Close Quarter Battles Campaign - starting Act 4

 After a couple of months where life got in the way of gaming, we finally began Act 4 in the Close Quarter Battles Campaign book.

The lay out for the first part of Act 4. We just need to kill the big hairy beasties and take posession of the bridge.

After fighting our way past assorted cultists and rioting mobs!

The bridge guards.

Things started very badly, Lanroth, with the bow, couldn't roll higher than a 2 when shooting and failed activations left him very exposed at the end of the first turn! Things got even worse by turn 3, Lanroth was injured and two rolls of 1 meant that Sarmand had lost his magic for the rest of the game and a bowstring had snapped!

Things started to improve from then. The arrival of a couple of random Iron Pikes (city guard) distracted some of the rioting mobs (in fact the guardsmen slowly cut their way through almost a dozen rioteers by the end of the game, taking some pressure of off us!). Heimir (our nutty swordsman) started to pass activations and began slicing and dicing his way down the street. 

We experienced one of those cimematic moments that Sellswords produces from time to time. Several games back Sarmand had picked up a spare sword and just slung it on his back. Why? There is no bonus in Sellswords and a second sword. The reason was revealed! Rolling three passes when attacking a Saamu gladiator, Sarmand then rolled a 2 for his first attack, allowing the Saamu to grap the sword and wrench it out of Sarmand's grasp and cast it away into the water trough. We imagined the beast raising his axe with the gloating leer common to the best Hollywood villans, when Sarmand drew this spare sword and ran the beast through the chest!

Eventually we managed to take the bridge with all three characters still alive, in part due to the stirling work of the Iron Pikes.

VSF 1899 Balkans War

In the later part of the nineteenth century the Great Powers of Europe vied with one another to utilise the new technologies to create increasingly sophisticated weapons of war. Great Britain, France and Russia all developed weapons based on the technology of steam, whereas Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire depended more on the power of electricity, expanding on the pioneering research of Victor Frankenstein. All parties were keen to test their new weapons in earnest, but at the same time reluctant to commit to all-out war against another major power in Europe.

 1n 1899, the outbreak of war in the Balkans gave them the opportunity they were seeking. Each Great Power reinforced their allies in the region with new technology and military “advisors” to train in their use (and often operate the weapons as well). Britain and France supported Greece, Russia supported Bulgaria and Germany and Austro-Hungary threw their weight behind the Ottoman Empire. The ancient regions of Thrace and Macedonia became the testing grounds for the latest war machines.

 Here is a report on a typical engagement in Western Thrace.

An early casualty, a severely damaged the Ottoman armoured car makes a slow withdrawal. To the right is an Ottoman one-man walker with and electric lightning cannon, to the left Krupps Steam Automatons advance through the wood.

A slightly blurry view of the battlefield.

The left flank of the Ottoman force.

And the right flank, beyond the picture, another regular infantry unit anchors the line. 

THe centre of the Greek line, Enfield Steam Walkers advance, supported by Greek infantry. A French-made armoured car has bogged down by the road (the armoured car was to be unable to move for most of the game!).

The Greek left flank.

And their right. The Cretan Gendames have already suffered casualties from accurate rifle fire from an Ottoman infantry unit.

The Enfield walkers suffer from heavy fire from electric weapons and the Ottoman field gun. All are damaged and have their MMGs disabled. The drivers decide to charge the enemy (more of a gentle trot by now) as one of them bursts into flames.

A second walker is knocked out.

As the last walker arroaches the Ottoman line the Ottoman walker (now also damaged), intercepts the charge.

The two machines batter away at each other until the Ottoman driver is victorious, but was almost immediatly struck by a shell from the Greek field gun and destroyed!

Whilst the Ottomans held the upper hand in the centre, their flanks were being whittled away.

The last stand of the surviving Ottoman forces, the tank just visible at the top of the picture had failed to move for the entire game and only fired twice!

An overview of the end. The Greeks had two intact infantry units poised to swing around into the surviving Ottomans' flamk. At this point the Turkish commander order a withdrawal.

Tenfold Dungeons, More Than Just A Dungeon

 I while back I came across Tenfold Dungeons via the Lead Adventure Forum. A sturdy 3D card dungeon/interior complex in a box, sounded interesting. I picked up a copy of The Facility, a sci-fi spaceship/starbase set (at slightly less than the £55 RRP) and was very impressed with the product.

I alreday have an old resin dungeon set, which does the job for my fantasy games. But it's heavy and I am forever knocking off walls and needing to stick them back together, so I had been toying with picking up one of Tenfold's fantasy sets for a while.

As these things happen, I was looking at one of the UK distributor's websites and saw that they were offering a substancial discount on some of the products, so, weak-willed as I am, I bought two sets.

I got Dungeons and Sewers (fairly obvious from the name) andThe Castle, a castle/stately home/haunted house set.

Life got in the way a bit, so they sat on the side in their shrinkwrap for a week or so, before I decided to open them up and examine my new toys, so I started with the Dungeons and Sewers set.

Inside the box are...two boxes. All the items are printed on both side so they they can be used to create platforms or raised areas within the set up.

Inside those boxes were more boxes. rooms corridors, stairways, door and plastic clips to hold them all together.

The fill lay-out, 2 large chambers, 2 medium chambers, a stairway and 7 corridors.

I broke out some minis and tried some in-action shots, to get a feel for how spacious the rooms are in gaming use. I do need to think about lighting for in-game shots in the future, but these will do for now.

And one of the corridors, lots of room for minis and monsters, as well as space for my fat fingers to easily move stuff around.

I'll try to get around to taking some images of The Castle set at some point.

I can see a lot of use for these, seperately or together. The Castle upstairs with the Dungeons & Sewers below, or use some of the castle rooms for the more inhabited parts of the dungeon and the sewers for the more grotty bits.

And so many uses beyond fantasy. Gothic Horror, VSF and even 1920s pulp!

Terror from the Depths - Painted

 I've painted my squad of Aquaphibians who have invaded an undersea base! Well, I've still got three more to do but this is enough for a game of Mutants and Death Ray Guns.

Where is Troy Tempest when you need him?

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?