Mighty Monsters at Elliscon in Danielson CT Saturday November 19, 2016

Mighty Monsters at Elliscon in Danielson CT Saturday November 19, 2016

Mighty Monsters is published by Ganesha Games, written by Andrea Sfiligoi.

MM is a convention favorite. I had five players running two monsters each. Two of the players were brand new to gaming and the other three were returning players from previous years.

I used the card driven initiative system I have been using for multi-player games for a while. The deck of cards I was using had two Jokers and an advertisement card I used as a third Joker. Drawing the Joker gets your choice of the place in initiative order and a off color die to use to add for one roll during your turn.

I used only one of my felt mats and had everyone set up pretty close to get the action going right away.

The players set up the board the way they wanted.

The flying praying mantis flew at NOE over the gorilla.

So, here was my first diversion from the rules as written. The gorilla player asked if she could leap up and grab the mantis flying over him. In a series of Quality rolls, the deed was done, and the mantis was brought down to ground but the grapple roll failed. The gorilla was in close combat with a clawing mantis.

The octopus made his way down the stream and scrambled up onto the bridge to fling a car at the aquatic gormiti and beaked gormiti grappling in range. A hit but bounced off of beak's armor. I need to modify octo's sheet so he can move medium in water and short on land. Currently, he is a short move.

Stegosaurus destroys a building with his tail. Gobira wanders out of the wood, deciding where to go.

Frizbee works his way through the buildings, had some trouble leaping from building to building. Killer Bunn worked his shooter weapons to good effect.

Flying lizard is over the tops of buildings, indicated by two stands beneath. Used his radioactive breath to destroy my nuclear power plant and oil tanks, making a mess of everything.

Young lady running Gobira and mantis was a new player. She did very well. Used Gobira's radioactive breath several times, wounding stego and setting the building behind him on fire.

Gobira activate enough to pick up a car but not throw it yet. That is coming.

So much for the nuclear power plant, dying in nuclear flame from the flying lizard.

Mantis gets slammed into a building and knocked down. Stego takes a car to the side of the head.

With oil tanks and nuclear power plant up in flames, aqua gormiti drug beaked gormiti into the deep water to drown him. Mantis "bugs" out to an uninhabited part of the board.

The smoking ruins of my oil tanks.

A couple of more buildings down. The shooting war has begun. Gobira fling debris with his tail at Killer Bunn.

Octo joins the close combat under the water. Beaked gormiti breaks free of the grapple. Mantis's orange ring means that he is Slowed.

I called it after that. No one was Knocked Out. Mantis and stego took the most damage. Everyone had a great time, but the extra monsters slowed us down. I had started with two monsters per player before two more players showed up. I should have walked it back for speed.

I didn't forget about subtracting for Powerful and Very Powerful this time!!!

Mighty Monsters is a great convention game and game to introduce new players to gaming. It is available online with a search by name, author, or at Ganesha Games. It is $8 and is completely stand alone.

Please support Andrea and other small press gaming companies.

HAVOC Worcester Massachusetts April 2, 2016 AAR

HAVOC Worcester Massachusetts April 2, 2016

Mighty Monsters! Ganesha Games.

[Captions are on top of the pictures]

The set up.

5 Players. 8 Monsters. I used the multiplayer initiative system I've been using for a while. The twist this time is that instead of +2 for drawing the Joker, I gave them an extra die for all attack and defense rolls for that turn. It seemed to work better. I think it is a keeper rule. 

[I remembered to do Powerful and Very Powerful correctly!]

T-Rex making use of those long legs.

Lots of smiles here. Things must be going well.

Father and son discussing tactics and rules. As it should be.

Little guy leveled a building. He was happy.

A hand for size comparison. Someone put the nuclear power plant awful close to the center of town!

Gobira is making his way (slowly)  into the fray.

T-Rex and Killer Bunn before locking horns.

Gobira gets his toes wet.

Planning.

Stegosaurus body slams Gobira back into the drink!

Gobira and the mecha go after a heavily armored foe.

After a tail slap drives the mecha through a building, failed activations catch up with the stegosaurus.

Called the game shortly after this. Gobira and the purple mecha were the only uninjured figures on the board.

A Fistful of Kung Fu! Osprey Publishing. Scenario based on Into The Badlands on AMC.

Only one player showed up, who signed up to learn the rules. It was the first time I had run AFOKF one to one.

We played it mostly as a tutorial. We stopped and discussed the rules along the way.

Carpet squares are fields of poppies. Carpet rectangles are rows of tall wheat. Both are Broken Ground. Both contain Smelly Stuff. Stands of wheat are line of sight obstacles.

The two protagonists go to blows. The bruiser is in on that fight. The other bruiser is slapping extras around.

The unarmed protagonist calls up her Iron Shirt to protect herself from a brutal attack by two opponents. Whirlwind of Death inhibited by a combined attack.

Mooks not sure what to do.

Bruiser could have rolled better.

Other mooks standing around doing what mooks do best. Nothing.

Protagonist knocked out by the other protagonist. Finished off by the bruiser.

Left hand gang is getting ready to roll morale. Not as bad as I expected.

Its all over but the crying.

Bruiser finishes off a mook.

Protagonist Chi jumps over to finish off the other bruiser.

Another great day of gaming.  Thanks to Andrea once again.

Support Ganesha Games, Osprey Publishing, and other small press game companies out there.

Elliscon November 2015

Elliscon

November 14th, 2015

Danielson Connecticut USA

It took me a couple of weeks after the event to get my laptop back to build this blog post. My daughter is in a Masters Degree program and was beginning her finals the Sunday after the con. Her chromebook died, and she needed Ol' Reliable to finish the semester and take her finals.

Let me try to catch up.

I ran Ganesha Games Mighty Monsters in the morning. Three and a half players. One kid dropped in and out halfway through the session. I chose to use a smaller layout and had each player run three monsters. 

As usual, when I run Mighty Monsters on the same day as I run Osprey's A Fistful Of Kung Fu, I forget that Powerful and Very Powerful Attacks are minus' for the defender instead of plus' for the attacker. As long as the player's don't find that out, I'm golden.

Everyone was quick to engage and forsook ranged attacks for the most part. The blue aquatic figure has a Force Blast attack consisting of a gout of water. He knocked the Giant off the bridge.

The Giant and the Giant Robot went at it hammer and tongs and knocked each other back a couple of times. The Giant was Massive, so it helped him in the clinch. It was hard for him to do any significant damage on the Robot with his Armor.

The T Rex was gnawing on Mecha Zeta, which kept Mecha from using his ranged attacks. The Mecha player should have kept his distance. Even with his armor, his best attacks are his ranged ones.

The young player who briefly stopped by ran the Big Damn Spider. He managed to cast a Web over Mecha, which slowed him up for a turn, allowing Howler to clinch him up.

The players were getting antsy not making much headway against each other. The dice were cold. I called it a draw and invited everyone back for the afternoon session of A Fistful Of Kung Fu.

This session of AFOKF, I did not foreshadow a potential arrival of gamemaster characters. This would be a straight street fight.

Again, I chose a smaller field. I finally get what game author Andrea was getting at concerning play areas.

The green coasters are a forested area.

The players developed their Mooks very effectively, for the most part. The younger players took a lot of damage from the Mooks, which softened them up for the Protagonists.

Note the Gazebo of Doom I recently acquired from the Dollar Store at Halloween!

Someone finally used the planks to make a Long Move without prompting!

Lots of Disarming going on. The two green fighters are an example of the Mirror, Mirror special rule which allows you to create a mirror image of yourself to help you fight, unless it gets too far from you and winks out!

Mooks were wreaking havoc on the Protagonists, who couldn't seem to make the dice listen.

The dual pistol wielder in the center of the picture was breaking up the mess to the left of the woodpile.
 

The dual pistol wielder lost her advantaged when the Green Girls locked her up. The girls were pretty bashed up, but they managed to take her down.

This guy was able to take out the rest of the Mooks bothering him and recovered his sword and pistol.  The Green Girls were in his sights.

Why they did not pick up the guns, I do not know.

One Green Girl was driven into the spools, becoming Entangled. This caused the other one to wink out.

The dude with  sword and pistol was undoubtedly the winner.

It was a great session.

I ran one more Mighty Monsters session later on in the evening. It was fun, but, unremarkable.

A great day at the Con. Looking forward to Havoc in Worcester Massachusetts in the Spring.

Teach your hobby or it will die with you.

Support small press games like Andrea's.

Ganesha Games and Osprey Publishing.