He did it to me AGAIN!

Hoi,

Not so long ago I promised Jan-Willem (aka Pijlie), I'd participate in a game of "Fistful of Kung-fu". This is a rule-set of the Osprey Series and I can now say: a lot of fun! This game of his took place at the last Ducosim Gaming Convention in Amersfoort in the Netherlands.

J-W and I had been discussing the game for some time and I had asked him whether I could use my Mystery Inc figures again since I wanted to give them another airing. He graciously allowed me to use them and so I packed them up and went on my way.

J-W is know in the Dutch gaming-scene for his great tables and easy-going nature as a games master and this occasion sure was no exception. Due to the public transport, I was late at the convention and had to pass on the first game of the day, J-W hosted 3 games in all that day. In the second game I played with 3 other guys and our mission was as follows:

At the end of the city-scaped table a Chinese mansion was located, the home of the director of a grand restaurant chain, but really an Mysterious Magician. He had acquired a valuable ancient statue which all the players (and their gangs) wanted to get hold off. The Yakuza thought it a valuable antique, the coppers had it down as a way to smuggle narcotics and the local biker chapter thought it contained money (or something like that, I actually forgot). My Mystery Inc gang ended up there cause Shaggy and Scoob were hungry, just my luck.

 We deployed our gangs in the 4 corners of the target building. J-W explained the basic rules of the game and boy are they basic: they're dead easy! 

It seemed to me to be a smart move to let others go in first, kill the Magicians minions for me and then I could steal the statue and get away. Luckily for me the other players more or less obliged me in this: the coppers and bikers got into a grudge-match ending with the Bikers being gunned down by the SWAT team which also took care of a lot of the Magicians stooges. In the meanwhile one of the Yakuza members (the boss I think) stole a car and tried to drive it straight through the mansion's wall. He was entirely absorbed in doing so, that he almost forgot I was there...

Cautiously I edged the gang up to the compound and when no one was looking I jumped my leader (Velma, who else?) over the wall easy as that! A bungle of the dice prevented me from jumping in the rest of the gang so they had to wait till the next turn. Velma, using some free moves gained from other players bungled rolls, hijacked a car standing in the compound parking lot and backed it over one of the magicians minions.

 The Yakuza and the SWAT players both got some figures into the building and when all my figures were inside the compound, Velma drove the car right through the screen-doors and into the mansion proper.

Now in the picture above you can see two warrior statues (J-W claimed them to be Ming Dynasty Terracotta Warriors, but clearly they're fake because they're obviously not terracotta ;-) Velma had the nasty suspicion they were not entirely what they looked like, so revving the engine she drove the nearest one to shards.

Meanwhile the other players, all except the bikers who were down to two figures and madly trying to get revenge on the cops, were inside and even fighting the Magician and his minions for the statue. The Magician waved his hands in a complicated Chinese gesture and made the warrior statues come to life... Velma changed gear and swooped the last warrior in the room down while turning the car around to take her into the Magicians study which was filled with bullets, statues and blokes trying to kill each other.

In a great stunt Velma then wheelie-ed the car through the study-door, unto the Magician's desk and ... smashed the statue; jinkies! 

Since this brilliant move brought the mission (retrieving the statue) to an indecisive end we all looked up to J-W for directions and I became aware of a dreaded sight: J-W started to smile menacingly from ear to ear and conjured up a model of a huge Asian Red Dragon... The statue had apparently been holding captive the spirit of a great Red Drake and it now escaped the stone prison it had called it's home for the last thousand years. The mission objective had now become "Kill the dragon" oh and by the way chaps it has 5 wounds.

My turn had ended and I really needed to answer the call of nature I ...erm...well I did and left the table with instructions for J-W to get Velma out the room when she would get any free moves. While doing business with Mother Nature I thought up a brilliant way to tackle the dragon, no puns intended.
 In my absence some nitwit with a gun blew up the remains of my car creating havoc and slightly wounding the beast, but luckily Velma had seen fit to get clear of the blast. In the picture above you can see the Bikers had hijacked a bulldozer which they had driven through the Mansion's walls just before I knocked over the statue. As soon as the dragon manifested itself, they got out of the engine and went for freedom and tried to get off the table. A wise decision in hindsight.

The dragon went on a rampage through the mansion and it's path took it past the spot Velma was hiding out. It had been shot some more and had 3 wounds remaining. Since Velma had a great plan and a chainsaw in case the plan didn't work out, I asked J-W whether I could perform a stunt. I figured Velma had guessed that the Magician was basically a fraud and the dragon actually was 3 guys in a dragon suit. I proposed to him that if I managed to roll my stunt successfully I'd taken down the dragon. J-W concurred and I had to roll a stunt with 3 successes needed, I rolled a 6, 5 and an 1... the dragon continued it's rampage and we all had to get it's 3 remaining wounds to go away.

In the meantime the rest of the gang had gathered in the courtyard and I needed to get my priorities straight, the most sensible thing to do was get out and that would totally be in sync with what the Mystery Inc guys and galls do each episode: run away a lot! But the game was nearing it's end and I decided to go for the dragon.

The Yakuza boss had sneaked out of the compound and appeared behind me. He promised not to attack the gang if I in turn let him be. Stupidly I agreed, the cops gunned down the dragon's next two wounds and just before Velma was in range to get the chainsaw in play, the dastardly Oyabun shot it down claiming the win!

A great game with lots of real movie moments. So J-W did it to me again: I need to get me that rule-set!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: