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.

THIS IS NOT A TEST- Sunday, 24th Sept 2017.

I'm lucky enough to belong to two-and-a-half gaming groups. One in my home village which meets every Sunday (and the occasional Friday), one in a nearby town that meets on a Monday, and one in the 'Big Smoke' that is the City of Lancaster over the border in Lancashire that I regrettably only manage to get to infrequently (hence, I only count it as half a group)...

Sunday saw me finally get a chance to break out my Post Apocalypse stuff that has been sat in a box in the store-room for the last three or four years and play my first ever game of This Is Not A Test (TNT) by World's End Publishing.
TNT is my kind of game in every way- a small scale skirmish game with light RPG elements, 'gang progression', and fast playing rules that give you plenty of cinematic moments. My personal favourite is the shooting mechanic where you never know how badly hurt an enemy has been by your guns until your turn is over- do you keep pouring fire on the same model to make sure they go down, or do you save your ammo for other threats? Cracking stuff.
Overall the rule-book is fantastic quality as well, and I'm very glad I backed the Kickstarter for it!

But enough of this- on to the game! We played the Snipe Hunt Scenario using 300 point Warbands. Myself and Andy took the scum-of-the-wasteland Raiders, while Father-Son duo Tony and Tom took the outnumbered but never outgunned Preservers:

*The Raiders (Pig Iron Productions 'Kolony Ferals').

*The Preservers (Pig Iron 'Kolony Militia/Rebels- PIP make excellent sci-fi/near-future models and are well worth checking out; they are even based in Yorkshire!).

Now to put it mildly, myself and Andy are not overly blessed when it comes to luck of the dice. In fact, we have been disparagingly dubbed 'Team Awesome' by the other guys in the group when we are obliged to be on the same side in a game.
However, some kind of bizarre cosmic alignment must have been in play that day, as our Raiders romped home to victory in flurries of 10s while the Preservers (despite being kitted out with riot armour, assault rifles, an LMG and even a frickin' laser carbine!) couldn't seem to roll higher than a 4 in most circumstances.
In fact, we played two games, with the Preservers getting annihilated in both games- Tony and Tom refusing to swap sides as is customary, and paying the price for such hubris!

*My Brute, Murt, about to introduce the Preserver Angelo to his Lucky Sledgehammer!

Despite the outrageous and uncharacteristic swings of Lady Luck, we all agreed that TNT is a great game and one that will be seeing the table again in future- though this time with full 400 point Warbands. I've even dug out the figures to make a new Warband of Caravaners from the Lead Mountain!

Though I imagine that Team Awesome will be back to their usual form by then...

HOWDO!
First post, so here's a little about me and my aims for this Blog!

My name is Jonathan, I'm lucky enough to live in the Yorkshire Dales at the foot of Ingleborough, one of the famous Three Peaks.
I spend my working days trudging the streets of a local town as the Friendly Neighbourhood Postman, and my free time is spent either trudging the local hills, forests and moors and occasionally playing in a Classic Rock covers band... But mostly, I play tabletop games with my friends. And when I'm not gaming, I design games and write about the worlds I create.

In short, life is pretty good!

Recently, I was fortunate enough to have one of my games actually published by the good folks at Osprey, and supported by a miniatures line from the equally good folks over at Northstar. That game is Dracula's America: Shadows of the West; a Gothic Western skirmish game.

This Blog has been set up mainly so I can interact with people who are interested in DA, without having to swim in the murky waters of Social Media (I'm firmly behind the times when it comes to the 'modern world').
I'll also use it to report on the games I play, new ideas I've had and my progress on wading through the ever-growing 'lead mountain' of unpainted figures that all but the most disciplined of Gamers inevitably accrue (hence the title!). I'll also post up general ramblings about this and that as they strike me- feel free to ignore these, of course!

Thanks for taking the time to read this waffling.

J.

*The Other Partizan, 2017: Would you play a demo game with this man??