Back to the Masonic Hall for a weekend cold enough that the ice on the ground when I arrived was still there two days later.

Friday

There had been some very light snow overnight, but the roads were clear, and I made it in very good time.

The festivities began with Sea Salt & Paper, a first game for the other player so I didn't include Extra Pepper. He won anyway.

On to General Orders: World War II, which I enjoyed (while utterly losing) but which seemed oddly flavourless. (They've produced another version of this, set in Warring States-period Japan, and it's sufficiently abstracted that I can see quite readily how that might be done.)

Then Steampunk Rally Fusion: Atomic Edition which I always have a good time playing, even when it's being frustrating. This time I managed to do a pair of full machine flushes (i.e. taking enough damage that I was back to my starting cards) and still tied for the win. ("Drive it like you're the only one who understands how it works.")

In the evening, I played a scenario for the Space: 1999 game, the first time I've used the Cubicle 7 2d20 system. Interesting: the scenario was very much in keeping with the better bits of the show (obviously you have to ignore a whole lot of reality just to watch it at all, but I still have a soft spot for it)—but as a result, there wasn't actually a whole lot for us to do with our various skills.

"Fly over it six inches off the deck, nuclear engines at full throttle. That should get a reaction."

Saturday

More role-playing this morning with Michael Cule's game to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his first RPG; a UNIT team investigated an anomaly near Ellesmere Island—which turned out to be the nuclear-powered icebreaker Leon Trotsky. This was mildly frustrating for me because my character was the one who couldn't spout nuclear icebreaker trivia (while I was the only player who could have), but that shouldn't be a problem for normal players, and apart from that I had a very good time. Perhaps a little on rails? Yeah, but it's a convention scenario, so that's forgivable.

Then back to the board games, with Flash Point: Fire Rescue. This time we tried the submarine board, one I hadn't played before—and we actually found it not too hard. I think the key was probably to run it as two separate teams, one in each half of the board. I took Captain and Generalist, with CAFS and Suppression Specialist on the other side of the table.

Having enjoyed that, we went on to the airfield map, which turned out to be rather more of a challenge—even with quite large spaces that can be allowed to flare up without doing any damage. This time I had Generalist and Hazmat, shifting the latter to Paramedic once we had things under control, still with CAFS and Suppression across the board.

The time never felt right for the Rescue Dog, alas.

On to Tavarua, the best (only) game I've played about surfing. I have no idea how authentic it may be, but it certainly feels like a passion project, in a good way.

Then VOLT. This is one of those odd games for me: I learned to play on yucata.de, where the other players are really very good; so while I tend to lose there, when I play with normal people I do disconcertingly well. Miniatures painted by Scribbs and I'm very happy with them.

Project L Trio

I was getting pretty tired by this point but we did get in one more game, of Flip 7.

Don't be greedy. Be less greedy than that.

Sunday

With snow forecast for the afternoon, we got an early start on Xia: Legends of a Drift System and played to 10 Fame, which is about as low as I like to take it.

Mostly we managed to avoid serious space hazards; I don't think there was any ice damage that wasn't fixed on the same turn, and while one of us repeatedly took on the Scoundrel we didn't interfere with each other.

Bizarrely, nobody blind-jumped into the sun; I found myself at the end of a move with plenty of energy to spare, so I thought I might as well perform a scan before continuing, and presto there it was.

There was some trade, and some mission work (I'd really like to try to do more of this, but the ones with specific locations often aren't possible until quite late in the game), and I got the winning point by proceeding from a solid goods sale to a last lorn exploration token to pair with the one I already had.

Then back to the Soft South as the snow started; there was a mini-blizzard on the way out of Stockport, but after that it was sunny all the way home. And this splendid creature was at a service station.