Cold Wars

Cold Wars usually falls at a very bad time of year for me. I'm either travelling on spring break, or else I'm swamped with a very busy week at work. However, with rumors that this might be the last HMGS convention at the notorious Lancaster Host "Resort," I felt I just had to go this once. I went out for the day on Saturday, and  clearly a lot of people brought their "A" games.

The glowing icicles alone were enough to make me consider taking up Frostgrave.

Double blind: The only way to play Midway

My son would probably love any game with evil snowmen

Dealer hall!

The game I played in: the siege of Carcasonne during the Albigensian Crusade. I was on the side of the  peasants who were due to be butchered (and broiled) should the Crusaders get inside the wall.

The castle was entirely scratch-built!

Victor Hiris was our GM and host. He provided a simple but elegant set of rules and kept things fast-paced and fun.

The peeing boy wound up rendering one of the besiegers' ladders unusable.  

A key move turned out to be keeping a reserve peasant  mob to plug up any holes. They plugged with extreme prejudice.

Our opponents elected to throw their entire force against the gate, which freed up a lot of our peasants to do the horde/swarm thing.

The first shot of the trebuchet brought down a corner tower. Stupid cheap construction!  A swarm of knights prepare to go through the breach, one by one, right into the waiting and angry arms of the peasant horde.  It won't end well...

On the other side, the attackers had some success with non-pee-soaked ladders.

The horde killed more knights with insanely accurate rocks than cholera and Plague combined.

The ram proved ineffective, but the scaling parties were able to render the point moot when they opened the gate.  But there were few attackers left to exploit the opening.

The gate was about to become a dangerous place.  But time was running out, and there was still an inner keep that remained to be cracked. 

Young Frankenstein!