Last year before the summer break I organised a miniatures skirmish game for my son and his friends. This year he asked for a repeat. With long school vacations I wanted to give the boys a chance to connect before the break.
My son turns 12 this year. He plays games online with his friends every day after school. However, meeting up in a physical space for socialising and playing a longer game is a richer experience. Plus it gives me a chance to dust off the collection.
I played games like Necromunda and Warhammer 40,000 when I was young. I enjoyed the crafting and playing the games and creating stories around it (mostly ignoring the official universe). I passed on most of my terrain when I moved to Sweden, but I kept a collection of the most treasured features.
Last winter I pulled out the boxes and started painting and crafting again.
Blackstone Fortress
For this years' game I did a hack of Blackstone Fortress. Blackstone Fortress is a miniature boardgame published by Games Workshop. The box comes with 44 evocative and finely detailed miniatures. You play the game as a co-op campaign and it's basically a dice fest with very light story and few tactical choices. I bought the box for the miniatures and enjoyed painting them last fall. It does have a few nice design features like custom dice to simplify modifiers for range and cover.
Last year's game was a two versus two race to loot an area. This year I decided to play the bad guys and have the four boys play one Blackstone Fortress explorer each. I converted the hex range to inches, set up a table with spawn points and surprises and off we went.
The boys had a good time. Chaos was defeated. I got an excuse to paint the last four minis. Win-win.
