Far Corfe: Battle Report - Clash of the Younglings

Chaos ensues as the Cherry Gang decide that, if they can't have the rocket, no one can!

My kids seem to have developed a fascination for watching me work on the various hobby projects that I have on my desk at any one time, wanting to help out when they can and just see what I'm up to when they can't.

I think it's tapped into my daughter Martha's naturally creative streak, and my son Sam is fascinated by the possibilities of freakish characters rendered in miniature, the weird vehicles that go with them and the possibilities of combining the two with various plastic dinosaurs that lurk around the house.

I began to let Sam amuse himself with some unfinished (and yet very sturdy) terrain and unpainted miniatures that he was unlikely to break, and from there this grew into an unofficial game, with names for the minis and an ongoing narrative of their general ineptitude - I mean, who tries to remedy an erupting volcano by firing an autopistol at it?

I'd had the free PDF download of Mini Gangs Gateway from Ramshackle Games sitting around for a while, and so I thought that I'd ask if they wanted to actually learn some simple rules to play the game the other night, and after getting a positive response, I set about putting together a simple scenario for them to try out.

Far Corfe - nose-pickers welcome...

I had the old D&D scenario "Ork and Pie" in mind, and so put together a kind of town square with four unfinished buildings and some scatter terrain in the middle, then added one of Sam's toy rockets as an objective in the centre of the table.

Both kids got a small gang, consisting of a vehicle, a big guy with a gun and a smaller guy with a less impressive weapon, they started at diagonally opposing ends of the table, and the aim was to get the rocket onto the back of their wheels and then escape with it, as well as stopping the other gang doing the same thing.

The Dining Room Table - where the gang warfare happens.

Sam was put in charge of "The Numpty Gang", with their rather unreliable driver Errol at the wheel of the war-buggy, and Martha christened her bunch "The Cherry Gang" after the doll that was apparently their boss and issued orders from the top of a nearby tower.

Things get serious as the Numpties and the Cherries engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Sam won a roll-off to go first, and the initial few turns saw the gangs driving, hell-for-leather towards the object of their mission, The Numpty Gang arriving just before The Cherry Gang and their footsoldiers dismounting, the little guy to manhandle the rocket and the shooter to lurk in the shadows and await the arrival of the enemy.

As the Cherries backed up in their truck, the ambush was sprung, with bullets whizzing from the autopistol of the Numpties and narrowly missing the target, and yet the Cherries still managed to dispatch their own little guy, while their shooter returned fire.

What happens when you shoot a highly explosive target and roll a 6?

As the little guys from both sides squabbled over the rocket, the Cherry's man got lucky and knocked out his counterpart, prompting the Numpty's shooter to turn his attention away from the other shooter still pinning him down with fire from the back of the truck, and in turn gunned down the Cherry's little guy.

At this point, something seemed to snap in the Cherries, and Martha announced that her shooter was going to turn his fire on the rocket itself, rather than trying to avenge his comrade - and that's just what she did, rolling an unmodified 6 on the dice and triggering the arming mechanism of the rocket.

The resulting explosion flattened most of the surrounding buildings, left a twenty foot deep crater in the town square and meant that what was left of the Numpty's and Cherries was scraped into a small sack and they had to be identified using their dental records.

Which means, all things considered, it was probably a draw.

I think the kids enjoyed the short and fairly straight forward game, asking to play again the next morning before school, and it effectively means that they have the honour of being the first to play a scenario officially set in Far Corfe, as well as the Numpties and Cherries being the first gangs to gain a standing in its underworld.

The Mini Gangs Gateway system is very simple and quick to pick up, and for a free download, it really begs to be given a try by anyone wanting to get going without cost or fuss, the kids picked up the mechanics without any trouble, and they were keen to play again afterwards.

Does anyone else have thoughts or experience of getting kids to have their first try at table-top wargaming?

As always, please let me know with a comment, either here or on social media.