The Start of My Poison Army - AoS

I finally got the first 15 models of my Poison Army assembled. While I still have another 11 models to put together, I wanted to pause here to show off what I have and to test out a paint scheme. I think I want to do some combination of brown, green and yellow. I will paint the monks' robe and the warriors cloak the same color so it looks like it came from the same place.

I did some minor conversion to help make the army look like it is one force. I notice there were giant rats on the sprue when I was assembling the plague monks. I got an idea to put a few rats on warrior's heads so they might look like pets or at the very least to show the warriors were comfortable around rats. I don't want every chaos warrior to have a rat on his head but I think a third or a fourth of them should be fine. The rest I want to put a giant rat on their base. I decided it would be easier to paint the rats and chaos warrior separately since it didn't look like there was a lot of room for a brush if I had already glued the rat on the base. I've been thinking about other uses for giant rats. If I ever decide to add a character on a Palanquin, I can convert one being carry by a rat swarm. As interesting (and helping to unify the army) that would be, I wanted my Poison Army to be more Skaven than Warriors of Chaos. Of course when I decided to make this army I thought there were a lot more Clan Pestilens options available.

I also did some weapon swaps. One monk has a chaos axe and one warrior has a Skaven blade. I like how they turned out except the monk's robe is hanging in the wrong way. It is hard to see in these pictures though I suppose I could say it is like that because of the force the axe is being swung downward. When I get it painted up I will make sure I will have a much clearer picture of it taken. With there being people locally playing Age of Sigmar now, I'm really excited to play AoS myself again. And this was my first step.

Expanding to Osprey Games - Ronin, Of Gods and Mortals

Since returning from the Warlord Games Convention, I've been trying out a couple of new games from Osprey. Tracy picked up Ronin while we were at the convention and later Of Gods and Mortals. I had heard about Ronin in the last few months due to it being similar to Test of Honour. The few complains I saw online about Test of Honour was that they already had Ronin for their skirmish samurai game and saw no need to change. I can certainly understand that feeling. While I really enjoy Test of Honour, I was interested in seeing what Ronin had to offer. Tracy picking up Of Gods and Mortals really surprised me. He told me that he wanted to limited the games he played to just Team Yankee and Test of Honour. Perfectly reasonable giving how much of an investment it is to get into these games. Him getting Ronin makes sense because we can still use Test of Honour miniatures with it. Of Gods and Mortals on the other hand requires (at the very least some) getting new miniatures. In a way, I suppose I do understand why he would be tempted to look into it. Both Test of Honour and Team Yankee are historical games and sometimes you just want to play with magic or a dragon. Also OGAM doesn't "lock" you into particular company miniatures. While there are some official models, you are encourage to get any miniature than you want. I guess that would make sense as Osprey only makes game rules themselves and commissions out the miniature making process to third parties. Both of us already have a large collections but while we could adapt some of it to Of Gods and Mortals, picking up a few new models is going to be needed. But are these games even worth it?

My answer for Ronin is at the moment is I'm not sure but my gut feeling says yes. I've only played one game and I still need to read the rules completely myself. From what I played, I see a rule set that is far more complex with a far different tone than Test of Honour. Ronin doesn't have a group system so every model acts on its own and fewer miniatures are used compare to Test of Honour. The game is broken into five phases in which all players will have the options to act during each. The first phase is Initiative. For most of the game you activate a single model and then play passes to your opponent to do the same. Initiative determines who will have first choice in each of the phases for the entire turn and it is rolled every Initiative phase. So you could be going second every turn for the whole game. Morale is also checked in the Initiative phase if you took enough casualties in the previous turn. Next is the Movement phase. This phase is when players take turns moving troops around. What is interesting with this system is that range units can also fire at a penalty during this phase as well. The third phase is for melee combat. The melee combat has a lot of quarks and complexities with it that I'm saving talking about it when I do a full review of Ronin. What I can say now is that the core melee mechanic deals with risk management of actions. Each troop has a number of actions they can do per turn based on their stat. At the start of combat you decide, in secret, how you want to split up your actions into offensive and defensive actions. Offensive actions needs to be spent to do a melee attack. Dodge is free but spending a defensive action increases your chances of surviving the attack. Play swaps between combatants until all players decides to pass instead of attacking. It is interesting that after the combat, figures are not pushed back. Once you are in base to base with an enemy, you stay that way until one decides to move away which comes with risks. The fourth phase is when range units can shoot again. There is a table with all the different range modifiers you have to consider when making a shot, including whether or not you shot in the movement phase. The advantages of bows vs muskets are similar to what it is in Test of Honour. In Ronin they have the same range though muskets suffer an additional penalty beyond 24 inches. In 2 turns bows can fire a maximum of 4 times compared to 1 of a musket. However muskets are far more deadly. Range damage is resisted by roll a d6 and adding the troops combat value and armor. Muskets ignore light and medium armor while heavy armor gets downgraded. In the single game I played I notice it was hard to get any damage done with bows. Not impossible, but certainly challenging. I can say ignoring armor is a big deal. The last phase is for cleaning up. Minor things that while important doesn't change the big picture.

I like Ronin for being a more detailed game. Strategy can do deeper in a complex system. Also Ronin uses more traditional army lists and has options for Chinese and Korean forces. All positives and makes me want to play more of it. One downside I notice is that some weapons doesn't seem to be a viable option. In particular, Naginata seem to be better in almost every way to the Nodachi (Naginata is a polearm while a Nodachi is more like a great sword). I did notice a very slight advantage for the Nodachi, but I don't think its worth taking over the Naginata. I don't like see weapon options being next to useless. In Test of Honour every weapon has something unique about it. I'm not sure they all are of equal power but since the benefits are unique and changes gameplay, I think they are all viable options. Of course I might have miss something in Ronin which would make the Nodachi more tempting. As it, I think there are enough ups for playing both systems. I think I will wait on playing Ronin again until the Test of Honour Ninja box set is out. Seeing Ninja as an option makes me want to take it but I don't have an appropriate 28mm miniature for it. One last bonus about Ronin for me is that there is an expansion that includes supernatural options for the game. I'm all for adding supernatural to my games.

Of Gods and Mortals is the game we have put more time into. So far I've played 2 games of OGAM. It is an interesting war game about the various traditional mythological pantheons warring each other. If you ever wanted to play game where the forces of Zeus fight against Odin, this is the game for you. Models are classified into either Gods, Legends or Mortals. A force will have a single god, 1 to 5 legends and the rest are mortals. While gods are by far the most powerful units in the game, losing all your mortals means you instantly lose. Also if the god is defeated, mortals has the option to resurrect them. What attracted us to the game is that OGAM has simple mechanics and a large roster of options to play with. However after a single game there was one aspect we really didn't like (and it was a big one). Combat is resolved by both players rolling a single d6 and adding various modifiers. The side with the higher results wins and knock their opponents back. If they win by 3 or more, then their opponent takes a casualty. If there is a tie, then both sides take a casualty and you roll again. Everything only has a single hit point and one bad roll attacker or defending can kill you. If you get killed by a lower class enemy (legend dying to a mortal, or a god dying to a legend) you do get a check to see if you can ignore the damage. We like everything else about the game but the combat system was a deal breaker. Tracy came up a new system that tried to stay close as possible to the intent of the original but we found more satisfying. It involves taking the total combat modifiers that would normally be added to a single d6 and instead roll a dice pool equal to that number. So if normally for combat you would add 4 to your d6 roll, the new system would have you roll 4d6s instead. Any result of 4 or higher is counted as a success. Both sides compare success and the side with more success roll a dice pool of their net successes for damage. Any results of 4 or higher on this roll is a wound. Gods are defeat after taking 3 wounds, legends after taking 2 and each wound removes a single mortal model. With this change we think the game is a lot more enjoyable.

The official miniature line doesn't cover everything that is available in OGAM. What models they are, some of them are tastefully nude. And some aren't tastefully nude. For example Hercules isn't wearing pants, nor are the harpies. With this in mind we are going with other companies miniatures. Tracy is interested in Greek and has pick up a few Reaper Bone miniatures to fill out his army. As for me, I've been leading towards Japanese Mythology so I could expand my Chaos Test of Honour force. There are so many armies I want to work on that I feel like I shouldn't invest in a new one unless I can connect it to a current project. I still want to do my Warhammer inspired storylines which require multiple armies themselves. One plot line I'm wanting to do is some chaos force travels away from the current lands and arrive in a Japanese like nation. For this I need to build up a collection Japanese models. Some of the things I was wanting to do is to have a Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition Nippon force. With the death of Warhammer Fantasy it looks I will have to craft these stories around using Test of Honour and Ronin. Of Gods and Mortals is a possibility though I don't see any of the Japanese Mythology gods fit in with my Chaos Samurai force. Still, the legend options of Japanese myth offer ways I can expand samurai into supernatural areas. One of which is the Snow Woman. I think she would fit perfectly into my Chaos force and I've already build a model for her. The sprue I got from the Warlord Games Convention turned out to be all female zombies. I really don't like zombies which means their value greatly went down for me. However I did find one combination that looks okay if I use green stuff on her leg. This model I can prime/paint her white, and just paint her dress, hair and maybe her lips. This will make the model resemble the Snow Woman from her mythological stories. If that is not enough, I can also use her as a Geisha Spy in Test of Honour. Basically Japanese Mythology will give me a reason to look for supernatural options for my Test of Honour force all the while I can continue expanding Test of Honour which will also help with the mortal requirements in Of Gods and Mortals. My only sticking point is not having a suitable god to use in OGAM.

There are other pantheons in OGAM that I'm interested in such as Norse, Egyptian, Arabian and not to mention Greek. But unless I can tied one of these pantheons to one of the armies I need to build, I do not see it being worth it for me to invest at this time. That said, Of Gods and Mortals does have rules to make up your own force. With how simple the rules are, I'm worried that players could break the game making custom armies instead of building something to fit their personal fluff. Putting that aside, I could make up a rule set for an Arthurian Legend list. The main army in my Holy Moon story is inspired by Warhammer's Bretonnia which itself heavily borrowed from the Arthurian Myth. I don't like using the create your own option to make an entire force, but that might have to be my option outside of Japanese. I'm sure in the upcoming weeks we will be playing more OGAM to see if our new system works. If things works out in our upcoming games then you can be sure I will be writing more about Of Gods and Mortals in the future (I keep wanting to call it Of Gods and Monsters).

One last thing I like about the game (Tracy doesn't) is it the first miniature game I've seen that unique characters are truly unique. By that I mean that while most miniature games have unique characters you can only take once in your force, most of them allow mirror matches. Of Gods of Mortals rules say that if both players have the same unique character, roll off and the loser will have to replace the unique with something else of equivalent value. The story is always important to me in war games and having unique characters on both sides always bother me a little. At least in Warhammer players could say their own custom character just has the same stats as an unique. But that really doesn't work in a game about traditional mythology. Also I think it can deepen strategy since you will have to consider backup options in case you are denied your uniques.

Ronin - https://ospreypublishing.com/ronin-skirmish-wargames-in-the-age-of-the-samurai

Of Gods And Mortals - https://ospreypublishing.com/of-gods-and-mortals-mythological-wargame-rules

Progress Review #4

For once I am quite pleased with the progress I made in May. I only got to work on models from one game, Test of Honour. I can separate the progress I've made into three groups. The first is my tournament list.

On one hand I tried to have my tournament force completely finish by the tournament, that didn't happen. In fact I was working on it on Saturday and Sunday morning of the convention. Part of the reason I was having so much trouble finishing was that my glue had gone bad and I didn't realize it. It wasn't making very strong bonds so it was taking longer for it to cure and later on would come undone when the model was being handled. The important part was that the entire force was painted, not quite finish but at least everything had paint on them. Because of this I have decided to change a little how I want my Chaos army to look a little. With how dark the spearmen are, I think I want to have some models to be brighter. I should be able to accomplish that by inking with a red instead of violet. I won't be changing the color scheme, just the inking.

None of these models are finish thanks to the wind incident. Those models need to be resealed. As for the others, several models need to be repaired, bases need to be finish painted, horses needs a lot of work, some weapons need work and lots of inking and sealing has to be done. The horses needs to get a special mention. When I started working on the horses I thought there was some cloth or armor on them and the only part of the horse's skin you could see was around the neck. I decided to paint that 'cloth' bluegreen, the same color as the underside of my Lord's cape. After I had started, I realize that tassel fabric around the horse doesn't go above the belt. This was Thursday before the convention so I was really running out of time. I decided to just go with the bluegreen and later I will go over it with a darker flesh shade. Another thing to note is that I did not use the special character. When playing with Takeda Naoko, I notice the blade of her naginata kept bending at extremely angles. So much I thought it was going to break. I didn't want to deal with it so I just assemble a mount samurai. I had one more idea for my force that I didn't get to in May. I figure that since this was going to be my Chaos army, I should put the kanji for chaos somewhere in the force. I learn that there are several different ways to write chaos but after settling on one I ran out of time to paint it. I want to paint it on the back of my Lord and on the flag of the battle standard.

These were models I was working earlier in the month. The archer was my original Sergeant of Archery. However I put way too much primer on him so I decided to make a new one instead of fixing it. I figure I would striped the primer off and try again though I might attempt to scrap the excess off with a knife. I don't feel comfortable with a knife so its up in the air what to do about it. Also pictured is the battle standard though you can't really see the flag that well in this picture. Sorry for that. He is really top heavy and I will probably have to put some weight in his base when I finish him. I was also working on a musket group for my chaos force. I stop working on the banner and muskets so I could focus on the tournament list. Now that is done, I can finish them up so I will have some options for different ways to play chaos.

When I got back from the convention I immediately started working to build my Oda army (after I brought more glue). I was planning on just using stuff from the main box set for Oda but that wasn't going to work because I'm using more muskets that the box set could make. The box set only makes 10 range guys and I need 12 for my list (still got 2 more to build). I got extra range models from stuff I already own so its not that big of deal, though it is a little surprising. I like to imagine that each box of miniatures is a group of men that my two sides are fighting over to recruit. Though I'm just starting my Oda force, the first wave is going to have more models than my Chaos force, at least that is in the tournament list. I've also already decided on a color scheme and what to do for the bases. The only thing that will slow me down with Oda is that I need to invest in a way to make my own decals. I know what the Oda family crest looks like and its way too detail for me to draw it by hand. Still I should be able to get the army to a state where it is mostly done before I need to add the decal.

That's everything I got done in May. I also have big plans in June. I want to continue working on Test of Honour models as I'm not only building up a second force, I also want to do a mini 3rd force to use in scenarios. I also want to get work done on other games. In Team Yankee when I pick up my Berlin box I hope to have all 6 Leopard 2s finish by the end of the month. If I can also get to the Gepards and Pahs, that will be icing on the cake. And there is still my Skaven I want to get assembled, about 5 Sisters of Battle painted and there is still Relic Knights. Let see how much of this I can get done in June. Thanks for reading.

Warlord Games Convention Review, Day 1

The Warlord Games Convention in Oklahoma was Friday, Saturday and Sunday last week. Not only was it an opportunity to demo and/or play in a tournament for a variety of offering from Warlord Games, they also allow gaming from other companies. In the official schedule there were sessions planned for Team Yankee and 9th Age, the community created edition of Warhammer Fantasy. As long as it was miniature game, they were happy people were playing whatever.

Tracy and myself attended all three days. When we arrived on Friday to pickup our con badges and swag, many aspects of the con was still being setup, including the vendors. This was also before we could check-in into our hotel rooms. That meant we had nowhere to go and nothing to do for 40 minutes. We didn't have room to properly look through our swag bag. Despite the slow start I will still really excited about the convention. Eventually I did get check-in so I could relax while waiting for more things to open up. In the meantime I got to see the free swag I got.

There were a few more things in the bag but they either had codes on them, where ads for other conventions/stores or both. I couldn't get a clear picture of the two metal figures. They are nice World War 1 28 mm figures. I don't see myself getting into any WW1 game but nevertheless they are nice to have and they will be something I will practice on. The Arena Rex booklet is the full rule set of an interesting battle arena game. I did get to play a little of it later in the weekend and will talk more about it then. The sprue is of female survivors from the game Project Z. It is not a game I think I will be interested in, however female miniatures are hard to come by so I am quite happy to have it. Will be converting them into something. Don't know if it will be Test of Honour, Age of Sigmar, my Shieldmaiden force or something else that I hadn't consider yet but I will be using them sometime in the near future.

After a quick nap I went back to the convention floor. I was happy to see more vendors had setup shop. The thing I most wanted to buy was the Test of Honour box set. I need the special dice and skill cards to play in the Tournament Sunday. The box has been hard to find since the game came out but with word a large shipment was release before the convention to stores, I was hoping to snag one. The second vendor I visit had a few so I asked to buy one. We had an issue in that I could only pay with card and the employee that had the credit card reader was still running the store front and wouldn't be at the convention for a few hours. I was fine with this and since I was the first person to buy (or rather pledge to buy) a box set, he gave me the Test of Honour unarmored figure. He also gave me the cardboard terrain from his own personal collection because he didn't need it anymore since he uses 3d terrain. This was more than enough to make me happy so I had no problem waiting.

I caught back up with Tracy and we started to check what the other vendors had. The one thing Tracy really wanted was the Geisha Spy. The Geisha Spy was a pre-order bonus, making her exceptional rare. Vendor after vendor, no one seem to have one. The last vendor we check was Warlord Games own booth (which we didn't realize at the time). Tracy was looking at their specialize dice for various games when something caught my eye. I thought I saw a stack of plastic containers that Test of Honour special characters are normally in. I grab one and to my immense surprise it was a Geisha Spy! Tracy was quite jealous because he thought I grab the only Geisha Spy they had. We were both shocked that the entire stack of plastic containers were all Geisha Spies! So we both grab one and immediately ask if they were for sell and how much. Apparently we weren't the only ones shocked to see the Geisha Spy there. We learn that the Geisha Spy wasn't suppose to be outside where customers could see her. She was suppose to be given out for free to customers who purchase a lot of Test of Honour stuff at once. I could see the manager agonizing over what to do. In the end we were allowed to purchase her at a really good price and the remaining Geisha Spies where quickly removed.

Now that we got our purchasing needs out the way, we could roam the convention floor to see what games were out and being played. We visit a table where a Test of Honour demo was going on all weekend. I've been considering getting some of Warlord Games' Japanese terrain and getting to see some of it in person at the demo was nice. Being able to chat about Test of Honour with others was a lot of fun but I had to learn to scale back my excitement. In my overzealousness, I was giving a new player advance strategic advice, not realizing that he was still learning how the game works. Still, he was appreciative and after the demo brought himself a box set. At another table I saw Hail, Caesar setup to play. No one was around to talk about the game to me and I never saw the game in action during the con. It was still an impressive display with a lot of cool looking models

Another interesting tidbit at the con for me was that there was a vendor whom was mostly selling Games Workshop stuff. Board games, Warhammer Fantasy boxes and single assemble miniatures. If I had to guess, someone working there was hosting the 9th Age event. The thing that really pique my interest was the Dreadfleet box. Dreadfleet is Games Workshops pirate boardgame set in the Warhammer Fantasy Old World. I've been wanting to pick it up ever since it came out but its price tag has been just a little too high for me. I started talking to the vendor about the game and he offered it a third off. As tempting as that sounded I wasn't going to bit and walked away. While I was still in earshot the vendor said if that wasn't enough I could get it at 50% off! That got me. I didn't buy it then but Dreadfleet was coming home with me sometime during the weekend.

At this point we decided there wasn't much else that was going to happen that night that we were interested in. We both eyed a chariot game on a massive board but as far as we knew it was only being played Saturday and Sunday. With the Team Yankee mega battle on Saturday and the Test of Honour tournament on Sunday we figure we wouldn't have the time to try it. It look like it would be really fun.

So Tracy decided to go back to his room for the night and finish his dinner. I still had to stay because the credit card guy hadn't shown up yet. I figure as soon as he did I would pick up my Test of Honour box, drop it off in my hotel room and then make a search for dinner. There was some issues with the card reader but eventually they got it to work and I had my Test of Honour box. I was really hungry by that time so I started to head out of the convention hall. And that was when a Warlord employee near me shouted to everyone in the hall that anyone interested in playing Circvs Maximvs needed to take a seat in the next 5 minutes. Circvs Maximvs was the chariot game we were eying and it wasn't on the schedule to be played that night. My desire to play it outweighed my hungry. I gave Tracy a call to let him know he need to get over here.

The board to this game was huge. It was probably around 4 feet wide and 10 feet long if not bigger. The host mention he has been playing Cirvs Maximvs for over 40 years and he scratch build the current board and models 30 years ago. Normally when you pick a chariot, the game has a lot of choices to customize your driver. Instead the host uniform the stats into three types of chariots: light, medium and heavy. Light chariots had the best drivers, highest top speed but the lowest endurance and took a penalty for attacking other chariots. Heavy chariots had the worst drivers, lowest top speed but the highest endurance and if they hit another chariot did extra damage. I picked a light chariot while Tracy went with a heavy chariot.

I was the furthest left chariot. The rules are really simple and easy to understand. However there are a lot of rules and the consequences of some actions were not always apparent. At the beginning of the turn you decided how fast you going. You can pick any speed up to your chariots maximum. You can also decided to whip your horse which increases your speed by die roll. This also decreases your stamina. Turn order in the round is random. After everyone has pick their speed, the host randomly selects the next person action. Once that person completes their turn, another person is randomly selected. Therefore you will never know when your turn will come up. When it is your turn, you can move a number of squares into the speed you chosen. The chariots are in two parts. You move the front of the chariot when you resolving your turn. Once you finish your turn you then move the back part up. This way if you loose count of what you were doing, you will always know exactly where you started. If your chariot section is right next to another players chariot section, then you can attack that player. There are two options for attacking. You can either ram your chariot into theirs or you can attempt to whip the driver. Ramming is free but it has the risk that you could damage both chariots or even only your own chariot! Successfully damaging your opponent means their wheels are deteriorating. For the rest of the game they will have to do a check every turn to see if the wheel gets worst. Whipping the driver means you are trying to kill your opponent. Drivers have 10 hit points and each time you successfully whipped a driver reduces their hp by one. Whipping the driver has the risk that your opponent might take the whip from you. If that happens then you will have to wait 3 turns before another whip is given to you. I can tell you 3 turns is a very LONG time in this game to be without the abilities having a whip gives you. Whipping also cost movement. When you decided to whip someone the number of space you can move is reduce by the number of times you want to whip them (yes, you can whip someone multiple times at once but this counts as a single attack). The goal is to complete 2 laps on the track and if you are spending your movement attacking others too much, you not going to make it very far. Now if you move your chariot section next to an opponent's horses, then you can attack the horses the same way you can attack the driver. Ramming, again is free, will do damage to the closest horse. Horses have hit points equal to their speed(the top speed of your chariot is equal to the total hps of all your horses). Damaging horses will decrease their speed. If one of your horses die, it becomes road hazard and the player will have to cut it free (which greatly reduces their speed that turn). Whipping another players horse increases the chariots speed. I will explain why you might want your opponent to move faster in a bit. If you are the subject of the attack, you get a chance to dodge if you want. Dodging does have a cost but if you failed to dodge then you do not have to pay the cost of the dodge. Suffering the affects of the attack is enough. There are two options to dodging. You can either move away, which reduces your speed the next time you act, or you can slow down which backs your chariot up 2 spaces and cost endurance(if you run out of endurance your horse will start taking damage instead!). There are reasons why you might not want to dodge. There are also the possibility that you are unable to one or both dodge options because something is in the way! On attacking, you can only attack once per space. If you are near two enemies, you can only attack one of them on that space. Move one space and you can attack again if you are still near someone.

The turns is where the game gets really interesting! Each lane has a safety speed. If you are moving faster than the safety speed for that lane then you need to do a check, modified by how much you are over the safety speed. Failing this check could mean your chariot/horses take damage or you flipped the chariot. Flipping the chariot is really REALLY bad! That means for the rest of the game your driver is getting dragged at high speeds by your remaining horses which cause you to take damage every turn. This is why you might want to whip someone else horses. If they are in the turn then the addition speed might mean they will flip their chariot.

The previous picture is of Tracy and myself taking the lead. We both manage to avoid a massive traffic jam where most of the other drivers were stuck in. We were among the last to get to go on the first turn, which is a good thing. While everyone else gather together to attack each other, we could put in most our movement into going forward. We didn't have to waste movement moving around other people. Tracy got to go first the next 3 turns in a row. You don't want to go first in round 1 because it just makes you into a very big target. After that though, going first is big. Since Tracy was already in the front, getting to go first meant he couldn't get attack because the best the rest of us could do is catch up. But this is where his luck ran out, briefly. While he was in the second turn, Tracy was almost last to act. With people finally passing him, we got a chance to attack! No one had whip someone horse in the game yet (mainly because the window where it would be useful is really small) and I was interested in seeing exactly how the mechanics work. So I move up to Tracy and attack his horse 6 times. Tracy tried to avoid it but failed. If he had succeeded on the avoid then all 6 of my attacks would have miss since it counts as one attack. From there we did 6 contested rolls. If Tracy won a roll, his endurance would decrease by 1, if I won a roll Tracy speed would increase by the amount I won by. After it was all said and done, I had increase Tracy's speed to 27. The safety speed in the lane he was in was 12. There was a slim chance that Tracy could have control his chariot in the turn but he didn't roll it. Tracy's chariot flipped and was fling across the track becoming a road hazard. His driver was dragged and took a lot of damage. We weren't very clear on the rules so at this point we thought Tracy was out of the race. Tracy left then, upset that his completely undamage chariot got one shot. Thing is that you are not out the race until your driver dies and if your driver dies on the round you cross the finish line, it still counts! Also he still got to go 27. From that point on his horses (fresh undamage horses) would go full speed. He did have the problem of someone could just run the driver over and instead kill him. In fact, a kid whom was playing tried to do that but ran out of movement to reach Tracy. And of course Tracy action came up which put him even further in the lead.

We ran out of time which meant Tracy, whom was the furthest on track won! Even if the game didn't end early, there was a chance Tracy would have won anyways. By the time the game ended Tracy need 2 more actions to cross the finish line. His driver had 3 hit points left so if he only took 1 or 2 points of damage on the next action, Tracy would have won. He was far ahead and in the next turn. That meant for any of us to catch him we would have to greatly exceed the safety speed limit. As for me, I was stuck in the middle of the pack, if not near the rear. My attack on Tracy actually cost me dearly. When I used up valuable movement to attack him, it left me still in the turn. Despite being in a light chariot and having the highest top speed, I misplayed the turns. The next round after my attack I had to go really slow to make sure I didn't flipped myself. It was also funny someone in the race did die. In the round after Tracy's flipped, another racer went into the turn slightly over the safety speed, trying to catch up to the rest of the pack. He need to roll 12 or less on 3 dices to not flip over, he roll 13. I then found out when you flipped, there is a check to see where the chariot goes (I miss this part with Tracy). Unfortunately for this racer, his chariot went straight up and down, landing on the driver! The driver immediately took 9 points of damage (again drivers have a max of 10!). Then he got drugged, taking more damage and died.

The game was a lot of fun. There was a lot of rules to understand but by the third round we could run the game ourselves (unless something new happens). With a group of mostly new players that says a lot. Its funny that I had text Tracy that he won. Even funnier that the next day he got greeted by the kid (same one that tried to kill him) who congratulated him on his victory. It is a game I would love to play again. Understanding the risk/rewards of every action, I can make much better choices. Yet, I don't see the game being reduce to only a few viable strategies, which is good. Overall Circvs Maximvs was a great way end day at a gaming convention. My only regret was that I was starving and nothing was open to eat at except Wal-Mart. This ended my first day at the convention but there was two more to go.