So after lunch on Friday, I ran my second game of the
day.
This time, it was a much more
modern game of
Save the Whale.
Anyone who has read the blog regularly has seen those models being
painted up; now, it was time for them to be used.
One thing that I think is important for players of the game
(and readers of the blog) to understand is that it is NOT a “serious game.”
I mean, the object for one side is to kill a
whale, for goodness sakes!
Instead, the
game is much more fun when both sides fulfill the stereotypes that are expected
of them.
Fortunately, I had a group of
players that were more than ready to embrace said stereotypes.
The whalers not only wanted to harpoon a
whale; they were bound and determined to do as much damage to the Greenpeace
ships as possible.
My Greenpeace players
were equally hardcore:
At the beginning
of the game one of them said, “We don’t care about casualties and damage.
We ONLY. WANT TO. SAVE. WHALES!”
With that, I knew we were going to have a
rollicking game, and we did.
There are no setup rules
per se, so we just rolled
random locations for everybody (including the whale) and got started.
For whatever reason, there aren’t as many
pictures of this scenario as there are of the earlier one.
I didn’t even start taking pictures until
several turns into the game, so this time they are going to be of more
interesting moments in the game.
The
Greenpeace rubber boats rapidly headed towards the factory ship, which decided
to use fire hoses to keep them away.
I
explained to the factory ship captain that this would give his side negative
publicity points, but to his credit he didn’t care.
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| Damn the publicity, fire hoses away! |
He was successful too.
The die next to the boat means that it can’t move for the next 4 turns. At the same time, Solo decided to get into
the action and turned their hoses on one of the harpoon boats:
 |
"Well, if they can do it. . . "
|
The brown thing behind Solo is a mooring line. Ships can drag those behind them to try and
foul their opponent’s propellers, but if they roll a 1 on a D6 the line breaks
and is lost. This mooring line is
probably in the Greenpeace museum, as the player kept it for the entire game,
even after fouling one ship. The harpoon
ship Solo snared was so badly
fouled that with other damage it was down to only one knot of speed. The players agreed to give him some speed
back, as he was out of play otherwise. He
also tried to foul the factory ship but was unsuccessful.
 |
| "Somebody's getting a taste of this rope. Oh, guess it's you." |
The one rubber boat swamped by the factory ship wound up not
mattering much, as the rest of them swarmed the factory ship and got out the
spray paint. Both of them passed their
die rolls, although not on the same turn, and applied slogans to the side of
the factory ship. Fortunately for the
whalers, only two slogans counted for publicity points, and the boats ran off
to interfere with the harpoon ships after that.
 |
| Like fleas on a dog. . . . |
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| "The different colors of paint make it ART, not GRAFFITI!" |
The captain of the
factory ship decided to use his ship as a sort of mobile battering ram, trying
to force a collision with any Greenpeace vessel he could get close to. He was remarkably successful in this, giving
damage to both protest ships and reducing Rainbow Warrior to no speed by
the end of the game.
Despite all their aggression (and attendant negative
publicity) the whalers did not succeed in killing a whale, so the protesters
won this game. Given the laughter around
the table for the great majority of the game, I’m going to assume that everyone
had a good time. That ended Friday for
me.
On Saturday, I had a chance to play some games, so I took
advantage of that. The first one was a
game called Conn, Sonar! This is
a beer and pretzels modern submarine game, and the scenario was the final
battle from Hunt for Red October.
Yours truly got to drive the Alfa class sub looking to kill Red
October.
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| 1/700 scale subs are oversize, but sure look good. |
The core mechanic of
the game is getting a fire control solution on your target. Every time you are successful using passive
or active sonar, you get a solution counter for your target. Once you have three, you can fire. You can also try to take back your markers
from others by being quiet. I had an
intermittent solution on the US sub, but could get nothing on Red October,
as her commander kept extra quiet by using the caterpillar drive. Fortunately, the Dallas couldn’t fire
until he was fired on.
Once I realized that I couldn’t find Red October by
being stealthy, I filled the water with active sonar waves. I finally got a solution and fired two
torpedoes before I lost him again.
 |
| Things are starting to get a bit crowded. |
This
is where things REALLY got interesting!
Of my two torps, one did not acquire, and began a circle to the
right. The other acquired Red October
but missed her. Going past the ship, it
acquired and began to track Dallas.
That fulfilled her Rules of Engagement, so now she could start shooting
back.
 |
| "Sorry about accidentally starting WWIII, guys." |
My first torpedo then acquired ME, so I decided it was time
to leave the area at full speed. Dallas
turned in front of Red October and fired two torpedoes that had no
trouble acquiring me, given the noise I was putting out at 40+ knots. However, my second torpedo switched from the
US sub to the larger target and hit Red October. Good news for me! However, a target that large requires two
hits to be destroyed. Bad news for me!
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| "So, do you want the good news, or the bad news?" |
After a turn or so of running like mad, this is my
situation:
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| "Looks like we made someone mad." |
As my quarry was only damaged, I decided to try and get out
of the torpedo’s seeker heads, and head back towards the (now damaged) missile
sub. They turned tighter than me though,
so I wound up taking two USN Mk-48 torpedoes in the side and one was enough to
kill me. Game over. Being a movie game, the movie quotes were
flying around throughout the game. Among
them:
“We’re going to kill a friend, Vasily.”
“Set safeties to zero.”
“You fool, you’ve killed US,” and finally
“You mean you have TWO subs missing in the North Atlantic?”
Overall, they’re a fun set of rules that let us play a game
of 19 turns to conclusion in under 2 to 2 1/2 hours, which included explaining
the rules. It manages to capture the
feel of submarine combat, or at least what we think it’s supposed to feel like 🤔.
The last game of the day was Check Your 6! Jet Age. This was another movie game and was actually
two scenarios in one session. To teach
everyone the basic movement and combat rules, we did a scenario from the movie Top
Gun of students versus instructors.
So, it was F-14's against A-4 Skyhawks with guns but no missiles. After everyone understood the rules, we reset
the game. This time though, it was the
final battle from Top Gun. You
know the one: “Somewhere in the Indian
Ocean. Present day.” And yes, we even had the dreaded
MiG-28's. They have missiles and
afterburners, so are a much more even fight for the Americans. The picture below is just after the merge:
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Yes, there's an F-18 in the game. Didn't bother the players, so don't
let it bother you. |
THIS time though, the forces of Somewhereastan got their
teeth into the Americans invading their airspace.
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| That is a dead Tomcat. Note that there's no parachutes, either. |
We played a few more turns, but weren't able to complete the game, as we were running out of time. The end of the game looked like this:
 |
Note that the other Tomcat is smoking. Black smoke indicates engine damage
and orange indicates afterburner use. |
With one F-14 shot down and another damaged, the forces of the People's Democratic Republic of Somewhereastan immediately declared victory. The funny thing in this game were not the movie quotes (although there were a few), but this:
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| Remember me? |
Yes, the Broadside! token that I mentioned in the first post. Apparently it is the official currency of Somewhereastan, as over 20 of them were used during the game with the great majority being played by the Commie pilots. I think at one point we were accused of flying this mission straight from the strip club, due to all the tokens we used! The money used to purchase them goes to the Battleship Texas though, so it's worth it. After this game slot, we had our convention speaker and then retired to the traditional after convention dinner. There were other games played during the two days, but I didn't get any pictures of them. Whether this is due to being busy, or being lazy, I will leave up to the readers to decide.
