Fall-In, day two (many pics)

My plan to finish up my backlog of posts before the end of the year might not happen. Hmmm.

One quick note before day two coverage. The massive historical game mentioned in day one was, in fact, a ACW game set at Fort DeRussy. For more details and some good pics, head to the Brooklyn Wargaming page here.

Registering for games before the con is always a shuffling game of seeing what I can work around what to maximize the number of things I can get in on. Unfortunately, some things either don't fit, or fill up before I sign up. One thing I didn't get in on was the Mini Mech game, so I made sure to swing by and take some pics Saturday morning. And man, I wasn't disappointed.

The terrain is spray-painted blocks on hexes, simple at first, but all put together and it's very striking, visually. (Could totally do that in a Tron-inspired minimalist deco theme, I note.) And the cute tiny mechs!

For more details on Mini Mech, go to Rothgar's Workbench here. I really, really (really) don't need another minis project, but yeah, it's tempting.

Another game drawing a crowd was the bug hunt game. Based on the classing 50's movies, it involved delving into underground tunnels to hunt giant bugs. They kept each cavern section covered until it was encountered. Pretty keen.

My first actual game of the day was an intro game to Mein Zombie. ODGW always has their own room set aside at the cons, and I am always up for learning new zombie rules.

Based off their universal rules system, Mein Zombie is almost a cross between an RPG and a minis game. You roll up some basics on your character at the beginning of the game. My character ended up being pretty lucky, but not a great shot.

The scenario was nice and basic. We stated as a group of survivors holed up in the house pictured above. We needed to break out of there, and head to two separate locations to recover the radio to call for assistance, and the generator to power it. 

Activation was by cards. I pulled the queen, so I called my character Queenie. I'm easy like that. One character had a flaw that basically meant they were kind of unprepared. He had two cards, so when his first one was drawn for activation, it was tossed. I do like the little touches like that.

The zombies had two cards of their own in the stack. Zombie activation was neat. When their card comes up, zombies within a certain radius of a living character would move closer, and lunge to attack when close enough. If your character made noise that turn (mostly firing off guns) that radius was larger, based on how much noise was made. This was easy to manage, and also lead organically to zombie herds forming, as the survivors kept moving, but attracting more attention as they went. Again, the little touches.

Myself and two survivors made a beeline for the first objective, basically never firing off a shot. (The other half of the party was nice and loud.) A couple of the rolls on hitting and damage are a little counter-intuitive, but you pick up on them straight away after a few tries.

Oh, hey, in there ODGW gallery, there's a pic of yours truly, standing on the left of the table.

Our posse makes it to the door and is working on breaking in before company arrives. Figs are 20mm plastic from the Zombies! board game. Survivors have their bases painted green. I admit, the game is pretty decent. I will likely pick up the rules at some point, even if just to incorporate some of their ideas elsewhere.

Second game of the day was "Mother Russia Rain Down." Shortly after World War III, which was set off by the Able Archer incident in 1983 going a different way, my team of Russians is converging on a gas station to liberate the fuel before the American survivors on patrol can do the same.

Rules were Iron Ivan's "Disposable Heroes: Point Blank." I was vaguely familiar with them, as I've read through their "No More Room in Hell" zombie rules.

The terrain was sparse and bleak, highly evocative.

 

The Soviet team consisted of myself and a father-son team. First few turns I advanced on the gas station over a hill, getting hammered by the Americans on the opposite corner. My teammates were slowly moving into the middle down the road, weaving between the burned-out cars. I felt a little left out in the cold, as they didn't seem to be getting anywhere, and the other half of the American team had sprinted up to the gas station.

Now, when we sat down to the game, the father on Team Russia had said that his son was really lucky with dice rolls. I pretty much dismissed this; it's the kind of thing a lot of parents say, and dice are dice, right? So when they finally get in position, the kid takes the Russian soldier with an RPG, pops out of cover, shoots at the American tank that was keeping me pinned down... perfect hit. Roll for damage, boom, it's gone. Huh. He proceeds to do it two more times, pops out, rolls a perfect hit, eliminated target. It was uncanny, and after that first one I was watching those rolls. Clearly the MVP.

As noted before, the other half of the Americans (skillfully played by the other half of Team Kent, Maurice's brother Shaun) had taken the objective. By now, though, they were flanked by my crew coming off the hill and the rest of the Russians dug into the road. It was a good defensive position, but they couldn't withstand the incoming barrage. Excellent game.

 

Maurice's fifteen minutes of fame, helping with the mic test.

The finale is the WWPD podcast. No need to wrap that up, it's all available to hear online right here. Always fun getting to see those gents ham it up in person. (If I take one thing away from this podcast, it was the tale of the Burrito Prophecy.)

Due to technical difficulties during the recording of the podcast, you don't get to hear when I sneezed really loudly. Sorry everyone! I do get a shout-out when they're recapping the board games from the night before. Team Baratheon!

And some links to other coverage, if that's your thing. First up is the inimitable Mister Nizz, covering the games he ran and the games he played. The former of those includes pics of the fantastic gnome boxing-glove boat, which is a phrase I don't get to type enough. If eye candy is your thing, Lord Ashram has more than a few pics of the tables at his blog here.

[When I first wrote this up, I had a section about an annoying little kid that vexed me a couple times during the con, but after re-reading it, I just sacked that bit. Yes, the kid was a pain. But really, bitching about annoying kids during a con report made me feel positively poisonous. Annoying kids happen. It's fine.]

Number of compliments received for my Captain Marvel t-shirt: 4.