Empire of the Dead Requiem Finished

I finished off the last of the stretch goal miniatures that came with the Empire of the Dead Requiem Kickstarter.  A good feeling of completion at getting the job done.  I am now turning my attention to Radagast and Gandalf, the last of the Escape from Goblin Town miniatures I have left before jumping back into Flames of War.

Here's Tom Gaunt and Deathlocke Bones and the Bad Doctor:

Here are all the stretch goal guys together:

Here are the guys that I chose:

Plus Gentlemen with Guns:

And here is all eighteen together:

I love basking in that warm feeling of task completion.  Very satisfying.

Red EOTD stretch goal

Well it has been little while since I have last posted. Namely because I moved house almost 2 weeks ago and Internet is still not working. So a brief filler post from my cell phone.

These are a couple of photos of Red a Empire of the dead requiem stretch goal. I quite like this model and think it's a lovely addition to a lycaon faction.

So that is all. Oh and I hope you enjoy my fantasy lords box in the background.

 Side note blogger mobile is rubbish and messing with formatting and auto-correct.

More Empire of the Dead: Iron Head Ned and Raphael

Another two of the kickstarter stretch goals painted up.  I now have only three left (Tom Gaunt, and the zombie versions of Holmes and Watson).  Here's Raphael and Iron Head Ned painted up:

More Empire of the Dead: Jade Dragon

I have been a bit quiet recently on the hobby front - family stuff and the like going on at what is quite a busy time of year.  I have managed to finish another of the Empire of the Dead stretch goal miniatures - this time the Jade Dragon.  An assassin who is allied to the Chinese Tong gang.  I am unlikely to ever use her, but I need to move through all the Empire of the Dead models before getting back into the Flames of War lead pile I have.

Here she is from different angles:

Reasonably happy with the freestyle gold on the dress and top.  Supposed to be a dragon motif on the dress, but you would be pretty hard pressed to pick that out.  On the back I drew the chinese symbol for dragon, which was a little lost in the pleats of the skirt.  Still, I think it has the desired effect.

Here is the picture of her from the Requiem Kickstarter, so you can see what I was trying to achieve:

Two's Company...: An Empire of the Dead AAR

Monday night saw Steve, Chris and me jump into a three player game of Empire of the Dead.  Made me recall that show, Three's Company:

An Early Photo of Our Gaming Group - that's me in the middle

We have been aware of the issues of playing three factions at once for some time and I have been keen to find a solution to random ganging up and the like.  I was aware that Games Workshop had released a new book called Triumph and Treachery that has rules for playing multi-player games.  For $150, there is about 4 pages of rules from what I can figure, based around the ability to make alliances and break alliances.

Couldn't be bothered paying that sort of money for that so I decided to play-test some home made alliance rules.  Here is how it worked:

1. In the maintenance phase any two players could call an alliance.
2. If an alliance is called, then the players each swap one model from their faction with a model in the others' faction.
3. That model is then controlled by the other person in the alliance as if it was their model.
4. In the following maintenance phases each player rolls a d10 to see if the alliance is broken.  On a 7 - 10 it is broken.
5. When the alliance is broken , the player breaking it gets to activate their model that has been swapped to the other faction during the maintenance phase.  They can move and shoot, or move at the double or whatever.

We played fracas in the end cause we figured that was one of the few scenarios that worked.  Cagey start at first.  Here's the set up:

When Chris and I got close, I summonsed my Zombie horde and Chris looked like getting squashed between that and Jack the Ripper.  He called an alliance.  I agreed, hedging my bets on the basis that I expected the alliance to be broken shortly, given the odds.

The Lycaon looking for trees to urinate under

Gentlemen Looking for Urinating Dogs

Steve continued to take pot shots from the far end of town, using the barrels I had just painted up:

And good evening to you too Mr Skeleton

With Uncle Thulu flying around shooting at a few as well.

Thulu Cam

You can see the Zombies approaching Chris there just before he called the alliance.  Here they are looking for some dog flesh:

Can you smell dog food?

I took out Steve's infernium hound, which they laid to rest in the cemetery:

Before

After: RIP Strange dog thing

Chris and I started to move towards Steve, but in the next maintenance phase Chris broke the alliance.  His figure freaked out (she was with the zombie horde) and ran out into the street only to be nailed in the cross fire from all Steve's waiting constabulary.  Chris had also moved his Beastlord and Packmaster close to the zombie horde and so when I won initiative next they were attacked, with Lord Percival landing five shots from his gatling gun.

The carnage was pretty great for Chris, who lost his Packmaster and a number of others too.  I took out another of Steve's constables, and along with three kills from Chris's faction, came out on top for the evening.

Steve had a quiet night shooting from distance, but got three kills (one of mine and two of Chris') so came second.

The alliance mechanic was fun, but breaking on a 7-10 was perhaps a bit too easy.  Tweak it perhaps to 8 next time, or try not to play 3 player games?

EOTD is fun and not too serious really - it is quite a nice run about from FOW which is pretty intense in comparison.  The alliance does add a fun aspect, but with three players it is hard for all players to have an equal role in the game.

Empire of the Dead Requiem Rules Release

The new PDF rules have been released for the Requiem expansion to Empire of the Dead.  Included are rules for criminal gangs (including Moriarty and his crew and the Inscrutable Tong), and other factions like Nemo and his crew, the Bedlam Brotherhood and the Clickers.

My first read through discovered a number of typos already (they still haven't fixed the long range distance for Lightning Jack for instance, which is "4"), which does detract a little from the overall effect.  Without play testing any of it yet, I do get an overall feeling of there being particular flavours for each faction, which will lead to them being played differently on the table and thereby using different tactics.  That is good - although adding additional complexity, the game is particularly straight forward anyway so it is not difficult to add special rules.

I am keen to get the clickers now - there is a two page back story to this faction which is well done and the manner in which they are played and developed is quite different from any other faction (the additional clickers are summonsed as the game goes on rather than deployed at the start).

You can also harvest body parts and get extra shillings from different body parts harvested from models killed on the table - cool!

Bedlam Brotherhood has a number of rules around combat - most involving the rolling of a D10 before combat with a "1" involved some positive effect (increased strength, fortitude or combat skill) and a 9-10 involving some sort of crazy outcome.  Nipper, for instance, in a fit of pique refuses to fight and resolves the combat as if he is discombobulated and prone.  Hat man, on a "1" turns sides for that turn and allows the other player to activate him as if he was a member of their faction!  Alice gets to use Tom, her cat, as an ally and can set him upon an opponent as well.

Lots of new rules around carriages - shooting from and at carriages and the like.  Looks like there is real scope for car chase sequences across London streets!

There are a number of characters still missing - it seems Prof Cavor (diving suit guy) is left out at this stage and so are the stretch goal guys as well in large part (correct me if I am wrong on that).  I am not sure if they are coming later.

Hopefully Westwind will take the comments back and be flexible enough to tweak these rules before they are finalised, because I would expect there will be some teething problems here.  Also, just a quick look at the costs of some against others, makes me think there is scope for some factions being significantly more powerful versus cost than others.  Guess we will just have play them and find out!

Inspector Uncle Thulu, his pet infernium hound and subordonates

Finally it is time for Detective Inspector Uncle Thulu to emerge from his slumber and take charge of the Triple Six Division, or more commonly known as the Supernatural Branch. Very few know the group by Uncle Thulu's preferred name, Detective Inspector Uncle Thulu and Friends.

Uncle Thulu hanging out with the gang in, err, a gigantic pot plant

So how did this young detective Uncle Thulu, a Empire of the Dead Requiem Stretch Goal, come to be the head of the Supernatural branch? After all he never shaves, he has atrocious table manors, he never brushes his teeth, he smells of seaweed and once he even broke Constable Rupert's arm (story following soon). When Uncle Thulu was a kid he was bullied by his nephew (time is relative (get it???) for Old Ones) Cthulhu. Because of this Uncle Thulu joined the supernatural branch to lead them against the fight of all things supernatural. Plus Thulu has a thing for men in blue. 

Why hello there

Let me take you round my pot plant

It is worth noting a few things about Uncle Thulu in my faction. First he can fly (he has a gyrocopter but I will just pretend that he can fly). However if he gets shot on a 8-10 you shoot his wings which then might malfunction. Second his walking stick doubles as a bludgeon and a pistol. Pretty snazzy!

It took me a while to appreciate Uncle Thulu's black cape. I was very impressed with Dan's painting of Jack the Ripper, namely the black and thought my attempt involving mostly just highlighting the raised areas and leaving the rest black/german grey was a bit silly. However I have grown to appreciate it and now (as a week or so on the shelf does) think it gives it a nice comical look along with the green skin. I was contemplating a olive skin tone but thought that would be a bit to serious for Uncle Thulu and friends. I will save that for his brother Cthulhu. 

Cthulhu model I got of trademe (NZ ebay). I think it was part of the Call of Cthulhu RPG game
I think this guy is pretty cool. 

Next up for the Supernatural Branch is Uncle Thulu's faithful robotic infernium hound CJ7 named after the Stephen Chow film of the same name (which was a kinda average film admittedly). I found this model a little hard to paint although I think this is because my gold tamiya colour wasn't the same great quality as valejo paints which I normally use.

Infernium hound needs a wash after bringing
justice to the streets of London. 

Next up is two more of the Westwind Supernatural Branch police constables . Police Constable Rupert with the light pistol and Police Constable Nettles with the net-gun. 

Constable Rupert on the left had his arm broken by Detective Inspector Uncle Thulu in an arm wrestle. Because he lost he had to give 20 shillings to Uncle Thulu which he donated half to the faction. The reasoning behind this is because in the Empire of the Dead rules if you start with a 200 shilling faction you can take an injury to gain 10 shillings. I decided I wanted to have a full faction with infernium hound and two firearms specialists so needed a little bit of extra cash resulting in an arm injury (-1 strength) for Rupert. 

I think these guys look alright. However I had trouble painting them, I believe due to my ageing brushes. Which leads me to this question, does anyone know where I can get good quality, long lasting, not to expensive paintbrushes. Also what is the best way to look after your brush. Anyhow I hope you can forgive me for my somewhat silly faction backstory and enjoy Doctor Who's 50th anniversary today.