Blood & Plunder - Demo Day at Gothcon

I ran a Demo Day at Gothcon (largest tabletop gaming convention in Sweden, with both Miniature Wargaming, Boardgames and RPGs), and got a quite nice set-up. As is traditional for my club, Yggdrasil Figurspelsförening, I ran a somewhat more involved demo than the usual run-em-through, fight-in-the-middle doen in an hour demo. It seems to work for us...

Since I have some very talented friends in the club, I also had an awesome table to run the demos on, which certainly helped to pull folks in.

The scenario was reasonably simple. The Spanish have to escort the governors' daughter from behind the village to the brigantine, to escape the pirate raid. Meanwhile, the pirates will try to kidnap (and/or liberate) said daughter, or at least keep her away from the ship for 6 turns.

The pirates started split. On the wrong side of the river, they had 5 Marins and 4 Enter Ploeg (with the obligatory blunderbuss).

Next to their boats, they had another 5 Marins, with an Untested Commander, and 6 Freebooters.

The spanish also started somewhat split, with 6 Marineros next to the Brigantine (presumably having prepared it for sailing).

The escort party, starting on the road behind the village, consisted of another 6 Marineros with an Untested Commander, escorting the governors' daughter, as well as 5 Marineros Piqueros and 8 Milicianos (upgraded to Trained).

Both forces were chosen in part so that no game-changing special rules could be missed, and the untested commanders for similar reasons (I've found that command points are the one rule new players gets confused by/wrong the most, especially when it's several command points).

And the first game of the day is off, an old 40k player against a group of 3 (which didn't give too much of an advantage, since they argued about what would be best enough to offset the theoretical advantage of more brainpower).

The pirates chose to focus on cutting of the route to the ship, and focusing on that group of Marineros. Meanwhile the spanish went all out perpendicular to the path to the ship, towards the freebooters.

The freebooters were swiftly cut down (after clearing up some rules confusion because this isn't like 40k). However, that detour would delay the spanish too much.

In the end, by turn 6, the governors' daughter were nowhere near the ship, and in fact caught up in a combat initiated by the spanish. A pirate victory, that seems to be gotten more by the spanish mentality of "screw the objective, kill all" than anything else.

Second game, I had two dads with their sons. Of course, the teams were swiftly split up as the two dads (with the spanish) against their piratical sons.

This time, we had significantly more speed (and less diversions to kill everything), with a major scrum in the middle.

In the end, the governors daughter and her escort is swiftly heading towards the ship, if a bit late, as the last pirate is cut down. Yes, the very last pirate, they were cut down, or routed off the table, to a man.

The spanish stand victorious as everyone had fun.

3rd, and last, game was the only one with only two players total. Both with some prevous experience of miniature wargames, I dared specify all the minor rules I had so far glossed over (Ruthless, Hard Chargers, Marksmen...)

The game was roughly similar to the previous one (as I would expect), except that the spanish did a magnificent bull rush towards the ship, getting out on the pier and almost to the ship by skillful use of screening units and 12" moves for the command unit. In the end, by equally skillful use of command points, good luck with dice, and maybe some liberal interpretation of rules by me to make it a game (I think I interpreted it correct, but I am not 100% certain and erred on the side of "don't want it to be over yet"), we have a standoff next to the ship.

After the last actions, there was a standoff between two captains, two Marins and two Marineros, with a lady in the middle. Noone could see quite how it would go, and a draw was agreed upon (since we were at the very limit of the pier).

In all, I had fun, and my players had fun. As it should be. I will have to spend more time thinking of scenario next time (I really wanted to do boat action this time, but I haven't had enough ship fights myself to feel comfortable teaching those rules). I absolutely think doing the slightly larger forces and longer games was the right decision, both for the players and for me, but it did mean not as many could try it. Next year, I will have to get a friend to help, and run two days (again... did so last year, and was absolutely knackered afterwards).

Best of all, I ran into one of my players the day after, and he told me that he had ordered rulebook and some englishmen that very evening :) The best kind of compliment.

/Fool Out.