A wet Father's Day game

Introduction

It has been a very rainy Sunday today.  Originally we had thought that we might visit the local Pipe Band event, but the weather put us off (oddly, this competition seems to be jinxed.  Every year it rains heavily on the day it is held, even if it was sunny the day before and will be bright again the day after).

So, my wife and daughter were off at the associated Highland Dance competition (more medals for my girl), my older son is away dog-sitting; that left just myself and my younger son in the house.  What could we find to do on a wet Father's Day afternoon?  Why, play Super Dungeon Explore, of course!

Lootimeter Mode

We decided to try the "Lootimeter" fan-based variant of the SDE rules; this version promised a quicker, more exciting (and more even) game.  I'm not totally convinced by "quicker" (it probably is, but we're too inexperienced to tell), but it was certainly exciting and very close!

Note that I wasn't going to write up this game at all; I wouldn't normally report on board or card games.  However, halfway through the session my son commented that the game looked much better with painted models (previously we had played 2 or 3 games "out of the box", with bare plastic figures).  At that point, I decided to take a few photos so that others could judge for themselves.  After all, SDE is a miniatures game, of sorts.

In recognition of dads and children everywhere, here are a few vignettes from the second half of our Father's Day, wet Sunday game:

The Questing Knight and the Royal Warden take down a band of Rocktops (turtles).  All that is left of these creatures are some empty shells.  At this point, my 3rd hero (the Thundervale Huntress) was galloping off to destroy the turtles other spawn point, thus preventing them from coming back...

The turtles may be gone (mostly), but there is a new enemy on the next tile!

Turtle casualties so far.
 

The Warden ducks and weaves through fire& brimstone to tackle the next spawn point - but a bunch of rabid squirrels are spawned as he enters the new tile.

Hah, what do you know?  The squirrels are friendly and will assist the heroes instead of the Dark Consul (i.e. the monsters)!

The Thundervale Huntress returns from her successful side mission, but she has been badly injured.  Shortly after this, she was killed by Bashful Boris, the mini-boss.  Boris was then slain in turn by the remaining 2 heroes.

The Forgotten King (big boss) arrives, but the Questing Knight piles into him and reduces him quickly to half his starting health.  This triggers a Boss Timeout, wherein the King summons more turtle helpers.
 

The wounded King flees, leaving his followers to finish off the injured Knight.  He is pursued by a vengeful Royal Warden, who is in turn chased by the nearest Fireflow Denizens.  The tooled-up Warden reduces the Forgotten King to a single health point, but is taken down to one point himself.  The game will go to the first player to fail an armour roll; it's the Warden who falls!  The evil Dark Consul wins, but only just (I'll get you next time, see if I don't!)

Conclusion

You'll note that not all of the models in this game are painted.  I'm working on that, though given the number of miniatures that I need to complete, it might take a while.  There's no doubt in my mind that painted figures look better, though the evidence of the last duel suggests that unpainted ones fight just as well!