Christmas Gaming

Over the Christmas holiday period I’ve been doing a fair bit of gaming amongst the festivities. At my local club Bolt Action has become popular, and I’m collecting a US army. While this is being painted, I’ve played a few games of Germans versus British with my friend Martin. He’s an excellent painter and, conveniently, has two forces painted for platoon actions. 

Martin hasn’t been able to game for a while, so it was good to have him back around the gaming table and rolling dice. Our games have been fast and furious but have always ended in close draws. The Germans generally have had the upper hand, but despite in the last game having two operational vehicles (a Panzer IV and Puma) they have still failed to break the British. 

My son has been staying with me over Christmas. He’s not a big wargamer, but is into Role Playing Games and Board Games. We’ve had some friends over and played a few colossal games of Talisman using all the supplements. This was mayhem, but a good game. I won the first game with a Death Knight but in the second my Rogue didn’t do half as well. 

We also took time to try Mice and Mystics. This is a fun game, in which you play… mice! The plot is as follows: the heroes were originally human but were cursed into becoming mice by a wicked spell. They now have to brave the dangers of the castle and see if they can break the enchantment. We gave it a play-through but failed to get the cooperative concept, so ended up losing to the hordes of rats and roaches set against us… 

Mice and Mystics was definitely fun however. In our one game Rossco was playing the cowardly thief Filch too well and failed to protect the Healer Mouse Tilda. As she was the only person who could heal the mouse party, so when she went down to a centipede, we all soon fell to the creatures which attacked us. Ah well…! 

In all I’ve had quite a few different and varied games to try, which has been cool. After the new year, it’s back to reality and playtesting Team Yankee with Rossco for the next issue.