I started my holidays by getting stuck in traffic on the highway to Chatham for KEGSCON VII. But we got to the
Retro Suites Hotel at last, checked in and then had a sumptuous meal at the hotel restaurant before collapsing in our very posh room.
KEGSCON is a fun little gaming convention organized by my friends Brian and Keith and the Kent-Essex Gaming Society, a very active club of gamers extending from London to Windsor, who meet a couple of times a month in various members houses. The hotel is very nice, if expensive, but Mrs. Rabbitman enjoys coming along to just relax in a posh room while I go and play with my friends.
Saturday morning after an enormous breakfast (
note to self: next year don't get the Full English, you aren't 30 anymore!), I joined the gang in the function room and got a slot in Ralp Kreb's Samurai skirmish game using the
Bushi No Yume rules, which you can get as a PDF
here. Ralph prefers
Ronin more, but he agrees that it can be a bit complicated and just won't work as a convention game.
Bushi no Yume is faster and easier and works much better with a group at a convention.
The game was two boats of Wokou Pirates raiding a coastal village and trying to carry off loot before the local samurai can interfere. It was a gorgeous little board (perhaps 4 feet by 4 feet), filled with buildings from
4Ground and
Plasticraft. The two warships are from
Oshiro Models.
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| Do Japanese pirates still say "Arrr?" |
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| Villagers going about their business |
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| More of the peaceful village. Note to self: get a moon bridge. |
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| Blurry action shot |
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| Village cemetery |
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| Boats immediately make any game extra cool. |
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| Local samurai arrive to fight me |
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| Pirates taking it to the samurai |
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| Pirate chief cuts teppo man in two |
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| A better shot of one of the Plasticraft buildings with a beautifully painted Japanese woman for scale |
Some of the other games:
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| What a Tanker |
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| Blood Red Skies |
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| Balin's Tomb. The Ontario Hobbit Adventure crew ran another successful Hobbit SBG tournament with their gorgeous terrain. See my posts from Hotlead for pictures. |
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| Dux Britannarium |
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| Another Dux B game |
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| Brian's 6mm refight of the Battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat 1870. |
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| Brian ran this a second time for the KEGS crew after I left at lunch time on Sunday. |
There was also a game of Chain of Command, Seven Spears, Blood Eagle, some board games and a second session of Bushi no Yume. I didn't get any pictures of those, too busy playing or GMing, or they were too blurry to use.
During lunch on Saturday, Mrs. Rabbitman and I went for a walk to find someplace to eat and after something light but delicious at Hungry Sam's Percolator, we took a look at the gathering of vintage firetrucks. I took many pictures to show my grandson.
Since Mrs. Rabbitman and I were staying all weekend, I ran my Chicago Way game twice. Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday morning.
An early playtest in August demonstrated that my gangs were too big, so I'd thought 5 figures each. I didn't remember to print off the new gang rosters until we were already packing the car, so I decided to just marker edit the rosters I had. Saturday morning I mistakenly edited the gangs down to 4 figures each, which turned out to be a happy accident. 5 figures would have made the games last that much longer. Also, gangs of 4 means I can accommodate up to 13 players/gangs with the 52 card deck.
If I had to. But that would be pretty mind numbing.
As it was each session I only had 7 players. Each player got 4 cards. I let them choose to use cards for initiative or the text. Which as the gangs got depleted resulted in some pretty intense and tactical card play.
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| Yu Fong goes down early from G-Man shotgun |
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| Big Tony and the cops lead by Sgt. Crueller gun each other down |
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| Nuns kept getting moved to block lines of fire. |
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| Pa Clampett hates the Revenuers and faces off with Elliot Ness |
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| Last Man Standing. Joel Cohen's torpedo shoots Pa Clampett dead through the window. |
Sunday morning went differently. More car crashes. G-Men and Tong battled down the main street towards the coal yard. Meanwhile the moonshiners, Hermann Kraut's gang, and cops battled around the coal and junk yards. The cops from the other end of the board chased Big Tony down into this fight as well. So all of the action ended up in the one corner with the junk yard. As my oldest terrain, it was nice to see it host a good shoot out.
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| Moonshiners and the Krauts start the shooting, dodging drunken sailors |
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| Cops crash their van trying to run over Yu Fong |
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| Cops get too aggressive and Hermann Kraut's torpedo with the tommy gun rolls 20s on each shooting action! Although Hermann did get his tan suit dirty scrambling over the coal bin being chased by the Police Sergeant |
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| Tong and G-Men shooting it out in the street |
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| G-Men take down Kraut the Cop Killer |
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| Shoot out in the junk yard. Elliot Ness takes out Big Tony. The purple suited gunsel takes out Elliot Ness |
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| Detective Punchki shoots down the purple suited gunsel |
After 3 hours of play, Mrs. Rabbitman had checked us out and loaded our bag in the car, so it was time to pack up, say some fare wells and hit the road. Another Romantic Getaway/Gaming Weekend in the books.
Playing
Bushi no Yume has me thinking about digging my stalled Samurai out again though. And I have Ronin/pirate types to fight my more regular Samurai troops.
