It's the pivotal
scene in a new episode of Drax, a
made-for-TV follow-up to 1979's Moonraker.
James Bond and operatives of Dept X of MI6 confront the insidious industrialist
and his new-found allies at the supervillain's lair.
In 1979, according
to MI6 files, an Insidious Industrialist's dastardly scheme to replace all
humans on earth with his chosen master race failed. Its mastermind, the
multi-billionaire Hugo Drax, met an ignominious end, shot by 007's
cyanide-tipped dart and expelled into space. And so, with his death, the case
files were labelled with the name of the space shuttles so crucial to their
plot and filed under M for Moonraker.
It is not wholly
clear how Drax survived the cyanide or the vacuum of space, let alone re-entry
through the earth's atmosphere or the shark-infested waters of the Indian Ocean
into which the wreckage of his space station fell. But against all the odds, in
a way that can only happen to principal or significant supporting characters in
such films, survive he did, to be picked up by agents of a mysterious
organisation which, it turns out, had been keeping watching over Drax and his
enterprise all along. The Supreme Headquarters of International Villainous
Agents (SHIVA), in return for his loyalty, vast financial backing, and the
secrets of the chemical agent Black Orchid,
duly nursed Drax back to health and gave him a position of some responsibility
in their own organisation.
This all provides an
unlikely, though not completely implausible, premise for a possible film sequel
to 1979's Moonraker or, at the very
least, a TV mini-series, and Channel 7TV2 was quick to take up options.
The Plan
Using the
7TV2rules,
we ran the above game several
times through the day at
Vanquish 2018.
The idea was to
introduce newcomers to wargaming and the 7TV2 game, as well as to meet gamers
from other clubs and encourage new recruits to our own. The episode was run as a
participation game, with players taking on roles within Dept X and MI6 in a
mission against Drax and his horde of minions. I
ran the bad guys, with a few minor tweaks to the rules for the purposes of the
scenario. The challenge was all about the good guys completing the mission they were given.
The Set
 |
| All set up and ready to go |
As we all know it's
the look of the game that first draws people in and so the set was built with
that in mind. I will post separately on how the set was made but essentially it
was a bespoke base cloth and six modular elements, plus an
open section of rooms, a helipad and radio mast, all of which was finished off with furniture,
scatter terrain, two jeeps and a helicopter.
The Props
I provided some
background material for the players in the form of a manilla envelope
containing case files, which was given to players and others who were
interested, containing:
Players were given a
quick run down of the essential game mechanisms and then made selections from a choice of gadget cards. Then a specific mission for the episode was chosen by drawing a random card from a set of bespoke mission cards (
fronts and
backs here) that I made
for the event.
And... Action!
And in summary, people
enjoyed the game and went away happy, and it was a very successful day.
Now to plan for next
year...
