Super EM and the Monsters

Sadly for music lovers in the audience, this is not a post about an obscure early 90s indie band who counted the Beach Boys, Thomas Tallis and Hebridean folk music as their influences and had been brought together by a shared love of honey and nutella sandwiches. Although I now have a slight sadness that such a band didn't exist...

Fortunately I am able to console myself with more gaming time with my little 'uns, or specifically, the littler one. Sunday was a day of serial children's parties with both boys in full social mode. After EM was done for the day he demanded first, a rough and tumble, and then second, a game "but not with knights - I want to be the monsters, the BIG monsters, and you can be peasants." I was happy to oblige and got out the New Gaming Board (TM) which is a two foot square piece of some kind of ply, painted black on one side and with some grass mat glued onto the other, along with some BIG monsters:

The peasants spread out, trying to cover all the avenues of attack the monsters could take, but the evil mastermind behind their assault swiftly moved his forces to counter, charging forward with an old Metal magic giant who proved to be man (giant?) of the match.

The Mask of Rolling Really High Numbers on Dice (as modelled by Super EM) proved its worth, as plucky peasants were battered about like ninepins...

First roll of the game - 20

Second roll of the game - 19

Chaos knight on giant evil swan charges peasants in open formation, assisted by an orc, under the command of a boy in a superhero mask? Yeah, that's absolutely the quintessence of Younghammer right there!

Meanwhile, in the centre of the village, the giant was running out of Romans

Third roll of the game - 20

At this point I have to admit to an ulterior motive in allowing EM to use my chaos knight; it was the first time the knight had been used in a game. Sneaky, eh? True to the "newly painted miniatures" law of the universe, he promptly was defeated in his first combat. Dice gods duly satisfied, I look forward to wreaking havoc with him in future. Mwahahahaha!

Any bird passing by would have seen the conflict splinter across the board, with nine brave/foolish peasants still striving to protect their cows...

... but a second bird in close pursuit would have struggled to spot a single breathing human. Sad times.

Lots of fun, with made up rules - everything moves the same distance (the length of a broken craft stick I had to hand), the larger the creature the "bigger" the dice (more sides) you could use. It all worked beautifully, with triumph and tragedy for each side. Admittedly I got the larger share of tragedy, but that's fair enough when indoctrinating introducing gaming to the nipper.

Have a good half term, fellow teachers, and remember it's just five weeks until Easter.
Rab