Tuesday 6 October 2015

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Truckers

Another fine evening of gaming last week, but truth be told, I can't say much about what was going on, I was chilling playing a relaxed game of Isle of Skye, Guillotine and then Take 6, plus fannying about with camera settings. So. This week there will be waffling. If you've ever seen the Fast Show with Paul Whitehouse and his bit with the old man in the chair, you'll know what to expect.


Formula De - time field distortion
A noisy full table of Formula De was played out beside us, I have no idea what track it was, but it looked good fun. I really like Formula De, but, and it's a big butt, it plays way too long for me for what it is. It takes forever and a day on a big track with lots of people, when all you're really doing is rolling and moving. Don't get me wrong, it's also a fun game, and in a campaign over several tracks with some serious minded people it can be another kind of groovy all over again. But yeah. Time.

1990, when my innocent self was still in the grips of schooling, I made my own formula 1 racing game, not exactly a million miles away from Formula De, except my version played in about 30 minutes. It proved to be very popular for the other sixth formers, who when given a choice of doing academic work / revising, or racing tiny cars around a track, picked the latter. Like shooting fish in a barrel ! Of course, me being me, shortly after I binned the whole thing and forgot about it, and now occasionally lament I did that, and try to remember exactly what the rules were.

In the grips of some madness of experimenting with to be honest, far too complicated camera settings, I tried to take some artsy pictures this week, with some long exposures and the like. Turns out, 30 second exposures of Formula De do not end well. 10 second ones, eh, somewhat better.

In other parts of the Mash Tun, Messrs David, Sam, James and Voitek decided to crank out the quality game of Galaxy Truckers, the crazy endeavour of assembling some form of cobbled together
Galaxy Truckers, League of Gentlemen style
spaceship, followed by taking it out into the galaxy to conduct your trading, looting and racing without it falling to pieces. I have to say watching them assemble their ships, they were by far the most, relaxed, polite, gentlemanly space ship builders I have ever seen. The spaceship assembly part of the game is something of a race against time against your fellow players - firstly to grab the bits you like, and secondly, you only have a minute to finish when the first player declares finished.

But apparently that was not of concern for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Truckers who you imagine ply their trade routes in smoking jackets and slippers. I didn't actually hear it, but I'm sure there was much conversation during building along the lines of, "No no dear chap, you take that part, honestly, it looks better on your ship anyway" and "Excuse me, but I think I may be nearing completion of my vessel, but I will sip on my tea instead of finishing to give you chaps a good crack at completion." . Clearly they've never played with Sam "Numbers" Blackwell who delights in creating half finished ships in record time just to watch everyone else fail epically.

Blood Rage, Ragnarok is upon us
Nicky brought along a new kickstarter binge, the gorgeously over produced Blood Rage, a game all about Vikings and Ragnarok and securing yourself the best combat death ever.

As the tag line goes Life is battle, battle is glory, and glory is ALL.

Now. If you know Nicky, you might not immediately associate her with bloodthirsty, kill or be killed all out Viking blood fests - her calm and friendly exterior revealing little of the Valkyrie inside. But that's where you'd be wrong. Which just goes to show, you never can tell.

The epically epic miniatures of Blood Rage
The game looks fantastic - of course, it's been done by Cool Mini or Not - and has been written by Eric Lang ( Chaos in the Old World, X-COM amongst others ), and seems to be winning fans. Nicky has promised to bring the blood letting along again this week, so, if you have a moment you can gawp at the fantastic miniatures, or if you're lucky, even give it a play.

A double dose of Castles of Mad King Ludwig was also on offer, one game drawing out into a somewhat lengthy affair with some dubious card recycling going on, Punk Rich was back in the house and found himself a quiet corner to hide in with Hazel and Dean where they got themselves wrapped up in Nations.

David and Chloe brought Imperial Assault along, where presumably they found the droids WERE the ones they were looking for after all, and have signed up to an every other week campaign of Star Wars ground based pew pewing. Looked cool. Although I hear some grumbles that playing the Imperials is something of a boring experience.

King of Tokyo stomped around the pub too, plus some Orctions gaming, and once again Mafia de Cuba got hauled out with a full table of 12 and some crazy shenanigans which proved to be very fun. Me and Sam nearly got away with both declaring to be drivers - despite that meaning there were one too drivers many - but Hannah belatedly pointed out our lie to Godfather Kieran who promptly ratted out Sam - an actual driver - then me - a diamond thief. Curses. Well played Sam though, he backed me up right to the end. If it wasn't for those meddling kids....

Thanks to Monika whos picture of Galaxy Truckers I purloined this week. My own picture succumbed to a 30 second over exposure madness.

The lovely Isle of Skye

Nations in the Time Out Corner

King of Tokyo and a trio of cool T Shirts

Imperial Assault. These ARE the droids you're looking for.

Castles 1

And Castles 2...

Another shot of the lovely Blood Rage miniatures

More blurry shots of Formula De for you...

1 comment:

'Weird' Lewis Walker said...

Prior to joining you in Mafia, I'd broken out Smash Up for the 2nd week in a row, becoming victorious in a 3-player game with my Ghosts and Mythic Horses combo, then followed it up with 3-player Munchkin Gloom. Much a story was told, much an RPG character was killed, and mine were the most miserable. Those two games and a Mafia win, another victorious evening for moi.