Holiday Gaming 3 - The Beast of Denley Moor

New Year's Eve saw the second part of what is possibly the slowest wargame campaign known to man; The Hunt for Faulkner's Balls.  This is the Pulp Alley campaign that we began exactly a year previously on New Years Eve 2015.

You will doubtless recall that last time the peace of the village of Little Pottering was disturbed by gangs of ruffians in search of the Reverend Featherstonehaugh and a mysterious journal that had come into his possession.

The outcome was that the Rev was returned to the bosom of his friends but that the journal was nowhere to be found.  In Pulp Alley rules terms, no League had control of that Plot Point at the end of the game.

My research revealed that a Miss Potts, former nanny to Gerald Faulkner, the last of the Little Pottering Faulkners, had found the discarded book and, realising its significance (it concerns an old pirate called Captain Faulkner), has posted it to her erstwhile charge.

Gerald, much to the distress of Miss Potts, is now a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War living rough on the moors above the Yorkshire village of Denley.  It were always raining on Denley Moor....

This year's game saw three Leagues (Richard S couldn't make it) converging on the moors with the aim of recovering the journal.

As the pictures show, the terrain is on two levels, sloping up to the moor tops from the road below.

The plain cloth disguises the presence of a number mounds and depressions on the top of the moor but despite this, the terrain was rather open and the game was dominated by long-range shooting.

The Brotherhood managed to find and decipher a map giving the locations of sightings of The Beast of Denley Moor (Plot Point one).

Sergeant Manson of UNIT managed to climb to the top of Mytherer's Crag, from where he could see the whole of the Moor (Plot Point two).

And the Friends of the Rev Featherstonehaugh managed to get some useful information out of gamekeeper Gordon Ollershaw (Plot Point three).  He's got a new shovel you know?

Jamie has the Initiative Hat (a new and very Pulp-y one this year)

And now Gus has the Initiative Hat.

With three Plot Points achieved the fourth, Faulkner's Camp, now appeared.  Sadly, however, none of the Leagues could manage to probe its secrets before a dense mist rolled in and made further exploration impossible.  (In game rules terms we'd reached the end of Game Turn 6 and no-one could/chose to play a card to extend the game by one or more turns.)

So where does that get us?  Well, the three Leagues who turned up will gain a point of Renown and each will have a point to spend on extra resources next time.  And I'll have to come up with another scenario as the search for the Faulkner Journal continues.