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.

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:

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.

Gentlemen with Guns aka Boys with Toys

Over the last week I have been working through the blister pack of Gentlemen with Guns.  Robert over at Fiends in Waistcoats posted about some of the difficulties with one of the models (Hon Harold Carfax) in particular: see here.  Apart from those issues, this was a reasonably straightforward project.  I based them on Secret Weapon's cobblestone bases (from NZ's Slave to Painting), which I really like and which do help to give them a bit extra.

Here they are:

The Band of Brothers

Thomas Gunn

And again

John Rushkin

Hon Harold Carfax

And from Behind

Lord Carstairs

John Browne

From the front

And on the side

You will see that I tried out some new patterns on John Brown and Hon Harold Carfax there - it took me a while and I would be interested in everyone's views on that.  I toned down the pattern with a wash and a drybrush at the end, but I'm not sure whether it is too dull now.

Anyhow, pretty pleased with these fellows and they should get a run next Monday when we play Empire of the Dead next.

Jack the Ripper and some Gratuitous Breasts

I feel like, in painting the Requiem miniatures, I have developed my painting skills somewhat.  In particular, I have improved on painting white, which has always been a problem for me (see perambulator boots guy).  Black has been the other difficulty.  Getting the highlights right using the right shade of grey has always been a pain.  For that reason Jack the Ripper caused me some consternation and I stared at him for some time thinking about how to deal with all the black.  In the end I think I have made some real progress on the black front, in particular by darkening up the grey mid tone highlight and block painting more than I usually would.  Here he is:

In here comes Sherlock to take him down:

And I nearly forgot about the gratuitous breast shot - which is included solely as a pastiche / homage to all those blogs which use such titles to gain hits:

Phoar...

Lightning Jack

After focusing on terrain for the last few days I got back into the Requiem miniatures.  I have been looking forward to Lightning Jack as his art work in the book is cool and it looks like he has some pretty cool attributes from the PDF rules that have been created for him recently.  I tried to stick to the colours in the book in painting him up:

Is there no where to get a drink round here?

Oh I see...

Ale?  Never heard of it

That ain't Jim Beam

There doesn't seem to be any historical basis for Jack.  If one google searches Lightning Jack, all one gets is some bad Paul Hogan film from 1994 - figure he isn't based on that character.  Looking forward to him joining my darkfire club in time.

Return of Steve! Woohoo!

Last night was the first games night at my new place and marked also the return of Steve from his trip.  He arrived after a 24 hour flight from Paris at about 4:30pm and then came to games night at 7:30!  What a legend!  Here is looking rather chipper after such a trip:

Nothing like a long trip to read up on the rules!

We got into our first Empire of the Dead game for a while - choosing the Lost Artifact scenario.  Alex and I took a half share each of my gentleman's faction and Steve and Chris shared his Peelers.  Twas not a good night for Steve and Chris - here's how their fellows ended up:

They did find the artifact first, but then got pasted.  Here's the rest of the pictures:

I am working out a new roading system with Malifaux tiles - I intend to fill the gaps at some stage

Half the Peelers before they got hammered

The new pub

Allo allo allo what do we ave ere then?

Peelers with the artifact about to be munched 

Fun night and good getting to grips with the rules again.  We are going to do a board game next week but me and Steve are going to be getting into the painting so we should be updating on that front regularly.