Qwik game board

Today I finally found time to build a game board for Qwik. I drew it on a 1mm thick sheet of cork and glued it to thick cardstock using spray glue. Then I made two sticks with toothpicks and glued them to small bases, also made of cork and cardstock. Here are the results.

 Each cell is 2"x2" which is more than enough for three 20mm square bases (you can have at most three figures in a single cell in Qwik.) In this shot I have placed three figures with round 22mm bases (don't ask) to show this.

Now I plan on creating a set of figures in 20mm scale for the Qwik teams, and a marker for the "bean" that I can place over the qwik's base when he's carrying it, or on the ground when it's dropped.

Supply Run

This is a battle report based on the Wasteland Wanderer solo scenario that I posted some time ago. I created a party consisting of two humans, a mutant and a robot. Here you can see, from left to right, Pink (Q4+ C3, Free Disengage, Telepathic Scream) equipped with a pistol, Ella (Q3+ C2, Savage) equipped with an electrical gun, Jones (Q2+ C2, Savage, Leader) equipped with a laser gun and laser-reflective armor, and MX40 (Q4+ C4, Artificial, Superior Software) equipped with an embedded power fist. They are carrying 9 energy cells and 6 food points.

 The Journey

The trip from Dust, a small settlement in the wasteland, to Mart takes about three days. It's dangerous as there aren't any fixed settlements or patrols in between, but the survivors must make it from time to time. After all, Mart is on the trade route from the merchants that come from the north and south, which means it's the nearest place they can go to find any goods we need. Which in this case are medicines.

Zombies and Implants

Cyber Zone and Zombie Apocalypse are the two expansions to the New World Disorder skirmish game. The first introduces implants and other enhancements, and the other, well... zombies. In an interesting twist, implants in Cyber Zone are not only the domain of tricked-out soldiers of fortune. In a future of advanced medical procedures, a low-grade robotic replacement may be the cheap alternative for the less fortunate.

I decided to combine both supplements in a single scenario, influenced by the ones provided in the expansions. Here, a gang of cybernetically enhanced humans must enter an area infested with zombies to retrieve credit chips stored in old terminals. They can sell the credit chips to a fence who provides them to people looking for untraceable money. To retrieve the chips, a character must stand next to a terminal and perform a |brains 4| test. On a failure, there's a 50% chance that the terminal will self destruct its circuits. If it doesn't, the character may try again with another action.

Review: Wizards & Gunslingers

During the last summer sale on DrivethruRPG I picked up a few less known game systems, one of which was "Wizards and Gunslingers," by Trevor Banister from Avalon Games. It is possible to find a couple of reviews of the game if you scour the web for information, with statements related to good ideas and poor execution.

The 199-page standalone rulebook contains information on character creation and advancement, combat, magic and other resolution systems, reference of creatures found in the game, game mastering advice and the setting of Westrue. The book is set in grayscale, with text in two columns. The quality of the illustrations range from inspiring down to amateur. At the end of the book there are also several maps, quick reference tables and the mandatory character sheet template.

Character creation is based on allocating points to three main attributes and then deriving several secondary values. After that, skills are also purchased by using points. There are six skill categories and, in an interesting twist, the character's class is determined by the category with most skill points. It took me about 40 minutes of reading through and, at the same time, creating my character for this playtest. If you already know the rules or have someone to guide you, I'd say that a character can be created in 10 minutes.

Review: Strange Grogge

Last night I got to read and test Strange Grogge by Mike Baumann, Matthew Hartley and Steve Blease of Wessex Games. It is a game about "age of sail" skirmishes in a fantasy land. So you can play orc pirates (or Pyrates in the book) invading a dark elf settlement, or maybe ratmen privateers boarding a dwarf ship. With little work it could be adapted to play battles inspired by old swashbuckler movies. From the copyright notice, the game's been around since 2004 but I only came to know it this year.

Contents: Strange Grogge is a 32-page game book. The basic rules span 16 pages and describe the choices on force types and equipment, movement, ranged and close combat and other actions. The rest of the book contains optional rules to expand the character attributes and add skills and magic, as well as a campaign system. I really liked the different "flavors" of magic available in the game, from the more traditional spell-based Aquamancy to the bonus-granting magic foodstuffs from Gastromancy. Like everything else in the game, magic isn't completely reliable and there's always risk of backfire.

Characters in the basic game are described by race, unit type, equipment and a single attribute called Salt, which is a measure of their fighting state (morale, preparedness, health and so on.) Salt will go up and down during a battle based on success or failure of actions and damage in combat, requiring some bookkeeping. Going below Salt 2 makes a character rout; besides that, characters may be killed outright as a result of combat actions (although that is more likely for characters with low Salt.)