Tuesday 16 April 2013

TableTop Day at Tabletop Nation.

I'll start by saying that I intended to write this post a couple of weeks ago, a day or two after Tabletop Day itself. However, due to a technology failure (my phone's micro SD card going kaput), I had lost most of the pictures and all of the video that I took on the day. These included some stills of great looking gaming tables, and a video of an absolutely beautiful 4' X 4' Carnivale table. I did though manage to retrieve, from my phone's messages folder, the pictures that I had been sending to friends throughout the day. (For those, see below with details of exactly what they are.)

For those that don't know, Tabletop Day was an international event on March 30th 2013 created by Geek And Sundry which commemorated the first anniversary of their You Tube show TableTop, presented by Will Wheaton.  It was also supported and promoted by geek queen Felicia Day. It was to promote tabletop gaming in all it's forms. Here's a link that explains much more accurately and succinctly than I, what it was all about. http://www.tabletopday.com/index.php/about
The idea was quickly taken up by the gaming community with events happening all over the world.

And where better to go than to Tabletop Nation to help celebrate and play a few games.


I will now go back to the aforementioned game, Carnivale. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to get an intro game of this skirmisher set in a post-cataclysm Venice in 1793. In the setting, most of Italy has been swallowed up by a risen Mediterranean Sea and Venice itself sits on the northern edge of a great magical rent in the sky.
There are four factions to play. These are:

The Patricians, the corrupt, decadent rulers of the city;


The Guild, thieves and roughians;


The Rashaar, sea monsters;


And The Ospedale, madmen and the doctors that keep them.


There are also The Gifted, independent special characters such as The Abomination and Harlequin.


My favourite of the four factions is The Ospedal. The doctors of which use their madmen charges as psychic batteries to power their arcane weapons. And they can get a rhino, what's not to love about that.

I took the five pictures above at a previous visit to Tabletop Nation. The models in them are the actual ones that appear in the Carnivale rulebook. Neat huh?

Here's a link to the official Carnivale site: http://vesper-on.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=6&Itemid=12&lang=en


The game that I played most at TTN on TableTop Day (and invested in) was X-Wing from Fantasy Flight Games.
I had heard that it was based on the Wings Of War games system. I have an old copy of Wings Of War from before it was re-released with lovely little aircraft models. The planes in my version of the game are simply pictures on cards. If my version of Wings Of War was version 1.0, then I'd describe X-Wing as Wings Of War version 3.0 but in space and Star Wars. An idea that is shared by a friend that I introduced to the game shortly after the 30th.
As with most stuff from Fantasy Flight, the quality of the models and components are first class. The litle X-Wings and TIE's, not to mention the Millennium Falcon are a joy.

Here are some pics: Unfortunately, the gaming mat makes it a little hard to see the models in the first two.

Luke Skywalker and Biggs Darklighter engage two TIE Fighters while Darth Vader in his TIE Advance lurks in the background.

A lone surviving X-wing and the Falcon take on a squadron of TIEs and Slave 1.

If you need to ask what this is...Well shame on you.

The rules are really simple but fun. The game plays quickly and smoothly. There are various pilots that you can assign to each ship which change their abilities and points costs along with upgrade cards to give you an edge. And there are custom dice...I love custom dice.
I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a Y-Wing, A-Wing, X-Wing expansion pack (which comes with, I'm informed, a Wedge Antilles pilot card) and a TIE Interceptor. Hopefully I'll be able to pick them up at Salute (Europe's biggest wargames fair) on Saturday 20th of April, as they were out of stock at Wayland Games (who share space with Tabletop Nation) on TableTop Day.


I want to make a clarification to something that I posted earlier on this blog. I had stated, that in the DreadBall tournaments that I attended earlier this year, I narrowly missed out on qualifying for the SuperBall (national championship). It turns out that I missed it by a much wider margin than I thought, as the events were not actually qualifiers for the SuperBall. Still a lot of fun though.