Thursday, August 18, 2016

Songs of Ice and Physics

On a cold night we were in for an icy treat.

Paul had provided a melting ice cap on which three bands would battle to retrieve magical artefacts.

My band was a bunch of scrawny goblins and barbarians along with a pet grasshopper.

Brendan, in his first game, was brought into to run the minotaurs and dead Aztec warriors.  His one normal dude went for an early swim and was lost (falling in freezing water kills, no matter what your armour protection). 

My barbarians head off leaving my force strung out.

A vicious wolf guards the artefact they are after.

Meanwhile...
The Minotaurs are having a bit of trouble with a wolf.

The other party also seem to be having a hard time of it.

My guys have no trouble dispatching their wolf however.

The Goblins seem hesitant to jump across.  
When you jump on or off a small ice plate it will start to move in the direction of the jump and at a speed equal to the number of jumpers.  This is shown by putting a white dice down.  
If the Goblins don't want to jump now, waiting won't help.

The Barbarians want to rest after killing the wolf and the Goblins are still in no mood for jumping.

Meanwhile...
The band controlled by Olivier has killed a wolf (they are getting value from their bows), but the chap with the blunderbus fell short in his jump and that's the end of him.

A Minotaur gets bitten on the bum.

While I'm struggling to get my guys moving, the Minotaur is grabbing all the artefacts.

The young lad (my levy Q5 C2 padding out member to reach 300 points) jumps across but then slips and falls backwards.  Oh dear.

The Goblins are across, but two Barbarians look left behind.

The Minotaurs defend their loot, which in part means handing it to the dead Aztec warriors to look after while they go back for more killing.

My party is now all across except the guy carrying the loot.  He better be quick.

The grasshopper senses blood...

My guy with the loot has a touch of cowardness and lets the ice float him out of harms way.

Grasshopper meets a freezing watery grave (he has just a Medium move, I think in future he can have Long, he's only Q4 C3)

And we're into action.

Took us a while but we got our second kill.

The Minotaurs are getting away...

Gone!

Brilliant game!

Thanks Paul for organising it and for sorting out the physics of moving ice plates.  As always the rules played really well.  The mechanics are simple but give plenty of challenge and interesting situations.  This allows people to pick up the game very quickly and get on with the enjoyment.

13 comments:

  1. Thanks for making such an excellent record of the evening. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and that everyone enjoyed it.

    I think the only things I'd change on a replay would be to have an even distribution of figures with "long move", and have tougher guardians for the treasure. Yetis or ice elementals?

    I think certainly your grasshopper should have long move and hop all over the shop!

    -- Paul

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  2. That is a very clever game! Simple but with excellent effects.

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    1. I've only played a few games, but they have all been excellent.

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  3. Replies
    1. Certainly different. Would have preferred playing in summer time though.

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  4. The ice flow rules sound excellent. Is there any chance of posting them in more detail sometime please?

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    1. I'll jot them down and send them to Sun of York.
      --Paul

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    2. Please do! I run a Christmas game for my family every year and this would be excellent. We use clay snowmen for the forces of good and GW skaven for the evil ratmen who are always trying to spoil Christmas (but never quite manage). I love the idea of fighting on ice floes for this year! You can see some pictures here if you're interested and I also put up the rules I wrote for the game. http://colony13.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmas-game-2015-snowball-alley.html

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    3. The fimo Christmas guys look really fun!

      I'm sending the rules to Sun of York today, to see if they make sense.

      --Paul

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  5. I found this very inspiring. Could you tell me what material you used to make the ice?

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    1. 3mm high impact styrene (plasticard) I bought as a 8'x4' sheet from an industrial plastics trader. It was about A$100. I cut it up with the Dremel. The stuff is more rigid than the hobby stuff, and trying to snap it gouged out a bit of my finger.

      --Paul

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  6. The rules Pail used for the Ice Floes have now been documented and published in this post:
    http://onesidedminiaturewargamingdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/ice-floes-in-skirmish-gaming.html

    Enjoy

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