7TV Day 4 Board in Brum and 700th post!

Saturday 25th January saw Board in Brum hold their first 7TV Day of 2020 and their fourth win in total. Sadly this will be the last one held at this location but there is another planned for September at their new location! Its only a few minutes up the road from their previous location but it is laid out better and should be great for bigger events.

I decided to build my cast from the Post Apocalypse set taking a good chunk of my raiders in the 40 rating cast. I decided to go with one star and loads of chaff with a few other types thrown in. I went with the theme of  'The Trials of Wes'

Overlord Wes led the warband.

Two bands of Marauders  (2 Marauder leaders and 9 Marauders split)

2 Pyro's and 1Wrecker as fun toys.

15 models gave me a whopping 9 Plot Point's until they started losing numbers. Only get one gadget for Wes.

It was a smaller turn out than planned but there was still 12 of us playing so a reasonable turn out. As usual it was optional to bring along a board for everyone to play. We shared the room with some Marvel Crisis Protocol players who also jumped onto some of our boards as well.

I took along my own Post Apoc terrain borrowing the great mat that was already on the table in the store.

Paul Smith's Brilliant Winterly Board

James Aldridge's excellent V2/UFO Board which won best board.

Mike Strong's Excellent Alien Board

David's cracking fairground with light up big wheel

Mike Strong's Tropical Ruin board

Mike Strong's Excellent Venice board with submarine!

As always the day is very relaxed and its all about playing games rather than winning. There are prizes but these go to best cast, best board and most sporting player. We played the usual 3 games with a break for lunch after the first game and then time was taken to vote for board and cast.

The day's theme was about the casting studio's accountants taking measure to claw back due to the budget being blown at the previous shows and cut backs were in place. The Scenario's we played were all chosen from the main book but all had extra rules to which affected the later games in the day. If you were in the red then there were negative effects and if you were in the black you got positive ones. If you were in the grey then you were just neutral.

Game 1 
David's Post Apocalyptic Survivor Warband
Wasteland Wanderer, Bad Lieutenant, a Biker Mob (on foot but using bike models) and a Survivor Group with a mutt.

The Scenario was called treasure hunt. We placed objectives as normal  but placed one dead centre in the middle of the board. When collecting this objective you had use an action and pass a mind test to pick it up. It was also worth D6 Victory Points. No the twist with the accountants was the side who advanced the furthest across the board would go in to the red and the one that didn't would stay in the black.

The Bikers and Survivor Family surged forward on the right hand side grabbing some loot.

The wanderer creeps up behind mobile home.

 Master Blaster's warband takes the left carefully picking their way over the roller coaster tracks (we agree the track would count as rough ground)

 Mother and her band take the right flank loosing of bolts and other missiles from their pneumatic weapons at the bikers but mostly just cause them to duck.

Wes and his wrecker chum sneak up behind a hut whilst a crossbow armed marauder snipes at the biker boss striking him with a bolt to the leg.

The Wanderer takes a shot at Master Blaster's mob with his shotgun catching a good number of them in the blast but the distance was just a bit to great and the pellets lacked any force to cause any damage. 

 

The Wanderers beastly friend snaggs some loot.

The Wanderer blast Master's mob and takes a couple of them out of action including the pyro.

The Bikers charge into the open shotguns blazing and a large number of marauders go down (David steals the scene)

Two survivors climb into the hotdog stand and begin to search for loot. Their persistence eventually yields a huge score and they find a bag of guns! Wes manages to maim and kill a number of Survivors. A big melee ensues but is to little to late and the loss of a huge number of his gang means Wes decides to bottle it and flee the fairground.

Had to get a shot of my warband on the fairground it was great to play on. It was a complete loss. David managed to grab 3 normal objectives besides the Central Maguffin he also managed to roll a 6!  I think I managed one objective and after counting up the points it was something like 15-1 (Though I didn't realise until afterwards I shouldn't of give him 3 vps for Wes as for some reason in Apocalypse rules the VP's are slightly different this would of only been 2 points less). However I kept my cast in the black and so next game would receive a bonus. My dice were appalling and when I did get chance to lay on the hurt my rolls got fluffed. Wes was great (well he would be he is the star) The normal maruaders were a bit crap at shooting with their pneumatic weapons. The Pyro's got gunned down as a priority and the wrecker failed to achieve much sadly.

We had a break for lunch and people set out their casts for voting for Best Cast.

 James's Red Shadows.

 Kieron's Zombie horde

 Paul Smith's Winterly cast with Strawman, Crow king and Mr Sickle!

Mike Strong's Ship Crew

 Alistair's Excellent Minion Cast.

Simon Clarke's Groucho cast loved the ape!

Game 2
Search and Rescue against James Aldridge's Excellent Red Shadow's cast. We picked the Venice board as neither of us had played on it before despite it being at several events we attended before. The scenario itself saw one of our cast members hidden on the board. To get him back we had to roll a D6 when collecting an objective and on a 4+ it was our cast member. It was worth 1 VP for finding him and 2 VP's if we got him off the board edge (neither of us realised that second bit until the end lol!) Being in the black I got a random card that made one of my opponents gadgets cost an extra 2 plot points to use. The Accountants wanted only a short episode so the player who turns over the most countdown cards counts as being in the black.

We tweaked the board slightly as it was setup their was only one crossing point to the sub so we moved the pier on the left so it was touching the sub. The Objectives were across the centre mostly. With one in the building on the left, the sub conning tower, the pier on the right and another on the steps and next to the statue in the centre.

The Marauder's surge forward towards the sub. Leaving two crossbow armed bandits to snipe at the Skeletron's who had sneakily deployed far forward and had advanced behind the central statue.

 The first Skeletron scanning the area located the missing Red Shadow Scientist straight away with his sophisticated electronic eyes.

The Massive Red Shadow Robot steadily advances forward.

The second Skeletron secures another objective.

 Wes and Master Blaster lead the charge onto the sub.

 Mother does likewise.

 The mobs surge forward blasting away at the Skeletron's eventually bring them both down with the shear wait of fire.

A huge brawl with the Baron his soldiers and the marauders fights it out in front of the statue.


The Red Shadow Scientist and a soldier in the building try to grab the objective but the Pyo's charge up the steps and torch them with their flame weapons.


A booby trap set off by some flanking Red Shadows kills two of the Baron's men. The Episode ended due to the accountants meddling.

 The Red Jackal sneaked down the right flank and grabbed the objective on the jetty taking some pot shots at the marauders before jet packing up to the top of a nearby building.
Wes searched the conning tower finding the missing marauder scout.

Again my dice were terrible and I poured a lot of bolts into the skeletrons and that scientist must have been wearing a kevlar lined lab coat or something. It was a 3 - 1 victory to James as he managed to snag 3 objectives to my one and the game ended before I could pick up the remaining one in the building. No Star's were injured though I did try very hard against the Baron and Red Jackal. We both drew on the count down cards as we both used 9 each and both ended up being in the grey (no bonus or penalty)

 The Baron, Red Jackal and his forces.

Game 3
The final game of the day was again Simon Coldrick's who owns Board in Brum's excellent Flash Gordon cast (I've known Simon a few years and yet this is was our first game together!) This time we played the Steal. Simon one the roll off and opted to be the defender and Flash himself bore the tech item the marauders sought after. This was going to be a touch game. I faced off against the Space Ace and Renegade Royal and a squad of soldiers and two mechanical men.

The squad of soldiers with Flash and Dale in the ruins.

 The mechanical men in their mud suit camouflage.

Flash's force surges forward (soldiers have a free move) and manage to get in position to secure  two objectives in the first turn. Some dodgy editing meant a Pyro and a soldier switch places. burning a soldier and the other being gunned down by Wes. Flash and Dale swiftly avenge the soldiers and  deal with the Pyro.

The Mechanical men advance and grab another objective

The Soldiers charge forward and pelt Master Blaster's mob with grenades killing them all and wounding Blaster.

A quake on the board shift the scenery and the mechanical men advance and kill a number of marauders with their electric arc weapons. 

Master Blaster and Mother charge towards the soldier killing one of them but are then brought down by Flash's Ray Pistol and punched out by the mechanical mans heavy blows. Losing a large number of my cast Wes fails his axe test and they all run away! Another heavy loss for the Trials of Wes! Simon managed to collect 4 objective, axe my cast who ran away! Gaining a massive victory

 with Wes's band only managed to kill a handful of soldiers and not collect anything at all. 

Simon's Excellent Flash cast with the bulk of the figures from Cold Wars and the Crooked Dice Spawn standing in for the mechanical men.

My dice were absolutely atrocious today. I think this is Karma for all the lucky dice I had at the last Dales event in November last year with my Gangster cast!

Essentially I lost all 3 games today. I had planned to take Marauders to the next 7TV event at the Dales club in April (this is Apocalypse themed and will be using the vehicles rules) So need to sit back and tweak this cast a bit. They Pyro's are bullet magnets and the marauder's own ranged weapons are poor. I think it needs more muscle and perhaps a scout of some sort as besides the crossbow armed guys lack any sort of shooting. The crossbow's are great they just need setting up in good positions so they can make aimed shots at people (I forgot about aim in the first game) the unwieldy on the crossbow though means they can't redeploy and shoot.

Wes was fine as the overlord. I may get Humongous painted up and then take Wes as a Co Star of some sort instead. Vehicles also need to be costed in but we will be upping the ratings to 50 for the next Dales event.

Best Board went to James Aldridge and his V2 Base board. (You can find his write up here)

Best Cast went to Paul Smith and his excellent Winterly cast.

Best Opponent went to Kieron Mulholland with his zombie horde. (You can find his write up here)

7TV Day II Board in Brum

Sorry its took me longer than planned to sort out my new phone and to get this post up. Saturday just gone 26th January saw Board in Brum in Walsall host its second 7TV Day event. It was a highly popular event with  nearly 20 players turning up for the days gaming. The bring a board was highly popular again. This time we even had to take down the store boards to make room and we still ran out of space!

The days gaming was set to start out at 1030 play one game with a break for lunch then two more games on the afternoon. It didn't matter if you won, lost or drew. what counted was the voting after lunch for Best Cast, Best Board and then at the end of the day most sporting player.

As usual Mike Strong one of the organiser had some nice twists to the games being played. One of them being that the TV Studios were hard up so lots of advertising need to be squeezed into the shows to maximise profits. This meant every player was randomly given a product and slogan that they need to fit in at some point during there games with a plot point awarded for placement and two if it fitted the moment perfectly. It was a nice touch which led to some hilarious moments. The games scenario's were set for each game so everyone tried the same scenario. These were mostly standard ones using the enhanced Maguffin rules for each one.

Boards.

Heres all the boards. Mostly 3x3 with a couple that were different sizes.

My Post Apoc board

 Stores Venice board which got taken down to fit in the Bunker board down below

 An Excellent grave yard board which was 2x3

An Excellent city board by Kieron of Cheaphammer.

Matthew Wildsmith took away the best board with this excellent bunker base board.

 Desert themed missile base with flashing lights!

Red Shadow UFO city Board.

Industrial Misslie Silo

Military base and silo. Seems the Apocalypse was firmly on peoples minds this time!

Love the shuttle on this great sci fi board.

CASTS

 There were some excellent casts brought along to the event. You can see below that they were quite varied but all excellently painted.

For my own cast I went for models that haven't seen use in a game yet so rolled out my St Searles girls. I went for Jackie team Captain, Bins, Dorothy, A Sixth Former team with a captain and single Fourth Former.

Andy Bascomes excellent Mad Sciene cast. Love that Apet

I love this cast. I am going to have to grab that Baron Krapaud (Crooked Dice Grandville Range)

Kieron's Excellent Shredder, Baxter Stockman and Foot Clan 

cast

Alistairs Fabulous and deadly Shiva cast.

Love this Action Force themed cast by James Aldridge.

This Chibi Ninja Cast by Mike Marshall won best cast.

Simon Clarke's Soviet spy cast.

Matt Spooners Crime cast led by Bane

Matthew Wildsmiths Mutated Blue Peter Turtle cast

GAME 1

This was against Matt Spooner and his crime cast. Unfortunately some wires got cross and he hadn't brought enough ratings so I loaned him one of my figs from a spare cast I brought along to boost him to the 30 ratings required. This Episode was 'The Hit' from the production guide. It seemed more natural for me to be the defender and Matt's Criminal Cast trying to assassinate a member of my cast. This was selected by Matt and kept secret from me though after a few turns it became apparent that Bins was the target she must have obtained some sort of information about Bane and his plans for Gotham (Nottingham not USA).

Bane and his gang deploy. The Hitman is positioned up on a rooftop

 The Girls all setup and ready to look for fags, booze or whatever they can get there hands on

 The Sixth Form team take on Bane, a close shave prompts the Gillette 'The Best a man can get' Advertisement. 

 Event cards run amok setting on fire the Sixth Form team.

The Hitman wounds Bins with a rifle shot. Bins rifles through the skip and creates a disguise and escapes.

Bane thins down the girls and Dorothy decides to join Banes side

Jackie takes out the Hitman with a well place Hockey Ball Smash then using her stick takes out the Jack Booted Sadists soldiers then eventually the man himself.

This game was closely fought Bin's managed to escape the clutches of Bane, Jackie mopped up on the left flank. The game ended a 12-6 Victory to the girls from St Searles.

Game 2

after a chippy lunch and voting for best cast and board we swapped around and paired for the second game of the day. I played on Shaun Pikes wonderful silo board against Matthew Wildsmith's Mutated Blue Peter Turtles cast. This was essentially a re-skinned TMNT cast from the free to download player guide on the Crooked Dice Website LINK. This time we were playing the Steal unable to decide who was most fitting we rolled for it with Matt winning. A selection of extra Gadgets were picked and Matt chose the Cloths Brush Communicator and gave it to Donatello my objective would be to capture the gadget (Maguffin) from him to score and extra D6 VP's at the end and likewise Matt had to stop me to score the same.

I kind of got sidetracked and forgot to get many pics for this one. It was a close fought game with Bins clawing back a some VP's. Jackie jet packed into Michelangelo but instead of hammering him in to the ground he managed to shrug off the attacks with the aid of his Pizza effect and a medipack gadget. Raphael and Donatello then joined him in laying on some hurt taking out Jackie (The turtles have a ninjitsu attack which effectively allows them to attack twice per action). The countdown deck limited my moves preventing me from reaching Leonardo and swamping him with my Sixth Form Team. Raphael and Leonardo then proceeded to slice and dice my team. I managed to use Bins and the remaining sixth former to take down Leonardo. A countdown card switched places my remaining sixth former with a Blue Peter Security guard who was then gunned down by his colleagues. With the now in your face security guard shooting down my Fourth Former.

Dorothy managed to use her Explosive Cocktails on Michelangelo and taking him out. Whilst Bins stunned April O Neil  with a sleep spray gadget then clubbed her with her Hockey Stick. The Game ended 10 VP to 6 it was close fought and the D6 VP's gained by the Maguffin clinched the victory. 

Game 3

The final game Episode was one I've played at the previous 7TV day but was new to most in attendance at day II. Last time there was a fire in the studio this time the Sewers had back up and foul raw sewage began to flood the studio! To make matters worse a bad curry in the onsite cafe meant everyone was desperate for the toilets outside the studios in the portaloos!

Basically this was escape the board prevent your opponent from doing so. I was up against Simon Clarke Soviet Spy ring. We deployed in the corners and had to escape off a central 6 inch section of the opposite board edge. Each turn for every countdown card we turned over the flooding sewage would advance behind D3 inches enveloping anything it touched.

The game was hilarious. I managed to win first initiative and scrambled my girls across the board using both Jackies and Bins Tactics ability to pull along the Sixth form team. Dorothy formed a readguard to attack and delay the spies. Using an explosive cocktail to take out some of the spies cultists.

Dorothy eventually got mobbed and clubbed down. The Sixth Former team and Bins managed to double time to the studio doors Whilst the fourth former and Jackie harassed the Spies whittling the cast down to justt the Star and Co Star. A fortunate countdown card brought Dorothy back into play and she took on the Opposing Co Star however she could take him down be for the foul smelling gunk swallowed them whole. Jackie knocked out the spy and clubbed him with her hockey stick but not before he shot and killed the fourth former. Bins and the Sixth Formers escaped followed by the Soviet Double Agent leaving Jackie to saunter off in the final turn unopposed.

The Sixth Formers and Bins double time it.

Jackie, Dorothy and Fourth Former fight a rearguard.

Finale

It was quite a quick day and we were all done and dusted by 4pm. Prizes were then given out by Mike and Simon. There was some excellent prize support sent down by Karl from Crooked Dice the Best cast winning £50 credit on the Crooked Dice website which went to Mike Marshall for best cast.


Best Cast

Matthew Wildsmith got voted best board which was excellent as you can see the Secret base was incorporated into the board. Matt's prize was again supplied by Crooked Dice which was some early release Post Apocalyptic minis and some rather tasty brushes

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Most sporting player went to Andy Bascombe I so love his Apetopus! 

Wayne Bollands from Wargames illustrated came down for the day and very kindly bought bag of goodies which we all got to pick  a random selection from. The figures inside included a good deal of his own 'Wayne's World of Wonder' range sold at Miniature Figurines  in as well as some long oop Crooked Dice figures. I heartily recommend having a look through the range there are some really cool figures. Many based on classic comics. So everyone went home with something.



I think it was a really successful day for Mike Strong and the hosts Simon Coldrick and Jez Allum of Board in Brum. A new date has been set for 7TV Day III on the 21st September which I shall certainly be going to. I also have the Pulp Day in July organised by Mr Bollands and hosted at Wargames Foundry to look forward to!