-The Beat-

In For a Penny

6. JAKE’S flat, interior. Jake is asleep in bed with some Bird. SKELTON and KENNEDY crash through the exterior door. Woman screams. JAKE starts to run.

SKELTON

Put on your trousers mate, you are nicked!

       7TV 2d Edition is a skirmish miniatures wargame for playing the climatic fight scenes from adventure films and television of the 1960s and 70s,  It is created by Crooked Dice, a British Company and therefore it tends to lean towards British TV of the period but it could easily be altered to simulate similar shows of the period here in the United States.   The rules cover various genres like science fiction, detective shows, supernatural investigators or exterminators (there is even a Scooby Dooby Doo programme guide).  The new boxed set is geared towards Spy Fi, think  Avengers, Man From UNCLE, some of the James Bond films, Department S, or even Austin Powers.

          Unlike most games, 7TV makes no attempt at creating the reality of these shows.  Instead, it recognizes them to be just that, television shows.  The game has a meta-game concept which simply recognizes your games as Episodes of a television programme instead of a scenario or battle in a campaign.  The official programmes are all linked together as the programming of 7TV studios.  In a similar fashion, the sides are “casts”, you are “on screen” when it is your turn, your casts are not killed but “axed” and the points used for creating your casts are “Ratings”.

      So I just received my copy of the boxed set.  The price is a little intimidating at £ 50.  Crooked Dice has made the game available for free as a PDF, which is pretty amazing.  This allows you to look at the rules and even to play if you like without buying anything!  I hope however that you wouldn’t be so churlish as to not send some money their way if you like what you see.

         Let me assure you, you get a lot with the box and it is all very nice quality.  There are the two rulebooks, a combination template for measuring two sizes of blasts as well as flamethrowers, plot point markers, various tokens, dice and all the useful cards.

        If like me you still thought this seemed a little pricey, they are now offering starter sets.  For an additional £ 10 you can choose two of their starter casts.  I chose the Crime and Law sets.

      This gives me eight each for my starting casts,  and is a great deal.

       Open casting (which is building casts from the basic rules rather than one of the additional programme guides) consists of deciding which characters you want to support your side.  The characters are rated as Stars, Costars, and Extras and their abilities vary appropriately.  The characters are listed as heroic, villainous or neutral which restricts what casts they can be with,  Similarly, the are also listed as belonging to certain genres.  these are Law, Crime, Secret, Civilian, Science, Military, and unknown.  Most characters have two of these and one must match to join a cast.

       Play is Igo Ugo and plot points and special abilities are used to determine who you can activate.  these plot points are also used to enhance your attack and defense as well as to activate your Star qualities and gadgets, so it becomes important to use them wisely.

   A very clever feature of the rules are the countdown cards.  These cards are divided into Act one, Act Two and Finale, and cause certain random events.  The nature of these events escalates , the later in the episode they occur.

   The rules are quick to learn, fast and easy to play and most of the rules you need are right on the character cards or on the back of one of the rule books.  So far I have only played one practice game, but both of us were comfortable with the system very quickly and my opponent (who won) is not a very experienced wargamer.

     A very enjoyable and fun game with an interesting premise and several clever rules.

Cheers,

Ron