I have been running Pulp games using heavily modified In Her Majesty’s Name rules. While the games work fine, they still lack a little bit of pulp feel and often generate into wargames. As such, I have been looking at other pulp systems over the last year. Most of the well known systems are a little more complicated than I would like, as I favor beer and pretzel systems that can be picked up quickly by new players. I also have a soft spot for D6 based systems. Last year, Crooked Dice released their pulp version of their 7TV secret agent system. After reading about the rules, I decided to pick up a set.
I was ready to run a play test game at the beginning of the year when everything locked down, so no games. Things in my area have gotten a little better and I have a couple of friends that have been very careful. So we all agreed to get together for a short game last weekend. So, finally, 7TV Pulp could be dusted off and taken for a test drive!
I set up a table using my Southeast Asia Temple terrain. The table was five foot by three and a half feet (a ground mat folded over). The mat was covered with large trees, some rocks, my temple buildings and random vultures.
I had three players (if is easier to keep social distancing ranges, when the group is small). Each player was given a force of four figures for a total of twelve points. The groups included co stars and extras. We had the usual five objectives per the generic scenario rules, with one being a maguffin. The cliffhanger deck had eighteen cards (six each of Act 1, act 2 and Final). Each player stated in a corner and we rolled for initiative.
The game moved more quickly than I thought (considering it was the first time playing) and we went through each players moves and actions. Teddy’s team found the maguffin at about the halfway point. This caused the other teams to start after Teddy and his stalwart defenders,. Two extras down and Teddy was getting nervous, as he hid behind rocks and tried to hold on and not have his caste “axed”. The game ended with Teddy still on the table and in control of the maguffin. A quick total of the victory points showed that Teddy had achieved a minor victory, while Archibald and Professor Esterhazy had to settle for the loss.
The game played well and quickly. It took a few turns for the players to get the knack of managing their activation tokens, but it was a no brainer later in the game. Shooting was quite straight forward, once everyone understood how multi dice worked. We had a few statistics tests. These are a little confusing, as the number has to be cross referenced with a table (it would be easier to just give the die roll number on the character cards). However, this was a minor quibble. Having the special rules on the character cards is very helpful. For new players, it is probably better to not to have different extra cards types for each model, as the special rules can slow things down a bit. I will probably keep more true to the units described in the game next time to solve this problem.
Now that we finally have a game behind us, I feel better about writing a review (coming up somewhat soon) and can now work on my own character cards to represent my models!
- Manteuffel