24th June - Progress and Games

Still on a rather time hungry work roster at the moment, but I keep telling myself it'll be back to normal soon. Continuing with the Saturday night family gaming we've played Pandemic and Elder Sign these past two weeks and managed a victory in both of these co-op games (admittedly Elder Sign was a just and the Youngest did end up a gibbering madwoman).

The Wife's Forge Fathers

My painting regime has been compromised with a six day week and some rather poor painting weather, but today I persevered and managed to  finish off my second warrior unit for my Saga war band (only badly smudging one eye which I was willing to count as a win) and I finally got around to putting the decals on the Wife's finally finished and as yet unnamed Dreadball Forge Father team. She did have them almost finished about two months back but decided she didn't like the paint scheme and redid them.

Had the gaming group round on Monday for our fortnightly games night and pulled out Munchkin this week. As you'd expect chaos ensued and I emerged from the fray victorious after the usual betrayal, last minute cursing and modifier pile ons (I believe one combat ended up with a player strength of 53 to the monsters 55). For me (and the group I'm fairly certain) the highlight was when the Wife bowed out early to sleep (being on a night shift and wanting an hour or two before work) I moved next to the Eldest and proceeded to bear hug her saying "Friend" over and over again. She blindly reached out till she found the dice and rolled to escape failing the first attempt but succeeding on her second try (for those who haven't played if you find yourself unable to win a combat you try to run needing a 5 or 6 otherwise you suffer from the Bad Stuff listed on the monsters card).

Not much else happening on the gaming front at the moment. Fingers crossed work settles down soon and I can manage to push some tiny metal men around on a table again soon and get the painting backlog on track again before my next deluge of said metal men begins to arrive.

8th June - Teaching the girls Stargrunt among other things

Well once again the regular gaming schedule is thrown out of whack. Had another chef at work leave on Friday, then just to make it interesting another one (who is also part of my gaming group) managed to get hit by a car on his bike on Tuesday. Luckily nothing too serious, cracked ribs etc but it means I'm back to 5 days for the moment. I'll give you a minute to share in my suffering....

Ok so pushing on I've managed to still get quite a few things in, playing a Capture the Flag scenario of Stargrunt with my daughters, a couple of games of Warage (a new dueling card game I backed on kickstarter last year) with my youngest and finally cracking the Settlers of Catan: Traders and Barbarians box. The only thing that's suffered has been my painting so my second group of warriors for Saga has been sitting surround by the paints they require to be finished... I can feel their bitter and judging glare on my back as I type.

So to Stargrunt. I managed to get a game in against my Uncle a week or so ago (no photos we were re-familiarizing ourselves with the rules) and decided to introduce the kids to it. Borrowing some terrain as I left we proceeded to setup the board after a breakfast run to Mount Tamborine while their mum was sleeping before her night shift. I knocked together a quick capture the flag scenario.

We were involved in a training exercise in a secret NSL location bring up the latest group of recruits to the require level of skill. Each side would consist of two 6 man squads all outfitted the same. Quality and Leadership value was deteremined by two die rolls, 1 - 2 Green Squad 3 - 5 Regular 6 Veteran. My daughters rolled a Green (my poor eldest) and Veteran (the lucky youngest), I got a Green and Regular squad. The leadership rolls followed with the Eldest rolling a lv 3 Ldr (my poor poor girl) and a lv 1 from the youngest (did I mention the luck?) I got a lv 1 for the Regs and a 2 for the Green. I just managed to beat the Youngest on a quick initiative roll so I began the game. I'd giving the girls a couple of basic ideas on how to go about getting the flag and getting it off the board and gave them a few minutes to discuss tactics.

The game went well. Both picking up the rules and had a good time. Unfortunately for my Eldest as they got to the point where they had the flag well covered, I manage to get the Younger suppressed and she proceeded to leg it into a nearby forest leaving the poor Green squad in the open where they proceeded to get cut to pieces and ended up breaking two turns later. The Younger eventually came out after skirmishing along the edge and refusing to break even unto "death" (Training excerise, dummy rounds, rigged armour etc). Her last two troopers proceeding to charge my Green unit killing two and driving them off, gaining the flag for one precious moment before being cut down by me Regs positioned just behind her.

They both enjoyed themselves though and the youngest has been scanning various sites trying to work out which faction she's going to buy once she finishes her Saga Irish.