Thursday 25 January 2018

This Town...

With Hunting Grounds being released into the wild this week, myself, Tony and Tom decided to revisit the first Scenario from the book- the Ghost Town.

I would be playing my Apache Posse- the Firemakers (using the Theme rules from HG); Tony would command the Dark Confederacy, and Tom would assume the mantle of the Twilight Order.

We would be playing on less urban terrain, so I set up a badlands ranch as the 'Ghost Town' surrounded by rock formations and cacti- as per the Scenario, the buildings would begin the game in the spirit realm; and so we used green glass counters to show this.

The game began with the Posses converging on the spectral buildings- the Twilight Order hanging back slightly to assume good firing positions (one rifleman by the name of Hank even clambering to the top of a precarious rock-spire), while the Confederates advanced behind their usual wall of expendable Revenants! The Firemakers, meanwhile, divided their forces- one half led by their Chief, Bodaway; the other led by the Shaman Taklishim.
Bodaway's group would shift into the Hunting Grounds and attack from there, while Taklishim's braves would mount an assault in the physical realm. The cards were kind to me, and I got the necessary red suits to pull this two-pronged assault off!

*The Firemakers cautiously advance on the ranch...

Careful fire-discipline in the early stages of the game saw the Order give the Confederates something to think about- first mowing down the Revenants and then opening up on the living behind, they managed to Shake the Necromancer- Tom knew that if he could drop the evil sorcerer, the Revenants would collapse and the Confederate numerical advantage would be neutered.
Unfortunately, he couldn't quite capitalise on this and the Necromancer managed to slink into the Hunting Grounds, from where he eventually managed to heal himself. In fact, this game saw uncharacteristically bad luck on the part of Tom beyond the initial turns!

*Hank takes up position atop a rock-spire to give covering fire to his comrades in the Order.

On the right flank, the Apaches ran into the Twilight Order's vanguard- a chaotic shootout ensued, during which Taklishim summoned a Wendigo- the beast screeched it's feral hunger most impressively; seconds before a silver bullet drilled it between the antlers and it dropped, physical form already unravelling. Meanwhile, the now-wounded Bodaway and his warriors were pinned behind the shack by a Confederate sniper atop the water-tower- with no red cards in my Hand to shift into the other realm, they were stuck for the moment... My cunning 'two-pronged assault' was already in tatters!

*The Wendigo appears from the aether and assumes an intimidating pose...
 

*... And an unimpressed Crusader of the Order guns it down without breaking stride!
 

Across the table, a mass brawl broke out in the yard between the Confederates and Twilight Order as they vied for control of the ghostly buildings and the loot within- both sides fed more and more fighters into the melee, but it soon appeared that the relentless undead (helped by Tom's atrocious luck!) had the upper hand...

*Things get messy out in the yard!

Taking advantage of this distraction, the Firemakers rallied and grabbed two loot counters from under the noses of the enemy- Taklishim and his surviving men mopped up the Order's grunts that still opposed them and positioned themselves ready to join the big scrap as the game drew to a close!
It didn't all go to plan, however- Bodaway (now in Wolf-Form) made a break from cover to draw attention away from his warrior who had the loot, and was gunned down by the Confederate sniper.
The sharpshooter then shifted into the Hunting Grounds to take down the fleeing Apache in the final turn- only to realise too late that his vantage point existed in the physical realm. The structure beneath his feet faded into a spectral outline, and the man plummeted to his death- the lesson here is always pay attention to which Plane of Existence you are in, kids!

*The Dark Confederacy secure the farmstead as the Skinwalkers melt away into the wilderness with their loot!

The game finally drew to it's bloody conclusion with the luckless Twilight Order wiped out to a man in the brutal melee and the Apaches making a fighting retreat against the relentless Confederates- both Posses reduced to a fraction of their former strength, and both holding two pieces of loot...

When the VP were counted up, the Confederates had squeaked a narrow victory thanks to the number of kills they had inflicted on the Order- a well deserved victory for Tony!


Sunday 21 January 2018

Dracula's Painting

I've managed to get a fair bit of 'official' stuff painted for Dracula's America over the last few days, ready for next weekend's inaugural Ingleton Wargames Weekend (organised by my good friend Andy and the kind folks at the Wheatsheaf pub!).

This is just a quick Post while I try to figure out exactly what I'll be doing for the participation game of DA I'll be running on the Sunday...

*My Congregation Posse, plus Unique Summons- I had a lot of fun paining these guys- lots of referencing snake-skin patterns! The Temple Snake (centre-right) was converted with a human skull-head to match how I originally envisaged the thing, and it's patterning is based on a diamondback rattlesnake! The Vessel (top left) was converted with twisted paperclips (inexpertly) sculpted over with greenstuff to try and give the impression of spiritual energy lifting him off the ground. I'm also particularly fond of the grassy tufts added to the back and shoulders of my Swamp Baka (centre-back); this was a last-minute idea that I think finished the model off nicely!
The rest of the Posse was painted in fairly muted, naturalistic colours to help them blend in with their swampy environs- apart from the bright white 'skeleton' paint on my Houngan Arcanist.

*The finished new Wolf-Form Skinwalker (a Frostgrave Barbarian Warhound, I think!) faces off against a mob of Zombies (from Northstar's Horror Stories range).
I'm especially pleased with how the Wolf turned out- again, lots of referencing images of Grey Wolves from books !

Back soon with a DA Game Report!..

Thursday 18 January 2018

Back in the Saddle...

A belated happy 2018!

After a well-earned rest following the madness that is my job during the festive period, I finally managed to catch up on the far more important business of gaming.

I wasn't completely idle, however- managing to snatch an hour of painting here and there meant I made some headway on my Ghost Archipelago stuff, and I even did some extra work on my Dracula's America Posses- getting some more hapless mooks finished for the Twilight Order and Red Hand Coven, plus starting a new Wolf-Form Skinwalker model for my Apaches...

*The new recruits.

*Some WIP fresh blood on it's way to DA!

*My Heritor Crew...
 
*...And my GA menagerie so far...
 
*...With more on the way!

During my break, I also got some extra rules material for Dracula's America under my belt so expect to see that in the future; either on the Osprey Games Blog or in magazines such as Wargames Illustrated!
I've also started a new, super-secret Dracula's America-related project that I'm very excited about, but I can't say much more as it's still extremely early days and it hasn't actually been officially green-lit by Osprey yet...

Er, looking back on what I just wrote, my break wasn't actually that much of a break really!

My first game of 2018 was an introductory game of the excellent Lion / Dragon Rampant- I've played both versions of this game many times over the last couple of years, and thought it was about time I introduced it to the Ingleton lads!

*The Armies advance towards each other as some pigs look on from the fields!

We broke out our SAGA Warbands for use in this game, and didn't really worry overmuch about army composition or coming up with a fancy Scenario- we just picked rough 24 point Retinues of the models we fancied using and then got on with the business of killing each other!

*My Viking Warlord and his Hearthguard (foreground) calls out his rival (on the left, waving his sword about) in the centre of the field.

As usual with L/DR, the game swung one way then the other; with both sides experiencing the highs and lows of dicing for activations- Team Awesome's legendary ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory saw us narrowly defeated in the first game. Since everybody was enjoying themselves, we pushed on and played a second game- this time, myself and Andy were utterly crushed in embarrassingly short order by Tony and Tom's much more decisive warriors.

*My brave warriors take the farm from a handful of enemy archers in the first game. The pigs are ours!

*In the second game, our warriors on the right flank are run down and massacred by enemy horsemen while our archers (and a few bemused cows) look on!

As the dust settled, L/DR was unanimously declared a great success by the Ingletonians- we will be playing more of it over the coming year, I'm sure (talk even turned to collecting Game of Thrones armies for it...).

Here's to a great new year of gaming!

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