An Impulsive Purchase?

 I made the classic error of, having seen someone's painted minis online, searching for the game! Anatoli posted their superbly painted miniatures for Darkest Dungeon the Board Game on the Lead Adventure Forum. While I wasn't really taken by the hero models I did like the monsters, so I had a quick browse. At over £100 quid for the game, this wasn't something I was going to buy into, but I did see one of the expansions that really caught my imagination. The Crimson Court depicts a Versailles-style 18th century court mutated into blood-drinking insectoid monsters. Brilliant! 

I found a copy cheap online and bought it, less that £30 including postage for 41 minis, seemed like a good deal. I really like the minis, the original set looked a little bit cartoony for my taste, but these are mutated insects, so no problem there.

They are a bit big compared with my 28mm minis (so-called "Heroic" 32mm I guess), but these are mutated, so who cares!

Of course, having bought them on a bit of a whim, what to do with them now? 

I've a few ideas, a couple of warbands for A Song of Blades and Heroes, once they are all painted I can see an entire campaign for Sellswords and Spellslingers.

It will fit in a number of settings, a jungle-like overgrown pleasure garden, alternative 17th/18th century Venice or a combination of the two!

Just so long as I do get around to painting it!

Watch this space, or will it disappear into the Cupboard of Shame with other good ideas/unfinished projects??

Gothic Horror - Part 2

 The five factions were the Nosferatau and Dracul vampire clans, the Scarlet Fangs and Rd Clws werewolf packs and the human Monster Hunters.

Victory points were assigned for each monster killed by your faction (no points for killing mere humans). Each monster faction had a particular enemy who scored bonus points for each kill. The humans scored bonus points for each monster faction wiped out, no matter who was responsible, after all they just wanted to clean the streets!

Werewolves rampaging through the streets of Venicia!

                             

The Red Claws started the mayhem straight away, charging into the Nosferatau clan. It was a little premature as the result was the Red Claws pack leader being surrounded and cut down by the vampires. With a second werewolf was killed it looked like an early bath for the Red Claws player!

But, then a lucky blow killed the Noseratau Elder and the balance started to move the other way. The two factions would remain in a brutal slogging match for the rest of the game.

Scarlet Fangs face off against the Dracul Clan. After the Dracul put one of the werewolves down these two pussy-footed around each other for the first half of the game! They spent more time glaring at each other and name-calling than anything else!

Which was just as well because the human hunters were finding it difficult to get going! They spent a lot of time milling around the central plazza (lots of failed activation rolls on my account!).

Finally the Scarlet Fangs pack got stuck into the hunters. The Dracul Clan had bravely hidden in a house allowing the werewolves to finally bypass them and get to the humans.

The Dracul Clan finally decided to show thei faces and risk getting their nice dresses dirty, after the Scarlet Fangs and killed the best Vampire Hunter!

It turned into a three-way brawl in the plazza....

...which resulted in the Scarlet Fangs being wiped out! Half the hunters were also dead, along with one of the Dracul vanpires

In the meantime the epic Red Claws/Nosferatau streetfight ranged on.

One of the Vampire hunters thought about cahring in, but decided it was better not getting involved!

Finally it was down to a single Norferatau still standing, but still the fight carried on. Both sides were finding it impossible to roll killing blows, so just knocked each other backwards and forwards.

At this point the Dracul clan decided that their previous tactic, stabbing the Starlet Fangs in the back whilst they were distracted fighting someone else, had worked so well they would try it again. But the Nosferatau and Red Claws promptly found their dice mojo and killed a Dracul each, wiping the clan out!

Having worked out how to kill vampires, the werewolves now made short work of the last Nosferatau. The Red Claws were victorious, the city of Venicia was theirs!!!!

Apart from the four humans rushing towards them, of course (a minor point!). They briefly considered ripping the impudent humans apart, but as silver bullets pinged around their ears they decided it was a good time to leave.

A clear win for the Red Claws with 9VPs. 

The Hunters actually came second with 6VPs.

The rest of the factions varied from 2 to 5 VPs each, but as they were all dead it was a moot point anyway.

A lot of fun was had by all.

Five-player Gothic Horror Game

 I'm just setting up for an epic 5-player Gothic horror game later tonight.

Using Fear and Faith rules, the factions will be  2 werewolf packs, 2 vampire clans and a band of heroic (Foolish?) Human hunters.

For many years the Dracul and Nosferatau Vampire clans have conducted a reign of terror over the city of Venicia, preying on the inhabitants whilst striving against each other for total dominance over the city.

But in recent times their power has been challenged by incursions of werewolf packs from the mountains. These upstarts not only poached the vampire’s rightful prey, but even started to take over districts within the city and claim them as their own.

In desperation of the monsters haunting the night time streets, the city’s governor sent a desperate plea for help to the Vatican. In response a Papal Legate was despatched to Venicia, with a bodyguard of elite vampire hunters, to rid the city of the undead menace. The legate also brought new weapons to arm the city’s polizi in their fight against the monsters.

The streets of Venicia are silent as night begins to fall.

The citizens shutter their windows and lock their doors.

Leaving the empty streets to the monsters...and the monster hunters.

The Scarlet fangs and Red Claws werewolf packs.

The Nosferatau and Dracul vampire clans.

The Prey....or Hunters.

The scene is set.....but what happens next?

Gothic Horror Bloodbath in Venice

 I recently ran a 4-player Gothic Horror game set in Venice, it was nice to get my canals out again. It took my newest faction, the Hungarian Fellowship (werewolf hunters), also playing was the Vatican Cognoscenti, a group of Puritan Witchfinders and a pack of werewolves. A talisman of great power was on a mysticly propelled gondola, travelling down the canals of Venive. The objective was to have conrol of the talisman, by having one of your characters on the gondola when it left from the far end of the table.

The game was great fun if a little confused at times (3-way melees!). Here's a few shots of some of the action.

The intitial set-up.

Some of my Hungarians cross a bridge, keeping pace with the moving gondola.

Whilst others form a rearguard to prevent the werewolves from crossing to their side.

One werewolf makes and early bid for the talisman, jumping onto the gondola in the first round, but my crossbowman takes him down with a silvered crossbow bolt!

A brave Vatican axeman attempts to prevent the Loup Garrou from crossing a bridge, it did not end well!

Werewolves, aided by a demonic wolf, charge into the Papal Cognoscenti.

Further down the canal, one of the Witchfinder's musketeers and a Vatican crossbowmen wait for the gondola.

The Papal Legate defies the demonic wolf with his blessed sword...oh, it breathes fire!!!

A second werewolf jumps onto the gondola, but my deadeye crossbowman strikes again! Two werewolves with 2 shots, he is on form today!

A confused melee breaks out as the gondola serinly drifts by!

Another view of the fight on the bridge.

My Hungarian Fellowship clear away the Papal troops from the bridge and one of my men leaps onto the gondola. Almost home and dry!

Unfortunatly, as he passed under the last bridge he was shot by one one of the Witchfinder's musketeers and the Witchfinder leapt onto the gondola in the final turn before it drifted off the end of the table.

More New Toys for VSF

 Oh Dear!

I've picked up various new toys for my ever-expanding VSF collection!

Firstly a couple of new buildings from TT Combat. These are actually intended for WW2 France, but I though with an appropriate colour scheme they should fit in with my Streets of Venice stuff.

I wanted to dress up some of my buildings to give them more of a VSF buzz, but I still want to use my Venice set-up for Fantasy or Historical games, so I don't want anything permanently attached. I'd already got some gas lamps and postboxes for the streets and a set of power generators from Frontline. I then discovered a German company, Ziterdes, who produce some supeb resin bits and pieces at a very reasonable price.

And a close-up of one of the sets.

Finally I've started work on a new faction, can you guess what it will be?

I found the boats on Ebay (seller  https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/actualsizeminiatures). They are reasonably detailed resin hulls with 3d printed weapons and fittings. The boats are intended for WW1 Africa, but do the job nicely for late Victorian/VSF. The launch is a motorboat, but I will add in one of Ashio Models' nice little upright boilers and turn it into a steam launch. That came with a stern mounted maxim, but the seller also does a nice set of Gatling guns so I'll swap them around. I will magnetise the weapons so I can remove them when in storage, to save in breakages.

The naval ratings are from Tiger Miniatures and the boarding party from Ironclad.

More for Venice plus other painting to keep myself busy

I didn't get around to posting an update on my painting log last week so I thought I'd combine the two weeks with my latest construction for my Streets of Venice layout.

I've got a bell tower, but the other iconic building I was missing for Venice was a church, so I finally got around to building the TT Combat kit I'd picked up in March.

 At first glance it looked complicated, but I realised that the basic construction was relatively simple, a lot of the pieces were decorative pillars and  arches for the windows.

What else have I been up to....?

 I picked up a bargain on Ebay, 30 Oathmark goblins, assembled and painted for the price of a new box! The lighting was really bad in the photos and the skin tones looked grey, but when they arrived I realised they were actually sades of green. Not the vivid GW palate, but still a bit to green for me as I would be adding them to my Middle Earth armies.  But that's still a minor problem, so I experimented with a couple of different browns on the flesh.

 Once I was happy with the result I could bang the whole lot out in no time at all.

My friend Mark in South London very kindly sent me the next figure. It's a Plague Doctoress from TT Combat's Carnevale range. I painted her in various shades of grey to match the Plague doctor I already had, but it doesn't really show up much in this picture.

And using a flash just washed all the colour out. I really need to look at getting a light box for this photos.

A steampunk contraption from Ramshackle Games.

A test unit for my 10mm French Foreign Legion.

Three more Alfar, old Heartbreaker sculpts by the talented Phil Lewis.

Another set of captives from Ramshackle Games, I'd originally only ordered one set of 4, but they got missed of the original order, so Curtis very kindly sent me two sets!

Another Viking warrior.