Sunday, July 22, 2012

Truants visit Venus

Our weekly truants game found four of us playing in Scott Murphy's treasure hunt on Venus scenario. The players divided into three factions-British, Venusians, and Germans. The Brits and Germans each had to struggle over rivers with limited crossing options. The Brits immediately opened fire on the Venusians when they came into sight. The Venusians, charmed by this friendly gesture, became instant enemies.
Scott's very nice Stonehouse Aztec Temple.  I have bits of this, but not the whole shebang. Al places his Venusians, while Steve and Rocky set up the Brits across the river.
 While Brits and natives tangled on the far side of the board, the Germans, run by yours truly, carefully crossed the river, only to encounter native wildlife of the large, reptilian Jurassic variety. First, a single Allosaurus kept me tied down as I tried to cross the a rope bridge in single file and keep my force intact.  Then a persistent pack of smaller, but more aggresssive velociraptors  pinned me down as formed a firing line to mow the little beggars down.
The nasty Allosaurus held up my initial advance across the rope bridge.  It also gave me a platform to provide myself plenty of fire support.
Thankfully, I planned to shoot my way across the river by placing my Seetruppen to on the river bank.  Slowed me down, but prevented a disaster with the big critters
A short lull in the action finally allowed me to move to one of the several treasure sites on the board with my unit of Schutztruppe, while my askaris and Marines advanced toward the chief objective, the large temple in the middle of the board.

All the while, the Venusians and British continued to tangle.  Generally, the limeys got the worst of this exchange.  The Venusians don't shoot much, but are difficult to kill. Both of them got to a treasure objective before I did, but often distracted by their fight were much slower about extracting wealth.  A giant crocodile that emerged from the river they fought over and repeatedly disrupted both forces kept things even more interesting.
A view of the Brits tangling with the Venusians.  While Sikh reinforcements rush to aid the failing British lines, the giant crocodile keeps both sides on their toes.
Despite a final Allosaurus attack on the German seetruppen, it was determined at the end of the game I was the winner. Yippee.
Slowly making my way across the bridge, the advancing velociraptors are visible in the distance.  Fresh meat tonight boys.
Moving slowly by the left to establish a firing line, I was eventually able to establish a firing line, with the schutztruppen on the left moved off to mine a treasure site.
This was a really fun game.  The rules, based on the Sword and the Flame, were the same as our Martian games.  We all had the right number of units to run-generally three infantry units and I had a Gatling as well. I really liked Scott's terrain, which was flashy enough to be interesting and attractive, but sparse enough to get around the board easily.  We agreed a fourth player, a second Venusian from a different faction, would give the Germans a little more to think about, and simply complicate the situation on the table.  Even so, a very fun game I would play again any time.

1 comment:

DeanM said...

Wow - that's a superb game Scott put on. Too bad I missed it; the rope bridge is very unique; a contender for Best of Show if he puts it on at Enfilade. Best, Dean