Chrome Hammer: Ascension Beta (Sabotage)

Star Breach

Hello, humans!

I was itching for a game to play, something new to ease my fidgety ennui, so I thought I'd finally try Star Breach, by Elijah M. Kelogg!  (I'm assuming the "M" stands for "Multigrain".)

This is an attractive book with glossy pages and nice illustrations and photos of minis.  It's something I could probably convince a friend to play if I had friends.  I mean, friends nearby that I could hang out with.

Anyway, here's what I did.

Gaea Prime: First Defense or "X-COM Please Don't Sue"

 

Let's face it, whenever I see a new sci-fi skirmish game, it seems like the first thing anybody asks is "Can it do X-COM?"  If for some reason you're not familiar with X-COM, it was an old computer game of tactical skirmish combat that explored fending off alien infantry, raiding their crashed ships, and researching the remains to reverse-engineer all of their cool tech to use against them.  Great game.

Gaea Prime: First Defense is basically that: GP's first encounter with alien slavers raiding the Earth for resources, and the adventures of GP's armed forces as they kill the aliens and loot their bodies for research fodder.

Here's how my first game went...

Weasel-Hammer: White Scars vs. Orks!

 Hello, Humans!

This September is Weasel-Hammer month!  What does that mean?  It's a loosey-goosey campaign set in a lost corner of the Warhammer 40k universe, but mostly played with Nordic Weasel Games games.

In the fractious and war-torn Mustelida sector, some kind of Warp disturbance has cut off that region of space from outside communication and travel while dark forces begin pouring in.  Whatever Imperial elements that happen to be trapped there are the only hope for Humanity!

"In the grim derpness of the far future, there is only w... weasel!"

Laserburn: Nostalgia Kills

 Sometimes you can't truly appreciate what you have, or what you've lost, without going back and (re)discovering it for yourself.

Laserburn is one of those things that bears experiencing. It's a sci-fi game from 1980, which if you're reading this in 2020, was about 100 years ago.  This was apparently before the time of common word processors, or technical writers or editing I guess.  Clearly this was type-written and then copied to make books.  But who am I to talk?  I was alive in 1980.  How many beloved games did I write? :)

I actually didn't get into minis games until much later, so I don't have any nostalgia for the game, but I'm also kind of a gaming hipster, so I at least had to try it.  Here we go.

Knyghte, Pyke & Sworde: Objective Battle

 Hey!  It's minis time again!  Finally!

I asked some folks what I should play next, and they said KPS again, so don't blame me.  Unfortunately, the short notice prevented me from painting up new guys, which really is a shame, but I decided instead to mix it up by playing an "Objective" battle this time.

I'm playing both sides, as usual, Blue vs. Red again.  To get objectives, each side rolls twice on a table, in the open, but then secretly chooses one of the two objectives.  The objectives are then revealed, and both sides roll for deployment type.  Blue ended up with "Find the Loot" (secure one of three random tokens) and Red got "Slay the Leader" (kill best opposing Captain), and for deployment I rolled the relatively boring "All Forward", which is just a normal "everybody starts on their side" setup.  The game will only last 4 turns.  That doesn't sound like a lot, but man, there was so much blood in so few turns!

TSoY: Maybe it's Me?

Previously, on The Shadow of Yesterday...

DUN DUN!

"What's going on here?  Where are the minis games?"

I know, I know.  This is just something that I have to get out of my system.  I've got plans for another minis battle report soon.  Maybe next weekend.  My gaming table is my work desk now, so things are more of a hassle to set up.

Anyway, Pedro, outcast member of the Red Company, and his Ratkin sidekick, "Chaser", have shacked up with a clan of bandits in the wilderness, and in a night of drunken camaraderie have agreed to help them knock over a guarded coach carrying valuable cargo.