Return to Dracula's America, Part 3- Louder Than Words

Here we are with the last in this little 'mini-series' of Posts giving you new rules to try out in your games of Dracula's America.
This time we will be looking at some new rules for Actions, to give your models some additional, dynamic options during play.

The usual disclaimer applies here- these are not yet 'official' amendments to the rules, so you should always agree to their use with your opponents beforehand. Please do give them a go, though, and see what you think- any feedback can be shared with me either here or on the Lead Adventure Forum (I don't have Facebook so won't be able to keep track of things on the Player's Page!).

Let's get to it:


SPRINT.
Once per Activation, an unengaged model that is on foot may Sprint instead of making a normal Move Action.
For the duration of that Move, the model adds +2" to it's Move Rate (so typically giving a total movement of 6"). However, this Move must be made in a straight line- choose the direction you will Sprint before making the Action.
You can use Sprint to Charge or engage an enemy.


SNAP-FIRE.
Once per Activation, a model may Snap-Fire instead of making a normal Shoot Action.
This Action must always be made against the closest visible Target, and the Shooter makes a 1 Die Shooting Test that can never be modified in any way.
If a Hit is scored, then the Target must make a 1 Die Nerve Test- if Successful, they are unaffected. If they Fail this Test they are marked as Done (think of them as pinned-down by the wild incoming fire).
As soon as the Snap-Fire is resolved, the Shooter's Action ends immediately- using a Skill or Weapon (such as a Repeater Rifle) does not allow you to make any additional shots in the same Action!


BLIND-FIRE.
Once per Activation, a model may Blind-Fire instead of making a normal Shoot Action.
Resolve a Snap-Fire attack using the rules above (this counts as your Snap-Fire for that Activation), but treat the shot as being made from a position 1" away and in LOS of the Shooter. This must be a position that would be accessible to the Shooter, and allows you to represent things like a model quickly ducking from around a corner to get in a hasty shot, before ducking back into cover.
In this way, you can potentially avoid triggering an enemy model on Lookout.


LIE PRONE.
An unengaged model on foot may Lie Prone at the end of any Move Action. Lie the model on it's side and give it a Prone marker to show this (and to differentiate it from Downed models).
A Prone model can stand back up, but this takes up an entire Action. Until then it may be harder to see, counts as being in Cover against Shooting (even if in the open), may Move up to 2", may not Charge or otherwise engage an enemy, cannot hold a Bystander and suffers a -1 Die Modifier in a Fight. It may still Shoot or Cast Arcane Powers.


So far I've found these options to be good fun, and that they serve to make the game even more cinematic; but let me know what you think after giving them a go!

I'll be back in the near future with some more Drac.Am painting...

Return to Dracula's America, Part 2- Regarding Summoning, and the Gentle Art of Hitting Things.

Hello, folks!

Here is the second batch of optional rules for Drac.Am for you to take a look at- as before, please give them a try and let me know what you think, but remember that these aren't official new rules; simply some 'work in progress' options for you to try out ahead of a future errata/FAQ...

Don't forget to spread the word- the more people we have testing them out, the better!


First up, Fighting- I know that some people find this a little underwhelming compared to shooting, and this was deliberate since I wanted this to be a game about close-range fire-fights rather than a face-to-face slugging match! But for those who favour fisticuffs, here are some new rules to try out:


FIGHTING.

• When you Strike your opponent, their Save is determined by the total Successes you scored, rather than the difference between your totals.
• Shoving works exactly as before- you push your opponent away a number of inches equal to the difference between totals.
• If the Defender wins the Fight, they will not Strike their Attacker. Instead, they may either remain engaged or Shove their opponent away.

Now here's an alternate idea for Summoning in the game- some players feel that this can get a little out of control (especially with an optimised Crossroads Cult Posse!), so here is one possible solution to this:


SUMMONING.
If your Posse has the ability to Summon other models during play, you will generate a 'Pool' of 4 Summoning Points (SP) at the start of each game.

SP are expended whenever you Summon a model during that game- whenever you successfully Summon a creature, reduce your Pool by the corresponding amount of SP shown below.

Use a piece of spare paper to track the number of Points you have available during play, and ensure you keep your opponents updated on how many SP you have remaining as the game progresses!

• Lesser Entities cost 1/2 an SP each.
• Minor Entities cost 1 SP each.
• Major Entities cost 2 SP each.

For example, I successfully Summon a Behemoth- this costs me 2 SP. I now have 2 SP remaining in my Pool. Later that game, I Summon a Lesser Entity- this costs me 1/2 an SP. I now have 1 and-a-half SP remaining in my Pool!

Return to Dracula's America. Part 1- 'Tis But A Scratch!

Time to blow the cobwebs off this Blog...

While my gaming time has been limited due to me taking advantage of the dry weather (though my Church of Dagon Posse is coming along nicely), I haven't been idle behind the scenes- between myself, Northstar Miniatures and Osprey Games you will hopefully start to see a gradual release of additional material for players of Drac.Am over the coming months!
While I can't give too much away right now, expect new rules for Twilight Order and Red Hand players, new Factions, new Hired Guns and Mercenary Drifters, rules for setting your games and campaigns in a new environment, and extended background dealing with the aftermath of Forbidden Power- even a look into the origins of Dracula and vampirism. I'm also working on a 'choose your own adventure' style 'branching narrative campaign' to tie it all together...

Hopefully we can round it all off with an Errata/FAQ, and a few optional or updated rules- in that spirit, I thought I'd share an idea for new Injury Tables with you here, so you can have a crack at them and maybe even give me some feedback! I intended the existing Injury system to be pretty unforgiving, to represent the dangers of living in a world populated by monsters (human and otherwise), but I'm aware that it can be a little too 'rich' for some- here, then, are a set of (slightly) more forgiving Injury Tables for the faint of heart!


INJURY TABLE.

1 = Dead!

2-4 = Lasting Injury. Roll a D5 on the Table below.

5-9 = Close Call. No effect; the model is unharmed.

10 = True Grit!

LASTING INJURY TABLE.

1 = Old Wound.
2 = One-Eyed.
3 = Limp.
4 = Weakened.
5 = Laid-Up. You may pay $5 for medical treatment at this point to treat this as a Close Call.


Please feel free to share this on the Players Facebook Page, or discuss it with me via the Lead Adventure Forum- the more folks that give it a try, the better! Let me also just reiterate that these are still WIP and are not 'official' amendments to the existing rules- as usual, both you and your opponent/s must agree to their use beforehand!


Next up, some options for Summoning...

Dracula's Painting Part 2- The Revenge!

During my recent extended period of Internet 'downtime', I managed to get some more figures painted for my steadily-growing Dracula's America collection...

I may be bringing some of these along with me to the demo game at Partizan in May- I always feel nervous handling the fantastically painted 'official' miniatures!

First off, we have my Shadow Dragon Tong Posse:

*I tried to give my two Guilao (the spearman on the left and the central swordsman) a 'ghostly' paint-effect on their arms to give the feel of them being partially ethereal- not sure how well it worked out, but it was an interesting experiment!

Followed by the second of the new Factions from Hunting Grounds- The Forsaken:

*Not sure if the photo shows it very well, but I'm very pleased with the painted-on weathering- if you look closely you might see a few elbows and knees (even a few toes!) sticking out of the clothing- the fellow bottom left also has some tears in his sleeve... The Trooper on the far right has both a mounted and dismounted version.

Next, we have a rag-tag band of Hired Guns, including the Wargames Illustrated Django and his portable gatling gun (kept in the coffin when not in use, of course!). Getting to write rules for using him in DA was a real treat!

*I'm particularly pleased with how the Stitch Doctor turned out- a deceptively simple miniature that was a joy to paint- I used several different skin tones on various parts of him to try and give him a 'patchwork' look, but again I suspect my camera-phone doesn't really show this very well!

And finally, my Unwelcome Guests. These were great fun to paint- especially the Jackalope, which I've been wanting to paint up for ages now! Thanks also to Ash at Guerrilla Miniature Games for the inspiration to paint the Hellhound up as a skinless monstrosity.

*The only one of these critters that is not an 'official' DA figure is the Vampire Ancient on the right- this is a 'Vampire in Manbat form' by the excellent Heresy Miniatures!

So, that's everything new for now- I have some more Apaches close to finishing (to replace my tiny wee Foundry ones who are looking a little bit small compared to everybody else!), and then I'd like to turn my hand to the new Northstar Plains Skinwalker Posse...

I'll be back soon with the first offerings for what I hope will be my big painting project for this year- something I've been wanting to do for many years...

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!

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!..

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!

Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Exciting times today- I got home after work to find this little beauty sat on my doormat...

That's right; one of the first hard copies of book 2 for Dracula's America! I suspect I may have made a small, high-pitched mew of joy at that point...

A nice, glossy, 96-page softback- heftier than I was expecting, but then I did get carried away writing it!

Ah, but it gets better- on the back page there was this:

Better finish the play-testing then, eh?!

Skinwalker Tribes- Apache!

This week, I have mostly been painting Apache for Dracula's America!

The Skinwalkers are my favourite Faction besides the Dark Confederacy, and since my switch to 28mm Old West instead of 32mm I've been waiting to get painting these guys!

*The Posse so far- including a Wendigo for Summoning and the Wolf Beast-Form for my Boss.

This Posse has been built using the 'Desert Tribes' Theme from the forthcoming Hunting Grounds supplement, so a little teaser for you here!

Using this Theme, all foot models (including Bear-Form Skinwalkers!) have a Move rate of 5" to represent their more elusive tactics- it doesn't sound much, but over the course of a game it can let you cover much more ground than other foot-sloggers (it's only 1" less than a horse, after all!) or go that extra distance to find cover...

The other wrinkle is that you are limited to only a single Skinwalker- I went for the Wolf-Form, as it's my favourite of the two!

*My Boss, Bodaway- in both human and Wolf guise! The Wolf-Form is simply a Frostgrave Werewolf.

However, you do gain the help of a Shaman instead. This fellow comes with Banish as standard (Skinwalker Tribes sure do hate those Abyssals), and I chose Summon and Shadow-Dance; one of the new Skinwalker-only Powers to give my Wolf a little extra protection against Shooting.

*My Shaman, Taklishim, and his Summoned Wendigo- this is a conversion of the North Star model, bent so it is leaning forwards in a more threatening pose with green-stuff mouth and fur and Mantic plastic zombie hands! Taklishim himself has swapped his spear for a rifle from the Old West weapons set from Colonel Bill's.

There are also Themes for Plains and Prairie Tribes and Woodland and Mountain Tribes in the book...

*The rest of the Posse- L-R: Eskaminzim, Dasodaha, Askadodilges and Bimisi. All my Apaches are from Foundry- they are at the smaller end of the 28mm spectrum (if you get what I mean!) compared to my other stuff, but are so characterful that I don't mind.

The Firemakers are finally out for blood in 28mm scale!

DRACULA'S ERRATA!

Well, it was as inevitable as the tides...

Thanks to the keen-eyes of several players (and Mr. Alex Buchel, no less!), a few errors in the Dracula's America rulebook have come to light.

I've gathered them here for now, for the benefit of myself and all players. If any more crop up then I'll edit this Post and add them in- if anybody from the Facebook group is reading this, feel free to drop me a comment and I'll look into any questions you may have!
Pass it on...


Page 9- Contact.
Add the following sentence to the end of this section:

"The only Actions an engaged model can make are to Disengage or to Fight".


Page 45- Attacking Bystanders.
The final sentence should read:

"Finally, a Bystander that Fails to Save suffers Damage as normal. It is worth no Victory Points if it falls Casualty."


Page 74- Recruitment.
7th line down, add the following to the end of this sentence:

"Note that you roll the appropriate Die even if your Boss is unable to take part in the rest of the Campaign Turn for some reason (such as being Laid-Up due to Injury)."


Page 96- Wendigo.
To better fit in with the 'official' North Star Wendigo model, change it's Base Size to 30mm.


Page 122- Pale Rider.
The reference to the Rider moving 8" is a mistake- it should move 6" towards it's Prey as noted in it's profile!

DRACULA'S DEMO, 26/9/2017

Last Tuesday, I managed to make it to the Lancaster club to demo Dracula's America with a few of the guys- there ended up being four of us, with Twilight Order, Red Hand, Crossroads Cult and Dark Confederacy Posses taking to the streets of Red Rock to Stake a Claim!

The game went very smoothly and in a great spirit as always- the 'Order playing very cautiously and hunkering down in the Gem Saloon (every window and doorway bristled with guys on Lookout, and a lone Crusader with rifle took up a vantage point on the roof!).
Meanwhile the other three Posses kicked seven bells out of each other, with the Cult player gleefully summoning Abyssal creatures as fast as they could be put down! A Broodkin and a Cultist engaged in a toe-to-toe showdown with their shotguns, which the vampire eventually won- Shaken, the creature promptly fed on his rival as they lay there bleeding and full of buckshot to heal his wounds...
The Confederates advanced steadily up the street towards the sounds of fighting, a 'meat-shield' of Revenants leading the way as always. Despite taking fire and even a Hellhound attack, the zombie soldiers just kept getting back up!

Other stand-out moments were the Crusader rifleman on the Saloon roof running out of silver bullets on his first shot of the game, as he tried to bring down a monstrous Behemoth doing it's best King Kong impression on the roof of the Olympia Hotel.
In the following Activation, a lowly Cultist with sixgun promptly plugged the Behemoth right between the eyes- the huge fire-belching beast went Down, tumbled off the roof and broke it's neck in the fall; dissipating into a cloud of sulphurous smoke as it hit the ground!

Considering that this was only the Lancaster lads' second game of DA, and their first using all the supernatural elements, they took to the new rules very quickly (much to my relief!)- the game ended with the Red Hand winning with two buildings under their control, and the Confederacy and Cultists drawing with one apiece.

Cheers!

DRACULA'S AMERICA POSSES.

One of the biggest perks with having DA published was getting one of each miniature made for the game by Northstar!
Consequently, the Lead Mountain grew ever-higher a week or so ago when a very large box arrived in the post from Osprey.

Now I already have a fairly sizeable Old West collection, but this is entirely made up of 32mm scale Black Scorpion (plus a few conversions made for play-testing DA) figures.
The Dracula's America stuff is more 'true' 28mm scale, so naturally this means starting an entirely new collection... And you can never have enough Old West stuff!

It's a hard life, indeed.

So I set-to with a will, and managed to rattle through a fair few models ready to take to a demo game tonight for the folks at the Lancaster club. There is something both surreal and amazing about painting actual models for a game that you designed, and that other people will play!

The bases still need finishing off, but for tonight- they'll do (and apologies for the blurriness on some of my photos- I don't have the steadiest hands when using my mobile phone's camera)...

Rank and file generic Old West guys to bulk out the Twilight Order and Red Hand Posses will hopefully be provided by the other guys tonight until I can get my Artizan Designs stuff painted- it was just too hard to resist the actual DA models, so they jumped the queue!

 



*Dark Confederacy Necromancer and Revenants, Die-Hards and finally a group shot including a Vengeful Spirit that can be summoned by my Necromancer.

 *Crossroads Cult (including Hooded Cultists by Pulp Figures). The Magister with book, Harbinger of the Abyss (the gent with the horns and the fancy duds) and the Hellhound and Behemoth that can be summoned to fight for them are all 'official' DA minis!

 *Vampiric Brood-Kin of the Red Hand Coven. The guy on the right was given a shotgun from Warlord Games' 'Project Z' plastic Survivors.

*Crusaders of the Twilight Order, weighed down by armour and packing silver bullets in their guns!

I've got my Congregation Posse undercoated and ready to go, and then I need to decide on a theme for my Skinwalker Tribe- then it will be time to buckle down and paint some 'regular' guys and gals to fill out the collection, before rewarding myself with some of the creature encounters (really looking forward to painting the Sasquatch!). Hopefully I'll be caught up in time for the new stuff in book 2...

J.