Sharp's Escape - Episode 2

In the first episode we left Sharp and his lads as they just fled into a cave with the French army hot on their trail.  Let's look in on them and see what they are up to.

*Warning*- If you are a historical purist who can abide no foolishness, it is probably best if you close your browser now.   I don't want to see any gripes on TMP, it is damned difficult for me to classify my reps!

I suppose some explanation is in order before continuing.  In the first post I mentioned we were testing some experimental skirmish and campaign rules we are compiling to handle universal gaming  situations.  The Sharp's Escape series is my vehicle for this purpose.  Most gamers have cool toys sitting around collecting dust that do not get any, or enough play time.  As I'm never one to shy away from something due to issues of "realism" (or sanity for that matter), I told the guys to show up with any miniatures, from any time period, with NO restrictions.  For test purposes I thought Sharp would make an interesting guinea pig.

Here is an overview of the rules:

1. Sharp must survive.  

2. He loses points for losing named heroes, gains points for collecting wenches, and gains points for "kills".

3. Every time Sharp goes through a gate, we roll to see if he makes it home.  If not, we roll off and the winner gets to decide where Sharp lands and who he must pit his skills against.  No restrictions, any time, any place.

4. Terrain and hostiles are randomly generated and he must cross the table to gain the next gate.

You get the idea.  There are simply no rules which handle this scope of gaming so we have been creating our own.  Now back to the rep!

Sharp's Escape - Episode 1

It has been a good long while since I did a full rep.  While we have still been gaming plenty, I've just been too knackered with work to get much blogging done, but there is light at the end of the tunnel!  This game is from a test we are doing with some hybrid rules sets, in a campaign setting.  My photos turned out horrible with the lighting, but I still got some acceptable ones to tell the story. 

We chose poor Richard Sharp to be the guinea pig, and poor Mark from our gaming group to be the hapless and hopelessly doomed Sharp because he didn't bring any minis for the campaign.  Without giving away the plot, let us just say that when Sharp was compelled to run recklessly into that unknown cave, he has opened up a whole new can of high adventure.

New Gladiator Insanity

Anyone who has followed my gaming exploits already knows that nothing is sacred, and that I am capable of any foolishness.  This includes raiding the kids toy boxes in search of cool stuff to game with.  Well this time, I have found the ultimate loot.  Gladiators in 1:20 scale!  Put these bad boys on a Hotz mat with 4" hexes and you got some great arena combat action.

This Roman Centurion was disgraced in an action along the Rhine and has found himself in the arena!

One of his legionaires was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well.

A Greek warrior who refused to join the Pax Romana.

A regular at the arena in Capua.

This Minotaur fell alseep on the job one day and woke up in the arena.

A beast man from the darkest regions of Africa.  A Lanista must have a paid a lot for this one.

Tiger man is sure to be a crowd pleaser as well.

Could Croc man be the ultimate fighting machine?

Rhino man looks like he could be good in a punch up as well.

I bet Ram man can perform an admirable shield bash!

Of course with all these heavy weights in the arena, there will be need of some vultures very soon.

Ludis Gladatorius

What I can't believe is that Blogger finally let me upload pictures again.  I can tell you that not being able to upload photos to the page is a real bummer.  I'm still on a hellish work schedule and will probably be so throughout this month so there won't be any big games for a little while longer.  The good news is that I still find time to get some sort of gaming in, and the great group of guys we have has been reliable and a lot of fun.  This past weekend we played Crossfire, Iliad, and Ludis Gladatorius by EM4.  This is the prepainted set of miniatures that comes with some simple rules and dice etc..  Ready to play out of the box.  Mike had picked it up and so I finally had a chance to try it out.  I must say we all had a lot of fun!  Here's some piccies.  This is a great game for trash talking.

Team fight with both sides taking a quick breather.  I think I was playing the lad in the baby blues.  My memory is a bit foggy because there was beer involved.

One of my rare moments of glory.  Right before Mike came back to kick me arse.

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Not a lot of honor in this group.  They never mind ganging up on some unfortunate contestant.

And this is what usually happens.

In the end, there can only be one.  This time around the Emperor was not in a merciful mood.