Good Wayne

Monday, February 09, 2004

JumpGate Game Weekend

NELUG participated in a games weekend in New Hampshire. We ran two BrikWars games in four hour slots in half of a gym and it was a total blast.

The first game was mainly run by Shaun. It was a tek level 2 game (medieval) called "It's Takes A Pillage..."

I had a ton of fun, even if I was paired up with one of the two kids who joined the game. This kid was probably 7 or 9 at the most, but he was very well behaved. And, except for the down time between turns (when he kept asking if it was our turn), he was excited and gun-ho to destroy the enemy. Heck, he had to keep reminding me that we had a unit searching one of the houses - I would have forgotten if it wasn't for him.

Shaun had a pretty groovy gold system where, you could collect it from searching chests and barrels (while looking for the Golden Key). But you could also kill civilians and rob the corpse for random 1d4 gold. That was neat. Plus, you could loot the corpses of the dead enemy. This actually took gold from the other team's Money Pool (which is the best way to run any economic system in a BrikWars game). The end was supposed to be a key to unlock a mountain which released a giant blue troll. I wish I had some pics of the troll, because it look awesome, but I don't. If and when some show up on Brickshelf, I'll post a message or something here. The real power in the game came from finding a chicken leg. The chicken leg would have let you control the troll and stop the town flat.

Overall, I though this was a really good game. With smaller squad, movement went quicker and the action was fast. Chris and I wiped out Jonathan's troopers pretty quickly. I think I lost only one guy the whole game (maybe two). I wouldn't mind playing this as a regular game just to see how it ends.

I can honestly say it's been the best TL2 game I've ever played [1]

The second game was the Tox Uthat, a TL6 game that was my basic design. Squads entering a space derelict in search of the Tox Uthat (it doesn't matter what it is, they just needed to find it). Make your way to the bridge and get the Uthat.

It was a modular game, and we had about 10 modules for players to search through that made up the ship.

In each module were containers and they yielded new weapons like Siege Pistols or useless items, like Space Twinkies. Amazingly, both the Siege Pistol and the Siege Rifle, two of the most powerful weapons in the game, were actually found. I used a d100 chart (2d10) to make container contents random. One of the non-NELUG players, James, found just about every useless item on the list. It was pretty funny (although Joe found the hairnets. That only would have been funnier if Shaun had found them...). I had added a hover security bot as a controllable item as well that I had high hopes for. It did get found, but the user got killed and the remote pad (a second way to control it) was never found. Boo-hoo.

Into this mix we also added Jorge's aliens and they were pretty neat. I know they ate two guys, I'm not sure what other damage they may have done. They scurried about and generally showed up at the worst times for the players.

My own squad got wiped out by Dan's use of the aforementioned siege weapons. Three guys pretty much vaporized in what was actually a miss. But 2d10 explosive damage in a confined space is nuts. You just don't miss. My last man decided to withdrawn and hide in a corner, weeping.

The cargo bay, in the center, was really the main battleground. There was tons of action in the center room (that's where I bought it, in a vain attempt to reach the transporter device). Although Wayne (no, the other one) managed to get a guy in there and teleported to the bridge. Of course his weapon and clothes didn't make it, so he had a nude minifig running around up there.

I had put a turn limit of 10 turns on this game almost as a gag. I mean, *no* BrikWars game ever goes 10 turns, right? Well, I think this one went 11 or 12, well after the ship should have been vaporized! But it wasn't really worth it to just stop the game because of some silly rule. In the end, two teams made it to the bridge, but the aliens were there too. The Uthat was retrieved, but we were getting really pressed for time. Most of the other gamers had cleaned up and headed out, so we just called a winner at that point and had the ship vaporized by the sun.

A Pyrrhic victory to be sure.

If you're really interested, I have a PDF file of the handout I had at the game. It contains just about everything including a lame BrikWars primer. It's at the bottom of this folder

[1] This being my third.

posted by Evil Wayne | 10:44 PM

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