More 7TV With My Disaster Dice

I got a chance to head over to Beau's again for some more 7tv a few weeks ago and it was a blast!

And the table was just gorgeous as you can see 😃

This factory complex was just incredible and it had a real James Bond feel to it.

Goldeneye anyone?!

He did an amazing job painting up all the computer consoles, data banks, and cooling panels from Crooked Dice (made by Figurebitz). I have a boatload of these myself and have only built a couple, but seeing what he did makes me want to go back and copy his paint scheme instead.

As usual I was too focused on getting crushed to take but a couple of photos. I did take a few but almost everything you see is courtesy of Beau.

Beau's cast was pretty heavy on minions as you can see with all the orange suited models above and below, so while he had a superior model count I definitely had a much more powerful cast. Completely forgot to take any pre-game photos of my cast.

What was really fun was he had two tables set up next to one another so he and I had a game and then Chris and Bob had a game of their own going on at the same time - no photos from next door unfortunately 😕

Chris was nice enough to lend me one of his casts that had a lot of really neat aspects to it - which of course I completely mucked up at every possible roll of the dice lol!

I had models that could teleport anywhere on the table, which in hindsight totally should have been used to grab objectives early on.

Each of us had a team of dogs and a handler which was fun!

A good scientist always has gadget and this model had one to get him right to the top of the platform.

Which made this first objective easy pickings for Beau.

Orange suited minions just swarmed across the factory floor pinning several of my models into a corner.

Flamethrower model leading the way around the corner.

A heavy weapons team protected his right flank from above.

A really fun part of the game was this poisonous gas cloud (represented by the orange blast template) that moved around the floor of the factory compound randomly at the start of each turn - I even managed to muck up those rolls lol! I totally could have caught orange suited minions in the cloud several times in the game but who is the only person to possibly roll a 3 on two six sided dice (the number you rolled on the two six siders represented the amount in inches that the cloud moved)??!! Yeah, you guessed it, this guy.

Despite my failures, these types of random events in a game are things that I absolutely love and always try to work into my games somehow.

Chris and Bob played with the same random event and during the talks of each of our games afterwards the poisonous cloud was the game changer for Chris as his star succumbed to the effects of the cloud and ended up turning sides which helped Bob win right at the end.

While it was disaster dice on my end, Beau was just crushing it on his dice rolls. I can't quite remember if this was his heavy weapons team die roll, but regardless he hit on every single added dice and pretty much summed up the night.

This was my one objective grab of the game, utilizing the teleporting ability of this model.

This photo represents what was my big plan and my BIG failure at the same time. This was my most powerful model of the cast - and by far the most powerful model on the entire table. So first activation of the game for me and I immediately use a grappling hook gadget to her up two levels to the top of the catwalk with the cylinder containers as I was going to go after Beau's scientist who'd already grabbed one objective on the other end of the platform. If this worked (and how could it not work with this particular character!!) I could easily put myself in a flanking position and really cause havoc for Beau's crew.

Well, the dice had other ideas. As I mentioned this was the most powerful model on the table, hitting on a base of +10 (average for a model is usually about +8) and getting 2 attacks! Well, needless to say when I announced my attacks all I needed to hit was to get three's or higher on I think it was five dice and sure enough missed on everything!!?? It summed up perfectly how the rest of my night would end up going with rolling the dice. By far one of the most disastrous night's of rolling dice I can honestly ever remember lol!

I did at least have one fun cinematic moment where I was able to take out Beau's flamethrower model - we both agreed it would have been fun to house rule an explosion next time if that model gets taken out! Needless to say I got absolutely crushed - claimed but one lonely objective and had more than half my entire cast eliminated. But despite how badly I played it was still a ton of fun regardless of the outcome.

Remember the Alamo? Well, I got all the roofs, doors, and windows all painted up - and what a huge difference it makes.

I will tell you that in researching the Alamo I have bought a several books, with The Illustrated Alamo 1836: A Photographic Journey being far and away the greatest resource if you want to accurately represent the Alamo on the tabletop. The big question is do I actually want to go that route? I think there are some things I definitely will change on the Hudson & Allen model to make it more accurate, but it does make me wonder where H&A got their information from on how they designed their model - there are some things in the model that are no where close to being accurate. Though it could simply be changes/decisions were made purely from a gaming standpoint. Anyway, stay tuned.

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

New Friends And New Possibilities

One thing I've struggled with is finding people to game with and that's why over the last several years I've been moving more towards playing rules/games that have a solo option. But also, truth be told I'm a bit of a socially awkward person.

And I really don't do well in speaking situations. For example, I can't tell you how many times I will be out at a restaurant and the server brings my food and says "enjoy your meal" and I'll say "you too". Winning.

I sometimes have a hard time trying to keep conversations too - I stumble on words and find it hard remember simple words, and a lot of that is because of the many concussions I've had over the years from sports. So I'll always be the one not talking. It's extremely frustrating but I always have to preface that when I meet new people

Flash forward to present day and I was seeing just some incredible work being put up on social media by a guy named Fenton Crackshell (aka Beau). He had posted about doing some 7TV games (he's really active on the Facebook page for the game and does some absolutely brilliant stuff in that pulpy/spy-fi genre that I just love) in the past at a comic book/game store that I had been to before. Immediately I start thinking "if he's gaming there he's got to be relatively close to me", maybe this is a great opportunity to meet up with like-minded gamers despite all my social anxiety as explained above.

We got in contact with each other and set a meet up to play some 7TV at his home. It's a bit mad to think back on it on now, but essentially it was what it must feel like for anyone who's ever been on a blind date before - we didn't know each other from a hole in the wall and we both could have been complete maniacs or serial killers. Though the odds of two serial killers being in the same basement is probably pretty high, no?

The best analogy that I can possibly give you to walking down into Beau's jaw dropping gaming basement is that it felt exactly like when the kids first entered the chocolate room in the movie 'Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'. I was in complete awe and wonderment of what I was seeing - there were games, comic books, probably 1000's of miniatures, terrain, old school cabinet style video games, graphic novels, a ski ball machine, a massive gaming table, pop culture stuff, and all of it was everywhere and as far as the eye could see - honestly it was like what it would have been if 14 year old me could have bought everything I ever wanted all in one place, it was total sensory overload for a geek like myself! And if it wasn't for the fact that it was the very first time being at his home and meeting him I totally would have been snapping photos on my phone left and right lol!

After I finished gawking at everything we got right into the game following a quick refresh of the rules, as I hadn't played 7TV in well over a year. Beau took on the role of GM and a friend of his, Bob, ran the opposing league. All the photos above and below that you see of the game are all compliments of Beau's iPhone.

You've heard me joke in the past about how awful my luck is when I roll dice for games, well if Beau and Bob were here to comment they would verify that very fact. It was unreal how badly I was rolling, it was absolutely incredible!

Unfortunately it's been almost three months since we played this game so I can't remember a lot of the details of it, but I did use some of the cool gadget cards to get my agent (above) into the ship - I think it might have been the suction cups that allowed me to scale the side of the ship here.

A lot of the terrain and scenery, like the brick work above, was all done by Beau's other friend Chris. Just some amazing scratch built terrain and the photos don't do it justice!

What can really be interesting for a possibility in the future is that he has a You Tube channel - he did a six part series on the MV Australis build, which is the massive ship from Black Site Studios that you see in all the photos - so maybe video battle reports are something we could try in the future. Then the whole world can actually see how badly I roll dice!

The one thing that also blew me away was Beau's incredible painting. All these photos don't even come close to showing how amazing the brushwork on these models were - I really wish I'd taken some close-up photos, but hopefully I can do that next time.

Despite my horrific dice rolling I somehow managed to get two of my agents into the same room with the MacGuffin for a checkmate sort of play and actually won the game! It was great fun and just an absolutely incredible table to game on!

Again, a big thanks to Beau for welcoming me into his home, and to Bob as well for playing. I know he's interested in giving Pulp Alley a go, so that's on my list to get something made up for him and the other guys to possibly try. Here's to hopefully getting together on a more regular basis to roll some dice or heck, maybe even making it a small impromptu club, meeting every other week or two each month.

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor