2023 Christmas Game

Christmas Eve, 1942

The Germans have a vise-like grip on Europe with little signs of cracks in their defenses. They’ve made holiday present delivery nearly impossible with anti-aircraft guns firing at anything in the night sky. For obvious reasons, we can’t risk The Jolly Fat Man.

Our battalion is tasked with delivering presents to some isolated but occupied mountain villages. The children have had a terrible year under German occupation and we’re going to bring them a small spark of joy.  And by “bringing them a small spark of joy” we mean toys and killing Nazis.

Your platoon will be dropped South of Le Village Au-delà Des Pommes de Terre (a village in the alps between Italy and France)

Your mission:

• Eliminate and Infiltrate German defenses south of the village..
• Deliver the right present to the right recipient.
• Blow up the railway.
• Escape to the Extraction Zone.

If you miss the extraction flight, head south over the alps until you reach Italy. There you can make contact with Agent Dominick. The Reindeer cannot climb the hills of Italy, as you know.

You will each be given two spheres of Christmas Magic to assist you. Use them wisely. 

Good luck, and we’ll see you in the canteen for eggnog, post-mission.

Maj. Gen. Blitzen

Such was the set up for this year's Christmas day game for family and friends.

Players would each play a member of Santa's Animal Nighttime Tactical Assault Force (the acclaimed S.A.N.T.A. Force) - each worth 100 points in One Page Rules terms for Grimdark Future Firefight.

Of the three cats present, only Theoria was interested in helping.

The table layout. A tripod MG-42 team has the central hill, the others are held by bipod-mounted MGs.

Sam the Snowman is a North Pole operative deep undercover. Players can rendezvous with him for additional Christmas Magic.

By this point the PCs had handily eliminated the MG teams. Rat King (missing an ear) orders his Swarms forward

Rat Swarms engage a German infantry squad.

Rat King (foreground) makes contact with Sam the Snowman. Penguin thinks twice about standing in the road with a mobile MG barreling down towards it. 

One of the presents that had to be delivered.

Penguin trying to avoid the kublewagen's MG.

German reinforcements start to arrive.

Penguin takes out the driver and the kublewagen crashes and explodes,

Hedgehog is carrying the beacon and starts heading for the hill.

Owl targeted the NCO.

Beaver would single handedly destroy this tank. His chompers have a bite of AP4 and he tore it up like it was a tin can.

Hedgehog lit up the extraction beacon. The smoking SDK was thanks to team effort with Beaver delivering the final blow.

S.A.N.T.A. Force members made their way to the hill. The vehicle takes two turns to arrive.

Owl finished up some business first.

Extraction unit arrives and the party begins to climb in.

The pilot takes off under a hail of MG and rifle fire (the party's minis don't all physically fit, but in-game they had all boarded)

A completely successful mission!

****

For the third year running, I have run a game on Christmas for our family and friends. It is safe to say at this point that we have a tradition. And there is talk of someone else picking up the reigns for a Thanksgiving game next year (I run a game for our Family Fall Festival and Christmas, I need the break in between).

This year I wanted to make use of things I already had, rather than making or buying anything new - it seems a waste to make these things for a single game, never to see the light of day again. So, you may have recognized some of these things from previous games.

To add variety, I looked to the missions.

There were five presents, each to go to a different house. The present was an image representing the title of a Christmas song. Each building contained a piece of paper with the name of a song. The present had to be given to the house that matched. The song for each house could onl be revealted by a delivery attempt.

The images weren't difficult to decipher but some were just enough of a challenge to be entertaining. It also provided a challenge for the players, as quite often the player with a needed present was nowhere near the right house. Players could pass presents to other characters(owl for instance took one ,as he was faster and unhindered by terrain) but no animal could carry more than two presents, or one present and the extraction beacon.

One really game-y rule I put in place was that all player figures had to be beyond 18 inches from their baseline before any presents, but other than that, the players were free to handle the objectives in any order they desired.

To blow up the train tracks, the player had to roll a die, with the chance that it might not go off, or worse, it might be far bigger than expected. In the event, it only blew up what it was supposed to!

The first reinforcement (a single squad) arrived one turn after shooting started. No other reinforcements were set to arrive util turn 8. That gave the party 8 turns to take out three MG teams and a squad, and deliver presents, before the bulk of the German force arrived. 

Players were not required to contact Sam the Snowman, but if a player did, then Sam would give them a Christmas riddle to solve - a couple of them were math based, some were brain teasers. I let the whole party participate but only the player who met with Sam got the reward (two more Christmas Magic beads)

To avoid any kind of unfairness, I involved the players in the German reenforcement placement.

I indicated six spawn points on the table. On turn nine, Germans would arrive from two spawn points, for each of the next three rounds, but they could only arrive from a given spawn point one time. 

The players were asked to indicate which points were used for which turn, but they didn't know what would arrive. In the meantime, I had a list of order in which the reinforcements would arrive but no idea where each would come from. 

This worked out better than expected, with the party splitting up to deal with different threats before they decided on a plan for the extraction. 

Oh, one last thing, Christmas Magic. The player received two silver beads. They could be turned in for either:

• +2 to the current roll (even after the result was known)
• 1d3 wounds healed
• Force the enemy to re-roll

I wanted them to have interesting choices to make rather than specifying a particular effect. This is not dissimilar to Hero Points in FUBAR.

The game ran for a little over 3 hours of play time, with a break for dinner around the two-hour mark (We were supposed to be done BEFORE dinner, but there was some confusion and some people didn't arrive for two hours later than initially indicated). It seemed like everyone had a good time and with the exception of my son who was very tired by the end, everyone was engaged until the final flight back to the North Pole.