Man-Summit 2013

Every year, my lovely bride organizes a “Girl’s Weekend” party. She and her entourage rent a house and spend the weekend there. The girls eat, drink, gossip and party far away from husbands, boyfriends or SO’s.  This year was no exception.

So, since she was having fun without me, I decided to do some partying of my own.

This past weekend, I hosted the first “Man Summit”. The simple goal was to have one big game party that would last the whole weekend with my house as the venue.

Well, I had several different games planned for this lovely event.  On Friday, I had planned to have an 'RPG' night.  I wanted to continue my Gurps: Prime Directive campaign with a new adventure.  Most of the players were excited to start up again but they had schedule conflicts. So, the PD campaign will wait until there is a better time.

Saturday morning was to be the 'Hex Paper and Counters' session which involved Avalon Hill games and similar stuff. There was no interest at all for that. 

The afternoon session was a mini campaign using the "Song of Blades and Heroes" miniature skirmish game.  There were three attendees; Desert Scribe, Chip "Da Baron", and John G.

We used "The Ruins Are Endless" rules to manage the mini-campaign. The game is set in an ancient ruined city that is so old and forgotten that no one really knows what secrets lie inside. The objective is for each warband to make its way through the ruins and find artifacts of tremendous value. The city is divided into 21 separate sectors.  Among those, there are 5 sectors that contain artifacts.  Victory points were awarded for finding the artifacts and defeating the opposing players units or indigenous monsters in that sector. The encounters within each sector were determined by a d12 roll and referencing a chart.

The Scribe brought a huge amount of Heroscape miniatures that served well as indigenous creatures. Chip brought along a ton of terrain which we generously spread across the map to make a deep and interesting tablescape.

The Ruins are Endless!

We separated into two teams.  Chip and Scribe vs. John and myself.

Goblins with Giant Spider

John had a warband of goblins escorting a giant spider while Chip had a warband of lava elementals and religious fanatics (??). I didn't ask Chip if he had a theme for his warband but probably should have.

Dwarves trying to move up the hill to support the elf.

I took my old "Venom Inc." warband.  This warband has never really worked as a unit but I didn't want to use my kobolds for this type of battle. The warband has one dark elf leader, two elf archers, one bugbear, one human crossbowman, and two Dwarf miners that never seem to make a difference in any battle. Desert Scribe's warband had only robots for its members.

At the start of the game, Chip moved his units quickly into the ruins and immediately encountered some of John's units.  The battle was pitched with John taking the upper hand early but Chip eventually worn him down.

The play continued with John and I taking the next bound and so on.  We came across an encampment occupied by some scary-strong Ape Men. We found miles of bladegrass that hindered our movement.  Chip ran across some slow zombies but chose to ignore them.  And some of Desert Scribe's robots were lost trying to traverse a filthy swamp. In the end, Chip and Scribe found three of the artifacts while John and I napped only two. 

After that battle, we decided to reduce the size of the tablescape and just run a typical SoBaH battle with the same teams.

The scenario was similar to the campaign. Three objective markers were placed on the map. An artifact was hidden under one of the objectives.

Robots on the move

The battle started and Chip rushed forward to grab the nearest objective which did not have the artifact. My dwarves struggled to get make any progress across the board.  Chip's lava elementals were able to take out two of my figs within two turns.  My warband struggled to move into combat the rest of the game. Scribe's robots managed to find the artifact and the battle raged on until John goblins routed off the board after a gruesome kill.

Chip's lava guys approaching my mixed warband.

It was great fun. I'd have to say the event was a success.  Thanks to the guys who came.

ManSummit2013