The Battle for the Dwarven Gubbins

My daughter (11) and I, both fairly inexperienced with wargames, decided to try and run a session using One Page Rules Age of Fantasy: Skirmish.  As if to reenact the game's cover art, we opted to run humans (her) vs. ratfolk (me).

preview-skirmish

The two sides contested among the ruins, each seeking to lay claim to pieces of the lost Dwarven gubbins-technology.

I spent the week 3D printing a vast number of tokens (only a few of which ever got used) and a few pieces of terrain pieces (all of which saw play). Unfortunately, despite my hours of printing, the table was still a little sparse on terrain. So we added a bunch of clay pieces from kids early art projects and a couple other random items crowding our bookshelves.


Member of a ratfolk patrol manages to remain upright as comrades stumble around apparently falling-down drunk. Presumably the commander should've provided better basing for the troops.


We ran just the basic game, still learning the rules, but had a blast. Kiddo is now old enough not to get impatient with the level of rules and steps of play.  Even her brother (9) who's not usually into these kinds of things took a slight interest. Sounds like we might play again in a couple weeks.

Patrol of rat-warriors scales a bizarre Dwarven monument to face off against the human marksmen who'd been sniping at them across the way.


A lone human warrior, last survivor of their unit, holds off the onslaught of a ratfolk patrol. One gubbins at least won't fall into rodent paws this day!

It looked like the situation would end in a draw. But at the last moment of the final round, the human captain put on a burst of speed, charging across the battlefield to dispute a ratfolk sniper's hold over one of the gubbins caches, thus ending with the humans retaining sole control of a single cache, thereby claiming victory!

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3D Printed components and miniatures used in this session include:

Tokens:
Terrain:
Minis:

Comments

  1. I convinced my partner to play Shadows of Brimstone this weekend. Afterward (upon reading this) she remarked that one page sounded like an appropriate length for rules.

    She also commented that she liked the pottery pieces on your table. I was fond of the Nat Geo stack, personally!

    I'm glad this worked out for you. I've never played a wargame before, but I dig the cobbled-together aesthetic you had going.

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    Replies
    1. The squashy green face pottery and the thing that looks like a shoggoth basketball court were pieces my son did. The multi-colored tray and upright perforated cylinder were Katherine's.

      I chose the top national geographic with the gold face cause it looked maybe ancient ruinsy. The cover with woman making a camel trek across Australia just didn't quite have the same flavor.

      I understand about board game length issues on the more elaborate games. Adrienne and I got Arkham Horror and tried playing it with another couple and found it too complex for our tastes. Like the most involved aspects of RPG resource management, but coupled with no opportunity for improvisation or lateral thinking.

      To be honest, the wargame rules my daughter and I played weren't really one page, despite the name. They originally were years ago, and there's still a 1 page version. But unless you're already familiar with wargame conventions, it might not cover everything you need. Sort of like Microlite20 relies on you already understanding RPG dice conventions and such. But the more recently published "full" version was only 17 pages including an index and illustrative diagrams, so it wasn't too bad to learn. I think it made it easier that I tried to get the overall understanding of the game ahead of time and didn't have to read through quite all of the rules as we played.

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