On Saturday 6th July I attended the now annual 7TV campaign day, organised by Wargames Illustrated and hosted at Foundry Miniatures just outside Newark. This is the second year I have attended following last years event which focussed on playtesting the Apocalypse ruleset.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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).
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.
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 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.
Twisted Pinnacle 