Weed Killer: Vegetarian Combat for the 21 st Century. By Sion in Oxford. £4.99. http://www.coveredinpeas.com/ " At Last: We've all done it! Sitting behind your nicely painted 15 mm Napoleonic army at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. Staring down as your magnificent strategy unfolds, always thinking in the back of your mind "Ah, but what if all these men right, were all carrots instead?"

Sold! I couldn't help myself. I walked up to the till itching to go home and write up my first ever veggie army list!! I was meeting some of the boys in a pub on the Charing X road for a bit of a froth. I am always perpetually early any time I am meeting people, so I had time for a pint and a quick browse.

I wasn't disappointed. This is a hilarious production which is a must for people into indie style games. It is very well written AND it comes with its own game pieces! This is the sort of indie gaming production the spirit of which frothersunite as a website and gaming society is all about supporting. I loved the art work some but definitely not all of which has been used for this review.

"If one of your troops gets shot in the goolies, it gets marked on your character sheet."

Background In the spirit of GM farming the big companies have produced the perfect GM killing machine - the "Legume Noir!". The stuff of nightmares. A great tasting nightmare - before long the old veggies were outdone and the world was over taken by a new green evil!! Mwwwwwahwah! ha! ha! ha!! The gist of the game. This game is first of all not about convincing your mother, your wife, or flatmates that you want to just borrow their legumes for a few minutes and then start marching them across the battlefield. Nope you can cut out the model legumes from the rule book. It is a two player game but if you are mad enough I suppose you could play it all by yourself. Multiplayer games are encouraged for real hardcore slaughtering....

Ok so do you get it? Are you listening? This is a game of table top veggie combat action. The game is basically a skirmish game although large forces would be possible. The section "Create your elite fighting force" is the place to start for all that type of stuff.

The interesting thing about the game is that all the Characters have basically the same points cost(10), hit points(20) and carrying weight(8). This is excepting the poor old Mange Tout which has only 15 hit points - well it is just basically a green strip of veggie meat 'innit?

The Characters Asparagus A bit like high elves in fantasy games and have a +1 to hit with projectile weapons. They will of course, like high elves in a fantasy game, get their arses kicked if they get in a real fight. The Carrot Natural melee fighters and cannot ignore the 'woooaaarggghhh' rule (which is basically a charge rule). They are the Samurai of the battlefield and if they meet each other they have to complete formal introductions. The Tomato Tomatoes have the advantage that they can carry a lot more than anything else. The downside is of course is that you can imagine the mess a tomato makes when it gets shot. To simulate this you there is a blast radius for such an eventuality. Any comrade covered in his buddy's body parts has to take a morale check.

On Carrots: "I have decided to make these the Martial Arts experts, as all ginger kids have to learn to fight at school."

The Potato
The slowest and the biggest these geezers can carry loads of stuff and take an awful lot of damage.

The Sprout
The bloke who made the game hates sprouts which are disgusting and evil etc.. they aren't in the game... no really. I think he probably has some issues which he needs to work out there.

"Asparagus are a kind of elite (hence their price in the shops)."

Mange Tout This was a bit complicated in the rules. Mange Tout is basically a pea pod OK? Well the rules do something with the pea pod. In addition it can't carry anything because it is a pea pod. There are a whole host of other veggies each with their own special abilities and all introduced with the same comedy attitude. It all adds to the enjoyment of having the game. You can have chilli peppers, sweetcorn, and hemp. All worth having in some measure as you attempt to build your very own version of vegetable soup. By the time you have finished reading the rules you will never see the old Sunday dinner in the same way again! Equipment There is a whole host of equipment to choose from. There are pistols, Uzis, assault rifles, explosives including the bazooka, grenades, and the friendly old napalm tube. After kitting your veggies out you can then go off to war and read the hard bit - er the sequence of play that is...

Sequence of play

The sequence of play is innovative and interesting - well at least for a bit of a todger like meself... The first stage is movement each player takes it in turns to move a piece. With large scale conflicts it makes sense just to move them all at once. Initiative is interesting because it is about bidding who is going to fire first. You can imagine the old Carrot and Mange tout facing off across the table. Do you wait to get a good bead on the old green face? Or do you fire off first in the hope of doing some damage before the Mange tout can shoot back? The idea is that you bid to see who is willing to take the largest modifier against his shooting to see who shoots first. This modifier is noted down and taken off all shooting rolls for that player. Shooting is taken by player from the fastest to the slowest. I quite like this idea and I agree it should be interesting to see how it actually plays out.

The third phase is the firing phase and this is fairly straight forward, you roll to hit, then for damage, damage occurs to the relevant body parts and you stroke off the hits until there are none left. A veggie can lose all of its limbs and when this happens it cannot move or do anything i.e. it is rendered 'crap'. When the torso hit points are destroyed the veggie dies. If you miss in Weed killer you still have to find out what happened to the shot as the ordinance still has to finish up somewhere so of course you can still do a lot of damage.

There is an official shouting phase and we all know what that is for! Then there is a melee phase. Finally there is a morale phase and a few random rules for when a character goes berserk.

All in all I was very impressed. I loved reading the game and for the very fair price it is worth buying if only just to have. The idea has loads of scope with the obvious introduction of a fruit invasion being one example. Another possibility might be to introduce smaller organic veggies perhaps. Additionally I would have liked to have seen some chemical weapons introduced like Weed Killer. Finally what about veggie transports etc? I mean how could we stat those up? Finally, where the fuck were the rules for the LEGUME NOIR?!

This game is definitely a must have for people who like to see just what sort of good indie games are out there. It even costs less than a fiver!! Now come on - that is almost less than two GW miniatures AND your veggies for the week...

frotherBaz

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