What's The Name Of The Game?

Sunday's game wasgreat fun,  played with three players and a referee.

 

The Royalist squatters carried the day, but fun was had by all.

 

The locals and sundry Parliamentarian troops led by Master Gropecastle, literally flash mobbed the bridge, but the trained and veteran Royalists defended it with applomb, a flanking move by the Marquis of Fantail was both dashing and lethal. Several lives were lost when both sides attempted to cross the narrow, but deep and heavily silted 'Scruttock Drain', causing the main point of friction to be on the bridge, as you can see.

 

Let the record show, that the first casualty of the day was Goodwife Hempknot, who, following her husband Preacher Hempknot, raised her hastily grabbed musket, aimed, and was shot by a Royalist piquet from over the Scruttock Drain. 

On Monday, Pete Berry, the author of the rules, kindly addressed a couple of questions we had, as we were playing from the original small press edition rather than the later and current Caliver edition.

 

 I was asked the other day, why I was always talking about games...

This came from someone who, has known me for over 40 years and is also a gamer themself, so I was a bit taken aback.

 

I pointed out that basically, life itself is a big game which one day we all lose, so why bother engaging with the 'real world' any more than needed?

Look, you go out to work in a morning and get in the car or on the bus and you take a chance that you will die horribly in some way or another, just as a character in an RPG.

You get on the motorway for a day in Scarborough or some similar coastal tourist trap and you may as well be playing a game of Car Wars these days. This is why I don't drive and never have - I don't like the rules. Several of my friends seem to treat their driving licences like character sheets with points for driving offences serving as rudimentary hit points.

I dropped out of the Civil Service in 2011 because frankly it was getting to be like Laurel & Hardy crossed with Rourke's Drift, or at the very least like a game of Toon. I loved helping the unemployed, chasing absent parents and even issuing anti-social behaviour orders, but the straw which broke this camel's back was being expected to sit on a chair for 5 weeks doing nothing whilst the Powers That Be, found me a desk. Literally, sitting in a room, doing nothing for 7 hours and 24 minutes per day.

 

So, I chose to make life a big gaming session, by design.

 

Now, I work hard. In fact, I work harder than I ever did for the Civil Service or local government, but I manage to give the impression that I a brush toting slacker of the first water, which niggles people. It also means that I don't have to give a toss about what Barry from Benefit Payments and Cheryl from up in H.R got up to at the Christmas party. (That said, I knew Cheryl at school and she always was a bit of a slag, and Barry, well... )

I don't have to engage with people with whom I have no shared interests, and as result I can spend more time thinking and talking about my hobby.

 

So, my playing the Game Of Life appears to stand out to my more mundane chums, than their own. But make no mistake, we are all indeed playing a big bloody game.

Yesterday, I sent a 12 kilo package of figures off to my painter and then, in the afternoon as the shadows lengthened, I realised that apart from a few personality figures in my studio, that was it for me. 

 

That was the peak of almost 45 years of refining my hobby and getting the set-up I wanted as twelve-year-old, as I looked in awe at the fantastic games put on by the likes of Joe Dever and the Player's Guild. 

 

The game I saw at Triples put on by those student gamers from somewhere or other (if you know of that wonderful 15mm fantasy game that did the rounds in the mid-80s, please drop me a line) had inspired me and sat in the background of my mind until the time was right.

I have finally stopped playing to life's WRG 6th and have now switched to a rules-lite version, where I am not interested in adding much to the collection, but rather in pushing a few thousand 28mm figures around on a pretty table.

I have a large enough room, more than enough terrain and aome lovely and varied figures. I am reliant on absolutely nobody for any aspect of the physical components and so, I can begin to plan the Never Ending Battle.

I did make a few purchases at the weekend, having decided to sell my Hudson & Allen castle. 

 

I bought a lot, and I mean a lot of 3D printed Normanesque stone castle walls, along with some stunning Fantasy conversion pieces, for the same, to give me the flexibility for historical and fantasy gaming. I think I bought about 15 feet of it, all told, but as it was on offer on eBay from the manufacturer at a double digit discount, I was straight in like a Stirge on a bared neck:

Now, let the record show, that I am not a natural fan of 3D printing, but this castle system caught my eye, and so, the price being appealing to my inner Yorkshireman, I decided on investing. At the end of the day, it is more accessible than H&A stuff now, and will mix well with my Grand Manner and Tabletop World collections.

Inspired by an old campaign system in Warhammer 2nd ed, I bought enough parts (and more) to build two long city walls at either end of the games room (in actual fact I could build 4 with the stuff I ordered, but variety is the spice of life) from which will sally forth the armies of Good and Evil respectively, together with fell machineries of destruction, in a never ending war. 

I also bagged 6 feet of scratch built Arabaesque city walls and 4 scratchbuilt orintal war junks which will do splendidly for fantasy naval gaming. Port of Harlond, anyone?

In fact, I think that the only things I'll be looking for now, are half a dozen more ships and a couple of harbours, but I'm in no rush at all. After all, I'm gonna live forever - right?