Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter

This week I accompanied Jenni to Calgary where she attended the 2017 National Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Conference for her work. Realizing that I would have quite a bit of time on my own, I packed a thick book and some copies of the (condensed) game sheets for Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter to help keep me occupied. I am glad I did.

Art by the game designer: Nick Hayes.

Before we get to the game(s), I also was on the hunt for some kneadatite (aka green stuff or GS). After having done some repaints of a few toys and game pieces, some of which I have featured here, I decided to give a crack at modifying some sculpts to make them useful for other games; I bought some 100 Heroclix for this purpose. Mainly I'm thinking figures for Pulp Alley and another game that I regret not buying at a thrift store some time ago (I'll write about that one later). Looking at the modding community online, many of them use green stuff to make their modifications or even to model figures from scratch. There are other putties out there, but the green stuff seems to be the most popular.

So, pricing out green stuff online, it was looking like an expensive proposition. On Amazon.ca (not known for very competitive pricing in the first place, never mind any kind of selection, but slightly easier for me on the receiving end than ordering from a U.S. company) I found a few suppliers asking over $30 for a couple of ounces of green stuff, if they disclosed an amount at all. Researching further, I discovered a post mentioning a FLGS in Calgary that they would recommend checking. Claiming the title of "largest game store in the world", The Sentry Box was certainly expansive and even a bit overwhelming. But I got the green stuff, for less than advertised on amazon.com even, and a pack of card sleeves. It was a lot of fun looking at all the miniatures, which seemed to be priced on par with anything I've seen online.

While the shopping and browsing were great, the food I ate that day (not at the Sentry Box) did me in. I spent most of the next day in the hotel room alternately reading, visiting the bathroom, catching up on the sleeping I didn't do over night, watching back-to-back episodes of Storage Wars, and playing Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter.

The Game

Now, I've played the first offering, simply titled Utopia Engine, in which the player is attempting to build the title device. In Beast Hunter, the player is someone on the run who wants to hide in a village, but must defeat the three terrible beasts that are harassing it in order to gain the villagers' trust and remain in the village.

In brief, either version of the game is basically described as a selection of mini-games. Each mini-game is an exercise in some method of dice roll management. It all comes together into an engaging story as the game is played out. Beast Hunter continues a few of the same mechanics from the original, adding some new ones to the mix. According to comments by other players, there's some pattern one may follow that allows them to win most of the time, but I haven't found it yet. After umpteen total plays of the original (a few years ago, which I never won) and Beast Hunter during my stay in Calgary, I only managed to finally beat Beast Hunter as I waited on Jenni to finish her last session. The game got me really annoyed at it as it killed me off over and over and over again during those days of playing. Being sick and sleep-deprived may have been a contributing factor as well. Ah, but finally winning was such a momentous occasion, I took a picture of the finished sheet. I was so close to losing this one, too.

The game is divided into days, and one chooses one action to do each day: build a tower, search one of the areas that surround the village, attempt to craft a special item, or rest to recover health points.

How the win went down

Day 1: An early find of the lair of the Giant of the Peaks and the rare material silver allowed me the opportunity to craft Silver Plate, which permanently reduced beast attack ranges by one. Also found some stone and encountered blood wolves which were defeated to gain me a beast pelt.
Day 2: I attempted crafting the Silver Plate armour, just barely succeeding.
Day 3: Terrible beast attack (don't remember which one attacked). Lost one hut. Went to confront the Giant before I lost the Sudden Clarity (+1 to attack range) in the Halebeard Peak Region. Luckily, the beast was cowed (which reduces its attack range) and I was able to defeat it handily. Defeating a Terrible Beast wins the favour of one of the village elders, I chose Epiphoros, gaining me two HP.
Day 4: Searched the coastal caverns and found the lair of the Dweller in the Tides. I didn't dare confront it with the Madness modifier in place there (+2 beast health). Also found some cord and fought a shell-cracker troll and took its oily meat.
Day 5: Built the southwest tower.
Day 6: Terrible beast attack - rolled the Giant's number, but he's dead, so no attack. I searched the Scar, tracking the Burning Man, but not finding its lair. Got some tar and encountered hollow birds, collecting some of their blood after taking them out.
Day 7: Rested
Day 8: Sudden Clarity was now active in the Scar, so I went back to search. Found a random encounter, which turned out to be an ash troll, I ended up with wounds and troll ash, which I used to make the reviving dose. Then I found the lair and with the Ambush bonus, I had to take it. The Burning man also came up cowed, but between it and the ash troll, I took a bunch of damage, including grievous wounds (reduce max HP). I chose the favour of Nikandros to recharge the balancing blade item I had used.

At this point I decided to take a chance and go after the Dweller as well. I think my four remaining HP coupled with the reviving dose and all the available re-rolls and free attack (recharged balance blade item) still available bolstered my feelings of invulnerability. The Dweller turned out to be cruel, meaning it did grievous damage on rolling ones. You can see the end result in the image (though all the determination points should be marked out). I fought the Dweller of the Tides while it was in a state of madness (giving it 2 extra HP).  I used up every every re-roll available to me, the balancing blade, and the reviving dose to bring down the beast, barely surviving with one HP left.

How he managed to crawl his way back to the village, no-one ever figured out, but two of the village children found Mason slumped against the wall, unconscious under the tower he had helped build only days before. 

His wounds should have killed him, but he still breathed. The elders had Mason carried into town and he was cared for by their wives. The wife of Sipporos was a grudging help, as this stranger had not proven himself in her mind, nor in her husband's. But as she sat up to watch Mason on the second night of his unconsciousness, cursing the council for forcing her to do this thing, he started to mutter and ramble about killing the last of the Terrible Beasts that had plagued their village. At first light, men were sent to confirm this unbelievable news. They brought back one of the beast's tentacles to show it was truly dead.

One day, the Blazing Star Regiment arrived at the village. The captain explained they were searching for a fugitive called Mason. The villagers denied any knowledge of a fugitive. The captain ordered his men search the village anyway, but they failed to search the wreckage of the hut most recently destroyed by the terrible beasts almost two weeks prior. Hidden under the remains, the wrongly accused fugitive named Mason quietly lay, listening to the activity around him, still too weak to stand on his own.

After the regiment moved on and Mason was moved to quarters more suitable to recovery. In time, he would recover from his wounds, except for a slight limp. Mason took a different name, in case the Blazing Stars should come again. He also took a wife, the sweet daughter of Halandros, the blacksmith. Mason, now called Dosarros, went on to raise his family of three boys and two girls and to benefit the village with the draughts and items he crafted from the local flora and fauna and the remains of the occasional dangerous beast brought down from the once forbidden valleys. 

Painting: X-Wing Fighter

As I was finishing of my ARC-170 fighters, I started an undercoat on a SW:TFA X-Wing. It stayed in base coat condition until this week when I noticed the maple bugs (or more commonly, box elder bugs) coming out. These bugs always show up in the fall, or are at least most noticeable in the fall as they tend to congregate in warm areas, like the sun-drenched side of a house. They eat boxelder leaves, flowers and seed pods, as well as the leaves of maple and ash trees.

A boxelder bug. Not harmful and kind of pretty. But they will try to get in the house and just hang out a little too long. (Image: GardenGreenAngels.blogspot.ca)

I was looking at their markings and thought that the colour scheme would work well on that X-Wing. So I mixed up some dark grey and started applying, then a slightly mottled look was taking shape, which I thought looked pretty, for a star fighter. While I had originally started with the intention of copying the bug's striping design onto the X-Wing, I didn't end up doing it. Instead I went with colouring certain components the red-orange colour. The markings are still kind of similar. I finished with a little white Rebellion symbol on one wing.

And here it is (against the background of my new neoprene game table surface):

The newly painted X-Wing. I think the grey seems darker than the image portrays, though it isn't as dark as the boxelder bug grey. I didn't want it too dark, though. Image was taken before applying any clear coat.

 Have fun!

Full Sail

For a few years now I've talked about, thought about, even prepared to play the miniatures space battle game called Full Thrust. I even carved my own spaceships out of sticks and painted them up.

To be honest, I did try playing it using the box-style ship markers from Leviathan. I had tried to decipher some conversion tables I found and used them to edit some partially completed Ship Status Displays (SSDs) I found for the same conversion which included huge (by FT standards) amounts of armour on different sides of each ship. I realized part-way through my attempt to play that it was going to take forever to do any significant damage to any of the ships I used. I gave up.

This time I am going to try the fighting sail rule set adapted from the Full Thrust rules called Full Sail. I didn't find any kind of points system to make up roughly even battle groups like Full Thrust ships get assigned, so I decided to use the crew sizes found on the SSDs I downloaded and printed as the points. Each fleet equals 82 crew. We'll see if that is a good way to build a fleet.

Yeah! Five minute MSPaint photo editing FTW!

The Scenario is thus:

The Spanish ship-of-the-line, Argonauta, has left port after repairs and is sailing with the schooner, El Cervantes to meet with three other ships: the Vospero, the Leon, and the Santos Romanos.

However, pirate spies have sent word of this movement to the dreaded pirate trio of "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. These infamous pirates have been waiting to get the jump on a ship-of-the-line. To capture the Argonauta would be a grand feather in their caps as well as a grand flagship for the fleet they have been amassing. They set out in the Revenge, with six other ships split into two groups, to find the Argonauta and capture it.

Unknown to this pirate armada closing on the Argonauta's position is the fact that the the other three Spanish ships are very close.

All four groups are on a collision course.

The Set-Up
The Argonauta is the only 5-mast ship in the scenario. She and her escort, the three-masted schooner El Cervantes, enter from the west.

The Vospero (4 mast), Leon (3 mast), and Santos Romanos (2 mast schooner) enter from the north-east corner.

The pirate ships Revenge (4 mast), Cachas (1 mast), and Sceptor (1 mast) enter from the south. Pirate ships Cassandra (4 mast), Silverback (3 mast), Raven (2 mast schooner), and Jamaica (2 mast) come in from the north.

Set up and ready to go.

Being a solo play, I had to decide on some kind of turn order method and chose slowest speed first with ties broken by heading (i.e. thrust potential due to wind).

Of course I figured I should have some kind of win conditions for each side. The pirates were easy, they win if they capture Argonauta. I decided on two win conditions for the Spanish. A minor win if they reduce the pirates' total crew by half (forcing them to flee). A major win if they capture or sink both the pirate 4-mast ships (Revenge and Cassandra).

After placing the ships, I rolled a d12 to randomly set wind direction, rolling a 4, so I set the indicator arrow to the 4 o'clock position (12 o'clock = north). There are optional rules for changing the wind direction and speed, but I decided to keep wind direction and speed constant throughout the game. In retrospect, I think the wind direction put the pirates at a major disadvantage.


Turn 1
Vospero and company, the northeast group, turned westward to bypass the island in front of them.
Revenge, Calchas, and Sceptor move between the islands in front of them in order to possibly cut off Vospero and to have room to turn toward the main prize of Argonauta.

Revenge et al. split up to cover the two routes through the island chain immediately available to Argonauta.

Argonauta and El Cervantes head for the north route.

Some shot are fired from various stern chasers on both sides, very minor damage dealt.

Pirates (left group) split to cover possible routes Argonauta might take. Three Spanish ships coming in from the northeast.

Argonata chooses the north route.

Turn 2
The Argonauta mis-judges her turning ability and runs aground! There are no rules to cover this situation so I decided it meant a roll for collision damage, ship speed reduced to 0, ship must turn in place (limited to one point per turn) until it is freed of the sand and can start speeding up again. Argonauta and Cassandra are within 10 mu (movement units) of each other and both fire broadsides at each other. Argonauta deals major damage to Cassandra (23 points) triggering a threshold check. Cassandra loses some guns and 1/6th sail rating. Cassandra doesn't even return half the damage Argonauta inflicted. Their escorts fire on each other, each doing minor damage to the other.

Despite running aground, Argonauta deals a devastating broadside into Cassandra!

These Spaniards must have been keeping up on their gunnery drills! The Vospero deals a whopping 24 damage to Revenge, triggering a threshold check! It was raking fire to boot, so the threshold check damage possibility was increased as well.

Are these really Spanish crews? They are exceeding their reputation.

Turn 3
Not much going on for Turn 3 but maneuvering. Revenge does get a raking broadside in on Vospero, but doesn't trigger a threshold check.

Revenge fires on Vospero. Should I add a rule that any misses be re-rolled against other ships in the line of fire?

Argonauta is still turning, but fires bow chasers into Cassandra, inflicting minor damage.

Action around the islands.

End of turn 3: Silverback takes a long shot at Vospero to support Revenge's raking fire. Scepter joins in with her bow chaser, too. Overall, not too much excitement.

Turn 4
Turn 4 sees the action turn up again. Scepter and Santos Romanos fling broadsides at each other.

Scepter has to make a threshold check and loses a cannon and some rigging.

Calchas fires on Leon, minor damage is exchanged. I think Vospero did not follow the rules of gentlemanly conduct earlier and fired at Calchas. Oh well.

El Cervantes successfully grapples with Jamaica. Both ships loose their broadsides and the boarding begins. Jamaica is captured and the prize crew makes preparations for sailing to the nearest friendly port.

I think Turn 4 is when I decided that the ships' top speed should not exceed wind speed (except when reaching, as indicated on the wind rose).

I had seen others make comments about this rule set that the ships move too fast. The other comments raised concern over slowing the ship movement perhaps transferring too much power to the guns. I don't think I really saw that, but that may be due to my marking which sides had fired and using a

Turn 5
Argonauta is mobile again and slowly starts to pick up speed. Cassandra takes more damage from Spanish ships.

Argonauta continues on its ponderous way, pirate closing in from the south.

Leon and Vospero (out of frame to the south) fire broadsides into Cassandra, causing two threshold checks. It's only a matter of time for her.

Turn 6
Some close calls as maneuvering ships in the middle of the action narrowly avoid colliding with each other. Pirates lose two more ships as Calchas is sunk and Cassandra is captured. Pirate crew losses exceed one half their start levels, so according to my win conditions, I end the game.

Leon finishes off Calchas with a broadside.

The very weakened Cassandra is boarded by the Santos Romanos. Cassandra's disheartened crew puts up very little fight and she is captured and taken as a prize. But with so much damage and the Revenge bearing down, it might be better to leave her adrift or scuttle...

Raven misjudged her speed and turning ability, ending up run aground in the same spot as Argonauta. She fired a raking broadside at the bigger ship, but the sudden jarring against the sand bar must have thrown off her gunners as only four balls hit the Argonauta. Meanwhile, in the background, the prize crew from the El Cervantes takes the Jamaica away from the fighting.

Ship positions at end of game.

It's a minor win for the Spaniards, though they did manage to capture one of the large pirate ships.

Post-Game Thoughts

Lawrence decided a treasure island was needed.

I am liking the Full Sail rule set. It's detailed enough to feel the loss of each cannon or sail or the frustration of not having the wind on your side, but not so much that the game is slowed down by record-keeping. It was easy to get a handle on movement (the wind rose is very handy). And rolling lots of dice is always a good time. Translated well enough to a solo mode for me.

I think, with this play under my belt, I may be more motivated in the near future to try the Full Thrust rules with my carved space ships. I'll try to find the solo scenarios that I had run across some time ago.

There is one other rule set I want to try, quite different, basically the PotSM rules but applied to a sand-box sort of fleet builder treasure race. I don't know if it can work so well in solo mode.

P.S.

Immediately following clean-up of this adventure, I cut and installed a neoprene layer. Still debating in my mind about the necessity of a microfiber sheet to go over that. The purchase of the neoprene puts my total amount of money spent on this table to roughly $60. I like that.

I have been having saving and formatting issues with this post in Blogger. I've edited a few times now. Hopefully this latest one worked!

DIY: Game Table (Part III)

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."

With the clear coat finished, my table is, as one might say, "fully armed and operational". And like the Death Star II, it's incomplete in aesthetics department.

Table all set up in it's new home in our basement. A bench underneath to seat some gamers.

So it will rest in the corner until such a time as more than two people are playing.

I made this table so that it can easily come apart. The playing surface (a sheet of MDF cut to fit) can be removed as follows:

The table sans playing surface.

The legs assembly and the table top are held together with nails which are easily removed to separate the two for easier moving (as in through the house and such).

The crucial nail. Pull out all four and the top can be lifted off.

So, some day, maybe, when I get more stain, I can finish the legs. I'd like to get a covering for the surface as well. I don't know what I want to use though, so it's research time. Currently deciding what to play first on it.

DIY: Game Table (Part II)

I work in the recreation sector and recreation seems to be drawn to weekends for some reason. That is why I work on Saturdays and take Wednesdays off instead. Today being Wednesday, I worked on two different projects.

Project 1: Clean out and rearrange the shed.

Jenni and I cleaned out the shed today, threw away a van-load of stuff from tires to wood chunks to a pulley hook thing from some kind of crane or something. We hired a neighbourhood boy to help as well. 

Some stuff is now in the house. Jenni has been working on the craft room and baby room as well (good thing 'cause a baby will be here in January). There is so much floor space in the shed now. It's awesome!

Project 2: Working on my game table.

I knocked the MDF surface out of the table frame and took it outside to stain. I'm using Minwax Iswitch Pine, for those who want to know that kind of thing. I was going to just apply a clear coat to it because that is what I usually do. But I found a conditioner and the stain and decided to be brave and see what came of it. Well, I think it turned out quite nice.

Table frame after the first coat. I'm already digging the darker shade.

Before moving it inside the shed, which can accommodate it now, I wanted to get some legs going for the table. I kept putting it off during the morning and a good thing I did. Jenni decided that she didn't like the table I had made for the kids' play room. I measured it and the length was roughly where I wanted legs to be. The width was just 1-3/4" too narrow to fit tightly between the bottom railings. However, the legs I had on the play table were too short. So I took off the legs and cut some new ones the right length so that the top of the playing surface would be around 30" high, same as the dining room table. Then I cut rabbets on each side of the legs so they will fit snugly between the playroom table frame and the game table frame. I've also devised a way to attach them such that I can take them apart easily if needed.

Sizing up the play table frame.

Things are coming together nicely. This is how I left my table for the night. may it dry nicely in preparation for the clear finish.

I was going to cut notches into the play table frame that would accept the two middle stringers, but as I looked at it tonight, I thought it might be just as good to add stringers right on top of the play table frame instead. Either way, the main function desire is to have a way to fit the two pieces together easily. Also debating putting a finish on the legs. They are a different kind of wood and have already cured to a colour similar to the stain I used on the top.

I'm thinking with a little luck, I can have this ready to install by the time Jenni goes off camping with the kids next week!

DIY: Gaming Table (Part 1)

I finally started building a gaming table!

I finished the tabletop tonight, save applying a finish to it, I'll have to do that later. So far the only thing I've purchased for it is some MDF for the playing surface. The rest is reclaimed lumber, so it's going to look rustic. The side walls were 2" x 8"s from some corral fence or something. I ripped them in half to make 2x4 size walls. The one side was worn by weathering. I sharpened up a plane (used by my great-grandfather) given to me by my uncle. I used it to plane one side smooth, quite a bit of work but quite fun and satisfying. Some pictures to show it off:

Vaulted tabletop! Yaay!

The grey bits are where the weathering wore away the wood between the fence slats. I planed the other side and used it as my straight side to shave the slat side to what is seen here.

Bottom view showing cross members and underside railings to support the MDF surface and to hold the frame straight.

Tried to get a play surface of 3' x 5'. Didn't quite happen as I ended up with 3' x 4' 11 3/4"! Close enough!

Now to get some legs on it, then a finish, probably just clear coat of some kind. I'm thinking about making some kind of box-like frame for the legs. It would be something that could be easily detached so that I can move the table in and out of the house ('cause I won't be applying a finish to it in the house).

Stay tuned for part 2!

Painting: ARC-170 (Micro Machines)

Some photoshop skills on a not-photoshop software! Background image from PatternPictures.com.

I finally got around to re-painting some more Star Wars. This time, it's the ARC-170, first seen, so far as I'm aware, in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.

These were fun to paint. If I were to do anything differently, I would have used a lighter pigment in the wash I applied near the end, not black. Still, they turned out alright and I keep taking them down to look at them. I've liked the design of the ARC-170 from the first time I saw one. I think it's because the fuselage and engine cowlings are reminiscent of World War II and Crimson Skies aircraft designs. Thus, I felt like a paint job that wouldn't look too out of place in that time period would look really good on these. I am not the first to have had the same idea as with an image search it seems one guy made one up in the German mottled camo design used on their jet fighters and another guy did one up like the Red Baron's Dr.1.

So on with the pics!

I wanted them to look like they belonged together, as though part of the same flight wing or squadron, so they were painted at the same time and same base colour. You will notice that the areas painted red are the same for both (unless you happen to be colour blind maybe). Only the yellow is applied in unique ways, as though the crews had the option to add yellow paint how they liked.

I keep telling myself that one day, these guys are going to see some action. If I repeat it enough, it's bound to happen. Right?