Drokk the Law!! - Part XIV

The quarterly game with Andy rolled around last weekend, and whilst I didn't quite get the painting done I wanted, it didn't really matter, as playing fun games with a friend is much more important that what is and isn't painted to my usual standard. It still bugs me though. We got two games in, Scrawl War and Demolition, and whilst I did win both, it was usually pretty close and both games had a good narrative flow. 

Andy's terrain on my new mat, plus some NWA club stuff for low-level cover. I'm not a huge fan of how "bitsy" it looks currently, especially when compared to my Necromunda, SuperSystem or Nocturnal tables, but hopefully it comes together in leaps and bounds if we're only playing every few months. I'm also hoping that next time Brutal Cities is doing a print run, I'm doing better work-wise and can justify a bundle. 

The first game saw Andy's Brian Ansell Blockers (Street Gang) versus my Yakuza (Mobsters) in a Scrawl War, a scenario where gangs have to spray tags on certain places. It's a fun and objective-based mission that requires movement and cleverly punishes just rolling over your opponent with gunfire. I won't transcribe the entire mission here, but basically there's four Scawls and whoever controls the most at the end of the game wins. So even a gang that runs off due to casualties can win if they got more Scawls done. 

I was up against it from the start, as Andy's Blockers had a Heavy Spit Gun (basically a LMG) and more long-range firepower than my Yakuza, who are more built for close and medium range fights. My gang pushed up through cover as best as possible, but my Blitzer went down the second he poked a toe out, and I didn't do a lot with return fire. Andy had two Scawls before I could get my gang into position to take even one.

The game turned around for me when I actually gave up and did something silly. My gang leader is armed only with a Katana, and often doesn't get to do a lot, so when I had nothing left to use, he broke cover to slice an enemy Scrawler in half. Andy loves a good scrap, so his leader leapt out of a window to clash blades with mine, but my rolling won out and I claimed my second scalp for the game. Of course, his spree was ended on the next turn by the Heavy Spit Gun, but it was a fun run while it lasted.

Emboldened, I pushed forward with my remaining gangers, taking out the Heavy Spit gun with a lucky shot throw the window with a pistol, so that my Punk could run out on the balcony for the last unclaimed Scawl. At this point, Andy was down to one model, and would have won if he had failed a Will To Fight (morale) roll, but the stubborn bastard just stuck it out, enabling the Yakuza to convert a third Scawl for the win. 

Game two was Demolition, with the City-Def trying to prevent known robot terrorists, Blood in the Machine, from destroying a statue. In order to complete the mission, the robots have to perform a total of 8 Special Actions in contact with the statue, which can be done by any number of models across different turns. Though they're outnumbered and out-gunned, all the City-Def have to do is drive the Robots off to win. 

My initial plan was to have Vendi and Call-Me-Kermit cover Haro2-Goodbye while he completed the mission, relying on his armour and 7 Hits to get the job done as fast as possible. However, I underestimated the City-Def's spit guns and trigger-happy tendencies, and Haro2 was low on Hits after just two lucky shots. 

In order to get the City-Def out of cover, I sent Haro2 straight across the plaza and into melee, where he's pretty much unstoppable, and picked off any City-Def he could get his claws on. Meanwhile, the other Robots converged on the objective, alternating between laying down covering fire and planting the bombs. With three robots on the statue, I won pretty quick, especially with Haro2 taking down all but one of the City-Def members.

This gaming day was mostly about just catching up and seeing where projects were at, next time we'll put in a little more planning and try a few new things, maybe even do the campaign stuff. I have a few more models on the painting table for Dredd, so expect to see another one of these before too long.

Superhero Media: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The story of William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth, their girlfriend, Olive Byrne, and their collaboration to create Wonder Woman is the stuff of comics legend, but the story is often played for sensation, rather than being allowed to stand on its own. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is one of the most sensitive and accurate retellings of the story, even if it does focus on William Marston more than the other characters and skims over some of the more interesting elements of Golden Age Wonder Woman comics. Having been in a polyamourous relationship for years, it is pretty common to find yourself being gawked at and asked plenty of invasive questions, and that was the 2020s, not the 1930s, but I do find myself wishing that the "sex stuff" wasn't the major focus of the story. Another failing, at least to my eye, of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is that the invention of the polygraph is covered as a side note, and no time is given to Elizabeth Marston's later rebuking of the device as useless for intended purpose. 

Those quibbles aside, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is masterful, a brilliant film that touches on many themes yet still serves as an excellent biography. Perhaps more so than any other creator of the Golden Age, the Martsons and Olive led fascinating lives, through the Great War and being early professors of psychology as the discipline moved from out of philosophy at the academic level, only really Anarchist Wizard Alan Moore can challenge this trio for an exciting life story. Wow, can I please get an Alan Moore biopic? That sounds pretty amazing now that I'm thinking about it. Talk about the "sex stuff" being some of the least interesting parts of the story. As to that same "sex stuff" though, the few minutes of Bondage, Pornography and Submission in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women are much better, healthier and more realistic representations of such than several hours of EL James adaptation can manage. There are better ways to learn about Bondage/S&M/BDSM if you want to know more, but for what this film is, I honestly expected much worse than what I got. There is a moment of triumph when Olive ties Elizabeth up for the first time that eclipses even the creation of the polygraph. 

As a documentary on the history of DC comics and the origins on Wonder Woman, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women leaves much to be desired, but as a piece of history, covering a man and the women he loved, and loved him, and loved each other, it is uniquely wonderful. Something that I struggle with when reading a lot of fiction is I don't see a great deal of alternate relationship models, such as ethical non-monogomy, in some ways it tends to be even less represented than queer relationships; I mean, how many couples in television series don't end up with a child, just for example? The fact that Professor Marston and the Wonder Women didn't get a broad cinema release pretty much anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope for broader representation of alternate relationship models. Amazing how little has changed in that regard in nearly one hundred years. While we're at it, let's bring the bondage, discipline and submission back to Wonder Woman, I'm sure there's plenty of room for it in the next Gal Gadot film. Until then, this film is well worth your time to track down and enjoy.