Of Gods and Mortals - Olympic Games - Game One.

I am very fortunate in that I have a dedicated gaming space - my converted garage the Sherwood Soldier Shack. It holds an 8x4 table and it occured to me that (if I tidied up a bit) it would be possible to have a mini OGAM gaming day. Four players, two games side by side, three games over the course of a day with everyone playing everyone else once. And so I invited James, Martin and Sam to do just that.

As a theme I decided on Greek Gods and Goddeses (we're serious gamers you know, so keeping things "in period" is very important) and so the first Nottingham OGAM Olympics was born.

I took Hades along with some Skeletons and Shades (I used the Flying rule to replicate their ability to move through terrain and other units and drift away from combat) and some Harpies to drag unwilling victims down to the Underworld. Legends were Cerberus, obviously, Orpheus (for his Underworld connections) and a Cyclops (downgraded to Big rather than Huge to reflect the model size). Pretty thematic - though I'm now thinking about modelling some Furies or possibly Charon.

James chose Athena (as Zeus with his lightning can be a bit powerful) Martin took Hecate and Sam had Apollo.

First up it was battle of the Underworld as Hecate and Hades went toe-to-toe! For this first game we used the basic Showdown scenario as most of us hadn't played for a while (ChillCon over two years ago in Martin's case)

The pleasingly scattered nature of deployment in OGAM took some getting used to for us all

Cerberus supported the Shades

Hecate also had Undead with her (but hers didn't "fly")

Hades had a little think to himself

Meanwhile on the other table Athena had the Talos with her (it's a tourist statue from Crete that James repainted - everyone always asks) 

Apollo and his lads stood firm

Athena supported her hoplites

And Perseus with some Harpies completed Athena's force

Hades, in the shade of some olive trees, fails to notice Hecate sneaking up on him

Cerberus barks (and barks and barks) a warning

The skeletons come down with labyrinthitis thanks to the Minotaur

Hecate had some satyrs in support. They were drunk, inevitably.

Hades' harpies and the cyclops went flanking.

With crushing inevitability the Big Lad drew the combat and expired. As per usual Legends are brittle!

Hecate, and her harpy legend took on Cerberus and the Shades. Cerberus proved every bit as brittle as the cyclops - two legends down and the game barely begun.

Hades (I kept calling him Zeus, which didn't help) took on the Minotaur. This took longer to resolve than necessary. Not helped by two consecutive double ones on his activation roll!

The queen of darkness steamrollered the Shades (Hades' handovers meant they never got to activate and take advantage of their free disengage!)

Hecate's minions caught the Harpies

Zeu Hades still struggling to deal with the bull headed lad.

Back on the other table Apollo and Athena drew a fight and awed everyone! (she's in that cloud somewhere!)

Hades came to aid the harpies and drove off the undead.

Medusa spent the game stalking (in a shoot with arrows, rather than send creepy unsolicited emails sense) Orpheus. At one point he ran and hid in the olive grove.

The fight raged on between Apollo and Athena

Finally Hades and Hecate came to blows. I realised this might be my only chance of a win. With the Satyrs being drunk if I could banish her they'd have some tough rolls to pass. Sure enough she left the mortal plane and both groups of Satyrs fled the field!

Apollo meanwhile set about Athena's hoplites.

My skeletons and harpies pulled back and formed a battle line.

Orpheus managed to get himself killed at around this point and "good arrows" (plus poison) from the half snake woman mauled the harpies.

At about this stage we ran out of time. Well, we *could* have played on but, you know, bacon cobs.

On a count-back of models Martin had killed more of my force and so Hecate could claim victory (and pre-eminence in the Underworld)

On the other table Athena in Owl form manages to topple Achilles and this in part led to her claiming the win.

OGAM was great fun to play - after a turn or two we were all back in the swing of playing and the game cracked on.