Game Report: Galactic Dawn megagame.

Last weekend I took the train up to York for another Pennine megagame. This one was Ken Hay’s  Galactic Dawn – a classic space opera with warming empires much in the style of traveller and Star Wars. I was down as control (checking my records upon my return home I found it was my 20^th game that I had controlled) for one of the factions: the Imperia.  

The team were pretty switched on about what they wanted to achieve so attacked the game with lots of enthusiasm. Each team had a premier of some description, an admiral who took charge of combat at the map as well as a number of ‘envoys’. The envoys could perform everything from espionage and guerrilla warfare to diplomacy and statecraft. I think that these players had the busiest game bouncing around from player to player negotiating, doing deals and planning devious tricks.

 Compared to some control jobs my role was very rules- lite. I didn’t have much mechanical to do rather keep a track of any issues that affected my team, and what other teams were doing to mine. This was all relayed through the main plot control umpire. As we were an experienced team Ken more or less allowed us to run the game as we saw fit, free- kriegsspiel style. Given that latitude was nice and it help to work through the endless multi-layered plots we had going on. 

The Imperia team were heavily taxed by the dominant Argathi faction, rather punitively really, although I suspect that that was just a ruse to justify a war against them. The Imperia was the only faction that could, with the assistance of others, come close to ending Argathi hegemony. The team did some good salvaging of wrecks to boost their fleet numbers as well as judicious trade deals that allowed them to gain many tech advances.  The heavy tax burden ended up being needed by the Argathi to build a giant ‘Death Star’ style armed moon, this preceded the imminent arrival of both galactic empires. At this point the plots started to really stack up as the espionage/ diplomacy part of the game centred around assassinations of the Emperors at the singing competition. Meanwhile, at the map the fleets gathered to try and take down the ‘Death Star’ like space station. At the end of the game both emperors were dead, and the death star was blown up; the different player factions had coalesced into two big groupings… hopefully the stage has been set for a sequal.

 I’d been feeling a bit burnout with megagaming so I was unsure how I’d feel after doing this one but I was pleasantly surprised to be full of enthusiasm for them again. I’ve even been having ideas for my own again. Many thanks to Ken and the rest of the control team, as well as all the players, for making this a really enjoyable day out gaming. I’ll look forward to the games being run next year too.

 Cheers, 

Pete.

Game Report: Blitzkrieg Story- 1940, Megagame, Sheffield.

Last weekend I was in Sheffield city centre bright and early to play my first face to face megagame since pre- COVID 2019.  The game was one run by Paul of Story Living Games that was meant to run last year but, for obvious reasons, did not. Paul’s idea was to run a game a year based on the events of 80 years previously, see here and here. For the 1940 game what could be more iconic than the invasion of western Europe?

The game started the mid- week prior to the actual face to face game with both sides being able to spend points to attempt to alter the starting conditions of the game. By using the probability matrix that was designed for the game players would assign changes they wanted to make by impact and likelihood of happening. This was a nice way to get rid of the hindsight problem that can affect many historical scenarios when they are replayed with the same exact starting conditions (I’m predicating this on the fact that the losing side historical can be played differently to correct the mistakes made at the time and thus have an advantage). The only downside was extra work for Paul and his brother Phil running the game as they had only a couple of days to make the adjustments to the scenario. The German team, I can only speak for the side I was on here as I’ve not seen any of the British options or decisions, chose to reinforce our core concepts rather than try to do anything too outlandish. So, we improved our staff work, deployment, air to ground co-operation and river crossings, hopefully things that would be all needed to try and get to Paris.

I was on the high command team and was given the job of running the air war sub game. Split into a northern and southern half we had a game played a turn in advance that would determine close air support, interdiction, transport flights and such like in each half of the map. It is a nice little game that rewards careful husbanding of one’s assets rather than trying to get everything in the air at once. I was familiar with the game from doing the same job at the Czechmate ’38 game. The only downside with the game was that in the Northern sector the mix of allied aircraft was completely overmatched in both quantity and quality by the Luftwaffe my opposite number never really got much of a look in. Most days we never had less than total control of the air and always had air superiority. Given the number of aircraft involved, at least on my side, I did wonder if the upper limit of the game engine had been found.

On the map the German attack in the north quickly bogged down into the Dutch and Belgian defensive line, The BEF setting up quite far back in French territory. In the South the advance through the Ardennes was equally slow but due to the difficulties of the terrain rather than anything else. Gradually the superiority of the German war machine made headway. The Belgians being quite tenacious in the defence, in the south a brief sally on to German territory from the Maginot Line was quickly dealt with. Oddly the mass of the French units, mostly infantry to be fair but still a lot of them, did very little and adopted a very passive posture on their own soil. As a player quipped at the time: they seemed happy to defend to the last Belgian.

The Dutch were proving quite stubborn and rather than going down the route of terror bombing their cities to bring about their capitulation, the sorties were far better spent on interdiction missions, a coup de main mission was planned and launched by a fellow high command player. This proved to be a success, mostly, with the Dutch royal family entering German protective custody but with the regrettable death of the Princess. This action brough the Dutch team to the negotiating table and ultimately out of the war. Retreating north of the Waal, this let our forces have a full run south of it. At this time the Belgian were trying to do a complicated withdrawal and replacement of their units with the advance BEF which mostly succeeded bringing them into the fight. Although the French were still mostly passive. In the south the breakthrough we were looking through happened, and the armoured units drove hard through the French aimed straight at Paris, aided by the tactical paradrop of the Fallschrimjager. One wonders what could have been done on that front had they been given more armour….

Sadly, there was one player missing on the day. John P passed away during lockdown after a short illness, his presence at every game was guaranteed with his usual enthusiasm and great sportsmanship. A thoroughly decent bloke he will be greatly missed going forward. A toast was raised with a glass of his Port to his memory at the end of the game and an award for best sportsmanship during the game given out.

It was great to be back doing a face-to-face megagame again. Given the UK’s vaccine rollout and the space available to us in the church hall we used it felt perfectly fine and the right time to be doing a game. It was great to see people that I had not seen before the first lockdown. I hope this is the start of more games being run in person, they best way to experience them.

Cheers,

Pete.

From the Shed: nuke marker and Pripyat sign.

I have managed to get some paint on the first bits of my 3D printed terrain and am really pleased with how it looks.

 

First up is the nuked city marker. Can see this getting some use in megagames as given half a chance most players in those games get rather homicidal if they have any nukes in their arsenals.

I also pained up the famous Pripyat sign for some games of Zone Alfa, when the club reopens. A simple grey scheme and plenty of weathering seems to set the tone right for the game.

Cheers,

 

Pete.

From the printer- sci fi terrain.

Firstly I hope everyone is dstaying safe and well in these lock down times.

I’ve been using my time to do a bit of 3 D printing. and getting them prepped for paint. This just consists of a quick clean up and a few coats of Mr. Surfacer paint.

First up are a selection of vats and tanks.

Then with have some tank traps and an ammo cache that I’ll probably use for Zone Alfa.

Definately for Zone Alfa is this sign from Pripyat seen here un prepped.

Finally I printed off this Nuked city marker- no real use for it yet but I’m sure it will appear in a megagage at some point. Players always seem to love flinging nukes about in them….

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Megagame Report: Outbreak.

Paul’s Story Living Games company was approached by a couple who wanted a game run as part of their wedding celebrations. Being keen board gamers they fancied something that could involve their party of 30 so Paul came up with a game set in the not too distant future where nation states/ regional power blocks battled each other and tried to contain an outbreak of an unknown virus.

The two of us headed up to the North Yorkshire venue a bit unsure what to expect- given the party was made up of all first time megagamers and possibly hungover.

We set up the main world map on the snooker table in the country house and I commandeered the dining table to run the science game. The wedding party were mulling around snacking and drinking already- some had got into the spirit of things and had got into costume.

Given all of the constraints of the game and the inexperience of the players the game went fantastically. After a rather polite start they got the hang of things and were playing against each others. An ill advised attack by Russia on the US blew up in the face of Europe who supported Russia rather than the actual aggressors. Guess it comes down what can be proved by the UN player.

Later on in the game the US did take a massive hit and had most of its population wiped out, I wasn’t quite sure what happened here as I was busy trying to help the science players eradicate the virus and stop the bioterrorists that had been revealed.

 

All in all it was really refreshing and motivating to see so much enthusiasm of these first timers. The way they approached the game was great to see and it showed that you don’t need that many control to keep a game moving. Both Paul and I were made very welcome and Paul’s game must have gone down well as they have book him again for next year and their first year anniversary.

On the way home I did ponder whether there are too many controls in some games given how well it ran with just two of us. Perhaps the more control present the less that players, either consciously or otherwise, are prepared to do for themselves.

Cheers,

Pete.

Megagame Report: Hold the Line, Poland 1939.

Due to illness I had managed to miss two games in a row that I was due to attend… I was really hoping it wasn’t going to be three in a row as the next one on my calendar was Paul Howarth’s Hold the Line ’39. Based on the invasion of Poland that kickstarted the war in Europe, it was to be played using the block based rules set that he had developed last year for Czech mate ’38 (see previous blog post). For a bit of a change I decided to sign myself up as a tactical player at the map. Usually I prefer command roles in these types of games but I fancied a change.

As a lowly German player I was assigned my sector and given my order: advance through the mountains from the south then sweep round the back of Warsaw to apply pressure on the capital. This was to be the diversionary attack with the main effort coming in from the west to trap and defeat the majority of the Polish forces whilst a push down from East Prussia would take the capital. At least that was the plan that the high command team had come up with. They had also opted for a longer build up and mobilization. This gave us more units and resources to start with but gave away our intentions to the Polish players: quite what bonus that gave them we were unsure. Still, for once, such decisions were above my pay grade.

The setting for the game was once again the wonderful, and fitting, Encliffe Hall in Sheffield. Paul had done a great job with the blocks and maps, shame our deployment onto the maps was a bit hamfisted… due to the Poles taking too long then some of the blocks being ‘tidied’- as such my deployment ended up being suboptimal with ramifications for the rest of the game.

As you can imagine it was slow work trying to force the mountain passes. Whilst they were lightly defended it did take much for the combat modifiers to stack against me, also my mountain troops weren’t where they should be due to the botched deployment.

 

The game system is now fully mature and was very nice to play. Given I was on a side map I didn’t see much of the rest of the game other than watching the growing amount of blocks being committed in the centre, that and the shouts of either joy or despair coming from the other side of the ballroom where the attack from East Prussia was going in.

 

By the end of the game the Germans had managed to get units into the capital of Warsaw; but with much heavier casualties and in a longer time span than what the Germans achieved in 1939. Nice to be rolling dice at the table for a change but on balance I prefer the command roles. As such I request one for when the next version of the game system is rolled out next year for the invasion of France.

I did take Nicola along as an observer- she was really interested in the idea but felt she lacked enough game experience to take part. I explained that the higher command roles are more about decision making rather than game rules; she seemed more taken with that. Hopefully I’ll persuade her to take part in the France game.

Thanks to Paul for putting the game on, and extra thanks as always to the control team who helped out.

Cheers,

Pete.

Partizan Wargames Show.

Yesterday (Sunday) Paul and I headed down the A1 to Newark Showground for the first of the Partizan shows of the year. We like to go to the local wargames shows to spread the word about Pennine Megagames and hopefully attract more players. Whilst Newark is not really part of the Pennines it is pretty close to Sheffield; hopefully we’ll get more gamers to the games we run there.

The game we took with us was Stalingrad: Block by Block, a mini game born out of two previous games. Given I had a very nice 6 foot by 4 foot map of Stalingrad from my Case Blue game that didn’t get used I thought it would be a good excuse to use it. Paul is running a game in September, Hold the Line, based on the invasion of Poland; the mechanisms of which he used for last years Czech Mate game. I thought to myself it would be nice idea to run a game with his mechanisms based around the city fight.

Paul was kind enough to give me the polystyrene cubes and stickers needed so I got to work and knocked up what was needed. We ran the scenario as a participation game, so players could try out the mechanisms in advance to give them a taste of what to expect if they attend out events.

The game proved very popular with the attendees of the show, lots of people were asking questions and taking photos, so much so that the two of us were hard pressed to run the game and chat to everyone at the same time at one point… We were the only none toy soldier based game there so we stood out as doing something a little different. Paul game design was described as ‘inspirational’ and I was pleased to see several people bring their friends over to show them saying ‘This is the game I was telling you about, I’ve played one and it was really good’.

The game should get a few more run outs this years and there are a few tweaks I want to it, some of the rules need tightening and it would be nice to come up with a set of scenarios for the board that are suitable from anywhere from 2 to 6 players so we can be more flexible about the size of game we can run in the day. It would be nice to be able to give people a taste of the layers of command that the megagames have, one of their stand out features for me, but it is difficult to do in small scale for obvious reasons. I have some ideas of how to do it but it will need more work.

I managed to do a little bit of shopping for myself (oddly no books) and managed to chat to some gaming friends I hadn’t seen in years. The newer venue for Partizan is much better than the stygian gloom of the old one too. All in all a great day and both Paul and I agreed it was the best reception Pennine Megagames has had at a show.

I’m quite looking forward to the next show for us which will be the Phalanx show at St. Helens in June.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Megagame Report: Buccaneer.

The 23^rd of March saw the first game of the Pennine Megagame calendar: Buccaneer by John Sharp. Set during the Anglo- Dutch Wars of the 17^th century it was a prequel of sorts to the very popular game of his Pirates that ran in 2017 ( see here ). It was also the first time that Pennine Megagames had put on a non- operational game in Sheffield since our very first one Sengoku.

 

The rules mechanics had been comprehensively overhauled and streamlined- I had some input into the quest side of things and this hard work showed on the day as the game progressed much faster than the previous run through. The use of custom- made dice again made it very easy for control to run the game and seemed popular with the players too. Buccaneer was a smaller game too, I often prefer the smaller megagames I think they flow better and seem more sociable in a way.

A lovely venue in Sheffield- The Old Post Office.

I reprised my role as intelligence/ quest control. The quests were a very popular late edition to the first game; accordingly, they were increased in prominence for this run through. This time one of the changes was to have the different countries’ colony governors be able to give them out. This added to player interaction as well as having the chance to set the players against each other.

A view of my messy workstation where I dished out the quests.

The players adopted similar roles to the previous game, colonies run by governors, nation teams running the navy and two smaller groups of pirates/ buccaneers. Given the game started within a state of war the pirate players could, and were encouraged to, get letters of marque from nations allowing them to target the merchant ships of enemy nations in a form of asymmetric economic warfare with a get out of jail letter as long as they only attacked the enemies they were meant to.

The map (and also social media is very popular in megagames with live streams on facebook being common).

Being away from the main map my knowledge of how the war between the nations was going. These wars started and finished by control interjection as the war in the Caribbean that the game represented was on the periphery of and subservient to, the conflicts in Europe. Besides I was too busy running the perennially popular quests and off the wall plans of the players. These varied from spreading rumours and gossip to trying to salvage the body of a pirate who had been killed so it could be strung up as a warning to others.

A view of one of the port maps- in this case Port of Spain.

The best of which involved a horse race. The governor of the Port of Spain had a very nice race horse that he would be prepared to accept a challenge from anyone to race against it. However, the governor of the port of Havana coveted the horse and got two different buccaneers to steal it for him. To provide a distraction he organised a sword duelling competition to keep the other players busy… The first plan was to get the grooms drunk then swap out the horse before the race, I adjudicated this and unfortunately it was not successful, the horse race was then run (ably improvised by Ian) and duly won by the champion race horse. At this point I interjected and ran through the plot of the second buccaneer; he had paid a hefty bribe, using a secret agent for the jockey to keep riding after the race, down to the harbour and then on to his waiting ship. The governor of the Port of Spain was worried about some funny business happening in the horse race so borrowed some militia off the governor of Havana to stave that off, unfortunately for him that unit of militia were under orders, passed to me in secret, not to intervene. I guess it is a case of be careful who you trust…

A gibbet’d pirate- put there as a warning to others.

Things got even more complicated as the first buccaneer whose plan failed bought another horse and passed it off as the original, saying that the horse that actually ran the race was the fake horse, having been stolen before the race had started. This provided much confusion in the other players as to which horse was the genuine one. It was some great game playing by Becky to sow such confusion, for more details see her blog here.

 

In situations like this it was easy to use the dice (different colours marked with different numbers of skull and cross bones if you roll one it counts as a pass) to settle matters, each player rolls there dice first to get a success against their opponent wins. There were a few extremes of luck both bad (black dice with a 4 in 6 chance of success failing three times in a row for someone) and good: 12 rolls on red dice for damage on a ship from a fort’s guns, given the 50/50 odds the player felt confident with his 7 hull hit points on this ship… no 11 successes. In that latter example the player who had delivered the race horse to the governor of Havana decided to help himself to some treasure on the way out, got caught and paid the price. Unfortunately, the crown he stole went down with the ship. Many divers died trying to recover it for the governor.

 

The game seemed to be well received by the players and was a great start to the year’s calendar.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Megagames Round up and next year’s calendar.

Megagames Round- up.

 

Now that is all my megagames done and dusted for the year it is time to take stock I guess. With the games this year so far it means I’ve been to 32 games in total (designed/run 2, played 12 and controlled 18). I really need to play more I think- it is always fun to do so, just a shame that the operational games that I prefer are few and far between these days. I should really try to get to another groups’ game as a player next year….

 

On the subject of next year: Pennine Megagames have announced the calendar for 2019:

23^rd March sees Buccaneer link being run in Sheffield. Set in the War of Spanish Succession it is a prequel to John’s popular game from last year. I hope to reprise my control role from last time as I enjoyed it so much.

On the 18^th May Becky put on Trope High link in Leeds. Think every high school film mashed together… so lot of roleplaying possibilities there at the school where everyone has a secret. I’m very interested to see how this one develops as it is something very different to our previous games and should bring in a different crowd of gamers.

22^nd June will be a chance to refight the whole of WW1 in Cubespiel link from Tom. This will be run in Manchester- I’m looking forward to this one. An ambitious design but with Tom’s background I’m sure it will make for an interesting game.

At the end of the summer, 14^th September, Paul will run Hold the Line ’39 link in Sheffield. Will the Polish mange to stop the German juggernaut this time around? Given how well the full-scale test of the rules worked with Czech mate this is another game that I’m wanting to play in.

Flying, Trading, Misbehaving link is a new game from a new designer Sam inspired by the Firefly universe being run in Manchester 12^th October. This should be a good game for all the SF fans out there. Plenty to do whether you want to roleplay or just fight out space battles or even trading.

Pickles rounds off the year on the 16^th November in Manchester again with Who Will Watch Them link , a negotiation game of super power limitation talks that could well be disrupted by super villains. Given the popularity of the Marvel/ DC franchises this one could go down well too. Superheroes and me don’t get on but Pickles’ design skills mean this will be a good game.

 

For more details see the Pennine Megagames website or look on facebook for us.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Serious Gaming: Entrusted 2.

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Back in the middle of this year I got the chance to act as control in Paul Howarth and Ben Green’s hospital simulator game intrusted. See past blog report  here. Fund had been secured to run the game again for a different group of healthcare professionals and again I got the chance to help deliver it.

 

The format of the game was to be slightly different this time. It was intended that all the players would be part of a single hospital; although the narrative was continued from the last game in that the participants were now running the old hospital post- merger, otherwise the basic premise and three levels of players was retained. I went over early with Paul to Manchester to help sort things out before the game and go through the changes that had been made to the game since last time. It was nice to get a better grasp on the mechanisms of the game as last time my control role wasn’t really focused on them.

The plenary Briefing.

After the attendees had arrived and the plenary briefing delivered we set up the room for the next day and retired to the bar. A pleasant couple of hours was spent with the control team drinking, chatting and playing a board game. In our case a run through of a the rather good Black Orchestrawhere you attempt to assassinate Hitler, we did with a briefcase bomb… There is a serious point to this, I’m of the opinion that gaming together, regardless of the game, can only improve a person’s and group’s skill level when acting as part of a control team.

The evening’s recreational game.

After breakfast at the hotel we started early with the game and watched the players try to organise the hospital. A failure on their part to stock take what staff cards they had available at the start meant that they had plenty in turn one but then struggled in the second and subsequent turns. There were insufficient resources at the scenario start to deal with everything perfectly, this was meant to engender a discussion from the bottom- up to the board level players to get more resources this didn’t really happen for a good few hours. As this time, I was supervising the admissions/ Intensive Care unit and surgical wards I saw that the players worked incredibly hard to process the patients through the hospital and to a degree I start to empathise with them. This became apparent when the board level players came into the main room to describe their latest social media campaign. I sensed a degree of annoyance go through some of the players that they had been working hard whilst the board had been coming up with new hashtags for a twitter campaign. It was very interesting to see that as in the last game I saw how hard that the board/ directorate were working and I know full well that social media presence and public perception is of utmost importance in today’s media saturated landscape so I would not want to do the board a disservice and suggest that they were having an easier time of it than those in the main room running the basic hospital functions. One of the points of contentions was a refusal to hire the extra nurse, of non- British nationality, that were needed to man the wards. The staffing crisis got so severe that the intensive care unit was not used for a couple of turns.

A pair of the wards staffed and with paitents.

Whilst the new mechanics are improved I think that a few player aids to speed up the learning of the game could be utilised in and subsequent run of the game.  I’d suggest that the quicker that the players understand and are comfortable with the basic mechanics the sooner that they can be different problem and scenarios can be injected in the game to generate the inter- department and inter- hierarchy discussions that will provide the greatest learning experience for the attendees.

Discussions around anesthetist’s staffing level in the surgical theatres.

In the debrief there were some great comments by the attendees which showed that they got a lot from the game and again it was great to see gaming being used for something so beneficial.

Cheers,

Pete.