Summer League 2020, Covid and How We Resurrected Our Gaming.

Image taken from https://www.goonhammer.com

In my last post on March 30th, I mentioned that I was prepping for the upcoming Summer League 2020 which takes place at my house through late October.  But the impact of the rapidly spreading virus that has plagued the world and shut most everything down put a stop to all of that.  It also had an adverse impact on getting any hobby work done as my family and I adjusted to what would become the new normal.  My wife, son and I were extremely fortunate to continue to be able to work whether on site or via applications like Skype, Zoom, Google Meets, etc.  

So, we tip toed through the Spring and most of summer staying in our house and venturing out for only the essentials.  Slowly, things began to open back up in mid summer and it was in late summer that my friend Ron and I decided to dust off our Space Hulk sets and begin playing remotely.  Figuring that we both have the complete 4th edition sets, we could set up the models on our boards and copy each others moves.  While it wasn't the same as playing in person, it was better than nothing.  

Playing Space Hulk, Covid Style

And now...

After about a month of so of playing the way as pictured above, Ron floated the idea of starting to play games in person.  Since case counts have trended in the right direction (down) in our area and have been relatively low, we decided that we can safely do it.  We play in my basement which has a walk out door allowing ventilation and we both wear masks the whole time while we play.  We sit on opposite sides of the ping pong table (which hasn't really seen as many pong games as it has warhammer games) which is about 4 feet apart.  So it feels safe and we've managed to get in a few games so far.

Our plan now...

Back in the Summer of 2015, we decided to play all 16 missions in the Sin of Damnation campaign that came with the 4th edition boxed set.  It took us a year to work our way through all 16 missions, each of us playing both sides for each mission.  We tracked all of our bug kills, marines lost in each mission, wins, losses and draws and over all kill ratios.  It was great fun. Since that time we invested a lot of time playing kill team style games and moved away from Space Hulk.  Since we couldn't play those games remotely and you could with Space Hulk, it has once again taken center stage for us.  And, it truly is an awesome game to play; simple, easy to set up, low model count and tense as all get out!  I mean, walking your marines down a dark and dank corridor wondering if you will make it to the next intersection or room is just awesome in my book.  And when your Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield sergeant power walks through a nest of bugs and takes down nearly a dozen of them before succumbing, that is what stories are written about!

Come and get it boys!

So we decided to do it all again with the added twist of playing ALL 97 missions that GW has written, starting with the Sin of Damnation campaign.  It will probably take the better part of 5 years but it will be so cool to actually get them all done all the while tracking the same stats as before.  Ron will be posting about the games in more detail on his blog (Space Hulk: Boarding Mission).  I will post more pics than commentary on this site.  I will post the stats for this campaign at the end vs. during the campaign and also do a side by side comparison between our first run in 2015 and this run.

Our first mission was played yesterday.  I started with the Marines and managed a draw.  Ron played the marines next and won his mission convincingly while only losing 2 marines!  As always, it was great fun and it has been good to get beyond the coronapocolypse bubble and get these games in. Be sure to check out Ron's blog for his write up on each mission.

Ron's Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield Sergeant....Fletcher. He has delicate feelings.