Strange Doings!

Had a nice games day with the Hotlead crew this past weekend.
The day was organised by Dave and Pete, who prefer games involving steam tech, odd characters and the supernatural. Or Star Wars. Whatever rolls your dice.

First up Patrick and I were test subjects for Pete to run through a game of Strange Aeons. 

I was busy playing and didn't take any pictures. My three Threshold Agents successfully defeated the party of Cultists and retrieved the 4 relics (although one turned out to be useless, an ancient recipe for hummus probably). But it was a bit touch and go as the Priestess put Harpul Singh my tough as nails Indian soldier (who took out half the cultists himself) under a spell and had him fighting with my party leader for a bit.

But nifty game. Lots of charts and pages etc. (really needs a better QRS) but an interesting campaign built right in. I could see one using it to play games with Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just have low level vampires as cultists and go heavy on the hand to hand and less shooting.

Gratuitous picture of Buffy, because well....

After we trooped over to a local bar for burgers and beverages, Dave set up his Victorian London for a seven sided game of In Her Majesties Name. I'll let the pictures (which aren't as good as I'm used too, I was using my phone) talk for me:

Dave's city contains many nice details, like this public loo

View from one end of the table, the fountain can actually work if he installs a battery and adds water!

Other end

More detail, lots of these news pillars with amusing posters and ads. They're made from thread spools with craft domes on top.

The Flashman Monument!

Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop, note the arterial spray inside the sky light

Complete with Sweeney Todd. Parties coming too close run the risk of losing a member.

The Pub. Named after Pete, who's nom du net is "Sterling Moose" on the Lead Adventure Forum

Rooms and stairs and details inside

Flashy again. Dave is a big fan.

More details

The objective; rescue HM the Queen. Who is apparently on the roof trying to summon the Torchwood Institute or Batman... that's Keith in the background

Strange Foreign Johnnies wandering the streets

Sneaky Buggers/Special Branch/Dave's Vampire Hunters

It was apparently Take Your Son to Work Day at Special Branch. The figure is named "Van Halfling" (Dave's Vampire Hunters are naturally lead by Van Helsing)

Big Game Hunters and Mounties

Prussians even!

The brave lads of K Division lead by the Consulting Detective and his friend the Doctor

I won the foot race to the building with HM trapped at the top. But it was a shoot out with the Big Game Hunters and the Mounties (caught between me and the hunters). But then Special Branch arrived and we had a big fight around the door, with my electro-truncheons giving me the edge in the brawl.

Brawling with Special Branch, as you do. Meanwhile the Consulting Detective is running upstairs to get the Queen.

Foreign Johnnies attack!

H Division arrives to clear the Foreign Johnnies from the square with volleys of carbine fire. Apparently still upset that they had lost the inter-Division tug of war and pie eating contest to K Division, they didn't care that my chaps were in the way!

Timmy goes down! But not after fighting the Dragon Lady for several turns.

With two Special Branch Agents covering me from the lads of H Division, Benedict Cumberbatch the Consulting Detective helps HM make an undignified escape out a window to safety.

Silly fun, lots of laughs. Although I don't like IHMN. I don't like how the mechanics work and the way modifiers are applied. I actually think good old Warhammer 5th edition would work better for a game like this. But the guys like it, so I just roll the dice and keep moving.

Then it was 10 o'clock and time to hit the road with my head all done in.

All in all a fun day.

The Princess of Mars

One of the blogs I follow posts very rarely but when it does it is usually a VSF on Mars game in 15mm. This club has it all in a wild mash-up of H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs; green skinned Tharks, Red Martians, eight legged thoats, canals plus the cephalopod Martians with their tripods and heat rays. Plus of course all the Earthly Great Powers who have exported the Great Game to the Red Planet complete with steam tanks.

So I thought I'd read a bit of the source material. I always do like to research properly after all. And after seeing images like this on line, well what's not to like:

I down loaded a copy of A Princess of Mars from my library. It was a wonderful story told extremely badly. I can see why fantasy artists love Barsoom. I can see the appeal of graphic novels (especially with Dejah Thoris bouncing around, if you don't know who that is just Google search images of her).

But Burroughs uses a lot of five dollars words to get anywhere and then very quickly jumps through all the action. So even though Mikey has the complete series and has offered to loan them, I don't think I shall bother reading any more. I suffered through the Conan novels in high school at a friend's insistence. I won't repeat the exercise.

Too bad though. Scantily clad girls with large breasts, flying ships, strange creatures and exotic locales are all good things. But I do like to have them with decent writing.

New Steam Tank

My friend Dan decided I didn't have enough steam tech for our occassional VSF battles. I only have the one tank, so he built me another using the RAFM three wheeled steam tank as a basis [which I cannot find in their catalogue to give you a link].

He thought it was a bit small so he added a Bandai (?) 1/48th scale Pz34(t) turret (all those lovely rivets!) and swapped the 37mm cannon for a Maxim gun. He then made the cupola a bit bigger and added a RAFM British officer.

Peter is happy. His Russians needed more targets.

Black Steam

Some of my friends like Victorian Science Fiction. I'm not quite as keen (I've only made one steam tank, compared to Peter's 6 or 7, Dan's 3, and David's 4), but it's a bit of silly fun and gives my Indian Army another excuse to get out of the box. Since our armies have become rather biggish, I've been advocating using a large battle set of rules for our games like Black Powder instead of the usual Colonial-based, VSF rules which use the standard 20 man units from The Sword and the Flame, fist fulls of dice for shooting and man-to-man, opposed die rolls for hand-to-hand (which is very heroic, but really slows things down).

So on Friday night we had a rare get together, made more festive with Mincemeat tarts, my enormous tea pot and Christmas music on the basement CD player. Peter wanted to play VSF, and was intrigued by my ideas of using Black Powder, so after the hour long 'catching-up phase' (as Brian called it), we started getting some figures and terrain out and made up rules for the steam technology as we went along.

Deployment was determined by where people were sitting.

Dave begins deploying his Dutch army. "How many units can I get out? I have more!"

Peter and Barry discuss the Russian strategy, or is it "That man there has been very naughty!"

Facing the Russo-Dutch alliance were units of my Indian Army, Peter's VSF Canadians and a contingent of Boers (I handed Mike my box with my British mounted infantry and Boer commandos in it, saying "Here Mike, have some British infantry" expecting him to deploy the British... silly me). Presumably the Boers are upset by the Dutch Crown recruitng Venusian Parrotmen and have thrown in their lot with the British.

Boers

Canadians (the jesters cap is for when one makes a spectacularly bad move) 

Highlanders and Indians

Gurkhas and Guides with my steam tank

I just used the stats from the 'Crimea River' scenario for the Russians and 'El-Teb' for the British. For the steam technology we started with:

Command: all steam tech uses a Staff Rating one lower than the army (or a -1 modifier) and cannot use Group Moves. Each steam tank/steam unit must be given individual orders.

Tanks moved at infantry speed. Walkers moved at 8". I'm thinking wheeled should go a bit faster, say 18" but be limited to good terrain. Walkers (like Peter's notorious mechanical scorpion riding Cossacks or Dave's mechanical panther riding Dutch dragoons) don't suffer penalties in rough going or crossing obstacles.

Automatons (Peter has some wind up mechanical men) we thought shouldn't have to take break tests, but once they hit their stamina (which we set at 6) they're assumed to be too damaged to be effective and are destroyed.

Things like Venusian Parrotmen get Ferocious Charge and Impervious Suits get to reroll failed Saves.

Highlanders about to be attacked by parrotmen

Anything armoured we gave a +1 or +2 to their Morale Save, but accumulated hits from rifle fire or hand-to-hand were deemed to be shock/wounds to the crew and could cause the tank to withdraw/break down.

And then there's things like this:

How do I make up a rule for this?

On the left is a RAFM steam tank which Peter has fitted with a spar torpedo. It has successfuly charged a da Vinci tank (can't remember who makes them). I recall we gave the torpedo three dice. He rolled three hits and the tank failed all three saves, so it blew up.

But other exchanges of cannon and MG fire between armoured vehicles pointed out that we need some simple armour vs. shell rules and the results of penetrating hits.

Dutch High Command watch from atop a bunker, accompanied by mechanical butler, staff poodle and a rather pretty ADC.

The Russians managed to destroy the Canadians and the Indian Army managed to destroy the Dutch, so both sides claimed a stunning victory and ate some more tarts.

I wonder how my group would react if anyone ever managed to stage a planned scenario?

Canadian Grenadier Guards

Another commission rolls off the painting bench! This time an addition to Pete's growing VSF Canadian army; the Canadian Grenadier Guards.

Sergeant and officer

back view

A couple of ORs

ORs back view

These fine figures are from Ironclad. Nicely sculpted. Minimal flash. They will support the Mississauga Dragoons and his other infantry that I painted over a year ago. I'm also working on some French Canadian militia for him who will be appearing here soon.

Rabbitman Gets His Theme Song

A Steampunk friend put me on to this little ditty:


It's strange, but I like it anyway.

Dragoons get their colours!

The "Mississauga Dragoons" have been given their colours.

Their owner commissioned a flag from The Flag Dude and picked it up at Fall-In. He just sent me some pictures of the completed Ensign this morning.

Pretty spiffaroo, I must say.

Mississauga Dragoons!

Here is my latest painting commission for Peter's growing Canadian VSF army. They are Honourable Lead Boiler Suit Company British heavy dragoons in the home service uniform. I believe they are out of production now. The figures are quite charming although they had some issues with non-fills. Each horse had a small chunk missing from it's left hind leg and several scabbards are pretty stumpy. As you can see below, one of the horses had a pretty bad leg, which I had to fix with a few applications of green stuff.

Two packs of troopers and one of command gave Peter a nice unit of 11 figures. Given the size of Victorian militia cavalry regiments he may infact have modeled the unit at 1:1!

All the torsos are the same but the right arms are separate and for the troopers you get four arms with the sabre at rest and in the command pack you get a trumpet arm, a sabre arm and an arm with an open hand to recieve a guidon pole.

The uniform is based upon this picture and the cover of the Osprey Men-At-Arms Canadian Campaigns 1860-70. We refer to them as the Mississauga Horse because that regiment actually existed once upon a time, but were converged with the Governor General's Body Guards to form the Governor General's Horse Guards sometime between the Wars. I based the trumpet banner on the colours for the Governor General's Horse Guards and Peter has commissioned a guidon from the Flag Dude.

Albeit with fewer battle honours.

An Unexpected Party

It's quite often very hard to get one's game on around here. I pine for the glorious golden days of only 5 years ago; a lot of friends lived nearby and we could get together between 2 and 4 times a month to game. We played a lot of different periods and had some really great games.

Now everything has changed; many have moved away or are too busy now to game very often and trying to co-ordinate our schedules can be frustrating.

But still, every once in a while the planets align and I end up with a bunch of excellent people in the basement for a game. It was one of our number's birthday so we clubbed together for a cake and put on the coffee maker and suddenly had a party. One friend, who's busy family life doesn't let him game much said the next day: "Man, I needed that. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time."

So onto the game.

American right wing; Rocketmen, sailors and Roughriders

The birthday boy opted for Victorian Science Fiction so we ended up with an alliance of Dutch and Russians on Venus versus a coalition of Americans and British. The AngloAmerican alliance have occupied an ancient Venusian temple, so to prevent a mass uprising among their Venusian Native Infantry, the Dutch with their Russian allies need to liberate it. There were enough troops in evidence, so I left General Wooster and my Anglo-Indian army in their boxes and helped run the very nicely painted Dutch instead.

View of Anglo-American lines; 7th Cav have occupied ancient temple

The American steamtank. It caused a lot of trouble for the Russians. But then the British steamtank caused a lot of trouble for the Dutch.



British hold center between 7th Cav and Roughriders

Part of the Dutch RW; mechs, steamtank and Venusian Native Infantry ("Parrotmen")

The Tsarist hordes advance on the left.

Parrotmen surge from the jungle.

Depleted British line awaits the Dutch onslaught.

Russians having trouble with American steamtank.

Dutch cavalry, both mechanical and normal charge the British Naval Brigade overruning them. A second charge against a square wasn't as successful.

Russian mechanical scorpions are cut down by American sailors.

Polly wants a cracker. The parrotmen charge the 7th Cavalry!

The fight comes down to a duel between the last Venusian and Gen. G.A. Custer himself.

It's a dead parrot.

Custer gets gunned down by a volley from the Dutch askaris however, who then capture the objective.

The Dutch King (with mechanical butler) surveys the captured temple.

The happy British Naval Brigade commander expresses the general feeling of the evening.

I think the Dutch and American steam tanks were from Iron Brigade miniatures. A couple were kitbashed from old toys. The Parrotmen are heavily converted Games Workshop Warhammer 40K Kroot. The mechanical cavalry are heavily converted historical cavalry riding mounts from Mageknight or one of those plastic collectible clicky games that I don't pay attention too.

The commander of the Dutch is posting a more complete (and accurate) After Action Report on the Lead Adventures Forum.