The Tomb of Ahmet Raa - A Pulp Alley AAR

Our first game on of the weekend takes our two groups of adventurers to Egypt, to locate the lost treasure of Ahmet Raa. Both groups have had a tip off from an anonymous caller as to the whereabouts of the tomb entrance and the fortune in treasure that lays within.

The Major Plot Point for this scenario is the Colossal Tomb of Ahmet Raa, and the minor plot points are; Ceremonial Hieroglyphs, Disassembled Survey Equipment, The Jeweled Orb and Smuggled Explosives

Our adventuring parties include:

Butch Sullivan's League of Adventurers, featuring the brave, talented and ever ready Butch Sullivan, his partner in crime Lauren Stone and regular adventuring buddies, Kazim of the Umbaku tribe, Marcus, Akhmed the eagle-eyed and finally Indiana the dog.

Société des Antiquaires de France led by Captain Jerome Lefranc, ex French foreign legion and now leader of the society's expeditions, Andriy Shukhevych the eastern European muscle of the party, Veronique Dujardin our dangerous same and mooks Gerard and Joseph.

Andriy and Joseph move up towards one of the the Orb, Akhmed lives up to his name and takes a potshot at Joseph, wounding the Frenchman, looks like he may be down for a while.

Lauren moves up through a perilous area of old crumbling pillars, she deftly dodges out of the way of some falling masonry and makes it through safely.

Andriy reaches out to grab there sacred Orb, a snake slithers out from among the trinkets and attacks him. In a show of strength Andriy strangles the beast with his bare hands. Collecting the orb he stashes it safely and takes up position behind the plinth.

Butch make his move forward and stumbles on something buried beneath the sands, kicking the dirt aside he uncovered a discarded crate, the marking on the sides suggest the contents are explosive. With a swift boot Butch smashes through the lid and he retrieves several sticks of dynamite.

Captain Lefranc steps out from a stack of crates and with a single shot downs Kazim as he makes his way around the sphinx.

Veronique makes her way over to the crates and with deductive cunning she reassembles the surveying equipment and she soon moves away back to cover.

Gustav makes a brave attack on Indiana but the larger dog clearly has the advantage and savages poor gustav.

Lauren bravely moves up weaving along the side of the Sphinx and taking aim she squeezes off a shot against Veronique, with an uncomfortable click Lauren realises too late that her pistols are out of ammo and the chance is wasted. Nearby the taste of blood enrages Indiana who rushes Gerard and the two engage in a deadly melee.

Lauren moves up to provide some cover but Andriy quickly closed the gap and swings and the adventuress, Lauren has some moves of her own and deftly breaks away from his attack.

Butch seizes his chance and makes a dash for the tomb entrance, lighting the dynamite he steps out of the way and a mighty explosion destroys the seal and grants entry to the treasure inside.

Butch and his team recover the lost treasure of Ibis hidden within Ah met Raa's tomb.

End of Game roundup:
This was my Brother and I's first real game of Pulp Alley, generally it all seemed to work really well, I love the added fun the cards grant and the mechanism of the perils seems to work well.

We did find that sometimes the challenges seemed a little easy due to the random draw and so for more major plot points we may draw 2 cards or some such.

The only other thing we struggled with was remembering who had the initiative and when you took it from each other, I suppose we'll just get used to it over time.

Painting Competition - end of month 2 roundup

Another wintery month plods on by and I've managed to remain pretty productive by my standards. I'm currently sat at 350 points with 4 weeks to go, so it would seem i am well on on the way to reaching the 500 point target I set myself.

My big problem at the moment, well 2 problems are; I've purchased far more than I'm going to get painted in this competition, I got excited by too many miniatures and tried to plug too many gaps mainly in my pulp collection and Napoleonics. Its likely I will have several units of French light infantry and dismounted dragoons, plus an odd assortment of pulp and the saga miniatures that never made it out of the box. My bother distraction is terrain, I have loads of ideas for new pulp terrain and have picked up plenty of supplies over winter I am just really keen to get building, in the last few years I've certainly preferred building terrain to painting miniature, clearly I missed my calling in life.

Anyhow, enough of the waffle I hear you cry, I'll get on with showing you all, what I've painted.

First up are some additions to my wild west Mexican gang, 5 figures are from the new blackwater gulch range and the others from black scorpion.

Swiftly followed by some perry napoleonics, a mounted infantry colonel and another artillery piece.

Some more Athenians for my Aegeus game, wargames factory plastics some with javelins and others spear and shields. Transfers are from little big men studios.

Finally some weird world war 2 miniatures in the form of some warlord games plastic American infantry and an AE-WW2 captain to lead them.

Finally some terrain bits, 2 experimental cloning tanks from west wind productions with their grizzly contents.

I make that 34 miniatures in month 2 slightly up on month 1, it would be nice to hit 40 miniatures in month 3 but sustaining 10 miniatures a week may be hard going as I don't have many free weekends coming up.

Butch Sullivan in Escape from the Lair

With my wife out at a works do and my daughter safely tucked up in bed rather than crack on with more painting I decided to have another run through of Pulp Alley and try and figure out some more of the rules. 

I plucked out another pre-rolled scenario from my stash and set out to play a Race Against Time scenario. The background is as follows:

Our heroes are stuck deep within the secret lair of Oberst von Klinkerhoffen and disaster has struck, it would appear that utility station 42 has been destroyed, this station controls the main hanger doors and without it our heroes cannot escape.  One of the electrical conduits is damaged and requires replacing, looking about it would appear that all the parts our heroes require may be available in the immediate area. 

The Major Objective for this scenario is repairing Utility Station 42.

The minor objectives of which our heroes require any 3 are; A pile of electrical conduits, electrical blueprints, some machine parts and an abandoned generator.

The initial setup with out heroes in the center around the Utility Station and the forces of Oberst von Klinkerhoffen coming in from the higher level. 

Our heroes quickly spread out in the first couple of turns making a dash to look for the equipment they need.

Meanwhile the Germans advance, Lauren Stone and the vicious hound Indiana move into a position to cut them off, Indiana leaps straight into the action and mauls one of the German guards.

Kazim makes a move to engage the German guards but under the watchful eye of Klinkerhoffen he is gunned down by the German guards.

Butch rummages through the paperwork in one of the offices and comes up trumps, it would appear he's found a set of electrical blueprints for the utility station.

Markus has made his way back to the utility station with a set of electrical conduits but he is ambushed by Hans Gruber, in the resulting firefight Markus goes down whilst the sly German officer keeps himself in cover around these large pipes.

Lauren moves into a better position and takes out one of the guards whilst Indiana is taken down by another guard with the help of Klinkerhoffen. Kazim meanwhile appears to have crawled off and fallen unconsious from the loss of blood.

Butch manages to start up an old generator  which can be hooked up to the doors and help get them moving.

 With everything they need in their control it would appear that our heroes can make their escape. Klinkerhoffen vows that revenge shall be his our Butch and co disappear into the night.

Again I ended the game a little early as I'd been at it on and off for a couple of hours and wanted to get cleared up as it was getting a little late.


End of Game Debrief.
Overall it ran smoother this time, I'm still getting my head around the flow of the rules, at one point I completely forgot who had the initiative and essentially had to roll off again to allocate it.

Low level characters appeared to get up an awful lot, this contributed to a bit of a bottle neck at the bottom of the stairs which lasted several turns with the 2 groups trading shots and melee and then recovering.

In the end it was enjoyable and I picked up on a few mistakes I'd been making by not reading the rules properly. Another game or two and I should have this down.

Test Game of Pulp Alley

I thought I'd run a quick solo Pulp Alley game to get myself accustomed to the rules, I spent one of my evenings last week on a train back from London and armed with my tablet and a number randomiser I'd pre-rolled a number of scenarios already and added some flavour to them based on miniatures and terrain I already owned. I've also statted up a couple of Pulp Leagues over the weekend to try out those rules.

So with an hour of free time I whipped out some terrain and miniatures and set too it.

First off the Background.

The renowned explorer Professor Jonathan Granger has stumbles into our heroes camp desperate for help, he must save his reputation. The professor has been travelling back through this dangerous areas of North Africa when he was ambushed by local tribesmen and in the resulting firefight he fled and managed to escape. 

It turns out he was transporting the fabled Tome of Sir Elrik of Lincolnshire, a jewel encrusted book chronicling much of the early crusades.

Our heroes scramble to help, and rush to the location of the Professor's convoy to begin searching for the professors missing equipment and the Tome and securing it before it it gathered by local scavengers

The forces in question are:
Butch Sulivans League of Adventurers:

Suliman's Desert Raiders

The Tome of Elrik is the major plot point and placed in the middle of the board. The rest o the professors equipment and convoy form the rest of the minor plot points which were: An old map, camouflaged rifles, a stolen rangefinder and a talkative officer.

The trucks formed the convoy in the center of the board and the black markers note the plop points. I didn't bother with any perilous areas for this test run but if I run this scenario again I'd probably make the area around the flaming trucks perilous. I was also playing on a 2'x2' board and started the two groups in corners on the same side of the board to speed up getting to the action. 

Once the game began Butch's Adventurers took the initiative and started moving towards the objectives, Markus makes a brave move towards the opposing side armed with his trusty SMG.

Unfortunately in the resulting firefight he's downed by the 3 Desert Warriors on this hill.

Old Hamza and Eagle-Eyed Akmed move towards the stolen range finding equipment and Hamza successfully heaved the heavy boxes onto his shoulders to make off with them. 

The following turn and Suliman's Raiders take advantage of the initiative, Hamza rushes Indiana, Butches faithful hound, with a swing of his mighty blade he downs the mutt in one blow. 

Akmed makes a rush for the Tome whilst Suliman collects an old map of the professors. 

Malik the Thief finds one of the convoy guards is still alive, in the following fistfight Malik beats some useful information out of the poor man, leaving him for the desert to finish off. 

With Suliman's Raiders in possession of several of the Plot points and my hour of free time drawing to an end I called it quits there. 

Overall opinions are fairly positive, I always find it hard to judge a game by solo play, I like the fortune card concept and the multi-dice type combat seems to work alright, though I certainly need some more dice to make it easier. 

Compared to .45 adventure its a fast game and non heroic characters seem to drop real fast with just a couple of poor rolls. I could do with printing some of the rosters out as relying on having the rules and both rosters on my tablet was a bit of a pain in the backside. 

Now to find someone willing to give the rules a try for a proper run through. 

Analogue Painting Competition - End of month 1 Roundup

Yup it's been a little quiet around here in January, that's due to the painting competition  Christmas, new Year, my Daughters Birthday and finally a weekend away with some Steampunk Friends of ours.

I've managed to plod along with the painting competition and currently sit a little behind the planned schedule, I've amassed a reasonable 155 points of my target of 500, that puts me at around 31% of target.

I'm actually a little surprised at that figure, and with a good Feb I may actually be able to make the 500 points.

A quick overview of what I've painted so far:

That's 28 miniatures and a vehicle, may not seem a lot for some people but for me this is pretty good progress, I probably only painted 30 miniatures for the whole of 2012 so here's to a year of painting stuff up.

With another couple of orders turning up this last week I've quite a healthy painting queue again, though I'm still ignoring the Saga Anglo-Danes I've got. Up next should be several batches of Napoleonic French, some WW2 Americans and plenty more pulp miniatures. 

These updates will probably only be monthly so they don't cut into what little painting time I have. 

Till next time.

G

First Analogue Hobbies Challenge entry

These were actually completed just prior to Christmas as I was keen to ensure I had made a start before we went a travelling around the relatives.

Firstly I have an important looking Indian Gentleman, possibly linked to an ancient Kali Cult or perhaps just an armed merchant. Who knows but you can be sure he'll turn up in an adventure or two.

Second up is a great towering thug of a man, painted up perhaps as the perfect example of Aryan strength for my pulp Germans, either way he's mean and ready to be a real challenge should our heroes encounter him.

I've some more Pulp pretty much finished but the Challenge rules state Curt gets first sight of the pictures so you lot will all have to wait till I've sent them to him and they've been published.

Brink of Battle After Action Reports

Over the Christmas period my brother and I managed to squeeze in 3 Brink of Battle games, which was pretty much on plan, I had 1 spare scenario but I can keep that for later.

The games went pretty well and as I spectacularly failed to take any photos of the first couple so I'll leave it to my brother to do complete write ups over at his blog here:

http://infrequentwargamer.blogspot.co.uk/

Whilst he is doing that I'll cover the 3 scenarios we played and ruminate on the rules.

Game 1

The first game we played was the assault on the gate of the German Facility, Phil has filled out the background a little more in his report and I'll not repeat it here. The scenario itself was a simple take and hold the British forces had 12 turns to cover around 3' of board to the gate and must hold the gate. For each turn the gate is held the Brits would gain an advantage in the next game. The forces were an even 700 points each.

We tried a few variants on the rules, the Germans deployed under markers and I allowed some dice rolls for the Brits to represent Intel on the area. The Brits rolled badly and only revealed 1 marker. The mechanic worked OK but it didn't really add a huge amount to the game and did slow it down quite a bit. 

The Germans also only received half orders to represent the static nature of the sentry forces. This worked fine and they gained full orders once half the tokens were revealed.

Overall the scenario worked well until we got in a firefight in the center of the board, this took several turns to resolve as both sides were in cover and difficult to kill. Phil lost a little too much time and too many men and the game appeared to be unwinnable and the Brits retreated.

I suspect the sides were in balanced with the scenario, perhaps the Germans should have had a couple of hundred less which may have evened up their chances as little.

The British Advanced force makes it's approach to the Facility Entrance

Panzershrek action, taking out the Giant Claymore Wielding Scotsman

Some Guard Dogs very effectively taking out one of the British Soldiers in the wheatfield.

Game 2 

The second game was a counter attack from the German forces and allowed me to try some of the weird forces I have, the Germans had to destroy a British Steel Suit charging station at the Allied base of operations. Again this was an even 700 points as side.

This played out pretty quickly and ended in German defeat due to losses. 

The stats for the battle suits worked well, they were a little difficult to damage and took multiple hits to down, a good invention but not unkillable. 

Once again I feel the defender should have had less points. as I hardly got more than a few inches closer than in the shot below before my force broke.

2 PanzerKampfSoldats approach the British defenses under heavy fire. 

Game 3
The 3rd game was more of a dungeon crawl, a 2'x2' board over multiple levels leading to 3 objective rooms which the Brits must destroy. Blighted by poor customer service and Christmas postage my Westwind Cloning Tanks didn't arrive in time for this scenario so I had to adlib a little and the 3 objectives were the ammunition stores, the pumping station and the generator room.

Whilst the game worked well  the firefights descended into back and forth fire with few casualties, meaning that the Brits didn't get particularly far into the facility before they had lost too many men.

Initial Board Set Up

The British Steelsuits lead the fight into the Complex.

2 German Abomination are incinerated by one of the Steelsuits

The PanzerShrek armed PanzerkampfSoldat makes short work of a British Steel Suit

Conclusion...

After discussions with my Brother our main concern is the stagnant firefights and non-result of shocking an activated model. We've kicked around a couple of ideas around stacking shock, you get shocked once fine lose your action token, you get shocked again then you may fall back, shocked a 3rd time and you're removed from play, either dead or combat ineffective. Not sure how this will play out in practice. 

We also discussed dropping the Con of everything by 1, we already have a lot of armour in the game and this compounds the effect. Dropping the Con may mean casualties pile up quicker. 

It was a good fun set of games, we're going to continue the fight in February when we get together again at my house. We'll probably cover level 2 of the complex, the cloning rooms and then some fights with really weird abominations. So for now that's our Brink of Battle gaming.