Hill 107: Onward to Garvald

Sat 19th October

The cold north.

Planet Alexandria.

Pandora's Box.

For Colin Jack’s 60 +10th birthday the Gothenburg Gamers headed out to Garvald for a very serious game of sci fi shooting and looting.We were joined by Peter Nicholson who had come from the barren land of Stonehaven to help us celebrate Colin’s birthday as well as helping us consume the edible goodies that were on offer.

Bill Gilkristi's Neo Sovs.

The Random appearing portal.

Visit from Colin's kin'

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!"

When we arrived we were greeted by the aroma of coffee and bacon rolls in order to give us sustenance to see us through the morning of gaming and squabbling which didn’t take long in coming.

The Mekon leads.

My visitors complete with two Dianas.

Blake 7 +.

The Visitors advance.

The game was played in the Garvald village hall and the round tables had been set up to represent eight planets in some far flung planetary system.The planets ranged from desert wildernesses,urban and industrial abodes through to jungle festooned backwaters.All the planets had been bedecked with plenty of scatter material to make them well worth fighting for.

Dave O'B's dinky ship complete with sounds which he kept on reminding us.

Another Colin find!

Dave P's Thunderhawk gunship.

Ready for the off.

The game play was based on the Onward to Venus board game which involves building up your forces to attack planets and divest them of their resources.My force was based on the visitors from the tv series V and were up against everything from Ming the Merciless (or in Dave O’ Brien’s case-Ming the Meek),various alien factions including The Mekon.the crew of the Liberator ,Canadian Mounties,the Blake Seven Federation ,Bill’s usual Soviets and finally Colin’s usual female faction.All the planets had random resources so as usual when the whistle went we all headed for potential targets with myself heading for the waterbound planet of Aquarius to see what plunder I could find.I actually won over the inhabitants but only to the cost of 50% of my gains.Well it was slightly better than having to fight them-just!Only one action could be done per turn so that was it for me.Everybody else headed for their nearest planet.

Sweet sugary energy givers.

Planet Nostromo.

Alien Zombies came,conquered and nobody bothered them for the rest of the game-I wonder why?

First skirmish of the day on Malacandra.

Open Pandora's box and you get a can of Hobgoblin.

This was going to be the norm for the rest of the day as everybody headed for the treasure troves found on all the planets.Playing cards had been distributed on all of the planets informing us of their value and what resources they were.Clubs however meant a random event and these came in all shapes and sizes from alien invasions,alien eggs,extra movement and many more eventful delights.

Feeding time at the OAP's day out.

"Where's the fire extinguishers ?"

The morning took the form of two rounds of different phases and led to some skirmishes but only on one occasion was the threat of jackets coming off. I ended the morning without any resources due to being picked on from all sides but At least I had captured a wild beast.

And he's not letting go of that can!

Colin's suited and booted aliens-female of course.

Shug's still brilliant volcano.

Lunch arrived in that good old form of after rugby fare,pie and beans washed down by a can of Hobgoblin.At least something came good of the morning.We all sat down as though we were at school dinners and guzzled the fare on offer ably served up by our favourite shepherdess Liz and her comml chef who came in the form of Colin’s eldest granddaughter Katy.

"And the cybermen came two by two!"

Dave O B and Peter go head to head for the frozen north-Be my guest!

Katy about to do the dirty.

Tower of Babel.

After lunch we set about conquering the rest of the system in order to claim all the resources as we still hadn’t been told the victory conditions.This stitch up was to come at the end.We all flew about from table to table trying to get first dibs on the resources and hopefully giving it a high defence facor in order to put off potential suitors.Our biggest laugh was the site of Dave O Brien landing complete with his ship making weird noises on planet Caliban hoping to build on his score only to find that it had been infested by a zombie invasion and a clutch of alien eggs ready for hatching.Dave in his own usual way just uttered ‘bugger’ and headed for pastures new..

"Come and get us?"

Flash Gordon's mob.

The rest of the afternoon set the same pace as the morning and we all knuckled down to gaining the most resources without losing any in the process.
The end of a great day arrived to soon as always and the scores were all divvied up and lo and behold our great Presidente was declared the winner by the scoring system that he had devised and nobody else had seen.Well since it was his birthday we’ll give him that one.

This was actually conspicuous by its absence.

The great day came to an end with a slap up meal in the local hostelry mainly the Garvald Inn where we were joined by some of our wives to help celebrate Colin’s significant birthday.

Deep in thought.

Bill's contempt at the last minute revealed victory conditions.

The majority of the scenery,figs and off course scenario were provided by Colin from his vast collection.He has spent the past few months putting this collection together and the scope of figures.vehicles and scenery is just amazing as I'm sure you can see.Dave Patterson also provided a wheen of sci-fi scenery to help make the tables look even more presentable.My contribution came apart from my presence in the form of visitors from TV series V complete with two Diana’s.One dressed in red overalls and one attired in white.No doubt they will be used again.