Author Archive
An Evening of Dark Fortresses and Perilous Dungeons:
Mike, Phil, Alex, Darryl and Bruce.
First up was Conan. The Cursed Shape Shifting Sorcerer Scenario for 5. Phil as Overlord. This was a tricky one for the Heroes but the time pressure is on the Overlord which is a nice twist. 7 turns to break the Curse by sacrificing 3 pirates on 3 altars.
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The Fortress with the Undead minions of the evil Sorcerer in the centre.
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3 of our Heroes; Conan (Mike), Savage Belit (Alex) and Amboola (Darryl). Bruce’s Prince plans to sneak up the rear wall.
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Darryl holds the centre, suffering wounds being hampered by the Mummies Curse (and rolling blanks).
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Cona aided by Savage belit attempts to save the first Pirate but the Mummy Guards against his blows and sacrifices the hapless victim.
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Meanwhile the Prince has been held up by hordes of Undead coming at him from both directions.
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The Camel (Sorcerer) flees the Prince in readiness for the arrival of the Second Pirate at the next Altar.
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It is the final seventh turn and the third and last pirate has been dragged to the third altar by the Camel. There is just enough gems for the Overlord to move one Mummy into position to attack the Pirate. With a blank rolled it is down to the last gem and the last possible re-roll to get at least one hit for the Mummy to slay the Pirate and break the Curse. Success for the Overlord. That was close!
Next up: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Everyone plays. An odd scenario as it turned out. Everyone took lots of hits at the beginning exhausting the Cleric’s Healing and themselves. In the middle, no Monsters at all but Bruce got his Ranger killed by failing to disarm a Trap. Then as the roof was about to fall in and knock out Phil and Mike plus Alex, Alex was able to deliver the killing blow on the Ettin for the heroes to win a partial Victory (one surge used). Also odd was that we only drew gold coins as the treasure cards ended up clustered at the bottom of the treasure deck just out of reach. Onwards as we get closer to the final showdown before the next expansion arrives hopefully!
Painting notes.
Spray paint army painter leather brown. Then add in dark granite for skin areas and gold, bolt metal, bronze mix for decorations. Chain mail for sword blade. Graveyard earth for bringing out correcting any bandages over skin areas. Strong brown wash. Sand mix base. Graveyard earth base. Highlight bone white. Spray varnish Testors dullcote.
Painting notes.
Troll brute. Fairly straight forward to assemble. In stages. Use superglue. Build up then glue to base. Sand and slate to base. Mr white putty to fill in gaps. Repeat when dry. Spray rotting flesh but maybe bone white better. Bone white to skin. Rhinos hide the leather. Tin blitz the metal. Same for rider orc. Next wash brown, strong brown army painter. Then bone white again. Highlight white. Edge metal with boltgun metal. Paint details on chair and rider. Cloth red. Leather rhinox hide and dark wash army painter. Flesh dark flesh highlighting. Used gw spray varnish.
We played again. Another great game. Mike took an early lead with a strong power base around Gallia Hispania. Phil and Alex were in Asia and Egypt with DARRYL in Macedonia. Hordes of Nomads and Sassanids poured out giving Phil and Alex a hard time. Then two pretenders in Egypt and Syria. The northern barbarians either massed or poured into Asia.
Phil took out the two pretenders giving Mike a slight chance to become emperor but he failed the roll on three dice. Then Phil took his chance and succeeded. Unfortunately the Nomads reappeared to distract his forces just at that moment and Mike marched into Africa. Fortunately Phil held him off and survived the Nomads and Persians just. Meanwhile Alex lost all control in Galatia Asia but eventually defeated the Persians and Goths so was keeping pace with VP but lacked strong cards.
Darryl marched on Rome and occupied the capital. This drained the emperors support but he lasted longer than Phil could have imagined thus garnering strong VP. Mike decided to give up on the whole invasion and the empire and marched home to form his own break away nation. Darryl deposed Phil only to find Mike as a Pretender and this meant he gained less from the post but as he said at least he was emperor. Phil finally was able to bring the strong cards into play from his time as emperor and gained the last few VP required to end the game at 60 and claim victory.
Another fun game.
Was great to see the emperor unopposed to see the value and to get a pretender on the map.
Another fantastic success for Mike in bringing this great new game to the table. Phil, Alex and Darryl played against him. Phil got off to a good start and managed to break away into a convincing lead.
However he became infuriated when Mike crowned himself emperor in Italian and abandoned his hard fought for province of Africa to take his place. He successfully deposed him on the second attempt after rolling too many ones on the first. See picture below when scored only three hits of four required. He then fell foul of mobs, barbarians and Darryl who all attacked him and lost support of the senate and his provinces. Mike had created a nice power base around Egypt and also had a very strong brittania province which he successfully held from Alex. Darryl scored huge amounts of GPs from his military prowess defending Pannonia and Macedonia. Alex held on to a fairly quiet and civilised Gaul and Spain but failed to oust Mike from Britain.
Phil was about to make a come back and was still holding on to a good lead when time stopped play. A victory of sorts but it was really only a learning game. Verdict was that this was a fantastic game that certainly deserves to make it back to the table.
Some Bronze Age skeletons rise again to do battle.
Mike, Alex, Darryl, Bruce and Phil.
First a game of standard 7 wonders. Bruce came first, then Mike, Alex, Phil and DARRYL. Phil got trounced in the military field and though he tried to gather some science they never came his way. Bruce had a very nice all round strategy so was victorious on his first game.
Next cities were added. This time Phil decided he was fed up getting trounced militarily. However everyone else gave up the arms race and hid behind diplomacy thus limiting his vp slightly in the. Last round, just enough to hold him back. Alex went all out on science and gave a masterclass on how it should be done. The victor was therefore Alex thanks to 55 points from science, followed by Phil with an all round but no science strategy, then Mike, Bruce and Darryl. Well done Alex for showing everyone how science can work for a victory.
Finally we played two rounds of Sherlock Holmes the card game in which Phil was victorious ending with a minus score whilst some players were closer to 100.
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