Bathed in the glorious success of the previous installment and faced
with growing demands from Saara (6 years) and Niilo (4 years), I decided to take another shot
at organizing a game for the kids.
Bathed in the glorious success of the previous installment and faced
with growing demands from Saara (6 years) and Niilo (4 years), I decided to take another shot
at organizing a game for the kids.
They've recently become enamored with giant robots and Gundam in particular (with only minor nudging from yours truly). As Santa had brought a couple of MS In Action action figures (with major nudging from yours truly), I decided to use those and a couple of other similarly scaled models I happened to have.
I have previously gamed quite a bit with 1/144 and 1/100 scale robot kits, but they are not quite
sturdy enough for the attentions of a hyperactive 4-year old. The MS In Action, on the other hand,
are basically action toys of Gundam Mobile Suits, built of rugged
PVC
and intended to be played with.
Giant robots are simply made for urban action, because the buildings will nicely show scale and provide endless possibilities for collateral damage. Thus I dug up the ruined buildings I had made for Rise of the Machines game last year and set up a small cityscape. Now, the models are roughly 1/200 scale, while the terrain was made for 28mm figures and is maybe 1/50, making the robots obviously too small for scale purists. But one must fight with the figures one has...
To avoid the game degenerating into fighting, I decided to make it a target practice against
system-controlled enemy, a role to be filled by my collection of Russian die-cast 1/43 toys.
The tanks were placed about the city, the robots started at the edge and the game was ready to begin...
Yes, yes, this is a pinko socialist "everyone can win" arrangement, but I've found this to be beneficial in learning the game basics. The kids can concentrate on following the rules and gameplay instead of declaring themselves winners at any cost.
The rules were simple enough: move 12" and shoot at one target on your turn. Like pros the kids
instantly started argueing whether you could move and shoot or just move or shoot... to keep
the game fluid and faithful to the source, I declared move and shoot. Shooting was a simple matter
of checking the LOS with a laser pointer and rolling higher than the target.
Saara had a little difficulty with movement. Traditional boardgaming was hard to unlearn and she kept rolling dice for movement and moving that many times 12". Niilo, on the other hand, was ok with the concept - when he remembered to apply it. Never let a rule get in the way of what you want to do, I guess...
LOS checking was easy, and there were enough opponents to provide a target from almost any angle.
Rolling two dice to hit was a good excercise in snap arithmetics, even though the Russians might
have complained about a slight bias in the system, since they only got to roll one die in defence.
The different kinds of dice fascinated the children, even though the variances in number ranges
was lost to them - they just wanted to roll the funny-shaped dice.
Not surprisingly, the target tanks were dispatched in short order, which was just about the limit of the kids' attention span anyway. Niilo was already flying from place to place and having his own fights.
I still hate taking down game setups. The stuff never seems to fit back into the box it came from...
The kids liked the game, but in the future I'll try to keep the game tighter and follow the rules more strictly. The target practice idea was good, it gave a clear and understandable goal to aim for.
Editor's note: All the pictures
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Copyright 2003-2021 Mikko Kurki-Suonio
Sucks!
