This time round the focus was Pulp and the newly released 7TV Pulp boxed set. As per usual Mr. 7TV himself, Karl Perroton was in attendance. Also there was Peter Wright from Edge Hill University and some of his students who had worked on the rules in collobaration with Crooked Dice.
As a change this year attendees were invited to bring along a board or table setup. The 7TV community is well known for really pushing the boat out when it comes to scenery and terrain and there were some excellent setups in attendance. The gaming area was spread across the Foundry shop, marquee and also a spare stable!
Abandoned Antartic Base (a Cthulhu Mythos themed board)
One of the Foundry tables
Gaming in the shop
Mike Strong’s excellent Venice table
Venice docks
More Venice docks
Matthew Wildsmith’s amazing two level museum table
For those who don’t know, Wargames Foundry has for a few years now been based in the stable block at Stoke Hall. The stable block is a circular building with a central exterior courtyard in which is based a semi-permanent hospitality tent. The shop itself is large and filled with a huge number of blisters containing just about every type of 28mm scale metal wargames figures you could imagine. Even more exciting for a man of my age, there are cabinets full of beautifully painted ‘old skool’ miniatures. Many of these are old Citadel Miniatures sculpts from the 1980s that once graced the pages of White Dwarf back in the day (Bryan Ansell who owns Foundry is the former head of Games Workshop). Any how, more on the cabinets in another blog!
The day was split up into three games and we were organised into two groups. The ‘baddie’ casts were fighting for the sinister Hydra organisation, while the ‘goodies’ were on the side of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). A general theme running throughout the day saw the games oriented around the scouting out and collecting of parts for a sinister super weapon, with the final game being a battle to ultimately control these doomsday devices.
A super weapon!
Attendees were also encouraged to model and bring along their own super weapon. I’ve already documented my adventures in putting together my big stompy robot for this purpose, and there were a wide variety of ‘devices’ on show (including a mysterious pyramid, various mechanical men and a plank of wood with some nails in). My favourite however had to be a television set – symbolising the rise of TV in the home and the death of the cinema serial!
A possible super weapon?
Casts were many and varied (according to Wayne from Wargames Illustrated this is by far the most popular event they put on) and in total there were about twenty four attendees playing. Although there was the overarching Hydra versus SSR theme, this did not mean a restiction in the types of casts fielded. There were mobsters, adventurers, Lovecraftian horrors, space aliens from beyond the stars, rocketeers and many more.
Mobsters
Aliens
Gribblies
Cthulhu
Time Lords?
My first game was against Peter James and his Rocketeers and was played on the Nazi flying saucer / V2 launch site table I had quickly put together for the event. This was my first ever game using the Pulp variant of the rules and it was interesting to see how a few little things here and there had been tweaked. The new countdown deck (now called the cliffhanger deck) provided a suitably ‘pulpy flavour’ to proceedings. My cast from Mongo didn’t fair too well here, with Emperor Ming and his cronies being axed only just as we entered Act 2!
This gave me a bit of extra time to have a browse round the Foundry shop and discover that despite not being aware of it at the beginning of the day, I suddenly really needed to start an Elf army for Saga Age of Magic!
Unexpected purchase in the hobby area!
Lunch followed including a question and answer session with Karl and the gang from EHU. A few tasty titbits of info on upcoming activities and 7TV releases were forthcoming. As you can probably guess I was particularly excited by the upcoming ‘classic sci-fi’ range of figures which are coming to Kickstarter soon.
The afternoon’s games soon came round. First up I was up against Simon Clarke and his excellent ‘North Pole’ cast, which included a heavily armed Father Christmas as well as a particularly violent red nosed reindeer! Two highlights in this game for me. First off Princess Aura being gored off the top of a building by Rudolf. Second (having survived and ultimately being the only cast member I had left), Aura attempting to seduce Santa in the last act of the game. Needless to say my run of luck continued and the invaders from Mongo were once again banished (surely Hydra must have been offshoring to Mongo by now).
Aura prior to the fall!
One of my exploding robots, summoned by Ming’s unearthly powers!
He knows if you’ve been naughty or nice
The final game of the day was against an old adversary, Kieron Mulholland. I’d previously played Kieron at the Dales 7TV event earlier in the summer and got roundly spanked after about three turns when Skeletor and his crew totally decimated my cast of orange jumpsuited fascist space lizards. Surely history couldn’t repeat itself?
It did.
While it wasn’t quite as short a game this time, my dice luck and tactical choices were similary awful and I was axed during act 2 as I valiantly tried to defend my stompy robot from Captain America, Bucky and pals. All in all though another excellent game and a reminder (not that it’s needed) how much fun 7TV is to play.
Gaming tables tucked away everywhere!
After all the results were totted up and points allocated, stunningly (although in keeping with the cliffhanger nature of the pulp serials) it was a dead heat between the forces of Hydra and the SSR. A number of prizes were allocated and a few freebies given out. It was a fantastic day all in all. Great to catch up with old faces and meet new ones.
A special mention for Sam ‘Downorder’s’ table
Abandoned Antartic Base (a Cthulhu Mythos themed board)
What monstrosity lurks below
Sam had put a lot of effort into special rules to match the table and theme
A massive thanks to Wayne at Wargames Illustrated and the staff at Foundry for the organisation. A big shout out to all the attendees and their brilliant casts and tables, and an especially loud ‘pip pip’ to Karl, Peter and the brilliant student team from EHU for crafting a fantastic new version of our favourite game. Looking forward to next year already.
I’ve now finished the ‘super weapon’ that attendees were invited to bring along for the final game of the day. Not quite sure how these are going to work in game and looking across the posts on the 7TV Productions Facebook page there is quite a variety of stuff being worked on by attendees.
I settled on finally painting the Mantic Mars Attacks robot that I have had for years and have now finished this off with the addition of a pilot and some suitable basing to tie it into the rest of my cast.
The finished model (unless I can find out the clear plastic dome – and if I do assuming it fits over the pilot!)Metal ‘rocket ship pilot’ from Cold War MiniaturesThe Giant Robot kit was originally released by Mantic for their now defunct Mars Attacks game. A lovely kit to put together with loads of potential uses – they are becoming particularly hard to find nowThe base was decorated to match the rest of the cast, giving it a cartoon-like alien vibe
Twisted Pinnacle 