More Game of Thrones and South Island Scenery

 Another small game last night using Julians A Song of Ice and Fire game from CMON (Cool Mini or Not)

Lovely figures, as we established last time, but I am not so keen on the rules. Last night John and Chris, as the Nights Watch, had to get to a building, recover two victory tokens, and get them off the entry point diagonally opposite the building. Julian and I had to try and stop them, we had six rounds of play to achieve our aims. John spent much of the game bemoaning the fact we had two giants, who are almost impossible to kill and can be quite destructive in combat if you roll well, while I moaned about rolling poor dice and the near impossibility of getting any meaningful casualties on the enemy. The proof of the pudding was in the eating - the giants did not really have much effect on the outcome, and the Nights Watch relatively easily got to the building, secured whatever it was they were after, and the exfiltrated - a mere technicality was, they possibly did not quite make it in six rounds, but unless you are some kind of tournament playing rules lawyer, there was no doubt they had won!

I took a few pictures, I don't think John took any - as I say, still very nice figures but the game itself doesn't really do much for me. We have a big AWI game at Barrys tomorrow so hopefully I enjoy that more!

Table layout, Nights watch on the left, Free Folk on the right. The target building is bottom right, exit point top left

Mounted Nights Watch head for the building

My mounted Free Folk unit

A view from the right flank - my four units - two infantry in the woods, the Teddy Bear Girls and teh mounted Free Folk

One of Julians two giants attacks the leading Nights Watch cavalry; they survived and proceeded to grab the mission tokens from the house

Here is the source of my frustration with the rules. The girls on the polar bears roll 8 dice needing 3 I think because it's a flank attack - first off, I don't think I ever managed more than 4/8 hits THEN, the Nights Watch save on four plus, PLUS they had a card that made it easier to save, PLUS once they had saved - say 2 out of 4 - they added an extra save on - and you need 3 hits to kill a mounted figure  PLUS you can use one of the character figures once each round to remove several wounds - so I battled the whole game more or less with my best unit on their flank plus another unit face to face with them - and I made virtually no impact at all.

Meanwhile, the Nights Watch with John Snow and his Dire Wolf had 12 dice for the unit and another 4 for the wolf, needing 3 to hit and my guys in the woods (the best of the Free Folk infantry) only saved on a six - you can guess how that went!

Wiped out within two rounds of combat!

Johns mounted Nights Watch did something similar to a unit under Julians command

Frustratingly, I had Ygritte in my band, she got within close range of John Snow, she rolled a six to kill him ......... and he had a card that said I had to reroll any hits - and of course, the second roll was a 2 - FFS!

Nice figure though!

John Snow and his indestructible band of Nights Watchmen

Final shot - Nights Watch bowmen harry the Teddy Bear Girls as their cavalry with the victory tokens exit, stage right.

Here are some pics from day two of our trip to the bottom of the S Island 

Thus was the highlight of day two - so lots of photos - and believe it or not, I did delete about 30% of them!

A brief stop on the side of the road - not much there but very peaceful!

Most southerly point on mainland New Zealand 

Waipapa Point Lighthouse

A local resident - fur seal, I think?

Bluff - centre of the New Zealand oyster industry, was pretty unimpressive close up - but looks ok from the scenic lookout

Our Air BnB in Invercargill, the main population centre in the far south 

Images taken on our short walk into town for a very nice Indian dinner 

War Memorial - of course!

One of many nice old churches we saw

I like the old 1890-1920 architecture - hopefully others do, too!

And that's it again - AAR on our AWI game will likely wait till Monday so people get a chance to read (and comment!!) on this post before the next one turns up.