Claymore 2015: Dungeonbowl and Dinosaurs.

The first Saturday in August usually presents the Edinburgh Wargames Show, Claymore, and once again Arabiansquire and myself were in attendance. Now different people go to these shows for different reasons. We are there to play a few games, a bit of shopping and a look around. Pretty much in that order. I'll just say now that the looking around section didn't mange much more than a quick peek as we walked past, so I'm afraid if you will have to surf elsewhere for the pictures  of the lovely set ups.

After a quick wander round the two halls the first game we played was Dungeonbowl run by the Edinburgh League of Gamers. (They also a single drive Bloodbowl game on a very impressive stadium set-up, but I forgot to take a picture!). 4 teams played Arabiansquire was dwarves, I took the woodelves and the two pro-coaches took up the humans and high elves. The game plays with the same basic rules as Bloodbowl, but with some random teleports, 3 scoring zones for each team and we played with 2 balls to prevent it turning into a fantasy version of the Eton Wall Game.

The game, however does bottleneck a bit (especially with a couple of rookies), and it took two sessions for a score to be made - a lucky breakaway by my Woodelf Blitzer a turn before the Humans looked like scoring. It must be said however that the game could have been but to bed earlier if if was not for the determination of one the ELG coachs wanting to score in his colleagues in-zone instead if bulldozing his way through my elves (which he managed on his drive across the board anyway). It was good fun though even with low scoring, and we had both started to recognize some of the basic BB tactics coming to play by the end.

The Dwarves take down a High Elf.
Note the temptnng spikes on the walls!

The Wood Elf Blitzer makes the decisive score.
The match reports the next day all contained the
phrase "...against the run of play."

Highlights for me were Arabiansquires determination to block high elves into the spiked dungeon walls (which he manged a couple of times), and of course my Blitzer leaping over the heads of the Dwarven blockers to score (I could almost imagine MacSver muttering "Bloody Elves"!)

After a bit of lunch and shopping a second game was sought out. With all the furore over the last week about big game hunting, the Glasgow Gaming Group could be forgiven for wondering about how their participation games would be received. However, their Jurassic World Trophy Hunting games was very popular all through the day and won runner up in the Participation Games Prizes.

My hunters get a shock as some raptors rush in from behind.

Arabiansquires group in the red berets waste no time
in rushing towards the largest prize. 

This was a homebrew game where each player had a group of hunters looking to bag the most points in Dino trophies. There were a variety of weapons in use, from standard rifles to limited ammo rocket launchers. The rules were simple enough for everyone (and there were some very young players) to know their options and the dice rolls were simple roll to hit and then verses hide toughness (armour) to damage. All great fun with Arabiansquire bagging most points by rushing through the compounds and laying down a withering swathe of fire to eventually bag himself a Brontosaur.

As for the shopping part? Well with recent Frostgrave purchases and more I had a pretty short shopping list but the traders at the show came up trumps. A ready flocked set of hills from Kalistra will be very handy, some small red dice sees me full set to play Galleys and Galleons now, and some Ainsty low tech street barricades are just right for my fantasy streets.

A successful show again, and we look forward to next time.