Unpunched Cry Havoc

 

A bargain at £35 on eBay! I'm really chuffed as I don't have the full set of rule booklets in my existing collection or a decent box for that matter, so I will now sort all my maps, sheets, rules booklets and counters out to be in one box. 

Sherwood Scenario 1

 

I punched out the counters for Sherwood today and set up the first scenario, in which Alan Adale has to escape from the Sheriff of Nottingham's men with the help of the local peasants. This was good fun and he almost got away with it but was captured in the very last turn after all of the peasants had run off. It's a really simple system, made even more so by the revised combat rules that use differentials instead of combat odds ratios as in the original Cry Havoc. A few more games are definitely on the cards this week!

Sherwood

 

I ordered my copy of Sherwood way back before Xmas as a present and it finally arrived today. I'm really impressed with the production values of this Cry Havoc based game and can't wait to try it out. Brilliant!

Advanced Cry Havoc

This looks brilliant! A free set of rules, counters and charts for Cry Havoc, tweaked to make the game a bit more streamlined and detailed. This is one of my all time favourite Beer and Pretzels games, so I'm really excited to see what they've done to pull it together. It looks great too and best of all it's free as a print and play download. 

I was thinking only just yesterday about making a travel sized, portable version of the game by resizing the maps and counters by 50%, so this may well be a be another angle to develop that idea further. You need the maps and counters from the original games to use these rules but they can also be downloaded for free from the Cry Havoc Fan web site. You can find it all here:

https://www.tacticalworkshop.com/free-addons

Night of the Ninja

Possibly the best scenario in the Samurai Blades booklet, although I do also really like the one with the Samurai monks defending the temple. This time the ninjas were lethal and wiped out the whole of the defenders including the target, Lord Misikado, although he did go down fighting and not in his pyjamas!

Samurai Blades

The sprog asked if he could play a game of two of Samurai Blades the other day, so I'll be dusting off my old dog eared copy for a scenario or two over the week. I love this game, even if Cry Havoc is my favourite in the Standard Games series, so I'm really looking forward to it especially the ninja scenario!

The Battle of Little Wootton

The sprog missed out on the game of Samurai Blades yesterday, so I set up a game of Cry Havoc for him after school today, using a scenario from Additional Scenarios Book One - The Battle of Little Wootton. This involved two rival knghts and their retainers trying to recruit some revolting peasants from the local village for a pitched battle, which can be played out in the second half of the scenario.

I took on the role of Sir James, accompanied by a sergeant and crossbowman, while the lad was represented by Sir Thomas, a sergeant and a shortbowman. We approached the village from opposite ends and proceeded to persuade the pungent residents to join our respective sides. This was achieved by standing within three hexes of them for a whole turn then rolling a D10 to see how they reacted.

   

Sir James started out quite well and managed to pick up a couple of the filthy yokels straight away, whilst Sir Thomas struggled to persuade them of the virtues of his cause, perhaps because he parked his trusty steed on top of their geraniums. However, things started to go downhill fast once the two rival gangs bumped into one another in the middle of the village street.

The bowman in Sir Thomas' faction managed to wipe out two of Sir James peasants and his crossbowman in quick succession, whilst Sir James' sergeant lost the gift of the gab and failed miserably to win over any replacements. He was instead surrounded by no less than four opponents and hacked to bits. This left Sir James cut off by the mob in the street, so he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and legged it.

In the end Sir James left empty handed and with his entire force wiped out, whilst Sir Thomas rode away with a seven strong gang of smelly peasants and only some minor injuries. I did manage to wound the annoyingly talented shortbowman but this was too late to make any real difference to the outcome. This was another cracking game and we both had a great time, despite the one sided outcome, so I'll be playing Cry Havoc again soon.

Oi...get off my land!

(and I've also found my old box of Viking Raiders...so I'll be giving that a dust off soon too!)