Cold Wars 2014

Things have been crazy busy lately so this is an abbreviated report on the Cold Wars Convention. I was only there for Friday and part of Saturday but it was a very good con. Although numbers seemed light on Friday morning by the afternoon, it was definitely busy and remained so for the rest of my stay. There also seemed to be some very high quality games in terms of scenery and figures.

I got to play in the absolutely delightful Aerosan race game run, where we had to contend with yetis, angry Inuits, and the other heavily armed jetskis. I actually finished second. Some pictures:

Friday night, I got to play in a "campaign" for the Kosciuszko Rebellion using Black Powder rules. We actually ran three games during the four hour period, with each game affecting the forces we had for the next session. It really made for a nice dynamic, the losing side would often cut losses rather than fighting to the last man. A wonderful chance to play in gaming style you don't often have at a convention. We Poles won the three matches but each one was a very close and we had some very lucky dice rolls. Here's some photos:

On Saturday, I ran the Terror on the Moscow Road. I had 11 players who seemed to be enjoying the not very serious tone of the game. It was basically Marshal Ney, Brigadier Gerard and various other characters from the Grand Army fighting off hordes of Cossacks along with packs of dire- and were-wolves lead by two vampires and their minions. Most of the French characters were slaughtered, althought Marshal Ney and Gerard survived, the good Marshal never giving up an inch of ground. A French opera singer who could hit hight notes that drove the canine creatures up a wall was one of the more successful. One of the vampire lords was killed by a heroic Polish captain who was prompltly torn apart by wolves. The other vampire was chased off the board by a fanatical Russian priest who felt the undead were worse enemies than the French. Here's a couple of pictures.

Here's some other games that caught my eye

Visions of the Capital of Old Ruritania, c. 1832

I haven't had much time for gaming recently (I'm in a show in a local theatre). I am getting ready for another Gothic Horror game later this year. This one will be set in Ruritania in the 1830s. In preparation for this, I began working on the layout for the capital city of Strelzov (Strelzau in Graustarkian). A brief pictorial tour of the capital is below.

Strelzov, the view from the Royal Castle.

A view of the city with the Radzivillovnian University in the foreground.

The northern end of Vladislav Square showing the Cathedral of Saint Ursula and the Royal Opera House.

Zagloba Prospekt, one of the more fashionable districts of the capital.

Fashionable Czirykoot Park, in the shadow of the Royal castle

The dark streets of the Old Town

The University: Professor Mercurio defends Alchemy from an attack by Science!

The Grand Ballroom at the Royal Palace

The orchestra

The King and his young bride.

And the dance went on...

Inspector Smelchak and the men of the Sventa Methodi Precinct prepare to go forth.

Main gate of the Cemetery of Saint Methodius.

Captain Milna hunts a fiend.

Fall In Convention

Due to scheduling, my attendance at Fall In 2013 was sporadic. Fortunately, I live only about 40 minutes away from the Lancaster Host so I commuted for Friday and part of Saturday. First, some general observations, as some other folks mentioned, attendance seemed to be light, especially on Friday. I noticed lots of games cancelled and at least two GM said they cancelled because they didn't have any players. I normally run big games with 10-12 players but this time I was lucky to have 6 players in the game I ran on Saturday afternoon. Despite that, I had a very good time, it was a good convention, and everyone else I talked to felt the same.

The game I ran was my weird science Roman game, Res Mechanica, that I had run at Historicon. The scenario took place at the end of the Year of the Four Emperors but in a world in which the Romans developed high technology. Vespasian's brother and his son and their retinues barricade themselves onto the Capitoline Hill after a failed attempt to get the rival Emperor Vitellius to abdicate. As the Capitoline is being assaulted by Vitellian die-hards, the Flavian relief forces, consisting of a strong cavalry force, including steam cavalry with the allied Sarmatian Ruritanii as well as the air and land ship elements of the Roman Fleet.

At Historicon, the Flavians prevailed through a slow advance that wore down the Vitellian defenders to break through. At Fall In, the Roman Fleet player pushed past the Briton and Amazon defenders and got into the city very early. There they met disaster. First a unit of Praetorians disembarked at a wine shop. Then Balteus (an ancestor of Blackadder's Baldrick) used his "cunning plan" ability to toss a augury chicken into the Archimedean heat ray of the landship, causing a grease fire that stopped the ship. The Vitellian Trojan Horse came up behind and set further fire to it. This caused a neighboring insula to catch fire that ultimately caused the destruction of the airship. On the other side of the board, the Flavian cavalry was chewed up but did get its big steam car into the city in time to break up the final Vitellian assault on the Capotiline. In the city itself, the Vitellians tried repeated to storm the Hill but were beaten back each time but it was a very close run thing. The big winner turned out to be Nigerapis (Blackadder) who abandoned the Vitellian side and ran off with Vitellius treasure and Mrs. Vitellius.

I ended up receiving an award for best game in my time slot.

The only other game I had chance to play in was Howard Whitehouse's Chainmail Bikini. As expected it was a great time. Four player leading teams of adventurers entered d a dungeon from four directions, hoping to rescue a prisoner being held in the dungeon. The rest of us players ran the barbarians and other things that were defending the dungeon. I got to play Nostril the Necromancer, the main villain who amazingly survived to retire, along with a withc from one of the other player teams, to run an Orange Smoothie stand in Boca Rotan, FLA. It was that kind of game.

Chainmail Bikini is the fantasy version of Howard's Astounding Tales!. He's added some really great features to CB, tactic cards, to enhance the hand-to-hand fighting rules. The rules should be published in the near future.

These are pictures of the "other City of Rome" game, Cy Taylor's Gangs of Rome. I was disappointed that I could fit this game in my schedule, it looked like great fun.

There was another anachronistic tech game, this based on the ideas of Leonardo Da Vinci:

Here's some other games that caught my eye: