War of the Worlds Survivors 6

 We played the next game in my post-Martian Invasion campaign this week.

It mostly went well for the survivors, they were very quick at getting to the potential loot caches and searching them, helped by poor die rolls for arriving Martians. Also, with the experience gained from previous games, the PCs have improved and are far less likely to fail Activation rolls. 

Colin and Henry grabbed what loot they could and exited the table as soon as something nasty turned up, in this case a Martian Hybrid walker. Mark found himself caught with the Hybrid in front of him and a Scuttler to his rear. His party split in opposite directions, three escaped safely but one was blasted by the hybrid's heat ray. His buddy heroically came back for him and picked his body up. This gave a couple of very tense turns as he frantically tried to escape whilst enemies were closing in from all sides. In the end it was my appalling activation rolls for the Martians that allowed them to escape the net.

On checking his wounds, the victim was alive, but injured and will have to miss the next game.

Here are some pictures from the game.

The table layout, with a few Shades wandering around. The round bases with assorted boxes etc are the loot markers.

And, of course, an interesting wagon!

Mark's parties gang up on a Shade in close combat.

Opps! Mark's rifleman (top right) took a shot at a Shade advancing on Colin, but just drove it to take cover over the wall, putting it ontop of the loot marker Colin was heading for!

Two more Shades appear and close in on Mark's rifleman. Time to run!

Colin tries a long range shot at a Shade, but his rifle jams!

A scuttler turns up behind Mark's party. Small, armoured and fast moving!

It advances and fires at Mark's leader. A hit, but it just grazes him and knocks him down (behind the wall, fortunately).

  The Martian Hybrid walker arrives!

After Henry and Colin have escaped, Mark's party split up having to fight off Shades as the Martians close in!

A lot of laughs were had by all. Next game, the survivors will be risking a trip into town!

War of the Worlds Survivors 5

 I played through the latest game in the War of the Wolds survivors campaign with Colin, Henry and Mark. Henry's party arrived late (emergency dental appointment), so Mark and Colin had a free hand to begin with.

This was a food gathering scenario, although there were a few points with something else useful might be found, scattered about.

A view across the table, the various crop fields represent areas that could be harvested to food.

From another perspective, there are several shades wandering about.

Colin more forward confidently, perhaps too confidently as he got close enough for a shade to charge one of this men , but he kills after a quick struggle.

Mark was a little slower on his advance, pausing to shoot at two shades in front of him, killing one and knocking the other to the ground.

Colin checks out one of the search points and rolls a 12! he has found some salvage, some food and a Random Weapon. A roll on that table and he has found...a sword! No bad, but not the best for someone short on firearms (because he keeps breaking them!).

Whilst some of his party starts harvesting, Mark checks out another search point and finds some salvage. Perhaps an improvised bomb-making session is on the cards for tonight?

Colin checks out another search point and finds another sword!

In the meantime a Martian scuttler turns up.

Mark's part of the table seems infested with shades. he didn't have chance to harvest much of the crops as he had to keep stopping a fighting off attacks. One of his men went down, out of the fight!

To make things worse a Martian stalker machine arrived, firing at Mark but missing.

Henry arrived at this point, and, seeing all the Martians had been drawn off after Mark, decided to take the opportunity to harvest as much from the closest field as he could, ignoring the rest of the table.

Colin did the same over the other side of the table, while Mark grabbed his fallen comrade and ran his men for cover behind a high hedge. He was able to get everyone safely into cover because I rolled appalling dice and only managed to activate 1 model in two consecutive turns!

After a couple more turns, a Martian hybrid arrived, right next to Henry. This was very bad news for the players, as it was armed with a "proper" heat ray, with a blast radius, rather than the lighter weapons carried by stalkers and scuttlers. Luckily for him, none of his PCs had strayed very far onto the table, so the were all able to escape before the Martian activated. Except for his leader, to duck down behind a wall. Just in time and the cover saved him from being fried by the heat ray. He then ran off the table at double time!

With the hybrid marching across the table, as well as the stalker, the scuttler and some shades closing in, Colin and Mark decided to cut their losses and run!

Except Mark could not resist taking a final potshot...at Colin's sailor!

He missed and the sailor charged him, hitting (and killing) his man, then ran off table! Forgetting he could have plundered the body and lifted his revolver! As all Mark's other PCs had already left the table, this meant the body was abandoned, which would make it harder on survival rolls.

At the end of the game everyone had restocked their larders, at least for the next couple of weeks, so the pressure is off for feeding PCs for the next couple of games. Mark had some useful salvage, as did Henry and Colin had more 2 swords!

Only Mark had PCs out of the fight, the PC he had carried off was wounded, so will have to miss the next game, but the abandoned guy was proper DEAD! So Mark lost the gun and other kit he had been carrying, plus his replacement comes with nothing, so will need arming out of Mark's existing stocks (but he still has at least a crossbow kicking around somewhere).

Thia should make the next game interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense!).

War of the Worlds Survivors 3

 On with our monthly VSF adventure.

This times things were complicated by a river dividing off a quarter of the table with a single bridge. I told the players that the river was fast flowing but wadable, but there was a chance of being swept off their feet by the current. No one bothered to ask further or try and cross until the later part of the game, so they didn't realise it was quite a low chance of most PCs being swept over!

There were 5 search points on the player's side of the river and a tempting 3 search points on the other side. There are a few Shades wandering about, but no Martian Fighting Machines as yet.

It went like this.

Mark advanced confidently towards his nearest search point (out of sight behind the hedge) whilst his rifleman took a pot shot at a shade, but missed.

Colin moved towards a different search point, swing around to avoid the two shades close to the centre of the table.

Henry advanced more cautiously, pausing to shoot a nearby shade.

A shade rushed up to Mark's rifleman, but he held it off until two of his companions charged in to his aid. Between them they beat the creature to the ground and killed it.

At this point Mark rolled spectacularly for the Martian reinforcements and a Stalker arrived, just across the river from his party. I make the players take it in turn to roll for Martian reinforcements, which allows me to pass the blame on!

Whist Colin and Henry engage the Shades by the bridge, Colin's Sikh boldly rushes forward towards a search point on the bridge itself. Mark's party all run for cover behind a nearby copse, out of sight of the Stalker, which moves towards the bridge.

Whilst Henry's party take cover behind the hedge, Colin braves the Martian and run across the bridge.

Instead of firing it's heat ray the Stalker moves closer and unleashed a new weapon. It shots a net that drops down over two of Henry's party. Avon avoid it, but Blake, the leader, is caught in it's folds (Henry is reusing his name tags from our previous Sci-fi campaign!).

More reinforcements, a Scuttler this time. 

A birds eye view of mark's party, who spent most of the game like this, waiting for the Stalker to be drawn off chasing after the others. Unfortunately for him, I kept rolling rubbish activation dice and the Stalker spent at least three turns just standing in front of Mark's position.

Co9lin managed to destroy the Scuttler with a very lucky shot and rushed forward to claim two of the search points. At this point a second Stalker arrived so everyone decide to leg it whilst everyone was still alive! Whist Henry and Colin dodged Stalkers and Shades on their frantic retreat, Mark quietly slipped away in all the chaos.

A great game, may a little easier for the players due to my poor dice rolling (yes it does happen sometimes!). The Stalker turning up so soon in the game could have been very nasty for the gang.

Everyone found some useful salvage to make stuff from and Henry and Colin both found much needed food. But everyone's food stocks are very low so the next game will be a food hunt of some sort.

War of the Worlds Survivors 2

 The guys came over for another game in our periodic post-Martian Invasion campaign. 

Here is the table lay out. The survivors have ventured into an urban area for this game. Centres of population were the initial targets of the invaders, so they tend to be more ruinous that the country villages.

There are 3 shades wandering about the area at the outset. the light brown boxes mark search points and there are 3 manhole covers which mark shade entry points. The players will each enter from a corner, the two bottom ones and the top right.

Henry initially had problems getting his party to activate, but Mark and Colin both rushed forward and reached a search point each. On searching them they both found useful first aid kits! Mark displayed his usual inquisitiveness and opened the sewer cover closest to him. he didn't see anything in the dark below, but did not replace the cover, which would give him issues!

Just 1 shade appeared in turn 1, coming out of the manhole next to mark. I had intended that new arrivals would take their entire turn to emerge from the tunnels via the heavy sewer cover, but as mark had left his open I decided to let the shade activate this turn and it attacked one of Marks party, knocking them to the ground. This melee went on with another PC joining in and taking it in turn to be knocked down, then regain their feet before the foe could deliver the coup de grace. he fianally despatched the shade but another turned up and took one of his men Out of the Fight ("dead" but possibly not!).

The players were aided by the fact that I had appalling dice and in 4 turns I rolled 2 activation fails for the first or second figure I tried to activate (each figure rolls for up to 3 activations per turn, rolling 2 failures ends your turn and passes on to the next player). This meant that even though a scuttler and stalker arrived , as well as several more shades, for the first half of the game they just stood around looking confused.

Once he got going Henry moved across the table and searched several objectives, but was very unlucky and did not fond much. In panicked him a bit when the stalker turn up really close to him, bit it's dithering allowed his party to hide in the ruins.

Finally I got some Martians moving, but most of the shades had been picked off by now. The scuttler advanced on mark. His party blasted away, but only knocked it down. It got back up and killed another of Mark's men. Henry and colin had found almost no loot at this point, so Colin took some pot shots at Mark, hoping to nick some of his stuff while he was occupied with the scuttler. this was the first time there had been any exchange of fire between survivors. Mark decided he'd had enough and grabbed his fallen PCs and exited, dragging their bodies with him.

Another scuttler turned up on Colin's flank and he started taking fire from the stalker, so he decided to make a quit exit as well.

In the meantime, Henry kept playing hide and seek around the ruins with the stalker. A couple of shades did make contact and attack some of his PCs, but they killed them both. His party then ran off the table when Colin distracted the stalker momentarily.

A great game which got quite tense towards the end. Mark got the most loot, a rifle, a first aid kit, 1 reload of ammo and 1 portion of food, the other two found just a first aid kit and some salvage between them. One the other hand, Mark also had two PCs Out of the Fight.

In the post game rolls, both of Mark's PCs proved to be only stunned with minor injuries, so they will be fully fit for the next game. Because he retrieved their bodies he got to keep all their equipment and loot. If he had left them behind it would not have affected their survival roll, but he would have lost anything they were carrying at the time.

On to the next game! It will be interesting to see how the parties interact after Colin opened fire on Mark. Previously the survivors have ignored each other, and even picked off a shade threatening another group on occasion. But will Mark be out for revenge next time? 

War of the Worlds Survivors Campaign

I belong to a monthly gaming group, four of us who have been meeting up (mostly) once a month since before Covid. Over time we have played a couple of Frostgrave campaigns, 2 or 3 Sellswords and Spellslingers campaigns and a Mutants and Death Ray Guns campaign. I fancied doing something a bit more VSF leaning, so suggested groups of survivors in the aftermath of a Martian Invasion, in the style of H G Wells.

Background, as presented to the players.

Barely a year after the First Martian Invasion, once again cylinders fell to Earth from space, this time in greater numbers in Britain, Europe, North America and Asia. In Britain the military were overwhelmed in weeks and in two months the country was totally cut off from the outside world, with no knowledge of what was happening in other countries.

It is now a year since the Second Martian Invasion, and you are part of a group of survivors eking out a precarious existence. After the first few months the Martian constructed sealed domes close to major waterways and Martian and their fighting Tripods are rarely seen away from these domes. Presumably to protect themselves from the diseases that wiped out the First Invasion. Many captured prisoners entered those domes, never to be seen again. Rumours of strange experiments abounded.

Smaller machines (christened Stalkers and Scuttlers by survivors) are despatched into the countryside to hunt down survivors. Also Shades have been released to join the hunt. Once human, perhaps the results, or the rejects, of Martian experiments, their skin has a strange blueish hue, as if their red blood had been replaced with some other fluid. They wander the countryside like mindless wild creatures who quite literally rip their victims apart and devour them.

Most recently another horror has appeared. Some sort of bizarre Martian/Human/machine hybrid, armed with a smaller version of the heat rays carried by the original Tripod fighting machines.

At your home base your group has a Marconi wireless radio apparatus, which is sometimes used to communicate with other survivors. But recently the apparatus has been receiving strange, unintelligible signals, which appear to originate from a location some 80 miles away to the southwest.

Your party have been despatched to try and locate the source of these signals and identify whether they pose a threat.  Other groups of survivors may also be aware of the signals and have sent exploring parties of their own. These parties should be regarded as rivals and potentially hostile, so treated with caution if encountered.

Campaign games will alternate between Scavenging Games, where the aim is to find useful equipment and food; and Scenario Games, which will move the players on towards the campaign’s objective.

The rules will be Ganesha Games' Mutants and Death Ray Guns, with elements from Fear and Faith and a few additional tweaks. I have added in the ability to find "salvage". This means any old, potentially useful, junk, scrap metal, flammable chemicals etc. Players can use this to try to create things like improvised body armour or explosives, in between games.

Martian robotic fighting machines, a Stalker and a Scuttler.

A Stalker with tentacles extended.

A Martian/Human hybrid machine thing.

A group of Shades.

Two survivors face a trio of Shades.

I don't think a crossbow will do much in this case!

"Come on chaps, we can easily deal with this little mechanical monstrosity!"

"I say chaps...where are you all going?"

Under Sea VSF

 Now I've got them painted, I'm trying out some underwater VSF games. The first couple of games were just solo ones, trying out different rule systems. So far I've tried In Her Majesty's Name and Mutants and Death Ray Guns, so far I'm inclining to IHMN.

I need to get some of the guys over to try these out now, to get some outside input.

Here are some piccis from the test games. The minis are mostly 3d prints designed by Mr Big Tong, plus a few older metal divers from Tiger Miniatures.

All the kerfuffle has attracted the (unwanted) attention of some other inhabitants of the deep ocean!