Another eclectic Thursday at Black Wolf

This Thursday's gaming saw a new group of players getting to grips and enjoying the 'To the Strongest' ancients rules. This makes about 70% of the club members who have tried the rules and enjoy them! John D has even started a civilized correspondence with Mr Miller about the forthcoming ECW version.

Another table appeared to be a rather low key Peter Pig game, noteworthy mainly for Pete's rather fruity language!

Then we had the "F" word game (Frostgrave)! Not only does it look strange, it also seems a bit of a throw-back to hordes of unwashed RPG / D&D players from the '70s and '80s. Rather unpleasant in today's polite gaming society. Hearing Tony say that he had a number of magical artifacts brought back really bad memories, not to mention what he was doing with his 'familiar'!!

The other two tables saw games using the Too Fat Lardies Dux Britanniarum rules. Both tables looked very nice, with Phil's superb home-made terrain on one table and my hernia-inducing Grand Manner buildings on the other. On one table we had the pluky Romano-Brits trying to stop some Irish Raiders from ransacking their church. Greg's Irish raiders gained a 4 move initial advantage, including a triple 6 roll for some cavalry, which meant that the game was played around the very door of the church! Simon's British managed to get onto the table and form a shieldwall, which kept the Irish penned in, albeit if the British levy were badly shaken by the end.

Things finally swung against the Irish raiders and a bit of cross-table coaching saw Greg's elite cavalry thrown into a slightly reckless charge against a group of British warriors, This ended badly for Greg's Irish cavalry, as well as ending his hopes of victory.

The other table saw an unusual Dux B game, raider vs raider. Phil's Picts had been expecting a peaceful trade delegation from Dave's Scotti. However, as the Picts moved out to welcome their Scotti visitors, they were set upon in a most cruel and underhanded manner!

Overall the battle was pretty even, with dice roll advantages see-sawing back and forth. In the end, the straw that broke the Pictish back, was the cloud of 8 Scotti skirmishers, inflicting loads of shock on the exposed flanks of the main Pict force. They were soon streaming back through the village, bloodied and broken. A good scrap though!

Next week may see the 1st outing of "A Handful of HOTs", a home grown version of 'A Fistful of TOWs', 1:300 Cold War.