MINI WARGAMING: Warlords Of the Wastelands: 2085 (18 March 2006)!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday, I had a cool opportunity... to hang out with the bunch that hosts the very well-known Zombie Town games held at Great Escape Games every year on Halloween weekend.

We all met at Vynnie's place and the following were present:
- George
- Maksim (me!)
- Marcus
- Mike
- Vynnie

Poor George and I were both pretty exhausted though. George didn't get enough sleep (working too much) and I had done a graveyard shift the evening before with overtime so I had only gotten home that very same morning. Luckily the game didn't begin until around Noon so I took a good nap before heading over to Vynnie's place. George must not have had the same opportunity for a nap because he nodded off several times during the day. Poor guy.

Vynnie has been documenting our games for ages over here at his web site:

PUBLIC DISCLAIMER:
Vynnie is a bit of a Libertarian and doesn't beleive in the concept of "political correctness" so please be warned before you check out his site. He doesn't have any language or thought filters on so, as a result, his web site is most likely banned in neighborhoods of "emminent sensibility" like Berkeley, Davis or San Francisco. Be careful!

http://www.recon-in-force.com/index.html

And specifically here at his "Wastelands and Trailer Parks" page:

http://www.recon-in-force.com/Skank/index.html

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Yesterday, we got together for a post apocalyptic game using Marcus's little-known rule set:

"Warlords Of the Wastelands: 2085"

...and it was a hoot! Yes, I did use the word "hoot!"

Mike had thought out a relatively simple scenario set in the RIFTS world in which a group of Coalition forces would attempt to rescue some scientists who had sent out a distress call earlier. The distress call came through garbled, but we were able to make out the location of the scientific outpost and that part of the distress call resulted from some sort of biological experiment gone horribly wrong. And with such scanty information, we "law men" set out to find us some scientists.

Mike acted as the game's GM / referee and the other four of us ran different detachments of Coalition forces dispatched to the rescue.

Much like all games that Mike and Marcus are involved in, they never take their gaming very seriousy and no matter how well the background is thought out, we always end up with a bad "B movie" plotline anyway! And yesterday was no exception!

I think that Mike had watched "Aliens" one time too many because it quickly became apparent that massed numbers of bugs versus high-tech marines along the lines of "Starship Troopers" was the order of the day.

The four Coalition detachments had barely ambled on to the field in view of the scientific outpost when we were assaulted by wave after wave of bio-bug nasties. Our line initially caved in until we retreated a bit, at which point, we stood our ground and let firepower do our talking. Casualties were heavy, but we left bug guts spread across the fields.

Finally, we hit a pause inbetween what we thought would be the next wave, but it never came. We administered to our wounded, regrouped and began to advance on the scientific outpost again. Marcus had his robot scout advance far ahead of the combat lines and when he entered the villiage, he found the scientists and their rsearch robot (who looked a might bit like Twinkie from Buck Rogers) ambling out of shelter. The robot began to converse with them and received nothing but grief for its efforts. The scientists were acting strangely and that funky research robot kept walking out of edge of the robot scout's photo receptors.

An instant later, the three scientists and the "Twinkie" lashed out at the bot utterly destroying it. We, in the Coalition forces, were confused, but consistent with our mission directives, we had a newly indentified enemy and set out to destroy them, the traitorous research bot and scientists. Our forces used what remained of our artillery and fired a rocket barrage at the scientific outpost. That gave "Twinkie" what for, but...

It also roused the beast.

A gigantic floating biological "brain beast" burst out of the ground and all hell broke loose. Ugly cockroach-like things came bustling out of the ground from every which direction and the skies filled with the buzz of entomological monstrosities. We almost broke from the sheer horror of that ugly horde.

However, the RIFTS Coalition doesn't breed nambie pambies so we figured to die standing our ground and...

We nearly did.

We unleashed everything we had and our troops were slowly but surely falling as we failed to destroy wave after wave of bugs. Suddenly some underappreciated NCO got the bright idea to target the "brain," so we did. And a half hour or so later, the "brain" fell and the waves stopped coming. In fact, the bugs seemed confused and ambled around mindlessly. We mopped up and called it a day.

Hey, the RIFTS Coalition may breed fighters, but we're not known for being the most clever lot! That NCO received a big fat promotion and a huge bonus.

End of story. Amen!

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If you've never played out a game based on a really bad "B movie," I recommend the experience. It's good-hearted no-brainer fun and is a welcome relief from folks who take themselves way too seriously. And the truth be told, every once in awhile I'm one of those folks so the light-hearted fun is a good reminder to loosen up, stop and smell the roses.

And for those of you interested in playing on some of the beautiful terrain sets featured on Vynnie's web site, check out ConQuest Sac coming very soon to Sacramento on April 7th to 9th, 2006. Mike and Marcus will he hosting a special edition of their Zombie Town game series there. Here's a link for more information:

http://www.conquestsac.com/

Just make sure, you don't things too seriously... LOL

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We also discussed getting a group together to see one of the latest films from Russia:

"Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor)!"

"Night Watch" is a sort of vampire film along the lines of a long series of American vampire films and has already received some acclaim. Unfortunately, when we checked, "Night Watch" has already left the Greater Sacramento area. I guess we'll have to wait for rentals.

I found a few links about "Night Watch" here:

http://www.nival.com/nightwatch/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403358/

Apparently, "Night Watch" is the creation of a certain "modern yet already classic science-fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko," whom I have never heard about despite reading Russian science fiction as often as not. I'll have to look him up. There are a few Russian book stores in town and I'll probably only find him there as I'd be greatly surprised if Lukyanenko is available in English translation yet.

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I love this beautiful weather we're having.

Everyone, have a great Sunday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.