A Most Excellent Day

I've mentioned before that my Gaming Friends are spread from Hamilton and Collingwood to Chatham. About a 3 hour drive at highway speeds from end to end. 

We're sort of the middle intersecting bit of a vast sprawling Venn-diagram of many Southern Ontario interconnected Gaming groups, clubs, or local scenes. So we don't get together as much as we'd like.

One of the lads, finding himself centrally located now, has organized game days during August in between his and another's birthdays.

So Saturday I rolled up my sea matt, packed my ships, and drove off to join a dozen of my friends,  old and new, for a day of barbecue and dice rolling.

I playtested a Snorkers! (Good Oh!) scenario I want to run next month at KEGSCon. I'm hoping to accommodate 6 players.

Swordfish get some good hits on Italian cruisers

British cruiser squadron under attack. This game saw a first. Not one, but TWO flights of aircraft getting shot down.

Italian DE flotilla making a torpedo attack on British light cruisers 

British destroyers finish off the Italian light cruisers

HMS Glasgow crippled by Italian torpedo 

Another view of the Swordfish making their attack

Learned some things. I'll review the fleet composition before the convention. Hopefully my friends had fun.

The gang

After dinner it was a game of Blücher with Keith's lovely 6mm armies. Joe and Paul ran the Imperial army. Rico and I played the Allies.

Allies in foreground. 

Swedes

Prussians

French, foreground. Not as many Prussians as I had started with in the back.

Danes

I'm not sure how it ended. I had to leave.

There were some other games on the dinner table. Age of sail using The Full Nelson.

And something involving pirates.

And there was cake! 

I can tell I had a good time because, despite being completely knackered, I had trouble settling down and getting to sleep. 

Mail Call!

Some arrivals this week, just in time for the Civic Holiday Long Weekend. Tuesday UPS delivered my hardcopy of Clash of Rhyfles. and the new plastic cavalry. 

I was going to wait, but Zombiesmith had a sale on, so I ordered direct and got the printed pieces to convert them into Toulmorese Dragoons and Gwynt Lancers. The Gwynt Lancers will be a mounted troop for Princess P'trysha's Lifeguards.

Both sets include dismounts. Toulmorese Dragoons can dismount to skirmish, but anyone might end up dismounted if their mount is killed. People have recommended around 30% for dismounts, so not sure how to split the boxes between Crusaders/Toulmorese and Coftyrans/Gwynt yet. 

So this weekend I plan on charging about with my metal cavalry to get a handle on how they work before I start gluing figures together. 

These also arrived in my mailbox today.

Rising Sun Over Java is a scenario and campaign supplement for my favorite naval rules Snorkers! (Good Oh!). There are some new rules, and 16 scenarios. Fortunately I have some older USN destroyers on order from Donski's Printer Farm. I might also see if they can be reskinned for Royal Navy vs Regia Marina or perhaps the Kreigsmarine, since I've got several German ships also on my print list.

More Games!

Friday Family Game Night!

This past weekend was the Ragnarok XP Gaming Convention. Daughter Number 1 said she was coming down and had signed herself and my grandson up for a game. So, really it behooved me to join in. The Raganarok Team have been giving me invitations for years, but I've always been busy. This time I didn't really have any excuse.

Friday night we had a real live Family Game Night though. Daughter brought her copy of Twisted Cryptids, and she, Grandson, Mrs. Rabbitman, and myself spent a jolly evening eating stray hikers and dodging investigators while trying to accumulate myth points and become legendary.

Saturday we both signed up for afternoon games so we didn't have to rush in the morning. The convention venu being about an hour away in downtown Kitchener with heavy urban traffic.

Ragnarok is mostly an RPG and board game event, but there were some miniatures. Although most of the miniatures were more for RPG style games. Not a lot of vendors. I didn't need a crochet geek character, or expensive dice, or re-enactment gear. I bought Zombie Munchkin for my daughter at the Bring and Buy and I bought myself a pack of Japanese scenic items from Torchlight and Dan gave me a bag of Skaven he found in his closet. Skaven, they just get everywhere, don't they? But after investigation I think I'll get two Midgard units of Stormvermin and two units of skirmishing Gutter Runners out of it once I've repaired some tails and painted them.
 

Event schedule clearly displayed on various large screens

Something Marvel. A Marvel themed RPG I think. I don't think it was Marvel Crisis Protocol though.

Something Star Wars.

Vendors and board games

Tanks!

Various RPGs on going

A different Star Wars encounter

The venue had multiple levels. Not many vendors.

Joe of Miniature Landscape Hobbies (see also his Etsy store and his YouTube channel) was running a game of Silver Bayonet on a Hobbiton themed board that he had built for a customer, Torchlight Games and Hobbies, and was delivering at the show. Pasha Dan had also signed up for that, and we knew the other gamer as well, so it was more a meeting of chums than the usual convention game.

British infantryman moves past a hobbit-hole

French and British parties meet in an obscure village called Horbiton looking for enchanted items. The villagers have all run off as zombies have invaded the valley, naturally.

Another British infantryman recruits a bandit lady to our team. Their love affair was tragically brief. I don't think their song got past the first chorus before the dastardly Frenchies shot them both down.

British officer recuits another bandit, Codpiece Joe.

Our rifleman engages a zombie

I had hoped that the game was going to be a more of a Middle Earth take on the Napoleonic supernatural game; hobbits fighting Nazguls or something. But the board was fun to play on anyway. Dan and I got absolutely tabled, losing spectacularly to our  young opponent.

Speaking of Dan, the weekend before he had brought his modern African warlords over and we squabbled brutally over an abandoned UN Aid Convoy using One Hour Skirmish rules. Dan puts a lot of character into his kitbashes and buildings.

So these were games 23, 25 and 26 of the year.