THIS IS NOT A TEST- Sunday, 24th Sept 2017.

I'm lucky enough to belong to two-and-a-half gaming groups. One in my home village which meets every Sunday (and the occasional Friday), one in a nearby town that meets on a Monday, and one in the 'Big Smoke' that is the City of Lancaster over the border in Lancashire that I regrettably only manage to get to infrequently (hence, I only count it as half a group)...

Sunday saw me finally get a chance to break out my Post Apocalypse stuff that has been sat in a box in the store-room for the last three or four years and play my first ever game of This Is Not A Test (TNT) by World's End Publishing.
TNT is my kind of game in every way- a small scale skirmish game with light RPG elements, 'gang progression', and fast playing rules that give you plenty of cinematic moments. My personal favourite is the shooting mechanic where you never know how badly hurt an enemy has been by your guns until your turn is over- do you keep pouring fire on the same model to make sure they go down, or do you save your ammo for other threats? Cracking stuff.
Overall the rule-book is fantastic quality as well, and I'm very glad I backed the Kickstarter for it!

But enough of this- on to the game! We played the Snipe Hunt Scenario using 300 point Warbands. Myself and Andy took the scum-of-the-wasteland Raiders, while Father-Son duo Tony and Tom took the outnumbered but never outgunned Preservers:

*The Raiders (Pig Iron Productions 'Kolony Ferals').

*The Preservers (Pig Iron 'Kolony Militia/Rebels- PIP make excellent sci-fi/near-future models and are well worth checking out; they are even based in Yorkshire!).

Now to put it mildly, myself and Andy are not overly blessed when it comes to luck of the dice. In fact, we have been disparagingly dubbed 'Team Awesome' by the other guys in the group when we are obliged to be on the same side in a game.
However, some kind of bizarre cosmic alignment must have been in play that day, as our Raiders romped home to victory in flurries of 10s while the Preservers (despite being kitted out with riot armour, assault rifles, an LMG and even a frickin' laser carbine!) couldn't seem to roll higher than a 4 in most circumstances.
In fact, we played two games, with the Preservers getting annihilated in both games- Tony and Tom refusing to swap sides as is customary, and paying the price for such hubris!

*My Brute, Murt, about to introduce the Preserver Angelo to his Lucky Sledgehammer!

Despite the outrageous and uncharacteristic swings of Lady Luck, we all agreed that TNT is a great game and one that will be seeing the table again in future- though this time with full 400 point Warbands. I've even dug out the figures to make a new Warband of Caravaners from the Lead Mountain!

Though I imagine that Team Awesome will be back to their usual form by then...