17th November - AtDE Game vs The Uncle vs The Brother

Two days, two games not bad stats if you ask me. Caught up with both The Brother and The Uncle at The Uncles house today and ended up playing another game of Across the Dead Earth. The Uncle and I played the pre-made gangs again, but we quickly rolled up a third gang for The Brother. The gang creation rules were quite simple really and we had this done in no time at all.

The table was still set up from our last game so all we did was add an additional three tiles making it four by three. We decided that a loot counter based game would ensure that we all got involved and make it harder for two gangs to team up against the other. The loot tokens were blind drawn and the winner would be declared by the total points held at the end of the game. Loot could be taken off the board through your deployment zone but you could not look at the value until the game had ended. The Uncle had also dug up some more scatter terrain so we had a nicely crowded table to play on.

The family gang came in from the north (The Uncle), where as the two savage gangs came from the south (The Brother) and the west (myself).

 The savages met by Ronnie quickly took to the flank of their muscle bound opponents. The first turn was spent getting into position, though the leader of my rival savage gang managed to loot the rear vehicle. Skylar entered one of the ramshackle buildings and prepared to loot the premise.

Now I got a little distracted by the game at this stage, although my brother also runs a blog and I'll put a link up to his post once he gets his post up as there was a fair amount of action between his gang and The Uncles, as I was rather cautious of Drexyl on watch and wait covering the loot across the road and took a few turns to re-organise myself. Ronnie did manage to take down a rival savage through a window though.

Topper then pop'd round a corner and showed just why an assault gang member with a scattergun can be so devastating and I attempted to cover the window with Pyro to free up Ronnie for a bit more flexibility but The Brother's scout ended that idea by then coming up to the window and dropping a grenade through it, which would end up taking Pyro out for a good four turns and also as it happens Shay-man as I refused to leave him down while I had a medic handy.

Topper proceeded to get some revenge of the scout taking him down. He tried to put him out of action but failed to manage it.
I thought this was the beginning of a comeback on my part with me being the only player who hadn't managed to retrieve a loot counter at this stage of the game.




Unfortunately the next turn removed any ideas of a spectacular come back on my part. Shrimp got into a melee with Skylar as she had in the last game, unfortunately unlike the last game she dropped her axe (That's not a knife event card) and was knocked down and then taken out by the hidden assassins blade in her opponent's umbrella handle. Ronnie decided to risk popping his head out in an attempt to take out Drexyl and clear the path for his gang mates to loot the convoy but the sharpshooter got him with a Head shot and suddenly my gang was two members short with two more tied up in a medical situation.

The next few turns saw The Uncle capitalize on the now clear roadway loot and begin ferrying it to his deployment zone. The Brother attempted to get his second count off the board but Topper saved the day knocking down his remaining three gang members, including one Quick draw (Event card) which while both men managed to get their guns up Topper and his magical scattergun won the day to the suspenseful musical accompaniment provided by The Uncle during the rolling proceedings

In the course of the next few turns Topper managed to not only take out the rival savage's gang leader, but also survived a blast from the medic's flamethrower and then put him down in his following activation. After which he picked up the loot and made his way back to the board. (In theory, we called the game once The Brother's last gang member was knocked down, although not one had been put out of action).

On the other flank Shay-man finally managed to stabilize the grenade shocked Pyro, who proceeded to run over to attempt to prevent Ezra the family medic from grabbing the final unclaimed loot counter. Of course he managed to trip (Event card Tripwire) and while he survived the grenade Skylar attempted to lob at him (which actually rebounded back beyond her, but she survived the blast) Ezra decided that seeing as Topper's scattergun had been so effective he'd have to have a go with his and the clown like ganger bit the dust again.

The final ranking was The Uncle on top with myself next and despite an incredible effort The Brother coming in last. If it wasn't for The Uncle putting Drexyl on watch and wait effectively keeping me from the roadway the game may not have gone the way it as I wasn't game to push towards the loot.

The rules handled the third player without any real hitches, the only change we made was a slight alteration to work out initiative, rather than adding enemy knocked down/out of action miniatures to our rolls we subtracted friendly knocked down/out of action ones and it worked well in the three player setting putting the emphasis more on your own gang rather than allowing you to take advantage of someone elses agression.

As soon as his post is up I'll link The Brothers blog here for anyone that's interested. Link now up Stand and Deliver Wargaming - Across Dead Earth Post-apoc Skirmish