Mechanical Madness

Yesterday we had another Martian get together out at Game Matrix. Mark Waddington and I have been hosting these games for the last several months. We have two games we're hosting at ConQuest, and we wanted to play test them with live bodies before we actually host them with strangers. The first scenario-A Sea of Enemies-involves the relief of a British hill fort, surrounded by hostiles in the Martian wastes. We've run that twice, and it's turned out well.

This second game is called "Mechanical Madness." Mark has his full compliment of amazing scratchbuilt goodies in the game. There were three of the eight-legged walkers, conversions of the Wild West Burger King toy. British walkers, of course. The Brits also had a pair of steam tanks, and two armored suits. They also had the beautiful Zepplin Mark converted and were reinforced by the piece de resistance, the scratchbuilt Aphid gunboat. Martians had mainly foot troops with some entrenchments and fortified artillery. They also had Mark's gorgeous Ranger gunboat, a conversion from the Star Wars Tatooine Skiff, and were reinforced by a pair of Merrimac walkers and a unit of German allies.

This was the first time we'd played mechanicals vs. mechanicals and with their more deadly firepower we noticed some potential for catastrophic damage. One of the British walkers suffered a catastrophic penetration and explosion from a medium gun. The Aphid likewise suffered a crippling hit that forced it out of the game, and expedited the British decision to retire from the battle on its first turn of entry.

All in all we learned a lot about how the mechanicals work in a game, the need to tweak a few rules, and that Space 1889 is a real crowd pleaser.