Playing Dead Man’s Hand while Escaping from Colditz to Puerto Rico

That’s what it was like at the BAD Gamers December all day gaming session, on Sunday

It kicked off with three miniature wargames – Frostgrave, Dead Man’s Hand and new kid on the block, Scrappers

Frostgrave is a firm favourite in the club, with Dead Man’s Hand, a close second.

Scrappers played surprisingly well. It comes from Osprey, and is a post apocalyptic gang level skirmish game. It’s more complex than Frostgrave, in both setup of the crews and mechanics, but still easy to pick up. The game became intuitive after a couple of rounds and as it relies on an opposed die roll approach, it keeps you involved no matter who’s go it is.

The best part about it for starting is that we used existing Deadzone and Congo terrain plus some mixed SF figures we already had, making the rules purchase the only new investment.

The downside to Scrappers is the rule book, which is quite dense and difficult to use as a reference during play. But when you start playing, it rapidly made sense and gave a fun gang level game, that we are already planning to play again.

A little later Pete and Graham called down the Elder Gods in a game of Elder Sign.

We then all joined in a game of Escape from Colditz, which in-spite of its flaws, proved to be great fun with a lot of laughs.

A quick detour into the card and dice game Age of War, which has a lot more depth to it than it first suggests, and then the day rounded out with a game of Puerto Rico – which was a first time for most of us, and the reason why this older game is considered a euro game classic, became obvious very quickly.

Good times and now looking forward to the next one at the end of January