The Christmas Game in Pictures

On Christmas day, after dinner was cleared, I set out a table for a role-playing lite wargame, using "Age of Heroes" (which I learned about on a blog I only recently discovered - Warwell's Wargames). Each player controlled a single hero - no warbands or anything like that.  I added a few of my own custom special abilities for some characters and I added an Out of Ammo rule. 

Each figure with a firearm received two ammo markers. On a 1, they would lose one marker. Once out they were totally out of ammo and would need to find more. Similarly, I created a medkit rule and each figure had 1 medkit that could heal 1-3 points of damage.

They could choose from a penguin, white-tailed deer (two rifles), arctic hare (one rifle), beaver (with flame thrower), seal, squirrel (with tommy gun), snow owl, arctic fox (with cigar), or a hedgehog. Each character had special abilities, so they all filled unique roles. 

My son contemplates the options.

Choosing a character took a bit of time as they debated the merits of each. In the end, the party consisted of the hedgehog (a healer, whom the player named 'Dr. Pendleton'), fox, bunny, and deer.

The scenario was simple: Santa's village had been ransacked and Santa was missing! The player characters, as inhabitants of the magic woods that hide the village from the eyes of the world, had an oath to help Santa and capture the perpetrators or bring them to forest justice.

The first encounter was triggered during the search of the ruins - 10 animated snow warriors rose up from the ground.

Snow warriors are immune to bullets. They need to be smashed.

It was a lengthy and sometimes harrowing battle, but all of the characters were involved and got to use their various special abilities. 

Fox (played by my son) had the idea that if he threw a snowball at a snow warrior and knocked off their hat, they would deanimate. His special ability was one of my own creation I called Crazy Like a Fox. He had to roll a 5+ to see if it would work and it did! So the part started aiming for hats!

With the snow warriors vanquished, the party applied medkits and hedgehog healing and then followed the tracks from the village's assailants into the woods. There they faced a choice - proceed north towards a dull glow on a the hill (a Christmas tree) or towards cries for help to the south. 

They chose the latter.

In a clearing stood a lovely house. Inside a sword fight of sorts was raging between the Rat King and Clara. While outside, a handful of rat soldiers stood guard behind a snow drift (played by a banana under the blanket) and their large Maus tank idled to the west of their position.

Deer and Bunny exchanged fire with the rats, while Fox used his Crazy Like a Fox ability to summon a carrier pigeon to deliver a grenade to him and a potato to Dr. Pendleton who himself had gone under the snow to advance towards the tank.

Bunny ran to the woods behind the tank looking for a weak spot but found none.

In the meantime, Dr. Pendleton managed to sneak behind the tank and plug the exhaust pipe with the potato. Fox had taken advantage of the rats being distracted by the firefight with Deer and snuck behind the house to hurl his grenade into the rat line.

Visible above are the candy cane missiles which the Maus can fire. It launched two into the woods at Deer, who managed to save and avoid any loss of hit points.

The tank's engine exploded sending the crew scrambling out the hatch in the top and the Rat King running from the house chased by Clara wielding her candy cane sword. The rats, their magnificent weapon disabled, saw no reason to stick around, ran off.

To thank the party for their assistance in driving off the rats, Clara gave them a bazooka and some ammo and told them the rats had bragged that they had helped with the kidnapping of Santa and had revealed he had been taken to an old, abandoned warehouse to northwest.

Fox and Dr. Pendleton pried candy cane missiles lose from the Maus to use as hand grenades and the party went to rescue Santa.

The building now functioning as a warehouse

The warehouse was guarded by mechanical toy soldiers with evil glowing red eyes. 

Dr. Pendleton snuck up the drift/hill in front of their position (played again by a banana) and rolled his candy cane missile right into them. The blast took out four of the soldiers outright!

The subsequent firefight went heavily in the party's favor, and they managed to easily cut down the robotic soldiers while suffering minimal wounds.

Fox, being sneaky, snuck inside and saw a number of black clad individuals with gold mirrors for their faces (In a follow up post I'll show close ups of everyone - they are cyborg zombies) busily assembling more mechanical soldiers.

Having run out of time to assemble a factory in 3d, I hastily painted a top down map on some brown packaging paper. Crude perhaps, but effective enough in the moment.

Fox blew his cover early and delivered a stirring speech to rouse the working class to throw off the shackles of their capitalist oppressor and avoid paying the price for his evil deeds, but the zombie-like cyborgs ignored his persuasive argument. 

The Evil Industrialist (played by an Ertl Sir Topham Hatt acquired solely to play this role) heard the shouting and came out to see what was going on - following behind him, controlled by the Conductor, came a monstrous robotic nutcracker!

Unfortunately, what's missing is the final battle pics.

Once the shooting started, the Evil Industrialist ran back into the back room behind the nutcracker.

Bunny came bursting in using the bazooka to attack the nutcracker, The nutcracker spewed fire from his mouth towards Fox - who managed to avoid the attack while the crates beneath him caught fire. 

Unshaken, Fox repeated his calls for a working-class revolution - this time directed at The Conductor. The Conductor , encouraged in part by the wound he received from a shot from Deer, was convinced, He threw down the controller for the mechanical nutcracker, told the Evil Industrialist where to stick it, and ran for the exit.

The Evil Industrialist, caring nothing for his employee's health or safety and proving Fox's point, was furious he was forced to handle things on his own. He was subsequently caught in the blast from Bunny's bazooka which caused him to drop the controller - neutralizing the threat from the nutcracker - and then was hit a second time by a peppermint missile hurled by Fox, which knocked him unconscious. 

Santa was freed from the crate he was held in and Christmas was saved!