This weekend, I was able to put some of my painting and terrain to work as we set up for a big four player game of Dropzone Commander. With the release of the unofficially official beta stats on Facebook, I could legitimately play my Resistance force and the rest of the group could field units beyond the core rulebook. In my mind, this means we’re officially breaking out of the old first edition orbit and setting our sights on the second edition horizon.
A friend was in from out of town the other night and I knew he’d like the racing game, Championship Formula Racing, so I put it to the table and got us all set up for some three-way racing. After the obligatory example through the first turn, we reset the track, configured our cars, and started it up.
Bret chose the black Lotus 77 with a slow start speed, high accel/decel and top speed and the worst skill option. Reese went with the blue Tyrrell P34 six-wheel and had lower than average accel/decel, high top speed and a fast start speed. I decided on the orange March 761 with average accel/decel/start speed, higher top speed and wear, and lower skill.
With most of my Kickstarter package in from A Song of Ice & Fire Miniatures Game in, I pushed to get it to the table and finally put it through its paces. My friend and I had a chance to play a demo of the game back at last year’s Gen Con but the experience was pretty piss poor. I’ve watched several playthroughs online and read the rules fully so was hopeful that we could see the game in the best light this time.
/pic4218513.jpg)
Earlier this week, I had the chance to break out Championship Formula Racing again. We had 6 players this time with four newbies and two veterans. As is typical when I play the game with new players, we ran a “practice turn” where we start the race and get through the first turn so that players can understand the rules and have a better idea on building their car.
After the practice turn, we set up our cars and started out.
I started in 2nd position (in the ’57 red Ferrari-Lancia 801) but quickly took the lead in turn one. Wyeth was in the orange March 761, Louis was in the Yellow Penske PC4, Jonas in the Black Lotus 77, Sean in the white/red McLaren M23, and Colton bringing up the rear in the blue Tyrrell P34.
I’ve talked a little about the prep of my Imperial Assault Hunger Games variant in both concept and execution but I wanted to take a minute to go over the full variant as we played it and how you can duplicate it if you want.
There have been several Hunger Games variants floating around for games like Imperial Assault and they all center around a central basic idea: multiple players deathmatch on a fixed board with each player controlling a single model until the game whittles down to the last figure standing. To simulate more of the Hunger Game’s theme, a cache of goodies lie at the center of map for players to pick up and use throughout the game. A lot of these matches like to break the game’s fundamental rules in some way by offering the ability to pick new items/powers/weapons regardless of whether the figure can legally use it. They also work best with a lot of players in the game to maximize the board and ramp up the chaos factor.
One victim remains in the Pit: Hammer Showdown. Tyreese, Prison Advisor is a weaker option than Pro-Football Tyreese (the current Pit King) but I decided to deck him out like his figure even though it breaks my normal 75 point limit.
We had our first chance to play the new beta rules of Dropzone Commander (currently version 2.4.1). It was nice to see Dropzone hit the table but since they’ve only released stats for the four core factions, I was relegated to playing with my friend’s UCM models. We decided to keep it simple and play with only the starter set of models and out of five of us, we had all four factions covered.
I was able to dig out a little and get another Pit game in this week. This week, we stick around with Tyreese and continue with the “who wielded it best” competition.
Tyreese, Blinded By Rage is up next. I had to bend the 75 point limit a bit to keep Tyreese in the “hammer builds” so he weighs in at a bloated 85 points. I don’t have a lot of confidence in this iteration of Tyreese as his damage output doesn’t look much better than Pro-Football Tyreese and he’s 11 points more. He also has a bad power, “Raging!” that ups threat even faster, which will make this pit venture harder.
To help focus my painting, I’ve decided to look at some themed Pit run-throughs. We’ve already seen that with my “kids night” session last week but this time I’m going to focus on figures with a particular weapon.
I’d already previewed these models last week but I figured it was time to try out this new series titled “who wielded it best.” These next few sessions will showcase the hammer wielders Clementine and Tyreese.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
