Gaming Today!

 OK, so today I went over to my good buddy Kurt's place to play some "Forbidden Psalm: The Last War," a Weird World War I skirmish game of small groups of survivors trying to eke out an existence on the abandoned Western Front amongst the horrors of mutants, monsters, and the occasional Martian War Machine.

Kurt preparing for the game

We randomly generated our squads, which led to some pretty weird combinations of gear versus abilities. For instance, I had a guy with an anti-tank rifle who wasn't strong enough to use it properly, meaning I could only hit on a roll of 19 or 20 on a d20 under the best of circumstances. But he also had Bad Luck, requiring the re-roll of any 20. So, he could only hit on a 19. Crazy stuff, man. Just crazy. But one of the nice results of all of this incongruity is that when we assemble our warbands for "real" games, we already know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

The German forces I was playing, from Kurt's collection. He has spectacularly bad lighting for pictures.

We played a scenario that was basically just trying to scavenge loot crates that were protected by crazy Loyalists from Britain who didn't quite know the war was over. And I used the "succeed at any test" and "inflict maximum damage" special cards to kill one of them Very Dead with the anti-tank rifle.

The battleground from my perspective.

I've killed the Loyalist and have stolen the Loot Crate.

In the end, the game devolved into multiple melees in the bombed-out building in the center of the board. A couple of Kurt's guys died, a couple of my guys survived, and I even managed to kill the Mud Ghoul that spawned during Turn 3.

Our first player vs player melee, determining the fate of another Loot Crate.

Multiple melees regarding that Loot Crate.

I managed to sneak out a close victory of 90 loot points to Kurt's 30 loot points. It's been the first time I have won a game in quite a while. Very satisfying! In any case, this game hits all the right beats for me. Small model count, random weirdness, not what-you-see-is-what-you-get (although not even Games Workshop is adamant about that any more,) and a solid campaign system, as well as having high solo-play compatibiity.

My three guys tag-teaming the Mud Ghoul.

Truthfully, we played a few rules wrong and forgot about a few others. For example, we should have spawned three Mud Ghouls on Turn 3 instead of just one; we were looking at the solo rules instead of the multi-player rules. But I really liked it. I give it a 9 out of 10, and highly recommend it. It can be purchased at Forbidden Psalm: The Last War