Celebrity Endorsement

Bollywood hippy chick, Zeenat Aman says:

"My busy acting schedule can really be tough on my complexion. After returning home from a hard day's prancing around in front of a film crew, I use The Revenge of Carlos Plynkes. It contains the miracle ingredient Plynxwellox, which has been proven by top scientists in a field to reverse the seven signs of ageing for up to eight minutes per application.

The Revenge of Carlos Plynkes. For truly beautiful skin."

Though scientifically proven to reverse ageing in our labs, there is no actual evidence it works. Not to be taken internally. May cause skin irritation and drowsiness.

The Lost Payroll of the Beckmanntruppe: A first game of Triumph and Tragedy

German Central Africa, 1890. The steamer Kaiserin Helena carries a precious cargo along the remote north west shore of Lake Wittelsbach. It is the payroll for the Beckmanntruppe, which is upcountry involved in hard fighting claiming the lands of the Halloo-Halloo tribe for the Fatherland. What happens next is unclear. A mutiny, violence, and an unexplained boiler explosion. The steamer runs aground in hostile territory. Only one man returns to civilisation. It is Käpitan Kaufmann, burning with fever, raving mad and with several spears sticking out of him. Unable to carry it back on his own, he claims to have buried the payroll and drawn a map showing its location. Unfortunately, due to chronic (and sadly terminal) absent-mindedness, he left the map in his desk drawer on board the Helena. He dies before he can give the location of the grounded steamer. Despite several searches, neither the ship nor the gold is found. It passes into local legend, and claims the lives of several reckless treasure hunters.

1916. While patrolling over the lake in search of German warships, Lt. Don Wimble, RNAS, spots the overgrown remains of the steamer from the air. Later he drunkenly boasts of his find in a Zanzibar saloon. Soon the entire region is talking about the treasure. Only the local German forces and the Congo Belgians have the wherewithal to mount immediate expeditions to claim the gold. Two independent-minded local commanders decide to grab the loot for themselves. As fate would have it, they approach the area from different directions at roughly the same time.

So this is the background to our latest game. Really just a cobbled-together scenario dreamed up without a lot of care or thought, for the purposes of trying out Triumph and Tragedy.

(Clicking on pictures generally increases their bigness)

This is a relatively new game written by a couple of fellow forum members on LAF. Björn was kind enough to send me a copy for free (autographed, no less!) when they came out. So the least I could do was give them a try and do a write-up on the game. They are an early 20th Century skirmish rules set, suitable for the Great War, between the wars Back of Beyond type affairs, Pulp fun, and even Darkest Africa, too.

It uses quite a novel (well, it's new to me) card activation system. This meant of course we needed to print up some unit cards. This was all a spur of the moment sort of thing, and I found that I didn't have any card to print on. Bugger.

But I did have...

... A laminating machine! I love the smell of lamination in the morning. Smells like victory.

Anyway, to the game. It was Plynkes against Siklee, who this time asked to be the Germans.

The playing area. A patch of parched scrub land on a remote shore of the lake. A native village dominated the centre of the table. Its inhabitants had scarpered, fearing a punitive expedition coming to punish them for what they did to the shipwrecked survivors of the Kaiserin Helena.

Speaking of whom, here she is. Not in bad shape, considering. Within was the map. Whoever got to it first would then be able to determine where to dig. We put three random locations into a hat (actually my Wolseley helmet which seemed kind of fitting).

These possible treasure sites were:

The lonely grave of Feldwebel Löhne...

Beneath the the cooking fire of the villagers...

Or 'X marks the spot.'

We weren't allowed to dig on the off-chance. Possession of the map was required before anyone could go making holes in the table.

The expedition leaders: Commandant Van Driscoles and Commissioner Steimel.
(Yes, they are my Flynn O' Flynn and Fleischer figures, but I didn't have time to paint up new characters specially for this game).

As it was our first go, we decided to keep our forces relatively simple. They were nearly identical.

We both had:
A hero leading the expedition,
A unit of trained askaris,
A unit of veteran askaris,
A unit of musket-armed irregulars,
Some porters,
And a support weapon.

The German support weapon was a heavy machine gun. The Belgians had a shiny new trench mortar. One of these would prove much more useful than the other, and indeed probably decided the outcome of the game. But more of that later...

So the game began. The Germans entered the fray, tightly-bunched and looking very orderly.

And the Belgians staggered on, in a somewhat more casual fashion.

First order of business for me was to find a suitable spot to set up my mortar. Nice and safe behind some rocks. The spotter for the mortar can be seen off to the left in the middle distance.

While I was doing this, the Germans had quickly advanced and set up their HMG to cover the open space in the middle of the village.

I had split the rest of my force into two wings. On the right the veteran askaris and the irregulars took up a defensive position on the edge of the village, to observe and hopefully hold off the enemy. Shots were exchanged but they didn't amount to anything much.

While on the left Van Driscoles and the trained askaris headed for the Helena, which they reached unmolested by the enemy.

But this good news was not much on my mind. For back at the village, the full force of the enemy was bearing down on my weak position, and to make things worse I was in danger of being outflanked on my extreme right. This position was obviously untenable. Should I sacrifice these men to buy time for Van Driscoles to find the map?

Nah, that ain't my style. The askari were hastily redeployed...

And fire was provided by the mortar to cover their retreat. It missed its target (the Maxim gun), but the wide shot fell amongst a nearby unit, causing casualties, mayhem and havoc, and also pinning a unit of askaris (The poker chips and white flag represent suppressions and pinned status respectively).

Mortar rounds continued to plunge into the village...

...Giving my forces a chance to pull back to a more defensible location.

But back at the Helena things were also going badly. Van Driscoles had boarded the remains of the steamer alone to search for the map. Spotting this, my opponent had sent his Ruga Ruga over to deal with him. Things looked black for the Belgian. But being a hero, he calmly stepped up and emptied his shotgun into them. Then, standing upon the deck, he calmly reloaded and opened up on them again. His high initiative rating (thanks to being a hero and having the 'Tactician' skill) and the luck of the cards, allowed him to get two shots off without reply.

Which sent the Ruga Ruga scurrying away. They never managed to regain their nerve, and eventually legged it all the way off the table.

Meanwhile the Germans advanced through the village, past the positions recently vacated by their foe.

Who had retreated to the nearby cover of some rock outcrops, and resolved to sell their lives dearly.

Now it became clear what my opponent's plan was. He was going to leave me to find the map and treasure now, but was moving to cut off my exit area. I would have to fight my way past the Germans to get the gold back to the Congo.

At this point I offered to call a truce and split the money with him, but he was having none of it. Fool.

But his veteran askaris, spotting my irregulars taking cover in a nearby patch of brush, couldn't resist advancing to test their skills with the bayonet. Surely they could beat these badly-armed raw troops? Well no, as it happens. Thanks to superior numbers, and some abysmal dice-rolling on Sickers' part (he was plagued with unluck throughout the fight, it must be said) the irregulars eventually triumphed, after a mammoth fight that seemed to last an age. They lost but a single man, and took one of the enemy askari prisoner.

Back now from the Helena (and having found the map), Van Driscoles set the porters to work. Turns out the payroll was buried beneath the fake grave after all.

At this point, after seeing their best troops humbled by, let's face it, a gang of armed hobos, the Germans lost heart. They had been taking gradual losses from rifle and mortar fire, and realised they could no longer really contest the issue. So they began to pull back, and I was happy to let them go.

So after some hard digging, the sacks filled with gold were uncovered. Victory to Brave Little Belgium! Hurrah!

The prize of Best in Show or at least an Honourable Mention must go to the Belgian irregulars. Raw troops armed only with muskets, they managed to see off the best the Schutztruppe had to offer. Good for them. Now my Ruga Ruga, whatever rule system we have used, have almost always performed extremely poorly. But these newly-painted figures, given exactly the same stats, behaved like heroes. I think those particular Ruga Ruga figures are just cursed. They must be.

Final Tally
The Germans lost 21 killed and wounded, one captured. Miraculously, the only Belgian loss was one irregular musket man killed, who was cut down during the famous melee.


So that was Triumph and Tragedy. I must say I was very impressed with these rules. The innovative card system, while being a slight pain in that you need to print out a unique card for each and every unit, I think is well worth the effort. All in one place you are able to keep track of which units have acted in a turn, who has the initiative, and the stats of the currently-acting unit. And the idea of selecting the order in which your units act by the way you stack the deck is great. It forces you to prioritise your force's actions, which can lead to some tricky decision-making. And the more decisions you have to make, the more involved you feel in the game, at least that's how I feel. I shall definitely be playing these rules again.

In retrospect, perhaps the Belgians had too much of an advantage with the mortar versus the HMG. But to be fair, it never actually hit anything it aimed at. All of the casualties it caused were the results of extremely lucky (or unlucky from a German perspective) deviation rolls. The German MG never seemed to find itself in a good place to fire (mostly because I ran away from it whenever possible) and I think it only fired for one turn in the whole game. On the other hand, the spotter for the mortar was constantly on the move (within his allowed limits) trying to find things for his parent unit to shoot at, which meant that they got off four or five good shots, about half of which caused absolute (and accidental) devastation.

Sometimes the dice just don't love you, Sickers...

I don't think I'm about to give up Price of Glory for my existing (and planned) Great War campaigns, because I really like it. But there's plenty of room for more than one game in our gaming circle, and I think T&T is perfect as an alternative to In the Heart of Africa (which I do like, but not as much as this) for Darkest Africa games. I think it is also well-suited to side-shows such as the Great War in Africa, and more Pulpish and not-quite-historical games like the one described here.

So that would be a definite thumbs-up from me and Sickers (and I'm not just saying that because Björn and Chris are fellow LAFers).

The figures used were mostly Copplestone, Foundry and Brigade, while the Belgian trench mortar and crew were conversions based on Old Glory figures. The Kaiserin Helena is a John Jenkins model (um, I think so, any road), and the village came from Grand Manner.

Thanks to Björn for the freebie copy of the rules, and Björn and Christian for answering my queries and general botherments about the rules. We were play testing a provisional rules amendment for the game, but unfortunately the situation it covered didn't arise during our game. Oh well, I guess that means we don't get paid. Never mind.

If you're interested in Triumph and Tragedy, there is a website:
triumph-tragedy.de

And the authors can be found hanging around on Alex Bews' forum, where they indeed have their own board:
Lead Adventure Forum

They are very helpful in responding to rules questions and the like, and a quick response is usually forthcoming. All in all a great bunch of lads. To be honest, what with them, Iron Ivan's Chal and Keith, and the Rattrap gang of ne'er-do-wells, I'm starting to expect this kind of service. So if you are a games designer who doesn't like being bothered in the middle of the night with stupid, brainless rules questions, then I don't think I shall be buying your game, thank you very much.

That's it for now, ta ta.

Niles von Crane's Flying Circus!

Friday night brought a slightly different style of gaming session to normal. It was all straight-out-of-the-box gaming. No painting for weeks and weeks only to end up disillusioned with the average-looking results of your hard toil, no crappy-looking almost-suitable terrain (well, not much), just lovely prepackaged gaming delights with an absolute minimum of effort. It's a lazy boy's dream, and the future of gaming, boys and girls!

Just don't tell the gang at Lead Adventure, lest they burn me as a heretic!

First up was the rather delightful, and newly-acquired Wings of War. Here we see Chronoglide et Fils. Chrono is doing his best to look windswept and moody (but I think he's coming over more just as grumpy) for the camera, while Fils is engaged in Brain Training or something.

...And they're off. It's the Red Baron, failing completely to line up his shots on the enemy. There was a lot of this kind of thing. The business of having to think three moves out in advance is heaps of fun, makes for much tension and excitement, and is generally a grand idea. But it does mean, with novices like us at any rate, that you spend a lot of time flying around in confused circles not shooting at anything. Or randomly shooting at someone who unexpectedly pops up in front of you who you weren't expecting to shoot at all.

Still, one suspects that the real thing may have been a little like that. For everybody except the top aces, at any rate.

That's more like it. Take that, Englander! DAKKA! DAKKA! DAKKA! DAKKA! You have to make the gun noises or your shots don't count, it says so in the rules.

Notice my hastily-improvised playing area, cobbled together from felt, canvas and leathercloth. So rubbish home-made scenery was not entirely absent after all.

We had two games, both times with Wakey and me as the Allies, and Sickers and Chrono the Central Powers. Chrono got shot down the very first time he was fired at by Wakey (which was funny), and mostly due to luck I eventually brought Sickly down in a seething ball of flame.

In the second game my Belgian accidentally flew his Camel off the map (what an idiot!), and then the two Dr.Is rapidly devoured poor Wakey (Those Dreideckers with their tight turns are nasty little bleeders).

But because I never got shot down, I guess the Allies won overall on points (4-3). A bit like the war itself, really.

So that was Wings of War. Great fun, one to get out after Christmas Dinner, when everyone is getting tired, 'toxicated, and tetchy, I reckon. Might get one of the other boxes to add to the rules complexity and scenario options at some point.


Next it was: A Dungeons and Dragons ride!

Yes, the D&D board game. Seems to me the ideal way to play the game. I cut my role-playing teeth on the excellent Call of Cthulhu, so have no fond teenage memories of "Steal the Monsters and kill their treasure"-gaming like some other people have. Never quite saw the point in it, after atmospheric games with characters, a terrifying ambiance and an actual plot. But this is the ideal way to experience such dubious entertainment. Nicely packaged with high production values, and the plot (such as it is) already worked out for the GM (I'm not a DM, I'm a GM. Dungeon Master? Who wants to play a game where you just guard a bunch of prisoners? Well, maybe if they were sexy lady tennis-player prisoners in their knickers, but that's a whole other matter...)

Wakey bought me this as a gift ages ago, and though Sickers and his elder brother had played it, the gang as a whole hadn't touched it before. So now was the time.

It was all good, old-fashioned fun, and I think everybody enjoyed it. It was a raid on a Goblin lair, the naughty inhabitants of which had kidnapped the local mayor or something. Bish, bash, bosh. Lots of hitting things, casting spells, laughing at the Thief's complete ineptitude concerning spotting hidden traps, and finally a nice healthy dose of bickering over treasure. You get the idea. We'll probably continue with this on those occasions when nobody has met their painting deadline. A nice change from the norm of tedious painted-figure gaming. All the monster-killing, treasure-hunting, trap-setting off fun of D&D without having to keep up the ludicrous pretence that one is role-playing.

So, an enjoyable evening, particularly Wings of War for me. It's got me really looking forward to the new Red Baron picture that is supposed to be imminent. Though I do think the producers of that one have missed a trick. There is only one actor for this role: David Hyde Pierce. He's the spit of old Manfred, I tell you.

Manfred von Crane and Niles Richthofen. Can you tell which is which?

See? Uncanny, isn't it? You absolutely can't tell which is which, can you? Don't say you can because you can't. If you say you can then you're just a bloody big liar. Stop lying! What are you lying for? Don't you know lying is bad? Stop it now! I sha'n't tell you again...

There's only one Gil Gerard, Browder, and it ain't you!

My good friend Chronoglide is a big fan of Farscape. Personally I have always thought of it as "Buck Rogers meets the Muppets", only with truckloads of added tedium, as Buck Rogers and the Muppets together in reality would be brilliant. But he likes it. Bless. So it was inevitable that at some point he was going to want to game it on the tabletop. As I had yet again failed to provide anything for us to play, I reluctantly agreed to this misguided scheme. So that's what we did.

Here he is setting up his little show, while in the background Wakey fills himself full of Caffeine in order to stay awake. He's obviously seen Farscape before!

Chrono's rules set of choice for the evening was something called 5150, which I had heard Sci-Fi nerds on TMP jabbering on about in the past, but I was totally unfamiliar with it myself.

We were to have only one character each. Ooh, very RPG. This type of thing is all the rage these days, what with .45 Adventure, Gloire and all that. Thankfully, neither the preposterous Wookee Klingon nor any of the Muppets would be taking part in this adventure. But three of the heroes of the show were to land on a lawless planet in order to procure much-needed spare parts to repair their damaged mother ship, Moya.

(That shuttle pod of theirs looks familiar. If it is a consular ship, then where is the ambassador, eh?)

A picture of Moya, just so we know what we're all fighting for. At least I think that's the right Moya. I wasn't sure so I used Google Images.

Hmm. Is that right? Tell you what, why not check for yourself?

So, the characters involved: As I said, it wasn't the complete cast, just enough for us to have one each. Sickers played pale Buck Rogers imitation, Crichton, human astronaut suddenly propelled into a frightening new Muppet-filled galaxy, or something. In our gang it is the law to refer to him as Gil Gerard, or just Gil, though this really does a great disservice to that truly great actor from the 80s.

Wakey was playing Chiana, a sort of light grey alien lass with Halle Berry's cast-off hair from X-Men.

While I played sultry ex-Peacekeeper turned renegade, Aeryn Sun. I can tell you want me. Stop staring at my right boob, you lecherous dogs!

So there we were, newly-arrived on planet Numberwang, in search of a second-hand de-nobbulator or Gayon-frottage-attachment or something. So we set off for the market district, but unfortunately fell foul of the local culture. Apparently there are very strict rules of behavior between the various guilds, gangs and other factions here, and the locals police themselves without recourse to any official law enforcement. But unfortunately for us anything goes as far as outsiders are concerned.

So we were soon set upon by the local riff-raff.

So the dice were soon rolling, and laser blasts (or whatever they call them in Farscape) were flying about all over the place.

Here's me, shooting a hoodlum, and blowing most of the special effects budget in one go.

After a brisk firefight, we had dealt with the delinquents. All either dead, retired hurt or run off. A few polite enquiries told us that we needed to speak to a trader known as Honest Jangwed who had a warehouse full of Moya bits on the other side of town.

So off we went. Here's a part of the game that was rather cool. We immediately stepped into the next episode, all ready set up on another part of the table. Having a game made up of several small vignette encounters like this is something new to me, and I like it. You tend not to get bored so like with a big old fight dragging on all night all across the big table (that's a terrible indictment of our attention-spans these days, ain't it?). This kind of thing would fit in sweetly with .45 Adventure and Gloire I reckon. Don't know if it is part of the whole 5150 thing, or if Chrono made it up himself, but it is a refreshing new thing to me. I like refreshing new things.

Later, on the other side of town: We found the area of Jangwed's warehouse, but unfortunately there were lots of unfriendly-looking security types around.

It was decided that I would approach them openly, and try to negotiate an audience with Jangwed. In case things went awry, the others would sneak around the side, ready to launch into action at a moment's notice...

Predictably, things did go awry, almost immediately. Aeryn is used to getting her own way, and the guards, thinking she was a Peacekeeper, weren't really in the mood to cooperate. This combined to create an atmosphere of tension and mistrust. Talks broke down, and they ordered her to drop her weapon and lie down on the ground.

Her response?

... Predictably violent.

Chiana chimed in, too. She might as well, as she hadn't done much up to now.

This resulted in one guard taken out, and another one grovelling in a puddle of his own wee. More guards turned up, but they weren't up to much, and eventually scarpered, leaving their boss in our clutches. We held him upside down and shook him until the shock absorbers or brake pads for Moya fell out.

Back to the landing pod then. But what's this?

Bad guys, hanging around outside our ship?

Oh no! Peacekeepers! Led by a PVC-clad lady Peacekeeper armed with a dangerously low-cut top and fully-loaded cleavage! This isn't good. We'd been fighting cowardly nobodies up to now. These baddies were the real deal. And they were after us! I had totally forgotten that we were wanted renegades! How could that slip my mind?

As they advanced, Gil Gerard, hero that he is, hid in a tent. Chiana hid behind a tent, only Aeryn (that's me remember) was brave enough to face these fearsome soldiers.

Or stupid enough. Aeryn was promptly shot, and went down in a heap.

The lady peacekeeper came over to gloat and then... A-ha! Aeryn had been shamming!

The very last of the special effects money went on this shot, as you can probably tell. Aeryn brought the chief baddy down, and she wasn't shamming. She was, though, still alive.

With their leader gone, most of the rest ran off, the remainder were ruthlessly gunned down. So our heroes made it back to Moya, complete with a sexy prisoner, who Aeryn took charge of.

So what happened next?

Well, this year Moya made it to the Quarter Finals of Roland Garros before losing to Rafael Nadal, Gil continued his regular guest spot on Sesame Street: The Next Generation, while Chiana had to give Storm her hair back in time for X-Men: The Last Stand. And as for Aeryn and the Peacekeeper chick? What of them?

In the immortal words of Stu and Rich ... And then they Lez Up.

****

In some ways the game was a triumph (which is odd, as Chronoglide was running it), short bursts of excitement make for a good gaming experience and we all took to 5150 pretty well. It's a nice system, all the reaction checks are lots of fun, and I certainly wouldn't mind playing it again.

But this is exactly where it all fell down as a simulation of Farscape. Where was the headache-inducing tedium, eh? (Seriously, Farscape almost always gives me a headache). Where was the despair, irritation, the turning over halfway through to see what's happening in (God forbid) Hollyoaks?

So in short, the experiment was a complete failure. If we are to try and do any more Farscape gaming in future, may I suggest we use a game system that is known not to produce fun, such as DBM or Phoenix Command?