Fall-In 2014: day two: Zombie Apocalypse!

Saturday morning rolls around, and for whatever reason we all wake up early. Good news because that means a leisurely breakfast at IHOP with a surprise appearance by a hostess with the magical gift of oversharing early in the a.m.

As noted in the Friday report, I did pretty well at Wally's Basement, so let's talk shopping at the con. I never know how much my dozens of readers really care about what someone else is buying. I mean, maybe? So let's hit the big topics instead.

Definitely fewer booths in the dealer's hall than before. I mean, I still found things to spend money on (thanks Brigade and Recreational Conflict!) but there wasn't a lot of competition.

Perfect!

I have a few big Kickstarter rewards showing up in the next few months, so as for strategies for spending my money I stuck mostly to things to supplement games/genres I already have. Better to add more terrain or figs or whatever, to keep me focused. So more Victorian scifi (Wolsung, IHMN) and modern (Pulp City, Gotham.) Was happy to see Brigade had some of the Midnight Workshop figs from Artizan, in addition to their Empire of the Dead offerings.

I didn't pick these up, but it's an inspirational concept.

I should also note that the one big purchase I made at Wally's was a handful of Skaard figs for Dark Age. Older models, but lovely, and priced so I couldn't refuse. Second army started!

And now my big Saturday event. I'd seen them run  games like this before, but this was the first time I was able to reserve a seat at the table.

From the description:

S160 Hold the Line - Z+60 Days
Sat 3:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 6 players
GM: Henry Kyle
Period: Modern, Scale: 25mm, Rules: Zombie Apocalypse (Home Brew)
"Sixty days after the dead began to rise, your small Texas town is in danger of being overrun by the walking dead. Luckily, word has reached you of a safe zone a few counties over. As the non- combatants are loaded into a convoy to be taken to safety, it is up to the town's ragtag defenders to hold back the undead horde long enough for them to flee."

Yes, those are all 28mm figs.

Arriving at the table, it's a hell of an impressive layout.

The plotline is: we're some of the remaining citizens of Arlen, TX. The city is surrounded by a massive horde of the undead, and we're the defenders gathered on the south side of town, trying to hold off the zombies until a convoy of non-combatants can get moving (in eight turns.)

(They specified the southside of town, as previous runnings of this scenario have been the one of the other three sides of town. Clever!)

Suffice it to say, our work is cut out for us.

The rough outline. The deck of cards was massive, with many options played in different phases of the turn.

The rules are straightforward and fast. Within a turn, we had all the basics down, and we only had to ask for specific rules or 'creative' ideas. Initiative was by cards, worked wonderfully for the ten or so players they had. Victory points were earned for killing zombies (and other things) and points were lost when zombies began attacking the convoy (and a couple other things, I think.) Yes, this means we're encouraged to screw over the other players. Each turn each player got a random event card. Which helped them out or hurt opponents.

No, they don't have these rules available yet. Yes, when they do, I will be picking them up without hesitation.

My crew of ne'er-do-wells.

When I arrived, I had my choice of which themed crew I wanted to play. I went with the Dirty 1/3rd of a Dozen, four hardened criminals who didn't care so much about saving the town as saving our own hides. We didn't lose points for walkers getting to the convoy; this was instrumental to my strategy.

Other factions included: the local donut-eating cops, the local gun club, the A Team, the Sons of Arlen Motorcycle Club, the heavily-armed strippers, some Blackwater mercenaries, and many more. Each had their own little advantages and characteristics. Great to sit down to that kind of variety.

See that light blue police car in the middle of the barricades?

Turn one starts, we start taking shots into the undead crowd, and a few zombies get over the cars. The local cops, who have found some dynamite (via their random event card,) toss it into the horde. It bounces back a bit, and takes out... the police car in the middle of the barricades. This is bad.

My crew spots an ambulance nearby. Curiously enough, we have the rules on our card for how to hotwire a vehicle. We're stationed next to the A Team, so we take some shots at the zombies with them while falling back to our new ride.

Couple turns pass, and the barricade is now more of a speed bump. Zombies are streaming through the breach. Thanks to those random event cards, other zombies have popped up from buildings in town, from the sewers, and from one of the table edges. Eek.

My posse has jacked the ambulance and is heading to the road west. We can't get offboard until turn five, at which point we get VPs for saving our own necks. I did mention we weren't nice guys, right?

I should say most of my posse. Jefferson was tied up in hand to hand combat with one of the walkers that got through, and when he was able to break free, thanks to some help from the A Team... his buddies had driven off. No honor among thieves!

Seriously, it was a firefight!

My ride makes it to the edge of town, but needs to wait a couple turns until we can slip off. We pick off any walkers that are near us. Other townies are suspicious of my motives, but don't know what exactly I am up to. Other than, you know, running away. Snee hee hee.

LOOK AT THAT. So cinematic.

Thanks to someone else's random event card, a zombie breaks into the ambulance, and attacks us. After a turn or two, I go from three criminals fighting one zombie to one criminal fighting two other zombies, including the driver.

Remember Jefferson? Inexplicably still breathing, he sees the writing on the wall, and is sticking like glue to the other survivors, falling back to the convoy.  

I could write three more blog posts about everything else that happened in this game. Walkers ambushing survivors, one-in-a-million shots, terrible turns of the tide. One of the things that went really well for a con game is that each player had their own characters, and thusly their own story in this larger event, enhanced by their own cards and cards others played on or around them. Highly effective, and a real plus for the folks behind this game.

Posey, the lone surviving criminal from the ambulance, gets out, gets in another ambulance they randomly ended up packing next to, and uses that to secure his escape and me a fair number of victory points. (As bad guys, we didn't care about fallen comrades.)

Oh, and Jefferson, the luckiest bad boy in town, makes it out to the convoy at the end and off the table. Victory points are tallied. I come in second, after... another bad guy player who didn't care about the convoy getting attacked. Having zeds pop up so early, before we could muster a rearguard to keep them off the civilians cost a lot of points from the good guys, which really gave us criminal types an advantage. But I speak without fear of contradiction when I say that everyone had fun.

Huge game. Great times.

After that epic battle, we headed out of town early. Swung by Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie, since it was on the way and I'd never been before. Believe the hype, it's pretty close to the ideal game store. Clean, well-lit, well-stocked. Plenty of space for gaming. The downside is... that's it's too far from my house. Ah well.

Kickstarter stumping: Stonehaven Half-Orcs

OK, quick aside here. Stonehaven Miniatures is coming up to the deadline on their latest fantasy kickstarter, this one for a wide variety of half-orcs and other odds and ends.

I bring this up specifically because I have a couple pulp and Victorian scifi fans among my leadership. In the recent past, I also signed on for Wolsung, which is best described for me as "Shadowrun steampunk." It's a pulp Victorian scifi-fantasy setting, which includes among other things the Triad of the Lotus Dragon, an orcish immigrant criminal organization. And coincidentally enough, there's a number of figures in the Stonehaven offering that would be perfect for your demihuman VSF needs: the Nobleman, the Pistoleer, the Mechanist, the Scholar, and more. Stonehaven really shines in making highly characterful figures, each one practically writing their own story for you. Take a look, you'll see.

The kickstarter can be found here, and as of this posting has about 36 hours left. You can pick up the figs from their previous kickstarters here.

There's already plenty of backers, so I am not trying to push the kickstarter 'to the next level.' Nor is getting a huge number particularly a great deal, truth be told. It's a deal, but not an investment. The sole reason I am post this is because I think this company is great, they are putting out some figs unlike anyone else, they are very responsive to their customers, and I don't think enough people have heard about them. Plenty of reason to take the time out to spread the word.

quick and disparate thoughts

SUMMERTIME SADNESS:
Games for Gencon getting lined up: in addition to three days of Critical Mass demos, I have two days of Bushido on order. I'm waiting patiently for the Relic Knights events to show up on the schedule, but I am having second thoughts about my ability to finish my Critical Mass army and my Bushido figs with enough time to get my Relic Knights figs done to any sort of worthy standard. I mean, that's a lot of painting on a strict deadline. And I am already tempted to paint so many other figs instead of the ones I need to. And I am not, you know, good with deadlines. At all. Nonetheless, here we are.

(Not that my Relic Knights have arrived yet, but I feel that day is almost upon us.)

DRUG OF THE NATION:
Having finished True Detective (so, so good,) I started in on Penny Dreadful. And wow. I mean, I heard it was straight from the pages of In Her Majesty's Name, but even in the first episode it just shines right through. Best gaming TV show ever? We shall see.

(I note that the fine gentlemen and ladies at IHMN have started putting up their IHMN Gothic supplement free online. No coincidence, I say.)

SO FAR AWAY:
Yes, still behind on a great many posts. So many. Have only really played Critical Mass and Pulp City in the past couple months. And re-learned Netrunner, a.k.a. Maurice's new favorite game. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Hope to get some Bushido in before the big dance, but that will require me to figure out where I left my much-neglected pinning tools, so I can at least get figs on bases...

Right then. Actual content next time. I hope.

stream of consciousness

We should bring back vests and ties as gaming formal wear.

OK, just throwing out some odds and ends for your light reading before getting back to the meat and bones of this place.

The BBC reminded us that it is the 100th anniversary of Little Wars by H.G. Wells, the predecessor to all modern wargaming. 100 years! How excellent is that.

As noted previously, I enjoy painting, but I am not great at it. And a lot of it is stressing over the completion. Painting the first 90% of a fig is easy. But that last 10%? Ugh. Tiny details that are so easy to mess up, not finding something embarrassing until you've taken the picture for the blog, etc. Giving myself artificial deadlines or challenges can help ameliorate this. The recent push has been to complete my Checkmate cast for the 7tv forum thread and I can say, last week, I got that put to bed, finally. Whew. Pics up here in the next few days. Then I'm giving myself a few days to just assemble and paint random things, then to press ahead for an IHMN company. Or two. Nose, grindstone.

The impending arrival of Blackwater Gulch kickstarter figs, and playing around with the IHMN rules, have me thinking about the Wild West, too. (Because, frankly, the IHMN rules would work great for a Weird West game as is, and the second book will address that area directly.) For some good resources, Jarec goes over Wild West gaming options here. And blogs like this really make me wonder why I never got around to this setting before now.

But when I start thinking, I hit up on one of my favorite RPGs from back when: Deadlands. If you think of it as Shadowrun in the Wild West, you're off to a good start. And even more specifically, since it was the 90's, there was a collectible card game for the same setting: Doomtown. The game itself was decent, but the setting was chock full of material. And each and every one of them would make for a great IHMN company. The Maze Rats are pretty much a pirate version of the Tong. The sinister Whateleys would be a great way to bring in Lovecraftian themes, and the upcoming book will give us some great stuff for the Sioux and the Flock. So yeah. Lots and lots to do.

Anyways. Here's two other good pieces for reading, continuing with whatever theme you want to make out of this post. Maurice clued me in to Anatoli's commentary on "historical wargaming and realistic expectations." Even if you're not a historical gamer, it's worthy material. Another thought provoking read for gamers of all stripes is this article by Charlie Jane Anders on the "7 deadly sins of worldbuilding." Minis gaming doesn't always involve the same level of details, but it certainly got the wheels turning over here. (Definitely gave me some ideas on terrain I'd like to do for Relic Knights.)

So yes. Soon, more painted figs, and more pics from this weekend's gaming-o-rama. If anything comes from the IHMN/Doomtown rambling, you know you'll see it here too. Eventually. After I come up with five other great projects to distract me.

Historicon 2013, day two (many pics)

Saturday morning, I slept as late as possible, knowing it'd be a long day ahead. The rental car I got for the weekend had XM satellite radio, and I confess I am a bit spoiled by it. The BPM channel served as my commuting soundtrack for the convention (and this song in particular was a choice find; I heard it maybe a handful of times, and I still want to listen to it again and again.) I managed to get out the door about a half-hour early, and saw maybe a half-hour of traffic, so got there right about on time? Heard rumors later drivers ran into worse backups, so hooray for planning beforehand.

Soon as I got there, I made a quick hit on the dealers room. I knew my schedule would be tight for the day, and wanted to pick up some presents for the guys back at the ranch, and figured this might be my last opportunity for the day. (This is, again, foreshadowing.) Toys in hand, I darted over to Wally's.

Sample my wares!

For those not familiar with the Historicon circuit, Wally's Basement is essentially a flea market where games rent a table for a few hours and sell stuff they don't want anymore. I'm a fan of the early Saturday slot, and have in the past few events managed to unload enough old product I no longer feel the need to keep, and made enough money off it... to buy more toy soldiers at the con. There's a disconnect here, but just run with it, heh. Anyways, things got off to a slow start, which I was worried was because I got a slot all the way in the back row. Luckily, things picked up before too long. I was able to find a good home for both some Warhammer Dogs of War figs I never got around to using, as well as a bunch of 25mm Foundry cowboys I picked up many years back. I was worried with the Reaper Bones kickstarter figs hitting the market, there wouldn't be many buyers for the older metal figs, but I was able to sell more than a few there as well. And maybe it was because this was the first time running the table by myself, but people certainly seemed chattier this year. In the end, made a tidy profit, and made some spare room for more minis.

Even with eating a speedy lunch, I had a couple minutes to myself, so I headed back to the dealers hall for the second time of the day, to spend a bit of that hard-earned cash. Gotta support the industry and all that!

The Count emerges from his shadowly lair!

When I signed up for the convention originally, the first thing I looked for in the events list was anyone running In Her Majesty's Name. As noted previously, I picked up the game a bit back, and have been looking forward to trying it out. The rules really seemed to be what I was looking for, but I needed to see them in action to know. I always learn by playing. And that's one of the things conventions are great at doing.

The Zef Secret Service, in their finest, not-so-secret uniforms.

Our fearless gamemaster presented us with a number of options of companies to pick from. Helpfully, he happens to have posted the stats (and closeup pics) for the non-book companies online; you can check them out here. After some dithering, I went with the Zef Secret Service, there to defeat the foul Count Krabbenstein and his wicked minions, and thusly convince the villagers how much better life would be under Zef rule.

 The villagers are revolting.

The whole table, a grand affair. All our action focused in and around the castle. A whole separate battle was waged around the village, which was a great way to run the game for that many players. And, truth be told, after three turns our so, we had the majority of the rules down, and just used the gamemaster for rulings or more obscure questions.

And a river runs through it.

The foreboding forest.

I was sitting next to the Black Dragon Tong player. Check out the glamor shot of the paintjobs (and that Yeti!)

Another pic of the village I wasn't visiting. Love it! Especially the little details, like the scarecrow there.

The villagers, being an angry mob, pretty much barreled right towards the castle. The Count sent his brides out to give them a good thrashing. Zef's finest, meanwhile, fanned out and started taking out the Count's Cossack minions, including shooting them off the castle walls.

One Cossack really stood out, and was the fan favorite on our side. His musket jammed early (should have invested in fine Zef engineering!) and, discarding it, he leaped from the parapets to join the fray! He was a house on fire, shrugging off shot after shot. I am pretty convinced his last name was Rasputin.

Between the villagers and Zef steel, the Count and his ladies were dispatched with extreme prejudice. But before the day could be won, the Gypsies finally committed to the fray, and it turns out they were a bunch of werewolves! They tore through what remained of everyone in the big scrim, in short order.

Seeing a lone villager run towards the now-empty castle, the remaining Zef forces saw the wisdom in his rustic peasant attitude, and started hightailing it towards the gate, as the werewolves cleaned up the last men standing.

Pictured above, the last of the Zef Secret Police is overrun by lycanthropes, while the last villager successfully makes it to safety. I have zero idea what happened in the village, but it sounded like they were having some fun plot twists of their own.

 The gamemaster put his writeup of the day here, check it out.

Officially, I rule IHMN a success. The game is relatively intuitive, and runs very smoothly. The turn sequence (all players move, in initiative order, then everyone shoot, then melee happens) keeps people involved, and allows for some interesting tactical choices. And a wealth of VSF companies to pick from, combined with some good rules for writing up your own, means there's something for everyone. Time to get my own figs painted up and run some games for the local crowd.

I had one more game scheduled for the evening, but was beat, and didn't want to stick around for more before my drive home (much less kicking around for the WWPD podcast after that.) So, for my last act of the day, I hit the dealers room a third time, mere minutes before they closed, and renewed my Old Glory membership. I wasn't sure, going into the con, that I would need to. I mean, hadn't I bought enough Old Glory in the past year? But the more notes I took about future purchases, the more things I kept finding to grab from them, so yeah, decision made. The money made off the table that morning made it an easy call.

Finally, here's some links to other people's Historicon reports. I do regret missing out on Les Miserables: the Wargame, because wow. Mister Nizz put up his full con AAR, always a good read. Victoria's Boys in Red presented their VSF report as well. You can follow the links here for some YouTube reporting goodness. Luke from WWPD put up his gallery, including some fancy close-ups, one thing my cell camera isn't great at. And oh, if you check out nothing else, here's plenty of eye-candy at 1000 Foot General too, so many fine pictures. Make sure to follow the links for the other days.

League of steampunk skirmish? Yes please.

"It is 1895 and the world is in turmoil. In the decades to come historians will reflect upon the cause of this state of affairs and many will point at Charles Babbage. His perfection of his Difference Engine and then his Analytical Engine gave the new scientific establishments in the great imperial nations the tool they had so long needed in order to make a great leap forward. The ability to make huge and repeatable sets of complex calculations revolutionized the world. 

"Within twenty years we had the perfection of miniaturized steam engines, electric light and motors, Radium Bricks, Arc weapons, Hydrogen and latterly Helium Dirigibles, Road Trains, Calculating Artillery Engines, Sea and Land Dreadnoughts and, well, the list is almost endless. Nothing is impossible when the wealth of a great nation is coupled to the unlimited imagination of educated men of science and their engineers..." 

In the past I mentioned that while I was all over Empire of the Dead, in the end I didn't get in on the most recent Kickstarter, in favor of dumping money on Zombicide 2 instead. But just reading through it reminded me how much I love that convergence of steampunk and dark Victoriana and what have you. Fiddling with the idea of a 7tv steampunk game distracted me for a bit; that may still happen at some point, especially when our Blackwater Gulch figs come in. (See how my mind works? Just keeps going and going...)

But really, for me, it always comes back to the League. Even before I started branching out into pulp gaming, I had been keeping a list of figs to get to convert the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I loved the comics, and adored the concept and the setting, all the fiddly historical details and discreet references to obscure literature.* (And truth be told, even that goes back to Anno Dracula, which was written by one Kim Newman, bringing everything back to gaming. Full circle!) There's a definite allure to the anything-goes feeling of pulp adventure, and when you get to bring in excellent characters like that (or a pastiche version of them) it really strikes a chord with me. A cowboy game is good, but bring in a masked man in black with a bullwhip and a rapier, and I'm hooked.

So when I ran across In Her Majesty's Name by North Star, my curiousity was roused. Equal parts steampunk and AE-WWII-style historical revisionism, this is straight up my alley. I don't have any real experience with Osprey's rules, but this post on the development of the game definitely sounds like it's worth investigating. Other posts in that blog gave me even more confidence in the direction they were taking, and this thread notes some of the other companies and clues. They're running a pre-order, which is a not-Kickstarter, but will likely net you a couple extra figs if you order ahead of time. I'm already brimming with ideas.

* - I also... didn't entirely hate the movie? No, it was bad, but they did bring in a couple good ideas.