Star Trek
Peter Hunt hosted a Star Trek game utilising his
"To Go Boldly" rules:
Blinking
in the starlight as they emerged through a wormhole from the farthest
reaches of Peter H’s toy room, the Star Trek ships put in their first
appearance in several years. Once
again the “To Go Boldly” rules (which are much stripped down and
simplified “Starship Battles”) have been tweaked a bit, and this time
some splendid planets produced by Jeff dramatically enhanced the visuals.
We
managed to get through two games. In the first the Federation, Jeff and
Dieter, were taking on a loose alliance of the Klingons, Denny and Peter
M, and the Romulans, Paul and Philippe. Unfortunately
for the Federation although the bad guys victory conditions were to be the
last men standing, they held rigidly to their alliance whilst the
Federation were around. In the highlight of the game Paul made a cloaked
approach Plasma torpedo attack on the Federation Dreadnought that Günter
Prien would have been proud of, but in the final analysis, the Federation
were unable to set the Klingons and Romulans at each other’s throats. Thus
the Feds did the right think by refusing two-to-one odds and warped off
complaining that once again Starfleet intelligence on the relations
between Klingon and Romulan was wrong.
The
second game was stripped of any political complications and was a straight
up fight between Klingons, (joined by Paul,) and Federation, (joined by
Philippe.) The Klingons warped into the battle area only to find a
solitary Federation Dominion class dreadnought under Dieter some way off
and trailing its coat tails before them. The
three Klingon ships grouped up and sped off in pursuit only for the
Federation to spring their trap with a flank attack by a Miranda class
frigate and a Saladin class destroyer. As
the Klingons wheeled to face this new threat there seemed to be dissension
in the Federation ranks as the Philippe’s Saladin peeled away leaving
Jeff’s Miranda to face the enemy alone. Baying
in the best Klingon fashion, the bad guys closed to point blank range only
to have Jeff play the self-destruct Kobiashi Maru card. The
Miranda’s warp core went critical as Jeff and his gallant crew made for
the escape pods. At the last
moment Paul’s ship’s doctor and confidant had him reconsider his rash
urge to get his K’Tinga class battlecruiser close to the Miranda, (i.e.
he played the “Bones” card to get him out of the mess,) so it was
Peter’s Kathless dreadnought and Denny’s old D7 class cruiser that
bore the brunt of the explosion.
The
situation looked grim for the Klingons but fortunately for them the
Federation dreadnought was too far off to exploit the damage wreaked by
Jeff’s self-destruction and by the time it closed the range the Klingons
had been able to repair some of their systems. Thus
began a struggle between three damaged Klingon vessels and two fresh
Federation ships. Things got close in and dirty and the Federation seemed
to have the upper hand as Denny’s D7 suffered a containment breach. In
true Klingon fashion however Danny refused to eject his warp core and the
dogfight continued with both sides trying to inflict as much damage as
possible on each other whilst trying to keep away from Danny’s ticking
time bomb!
When
the D7 went up Philippe’s ship was marginally damaged and, with the odds
now against them, Dieter decided to cut and run. As
the Dominion worked up to warp speed Peter’s dreadnought fired a last
salvo of photon torpedoes after it. Fortified by a couple of stiff slugs
of prune juice, (another card,) the Kathless’ weapons officer excelled
himself and the Dominion was ripped apart. Outnumbered
and alone Phil’s Saladin went down gallantly a few seconds later leaving
the Klingons to celebrate their victory.
Denny
missed his flight to Canada
that
day, but a good time was had by all, especially in the second game, so
I’m sure the delay was worth it.
James
ran a game of History of the World - the report of which is as follows:
Result
was 1st - 5th: Ludovic, Neil, Chris L, James, Dan. Ludovic basically
led from epoch I only losing the lead briefly to James around epoch
V. Neil did well with the Romans and moved himself into second
place. Chris was consistently
second last but managed to pip James in the last epoch. James
was second for most of the time, grabbed the lead only to
fall back to 4th. Dan was
consistently last or equal last (better luck next time!). And
then Ludovic left the country the next day, back to France
.
The
Leaders were fairly useless. Both
Neil and Chris rolled triples the first roll.
Chris rolled another triple for his second Leader card, but later
on, and it was only Ludovic who managed to have his leader fight till the
end of the epoch. A good game!
Painting
Workshop
John
and Richard ran a painting workshop, which created a lot of interest.
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