SELWG 2012: Crystal Palace

Well another year and another SELWG, and as usual another nice day out for me, Trever and Oliver. Of course I forgot to take a camera, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of mentioning a few games and products in passing.

Lets me start with the easy stuff, what I bought. I bought one pot of Earth colour paint and two packets of GZGs not Fatties to go with the not Scopedogs. Talked to Jon and Mel about the conversions I did, and the feedback that I got. As a result Jon is going to consider doing weapon packs, or he is going to ask me to send him my conversions for casting. So watch this space, as they say. No doubt his interest in doing said project would increase with being sent emails from people who would want these done.

Trevor and Oliver played in the Climb Mount Nittaka' run by the Staines Wargames Club. this was a WW2 Japanese airstrike against USN Pacific fleet assets, which they enjoyed, and the game got first in show for best participation game. They then went onto to play South East Essex Military Society's game The Restless Dead, which you can all guess was a zombie game that had lots of kids playing it, and all having a whale of a time while doing so.

I spent sometime schmoozing around the show, looking at new products, and being taken aback by how many new SF rulesets and ranges were out there. Speaking of which brings me to Gruntz. First disclaimer, I quite like Gruntz, and I'm predisposed to like the game as I have been following it for several years.

So, I got to play my first game of Grunts at SELWG. Yay! Boy does it play fast and furious. Robin umpired the game, which was a good thing as I was completely at sea with the stat sheets, and game mechanics having not read the rules in a very long time indeed. Jonathon was my opposition who I guess had played before, or who had a better understanding of the rules than me. He was playing defender with a couple of APCs, infantry and two heavy weapons teams. I was the attacker with a squad of infantry, three small mechs and a large mech.

Jonathon then proceeded to own me by destroying my units one after another, while I failed to roll the numbers I needed on the dice to return the favour. It looked really bad for me, but I very cheekily snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by occupy the base, and asked if this made me the winner? Robin said yes, I had achieved the objective and so I won, getting a GZG prize for doing so, in fact the big prize for the day. I felt quite guilty about this, as Jonathon clearly bested me on the combat side of things, and had the  game gone on another couple of turns would have assaulted his way back onto the base.