Thursday Night Fantasy Game

 As I am unable to go to Julians place this Friday or next, Andrew hosted me after work for a small fantasy game using his home brew rules at his place on Thursday evening. Similar to his WW2 rules, the basic requirement is to role a 9 on 2 D6 to get a hit - with hero figures adding to the roll. As a change from normal, instead of heroes/leaders automatically adding 1, 2 or 3 depending on the level of heroism - we rolled a third dice that had 0 on three faces and either 1, 2 or 3 on the remainder - meaning that instead of automatically adding a number to the heroes role, you had a 50% chance of adding nothing and only around 17% chance of adding 3 - I prefer the old system! The number of times I rolled 7 or 8 but didn't get to add anything was "mildly irritating"

We ran two groups each with a vaguely "pirate" theme 

I had some female Three Musketeers figures to add to my standard "fantasy" selection and Andrew leant me musket armed Foundry pirates

Above and below are Andrews two groups

As usual, we had piles of treasure to get to and then search, pick up and remove from the table. A twist this time was that out of 4 or 5 possibles, only one would be real - and this was decided by turning over a tile when a pile was searched. Flukely, Andrew was first to reach a treasure pile, and it turned out to be the treasure - so the rest of the game was reduced to us fighting each other as he removed the one real treasure from the table.

One of my bands at another potential treasure site just before Andrew located the treasure elsewhere

My two bands, with Andrews figures in the top right slowly (very slowly as it turned out) lugging their ill-gotten gains towards their table edge.

Mass combat ensued in the central part of the board

One of Andrews leaders tells the girl in blue to get out of his way - she didn't and died on the spot!

The blonde-haired girl in red boots defeated another of Andrews leaders and drove him back - hurrah!

The ladies in green and red were two of my four leaders - here they are in combat with two of Andrews "grunts"

The leader in green was driven back while the two pirates killed each other - both rolling greater than 9 and only requiring a single hit to die.

The female prate in blue/grey is Andrews fourth leader. At this stage, we had around 6 casualties each 

A turn later. my fourth leader in dark blue, forced Andrews leader back into deep water, giving her a second hit!

Near the end of the game, Andrew was getting closer to getting the treasure off his table edge, but all of a sudden, I had killed three of his four leaders, without losing any of my own

We had been rolling every turn for a monster to appear - we needed to get a double - right at the end of the game, I finally rolled a double 5 - the number denoting where on the board the monster appeared - 5 was in a pretty benign area, fortunately!

Final view of the central combat area - I think every figure in sight is mine. We tallied up the points, and despite getting the treasure off the table, Andrew lost so many of his figures that I ended up with a win - outstanding!

And another batch of South Island tourist pix! These are from our last full day Friday 6 March

We drove about an hour north of Dunedin to the port town of Oamaru

An old manse (first two images)

And one of many old churches

We then went to a definite tourist stop - a street down by the docks where all the old 1890-1910 buildings have been left almost untouched

Some kind of industrial machinery - I wasn't taking notes, sorry!

For some reason, Oamaru is the self appointed Steam Punk capital of New Zealand 

Steam Punk HQ

Old railway station across the road

Town Hall and (of course!) a war memorial

We had to head back this way to pick up the car!

A five minute drive to a seal colony and (if you are there in the middle of the night and lucky) a spot where you might see little blue penguins

As it was lunch time all we saw (and smelled!) was seals

Next stop was here (thanks Google/AI!) Koekohe Beach, located on State Highway 1 between Moeraki and Hampden, about 40 mins from Oamaru or 1 hour from Dunedin

The Moeraki Boulders are large, near-perfectly spherical concretions 

They are calcite concretions, formed by the slow accumulation of minerals, mud, and sediment around a core over millions of years.

Next to a 1730mm (5'8") figure for scale 😉

Many feature cracking patterns on the surface, sometimes appearing with crystal fillings, and some remain perfectly intact.

I thought they looked like dragon eggs!

We turned off the main road to someone's gorge - but could not really get a good picture of the very dramatic but short drive through it - this is looking back down towards the east coast in the distance

Another beach - and another seal colony!

Back in Dunedin, we felt obliged to go here - Baldwin Street, located in Dunedin, New Zealand, is officially recognized as the world's steepest residential street, with a maximum gradient of 35% (about 19° incline). The 350-meter-long concrete road rises 1 meter vertically for every 2.86 meters traveled, making it a popular, steep tourist spot known for its extreme slope.

And then we drove out to Port Chalmers 

I guess that explains all the logging trucks on the roads....!

Port Chalmers Time ball & Signalling: Historically, Port Chalmers served as a vital hub for flag and time signalling operations. The historic time ball has recently been refitted and restored as a piece of maritime heritage.

Main street of Port Chalmers

A little light refreshment after a busy day of holidaying!

That's it for this post - next time, more winter Germans probably - till then, thanks for visiting and please leave a comment - cheers!