Weekend Update

Work continues apace on the Russians although they look little different than they did the other day, so no picture. 

My Armies in Plastic order arrived the other day - I was surprised that the package was so bulky given I only ordered two guns. Then I remembered, I wanted two mountain/screw guns (I will use generic infantry for crew) and found the best deal was to get a Northwest Frontier battle pack with 20 Afghans and 20 Indian army figures, plus the two guns.

The Afghans, which will be useful if I want to pursue the Great Game angle, include several figures armed with sword and shield. In spite of cartridge pouches, I think they can be pressed into service as levy figures for my One Hour Wargame, mostly Deetail, Saracen army.

I rather like the Indian officer and think he would make an interesting character - whether I would decide to paint up any of the others remains to be seen.

Do two guns count as a gun park?

Saturday afternoon was a nail biter of a  Panzer Kids game :

The Sherman or the Tiger?

The rules are straightforward, play fast, and there’s plenty of differentiation between tank types. 

We played the basic rules (this was my second attempt with them, my son's first) with an objective (which is an advanced rule although we didn't include the recommended ATG). The Germans had a Tiger I and a Panzer IV, while the allies fielded three Shermans. 

It came down to one Sherman against the Tiger, both with 2 hits (3 eliminates a tank). The Sherman had a cover bonus, which enabled it to withstand the Tiger's onslaught, helped too by a monumental run of poor die rolling. Finally, after some ineffective back and forth, we set a limit of how much ammo remained, and with one round left, the Tiger brewed up the Sherman for a German victory..

For next time, we're looking forward to using ATGs.

Finally, on Saturday night, I played a solo RPG (something I haven’t done in years):

I bought the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic RPG a few years ago during a time when my son was watching the Friendship is Magic TV show. Naively, I thought I might hook him with the game. His interest didn't last the delivery time of the book.

However, I was rather taken by the system which encourages cooperation between player characters via an in-game mechanism called "friendship points". It's also implicitly encourages non-combat solutions to conflict, being it's a My Little Pony theme, but you can ignore that if you choose and the system can handle it. So, point being, I've held onto the rule book and even picked up this starter set - which cost about the same as the dice it included.

The adventure was engaging ,and a little frustrating too, when I was lost in a labyrinth (I realized I had to map it out or I'd be lost a lot longer). 

Oddly, the module is a solitaire game book/choose-your-own-adventure with dice type affair, so although it provides a method to play with others (everyone rolls and if one succeeds they all do, but if one loses a hit point, they all do), the intent is that it's played by one person. Thus, in a game where friendship is the mechanism to overcome difficulty, there's no one around to spend friendship points with. 

If that's not an analogy for the pandemic, I don't know what is.