Deadzone and Cystoscopy.

I didn't plan much for last night at the club as my holiday looms and I had other things preying on my mind (see below), so I took up Simon's offer for some fun with Deadzone, a sci-fi skirmish, a few people were MIA this week so only three games were on offer other than Deadzone; X-Wing, Frostgrave and Age of Sigmar, not a historical game in sight.

Deadzone is much like a host of other games of its type, lovely figures, small table, plays quickly and doesn't last long, despite this the book looked fairly complex to me as opposed to say Dead Man's Hand which has about 10 pages of rules. The game itself proved to be fairly simple although like any game you play for the first time you will not be able to appreciate any subtleties. In the first skirmish I was given The Plague, horrible looking people up to no good, I think the enemy were humans or one faction of them. I simply tried my best and rushed in, obviously I was quickly shot down and Simon won the game comfortably. In the second we changed sides, I had learned a little and, like Simon before me led the humans to a resounding victory. At one point I fired frag grenades into a large melee involving some of my own men as I was getting nowhere in hand to hand.

The Plague

Humans?

I get trounced.

I win.

I have played Deadzone once before but a much larger game, it is not to be taken seriously and is good fun and fine for a club night. I was a tad distracted last night but I rallied and enjoyed the game, the second far more than the first.

I sent off another order to Rubicon on Tuesday night, a truck each for the British and Germans, I have been watching quite a few Bolt Action games on YouTube and can now understand why people bring transports. Bolt Action allows every truck to have a machine gun, despite this running against commonsense, yes I know some trucks had them but you won't see many in period photographs, to me it is simply annoying and gamesmanship, so, like not putting .50 Cal's on my British halftracks I don't do it. Anyway, I digress, the truck models are due for delivery today, superb turnaround from Rubicon.

 

Julian 'Del Boy' Ankers at the club when I told him I had ordered the trucks told me he had got several for the price of one on eBay (grrr), I looked this morning and could not see any bargains at all, in fact one guy wanted (with postage) £13 more than Rubicon was charging. There is obviously a knack to this. I have been very successful with my eBay selling over the past few weeks and got rid of the last of my stuff this morning, kerching! So possibly more Bolt Action stuff on the horizon when I get home.

I had a cystoscopy a few hours ago something I have been fearful about for over a week now, it is a check up on your bladder by a camera which goes in through your penis, I feel your eyes watering already. This is a by product of not getting enough antibiotics way back in December, I knew my bladder was not the problem but hey, I didn't do seven years at university. I made it to the waiting room at Lancaster and waited my turn with a woman shouting at her dad and sharing sandwiches and coffee while the woman next to me was praying, seriously, praying in a low voice. The woman next to her was flicking through Youtube videos and the rest of us got to listen at high volume to about five seconds of each one. Thankfully I was then called away, I couldn't really understand the doctor and had to ask several times what he had said, I winged it once and guessed right according to what he then said.

I was then led to a small room, told to drop my underpants and trousers to my ankles and lie on a bed, the Doc said he would be putting an anesthetic in my penis and it might be cold and a tad uncomfortable, he was definitely right about the second part as I let out a low "Wooooooooo". Before I knew it the camera was in and I could see what was happening on a monitor to my left, big deal, just red or yellowish flesh with veins all over, I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes despite there really being no pain, only a slight strange feeling and a need to pee, I merely wished for it to be over. It must have took less than ten minutes and that was it, nothing to report. It is more painful now going to the toilet than it was during the procedure, it can take a day or so for this feeling to go. I am now really, really looking forward to getting away on Friday morning. The procedure is not as bad as you think but you can still live without it.

The Magic Well

We were going to do Bolt Action last night but perhaps I am jinxed, I got a shout from Julian who wanted to run a Dead man's Hand game so Simon and I changed plans, a little later we were also invited to a game of Dracula's America but it was too late to change things again. I admit however the weird side of Wild West gaming does not appeal to me, but I know the author, Johnny Haythornthwaite, and he comes to the club now and again so I would have given it a try but it was too late.

Our game was supposed to be a four way shoot out but Alex asked to join in as he had watched the game on several occasions and had always wanted to try it out, so we did some juggling as we never leave a man behind and ended up with five players, not ideal but off we went.

Julian explained that in this particular town bang in the middle of main street was a well, someone started a rumour that gold from a previous time had been stashed in the well and someone had claimed recently to have seen it. The rumour spread like wild fire and shortly five interested gangs decided to check it out, but of course they all turned up at the same time.
 

The gangs muster.

 The Mexicans started the ball rolling by firing at some outlaws while taking over a nearby hotel as a base, the Outlaws did the same and dragged their wounded companion into Rogan's bar to take shelter while sending some riflemen to the roof. Everyone did the same, the Pinkertons settling down in the undertakers and some more Outlaws taking over another Rogan's joint, Rogan's being like Starbucks in this town, one on every corner. Ryan's dodgy bunch were left cowering behind gravestones and the dubious shelter of the nearby gallows. It was going to be a brave man who would run the gauntlet of fire to get to the well.

The Spider heads for Rogan's 2.

Julian gets to the well first with Simon closing in.

It soon became obvious Julian and Ryan had made an agreement and as Ryan took the Pinkerton's under fire Julian moved on into a position to make a run at the well, 'The Spider' (me) decided to assault Julian's Outlaws in Rogan's and cut off his retreat if he did manage to get some gold, my Sniper Bob or Roberto took down the first kill of the game, Julian's gunslinger. Seeing what was happening the Pinkerton's and Simon's Outlaws began some mutual support, I still threw lead at the men leaving Rogan's, I got another two in the course of the game and lost one Vaquero.

Back at the well despite the lethal rain Julian managed to grab some gold, Simon now threw his men at the well and he too managed some loot, Ryan failed to find any. Although men were falling in other parts of the street the well area seemed fairly devoid of dead and wounded considering how much firepower was concentrated there. As the clock struck 10 Simon had four gold and Julian three, although there was no way Julian's Outlaws were getting back to their horses through El Arana and his waiting companeros.

A great game, a lot of banter and laughter and a moving cactus, you would need to have been there. Perhaps an upturned bullion wagon or stage would have been more 'western' than the well but it was a good scenario for a multiplayer game and I would certainly have another go. The camera pans in on the eyes of each gang leader, the tension rises, sweat breaks out on the Mexicans brow, you know it has to be the Mexican, then the frantic scrabble for guns and lead starts flying, that's a rap.

Elsewhere we had a boardgame, Frostgrave and as I said Johnny's Dracula game.

Oh, Julian is off the hook re the tape measure, I found my old friend in the same bag I left it in. The contract has been cancelled.

Deadzone

Another miserable wet night, we have had some terrible weather recently albeit seasonal I suppose, my journey to the club was not improved by meeting a couple of less than decent drivers on the way, something which is all too prevalent in these here parts.

As I said last week this week it was a try at Deadzone, Mantic Games popular sci-fi skirmish. Whole planets have been sealed off as they slip into decline, however there are factions who still wish to make money from their resources and so these factions slip past the quarantine and make planet fall and of course end up fighting each other, I think that is the gist of the storyline.

I chose the 'Enforcers' which, if you read the blurb are the cutting edge of the military of the time and then some, I found out that they were more like our Community Support Officers for most of the game and they certainly shot like CSO's. The others were Mutants, Rebels and Orc's, they do get around don't they.

Ruined cityscape, this was quite impressive.

 Each faction has certain abilities, you then randomly choose a mission card and 20 other cards to play as the game progresses, once the hand of 20 is gone the game ends. I had to gain my victory points by killing off specialists or leaders and hold victory point Z and the squares around it, the problem was there were three zones and you had to get there to find out which one was which. Also placed at random in the playing area were little crates which would contain goodies for the troops e.g. extra ammo, grenades, chocolate etc. OK there was no chocolate.
 

The Enforcer squad with their stat cards.

My specialists, sniper and rocket launcher.

Mutants.

 Near my entry point was a goodie crate and just across the road a zone marker, perhaps I was right next to my objective, we would see. I set off and holed up with an all round defence, I put my rocket launcher on overwatch and aimed it at a tall building a way off with a goodie crate on the second floor, I wanted to catch any Orc who made his way up to grab the goods, with the Mutants coming in on my right I set up a defence with my Sergeant and Sniper while two grunts went for the crate.

Rorke's Drift Deadzone style.

I loosed off several shots at the mutants and only managed to wound one, there is a nice mechanism where you can simply blaze away just like in the movies and lacerate an area with bullets, this did me no good whatsoever but in my head I could imagine the chaos as the mutants scrabbled for cover, I really felt like doing sound effects but remembered where I was.

One brave trooper made it to the box and found extra ammo, he had to use it however as he blazed away at a mutant dog which attacked him, yes you guessed it, he missed. The Orcs meanwhile played a card which took my overwatch off, so the rocket launcher was now useless for a turn or so, but I had a cunning plan. The mutants closed in on me for some hand to hand at which they were supposed to be good and my men bad, but I killed the two of them. Over on the other side as the clock ticked down to the end of the game the Orcs raced their devil dog into a group of Rebels where it promptly blew itself up and merely showered the Rebs with it's own entrails, the Orc leader was unhappy. He decided as my rocket couldn't hit him to take his sniper to the top of the building with the crate, open it and take up a position. I played a booby trap card, the crate exploded and the sniper was thrown into the air and fell to his death, result!

The game ended with the Orcs as winners, their objective was to keep 50% of their force alive, an unusual card for Orcs but easily sustained, the Mutants got nothing and I am not sure how the Rebels fared, but I had killed two mutants and an Orc sniper without losing a man, so I did not win but I was chuffed.

Deadzone, another skirmish game which you can play with a minimum of figures, which looks cool has a great background story and has some interesting features. We played on a large table for a skirmish game and it is meant for a much smaller set up so we took some time to get into action, but once we got closer there was a lot more going on, I quite liked the larger table as it meant that I had to think about my moves vis a vis the objectives but it did take time to progress with four players. I enjoyed the game and look forward to playing again.

It looks like skirmish games are the norm these days and I don't see that changing as we greybeards with our big armies get older, they are clever, their production values are high and they present a false sense of wargaming on the cheap, but of course they are not as you always need or want the next expansion, new mats, buildings or new figures. I can happily play both but prefer big battles. Next week we are continuing with sci-fi as one of the club members has asked for an X-Wing game so Simon is busily preparing a scenario.

I see my membership has risen to the heights of 32, after a time I am convinced that widget counter is not working and stuck at a certain number, but no, so welcome Legion Games.