Sunday, 29 October 2017

Fish Stew - An All Hallows Special (not for the faint hearted)

Game Design

This game featured the rules written and used by Sprinks over at the Wronghammer blog (that's a link I hope, though my HTML is not what it was...). I tinkered slightly with the rules, "Blood, Guts and Severed Heads" to allow for one-on-one skirmish fighting, so it's now BGSH Lite. In the spirit of the Sprinks System, figures were left unpainted.

Storyline

Old Sir Bernard had retired from the Baronning business, moved to the coast and bought himself a nice little Manor he named Dun Slaughterin. He'd hung up his sword, thrown his armour in the shed and was looking forward to spending some quality time with Lady Bernard, sitting by the fire with his feet up on a serf, or some such. Then the messenger arrived.
"The King demands that all knights, old or young, must march North to The Death Lands with as many fighting men as possible, and join him in a mighty final battle against The Evil Personage and his monstrous army of... monsters. Oh, and as you live by the Sea he also demands that you bring a large cauldron of that fabulous fish stew they do around here. Farewell!"
Sir Bernard sighed and went to look for his horse...

 Objective

Sir Bernard and the Good Men must get the Fish Stew across the board. The Ambushing Goblins and the Troll must stop them. The Troll is hungry (of course) and wants the stew. The Goblins just want to kill as many men as possible. All normal Fantasy fare.

The Game

Overview of the board - What no grid?
Sir Bernard sends archers out to cover their advance through the Bad Lands. A measuring devise is used!
 
The precious cargo

The Ambush is sprung - Circle the Wagon!

First blood - A well aimed shot takes down a Goblin

Charge!



Blood, guts and severed heads indeed

The body count rises
 
The troll slinks away and it's defeat for the baddies

Sir Bernard has lost most of his men but saved the Royal Gumbo - hurrah!

Conclusion

A fun game with plenty of carnage and no serious consulting 200 page rulebooks or very expensive expansions, so therefore a success. Once again my troll was completely ineffective - another game like that and they'll be playing for the reserves.

4 comments:

  1. Nice report there sir!, loads of character. Fish stew is such an under used plot device I find!. I like the idea of one on one rules, how did you go about it?.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Mr Sprinks. I'll scribble the rules down sometime and put them in the In-House Rules section (on the right somewhere). Glad you liked the reference to Fish Stew - you never know what you'll get in the murky depths, a nice bit of fish, a claw, a tentacle...?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Loved that report. I really need to try El Sprinks' rules, and your own Jack.
    Believe it or not, your tinkering with the Portable Wargame stuff has me thinking about a 17th century skirmish and a wwii Armhem game with 54mm figures...no , I have no idea how my mind works either!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you m'lord. I enjoyed playing Sprinks's game - good fun though it would have made sense to stick the figures on bases first.
    Both of your scenario ideas sound very interesting. Looking forward to reading the reports

    ReplyDelete