When Dogs beat Frogs

This Blog post is a slight interlude from The Great War and my usual blogged material. Readers with an aversion to hilarious and fun wargames would be well advised to click away quickly.

Lard Island was thrilled this week to welcome back our great chum, Rob Avery, for an evening’s gaming. Rob’s been a huge friend to our wargaming club, has contributed rules and scenarios by the bucketload to TooFatLardies, and is just an all-round great guy. He’s one of the most enthusiastic and fun wargamers you could hope to meet and is a real expert on Ancients and World War 2. Which is why… errrr…. he brought along his new set of rules for 15mm science fiction games this Tuesday night.

Or, as we came to know it during the evening, The Attack of the Killer Lawnmowers.

OK, so I arrived at the club late on Tuesday evening. And when I arrived I didn’t have a clue what was going on. This will serve me right for not being on time (again)! And although I’m a fan of reading science-fiction and the 40K universe, some sci-fi games can still come as a bit of a surprise. The table looked very nice, sure. Rob’s a great painter, and when he builds, he builds BIG as you can see from the photos. OK, so some things looked familiar - there were row upon row of Rob's wonderfully painted figures and “tanks” (the killer lawnmowers aforementioned)...

... but then there were also some far more exotic groups. This was because the Germans had become frogs and the Americans, dogs. I know, I know … now you’re confused. So was I. But the more confusing it got, the better the game flowed and the more wonderful and hilarious it became.

Wonderful because the Aufklärungsschwadron had become squads of frogs on “grav bikes” (which I could swear were space lambrettas), the panzer grenadiers seemed to have become potato-shaped terminators and the Americans … sorry, the Dogs … were supported by purple-people eaters of all descriptions.

The basic idea was to have a game which is based on Richard Clarke’s Second World War rules , “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum”, but set in outer-space. Well, why not…

So, with a straight face I can report that the space lambrettas were destroyed by the purple-people eaters, the potato-grenadiers-terminators swept all before them and the killer lawnmowers hovered majestically above it all.

Grim dark it certainly wasn’t. (Maybe a little Ciaphas Cain, but certainly not Grim Dark....)

However crazy a game that sounds, it probably was but I don’t think I’ve laughed and enjoyed a game so much in a long time. In other words, a change is as good as a rest.

Maybe you won’t want to play Dogs eat Frogs every week (or, maybe you do!), but if Rob’s is ever in town and offers you a place at the table commanding the killer lawnmowers, you should definitely accept. You’ll never regret it.

I'm hoping my normal service will be resumed this bank holiday weekend when I post Part 2 of the Dead Marshes (sorry for the delay with this).

Have a great weekend, and to all my American friends on the East Coast, stay safe and avoid the hurricane!

Oh, and I should mention that no frogs (or dogs) were hurt in the playing of this wargame.