Fall-In 2012 Report 2 of 2: Fanticide, Saga, Bolt Action & WWPD

 In addition to running my one game, which took up most of Friday, I was able to do a lot of fun things at Fall-In including participating in some of the demo games of Fanticide with Ernie and his crew at Alien Dungeon.  Fanticide is a fantasy skirmish game that was designed by Rick Preistly and Alessio Cavatore, Skye Chaney and Ernie.   It's best described as "whimsically grim" and it's a hoot to play.  More importantly, it has Flying Monkees - 'nuff said.  I played the Liberi (Centaurs with a Native American theme) against the Fae.  I lost a very close game but it was a lot of fun.

 Here's a picture of Ernie running another demo of Fanticide - I've never been able to get a clear photo of Mr Baker in the wild as he is in constant motion.  I think it's a good sign for the game that everyone who participated in the demo's came by the booth later to buy a the book and some minis.  As Mikey is implored on the old Life cereal commercial "Try it, you'll like it".

 I managed to get into the vendor hall early on Friday to say hi and was promptly put to work by Ernie building one of the new 4-Ground laser cut building kits.  I had no tools except glue application sticks from the cast-off wood from the frames.  I managed to complete the kit in 30 minutes which demonstrates how great these little kits are.

 Saturday morning was occupied by the SAGA tournament.  The tournament was very well run and had a simple scenario for all games - first player to loose 2 saga dice due to causalities looses the game.  Warbands were 5 points and I brought my Normans who consisted on 4 mounted Hearthguard and one levy archer.  My first game was against Mike who had Anglo-Danes and was very adept at using there "Intimidate" feature which allows them to build up Fatigue on opposing units.

Here's a picture at the end of our game.  It was a very close game but I managed to win but it could have gone either way.  Mike was very fun opponent.

At this point, for some reason, I forgot I had a camera on my I-Phone and stopped taking pictures for the rest of the con.  I'm afraid the rest of this report will just be rambling prose...

My second game of the Saga tournament was against Tom K and his Welsh Warband.  The Welsh can be very challenging opponents given their javelins and ability to fly through terrain.  I played Tom before in the Historicon Saga Tournament (I lost!) and he is a real pleasure to game with.  This game went well for me as my archers managed to wipe out a hearthguard unit on the first turn and take another done to one figure on the second.  I won the game very quickly but think the scenario design tipped the balance in favor of fast / "shooty" warbands like the Normans.

I decided to skip the third round of the tournament in favor of participating in one of the Bolt Action demo games put on by the WWPD Bolt Action crew (Dano and Judson).  I had a great time and really liked the ruleset.  The rules as best described as "Saga for WWII".  The armies are relatively small (30-40 figures plus the odd tank) and the rule mechanics simple.  There is a good feel for the benefits of combined arms and it's just a lot of fun.  Dano and Judson did a great job as GM's/Emcee's and I pretty sure they have honed their joke delivery skills in the finest dives along the catskill mountains - I could swear I was hearing rim-shots after each punchline!  It was a very fun event.

After the Bolt Action demo I grabbed a quick dinner and sat in on the WWPD podcast - and won a free T-Shirt in the drawing!  Next up was a game of X-Wing where I was piloting a target drone oops I mean Y-Wing.  It was a great game but lets just say I let the rebellion down that evening!  It was fun getting some time to chat with Steve M and the WWPD crew during the con.  By the way, Luke really gets into playing the board game "Spartacus" - it was really neat to see someone having that much fun with a game.  The WWPD crew did a great job with their podcast/game night and I had a blast.

As for "loot", I really didn't buy much from the 'con.  A few odds and ends for Saga from Architects of War, some Byzantine figs from Age of Glory and a few rulesets to read.  The big purchase from the con was a 5 point Viking Saga warband that I won in the "Toys for Tots" silent auction.  I'll post a picture of those figs in a future post.