of ongoing criminal enterprise simply did not need.

Anger was notably absent from the cowpoke’s face as he stared down The Daragh dispassionately, and his drawing hand hung motionless by his side, with nary a movement towards his holster.  When he finally spoke, he didn't even deign to raise his voice, almost whispering, “Don't think you know me,” before slowly walking out the doors of the Emporium and into the street.

The doors hadn't even stopped swinging before The Daragh slapped an open hand on the table in approval.  “Lad’s got some salt, and no one can tell The Daragh different, that's for certain.”

Cole nodded as well.  “Looks like the Missouri Kid is a steady hand at least; that's good.”

“East Missouri,” reminded Rose, prompting more laughter.

“Too long it takes to say, t-il pas?” mused Beauregard, “Reckon I will call him… the E. Mo’ Kid.”

Cole drained his whiskey and started to refill his glass.  “The Emo Kid?”  He paused to consider this, then shrugged non committally.  “Has a ring to it.”

Transitions

Every day is likely to bring changes, some big, some small. Usually you don't recognize these transitions until afterwards, but sometimes you can discern their presence, and it always easier to detect them occurring to another.

I had the house to myself for a while this weekend, which is unusual. Glory and Audrey attended a feis in Calgary, so they left early-ish Saturday morning, right after waking me up to tell me our vehicles had been rifled through in the garage, again. Did the door fail to close properly on Friday night, or did some skill pry it open with a letter opener? In the end, it is of little consequence; little buggers knicked all my change but left the little spring-loaded widget I keep it in, and that appears to be all that goes missing, so I'm calling it a win.

Prior to this feis, Glory had been down on the whole dancing thing. She lost a lot of practice time with her broken toe and school events, and the competition gets harder and harder as the girls in her age group get more and more dedicated.

Thankfully her teacher Lori is absolutely excellent, and explained to her that she has seen the effort Glory is putting in, but it will take some time to pay off. The girls that dancing came easy to are beginning to drop out, and if Glory perseveres, she will see better results. Her daughter went through the same thing at this age, Lori told her, but stuck it out and sure enough, she started placing better and enjoying herself much more

.
Glory took it to heart, worked some extra practices this week and came back from Calgary with her first gold medal in months, plus a few silvers to boot. Her placements weren't great across the board, but she can see the improvement. I'm proud of her medals, but even prouder of how she got them: determination. Did I have as much at her age? Not likely!

Fenya, on the other hand, had a formal engagement as grad date to a young man we know from church. She got her nails and hair done, found a cute and affordable dress at H&M, and was beaming when he and his mum (no license for him yet either) picked her up Saturday afternoon. His mum had arranged for her to sleep over if it went late, so when he held open the door for her (good stuff, that), the expectation was I wouldn't see her until church the next morning. I had the house to myself.

That's not a lot of good to me, so I invited Earl over for a burger and game of Legends of the Old West set in Serenity Gulch. Earl was stunned to discover that Fenya was off to a grade 12 grad, and that she would be attending her own next year at this time. "That's impossible," he protested, "I feel like I only just got out of high school a few years back, so how can people I know from that time have children who have nearly graduated? It doesn't make any sense!"

I nodded sympathetically. "Time flies when you're having kids, I guess."

Earl has played a lot of games over the years, but this was his first exposure to a tabletop miniatures campaign. As a sort of hybrid between wargaming and roleplaying, he took to it immediately, naming and equipping his Lawman posse, selecting the most characterful models and imbuing them with significant backstories within minutes of getting them onto his roster, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows him.

We rolled up the 'Vendetta' scenario, familiar to us from G&G X, with my outlaws, the Carson City Crawdads, holed up in the Emporium Saloon, and his Lawmen coming to chase them out. I left half my gang in the hotel and sent the other half dashing across the street to the hardware store to try to get the drop on Sheriff 'Bulldog' Lightfoot, his deputy Big John, and a rifleman.

Photo credit: Earl J. Woods

In the end, a lucky shot dropped one of his deputies and gave me the advantage in the street fight, and my prizefighter Tyrone took a wounded Bulldog down for the count. Banaczek, one of Earl's posse, got right up to the window of the saloon, but merciless Lafitte let off both barrels from a sawed off shotgun out another window before he could fire, and nearly took out two more of his vigilantes at the same time. (Including Tennessee Tess, who shrugged off so much lead in the game I figure she is either a revenant or a terminator.)

After the game, you roll on some tables to determine the fate of those taken out of action, and the Lawmen were rather the worse for wear with both henchmen succumbing to their wounds. However, all Earl's heroes withstood their injuries, and even ended up tougher for having done so! On my side, the Crawdads lost one of their henchmen, Kansas City, but the surviving heroes got a fair bit of experience and loot out of the deal, so that worked out all right. And most importantly, Earl is enamoured enough with the referee-less campaign system and the intriguing notion of models developing reputations that he seems eager to revisit the Gulch again.

Tonight I finally cleared away the junk between me and the painting table and got back to painting for the first time in a long while. I picked a hired gun, hero and henchman to add to my reserves, and painted the hero figure first because he looked fairly badass and I had a colour scheme in mind.

It was never my intention to make him into the worlds most dangerous looking leprechaun, but that's how he started taking shape, so I went with it, and if one of the lesser heroes (or "kids") in my posse goes down, I know who is coming in from the wings.

But the transition for me is the realization that painting is not nearly as easy for me as it once was. Part of this, I know, is lack of practice, and I hope to get a little more painting done over the summer to clear out some of the backlog of denizens for Serenity Gulch. But I also know a lot of it is in my eyes. My last major painting project, my Valhallan regiment for Warhammer 40,000, was done well before my eyeglass prescription required transitional lenses, or what we would have called bifocals in the old days.

Laying the colours on the coat, finding the trigger guard on his scattergun, even the shading was not too difficult, but the faces I used to take such pride in may be a thing of the past. I had a dickens of a time just getting the ember placed on the cigar in his mouth, and the eyes aren't awful, but a long ways off from what I have painted previously.

Still, life is change: we grow up, we grow older, and then...whatever's next. The weakening of the eyes is just one more side effect of aging, a terminal condition but one with only a single alternative which is even worse. This is small potatoes, so I intend to keep painting, as much as I am able, and if the figures aren't pretty, at least they'll be done. Maybe I will even relent and get one of those magnifying lamps people have suggested to me for a couple of decades now. Regardless, I'll lament not having done more when it was easier!

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G&G X: Nine for Ten

There is a core group of 8 of us who comprise the majority of Gaming & Guinness events; sometimes situations preclude everyone's attendance, such as work or distance. For instance, this year, a rescheduled assignment kept Mike T. from joining us until Thursday morning, but Colin made it out from Vancouver Island to attend for the first time in six years.

This brought our total number of attendees up to nine, like the Fellowship of the Ring.  Or perhaps more like the Nazgul; it can be difficult to distinguish...

He brought the drinkers:teetotallers ratio down to a paltry 2:1, but despite a legendary beer being half of the name, G&G has never been focused on drinking. The half-dozen Edmontonians can get together for a game and an ale just about any time, and we often do, but bringing in the out-of-towners and having lots of people stay the night prompts a more carefree attitude and deeper fellowship. Sharing meals together gives us a chance to catch up, to chat in a manner that often eludes even those of us unseparated by time zones.

But dice and models and cards are the hub by which our wheel turns, and the gaming was good this year, as it is every year. Island Mike kicked things off Wednesday with a game of Wits & Wagers, a trivia game using exclusively numeric answers, and placing player guesses on a betting line. The game itself is a ton of fun, and the wagering angle means even those who aren't good at trivia can even things out very quickly, but Mike had also created a set of questions linked to the 9 previous G&Gs, making the experience absolutely exquisite.

Thursday saw Mike T. make it back in time for our very first game in Serenity Gulch. Despite the fact that I didn't get as far in building and painting the town and miniatures as I would have liked, everyone seemed happy with the 'work in progress' rendition we ended up with.

The quick and easy nature of the Legends of the Old West rules made the game easy to pick up. We gave each player two miniatures to run, one sheriff or desperado (hero level) and one vigilante or rowdy (henchmen level), and ran a straight up street crossing gang fight with 8 models a side. Then we kept the same sides and tried a scenario out of the book, with the Outlaws edging out a victory over the Lawmen, ably abetted by Mike T.'s Apache Scout.

Thursday night we played one of the best games of Formula Dé I can recall, with the lead changing hands many times on the Monaco course before victory went to Colin, who insists the game would be more interesting if the vehicles were armed.

Friday afternoon was the introduction to the X-Wing miniatures game for most of us, and we were all suitably impressed: fast, simple mechanics, a fairly elegant movement system that has players revealing their pre-set maneuvers simultaneously before using a template to move their ship, and very well done models that come pre-painted.

Earl set up a scenario in which Darth Vader and a hand-picked squadron of Imperial fighters ambushed Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in retribution for the destruction of the first Death Star.

Totty selflessly sacrificed his two TIE Fighters, keeping the Millennium Falcon tied up at one end of the table while Darth Vader, my TIE Interceptor and two other fighters went after Luke and his escort.

Astonishingly, the Force was not enough to save Luke and his X-Wing and the Imperial heroes restored order by eliminating the terror-pilot of Yavin IV with a jail of turbolaser fire! At least, that's how the press release will read. I'm sure he ejected safely and is awaiting his chance to return to the fight,

Friday afternoon we schlepped down to Windermere for a VIP screening of Mad Max: Fury Road, and it was a great movie I intend to review later. Friday night was our opportunity to return to Rock Band, after Jeff went out to pick up a power cord for his PS 3. We were all a bit rusty, but with suitable amounts of liquid courage, a good time was had by all.

Saturday got off to a late start since the last of us wrapped up Rock Band after four a.m., at which point I put the chili together for Saturday night. Thankfully, a modest amount of prep work and the use of a slow cooker meant I got to bed a little before 5:30.

Would that as much planning went into the Call to Arms: Starfleet Battle game for the afternoon, but judicious application of a club-style 'Every Man/Klingon For Themselves' meant we were still able to finish by supper time.

The cutthroat nature of the scenario meant that a few people ended up leaving somewhat early, but consoled themselves by getting in a game of Pimp: The Backhanding on the floor, so they could still keep an ear on the happenings in the Harp Nebula.

Three Klingon ships met their objectives, of which my beloved battlecruiser Vengeance was one, having successfully boarded the U.S.S. Excalibur, subsequently destroying it, and then chasing off another Federation lapdog. Truly, a dark day for Starfleet!

Saturday's traditional chili dinner, like most of our meals, was taken outside. The weather broke Alberta G&G tradition by not snowing as well as being very, very warm. This also gave us a chance to take the group photo and show off the amazingly suave jackets Pete had made to commemorate our tenth (tenth!) year of Gaming &Guinness.

The final marquee game, as always, was Circus Maximus. This year we allowed everyone to take a medium chariot for free, hoping to tip the scales a bit more towards carnage, since our favoured light chariots are useless for ramming.

Thanks to two players thinking along the lines of, 'well, if a medium chariots good, then a heavy must be even better,' those scales tipped like a teeter totter after Shaquille O'Neal gets off his end. Of the nine chariots that started, only six came out of the first corner.

I took myself out of contention early on by swerving instead of braking to evade one of the heavies, but stuck it out and managed to finish the race. Island Mike was again the victor, taking the coveted Circus Maximus trophy back to Vancouver Island, with Earl and Scott rounding out the podium.

As always, G&G is a happy blend of the old and the new: new games, like Legends of the Old West and X-Wing and Wits & Wagers. New beers, like the Mellow Moon Pineapple Hefeweizen or the growler of Hogsbreath from Hogshead Brewing. And the old? Well, Saturday morning, that felt like us, frankly. But many tried and true games as well.

A decade later, I can't tell you how we did it: how we kept the momentum up on something that was initially a one-off event, prompted by the vision of filling a long empty basement with friends and games, and not having anyone need to drive home if they didn't want to. Somehow those first crude t-shirts made with iron-on inkjet transfers made it into an event, and captured the imagination of friends whose companionship I count among my most valued possessions, and whose commitment to fun and fellowship will keep this silly tradition going for at least another decade!

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