The scuttlebutt at Roys Casino in Macau is that the location of the secret temple of Assani has been found by a French archeology team in Siam. The news has traveled quickly through the Chinese underworld. This has lead to a rash of adventurers looking to be the first to raid the temple for its riches, before the French government can put together a national force to take the temple over. There have been rumors of the Great Ruby of Assani was last seen in this temple in the 12th century, as a centerpiece at the Great Buddha statue. Time to get your expedition ready to get there before the world depends on the site. Time is money and the game is a foot!
My weekday gaming group has been slow to recover from the Covid lockdown, but slowly but surely, things have been getting back to normal. We started with Wednesday, but got tired of tried of competing with the 40k players for table space, so we moved to Tuesdays. At this point, almost all the games have been LotR, but my LotR buddy went out of town for the holidays. With that, I decided it would be a good time to roll out a Pulp game.
So, it was time to pull out my 7TV rules and read through them again. I reached out to a number of buddies and things looked like we had a plan. It had been a long time since the last sole game of 7TV. So, a quick re-read and then I sat down and made six teams to cover the number of possible players. I grabbed my Siam terrain (along with my new bushes) and was ready to go.
Unfortunately, one buddy ended up going out of town and two others came down with Covid (one the day of the event). Tuesday came and I got to the shop to set everything up, but none of the remaining players showed up. So, it looked like a bust, but the final buddy confirmed he was coming and showed up. With Pulp, you only need one player, so we were a go! I decided to throw out some of the special events, as I would be playing and wanted to keep things simple with only the two of us.
I had set out the six teams (three on each side). I decided that we would each choose two of the groups and set up. I chose the Shock Troops and Occultists. My buddy went with the Adventurers and Gumshoes. The six objectives were set up on the table, with the Muguffin being randomly assigned to one of the markers.
After going through the rules quickly and discussing the order hits in detail, we got started. We rolled for initiative and I lost the roll, so my buddy went first. He quickly moved forward into the center. I then tried to counter his moves with my teams and moved forward firing as I went. Unfortunately. all my shots went wide. The next move my buddy can into contact with both central objectives, while taking some ineffective shots. I then decided to try to shoot him off the objectives while charging in to stop them from being picked up the next turn. Once again, nothing much happened.
We continued our rush to the center, as he tried to overwhelm my forward characters and I piled in with my Shock Troopers. I guess I should have looked closer at the cards, as these guys are terrible in close combat! This fight turned into a scrum, as we both tried to get the upper hand over the turns. I even took out two of my own guys (one by accident the other on purpose). I was able to get the upper hand on the other objective, killing the co star and taking it for myself. I was also able to get another co star, that triggered some victory points. I just had to get the star, which was not easy, but I had the numbers.
I finally was able to get the advantage on the center, removing the two co stars, leaving me with the star. I decided to peal off one of my co stars to go get some other objectives, as she was not much help in the fight. It would be my star vs his (plus the co star I was sending from the other side). We just mad it into the final act and my buddy decided to concede at this point (of course it was getting close to closing too! He had lost his fur co stars and I had only lost extras, I had more objectives and had my characters conditions. Added with my co star on her way to getting two objectives, I had the clear advantage, so victory would go to the forces of darkness this day!
I was worried when players started dropping, but ended up having a fun game with a clear ending. I made a couple of rule error, but will fix that next time!
- Manteuffel