Pulp Alley Batman

A few months back, I got ambitious and stat'ed out some Batman leagues for Pulp Alley. Adam West's death a week or so back gave me reason to finally get my superhero project out to the club.

Bruce and Dan took the roles of the Joker and Riddler respectively. Their secrete objective was to get as many phone booths to the park in the middle of the board and then call into the Joker-copter to get away. Scott and Terry played the good guys and their job was nab the various costumed villains.

Batgirl spent a lot of the game ob overwatch, using her shooting skills to rain Batarang hell down on anyone in her corner of the board. Meanwhile, Penguin and some of his goons tangled with Batman and Robin.

Across the table, the Riddler grabbed a hone booth (jokster he is, he also seems to have turned it upside down). Much of Dans evening was battling it out with Gotham's finest and trying to keep Commissioner Gordon bottled up. Of all of the characters, Catwoman seemed to play the best--no umph in a fight but she was able to avoid almost all damage.

Here, some of Scott's better coppers emerge from an alley and spent the game inning down the Joker from cover. Bruce had great luck passing health saved but no luck passing peril checks to get the phone out of the booth.

The Penguin and Robin mixed it up for several turns before the Boy Wonder took an umbrella to the nads and dropped, allowing Penguin to grab his phone booth and head towards the LZ.

Poor Joker (and later Harlequin) just couldn't get a break (one imagines phone booths in Gotham would be pretty sturdy).

Batgirl pretty much sealed the game for the Joker with a Batarang.

With the Joker, Penguin and Harlequin in rough shape, the Riddler muttered, "well, I'm a villain so I'm out here", successfully called into the Joker-copter and made it off board with one phone booth.

In the end, we called it a draw based on pointing out the victory conditions. Thanks to everyone for playing and to Bruce for bringing the tokens, rules, and helo as well for walking us through the rules. I didn't get any good shots of the three (!) other games that ran.

Decision in North America

Last week, I dropped in on bruce to try out a new game he picked up (new to us--probably five years old) called The American Revolution: Decision in North America. The nub of the game is point-to-point movement, one turn equals one year, variable movement, territorial control affects resources the next year, some card play, simple combat.

We played the intro four-year scenario. As I was unclear n how the game worked, my "plan" was to do the thing that seemed to hurt Bruce the worst each turn and hoped that piled up over time. So Washington went north, lost a battle, and returned south. But Carleton had to overwinter is rural new England, which was not good for his troops.

I went north again the second year. Bruce's better knowledge of how resources worked meant he go a jump on me in army building and things were looking dire as he started to blockage New England. Fortunately, I got lucky as all hell on the combat dice.

By year three, things were starting to turn around for Washington. There were more militia and I was deploying them in ways that made more sense in terms of resource acquisition. And Washington was the General Patton the AWI, rolling into town, rousting the Germans, and then rolling forward.

The final turn (I think) saw a lot of American militia and the British army pretty much decimated. I don't think it was an American military victory, but it was close. I was less successful on the political charts (out of frame on the left) which is one of the things you can (and should) spend resources on.

I would totally play this again (ideally while I can still recall the rules). This week, bruce and I will collaborating on a Bat-themed game of Pulp Alley at the club, in part to mourn the passing of Adam West.

June 6 club night

We had a dozen guys out to the club this week, which was a goo turn out. Chatter was about a change in venue in the fall due to a rent increase (new venue TBD).

There was couple of games of 28mm sci-fi skirmish (Armageddon?) as well as some Memoir 44.

There was a lovely looking game of Star Wars Armada. Oh, I wish I could convince myself that this is worth the money. Beautiful models.

Scott, Terry and I played some CCA Spartans v Athenians. I haven't played many of the scenarios in the sixth expansion and this one had a fun mechanic.

Above is the set-up. Below the Athenian ambush has been sprung (to the doom of the Spartans in both plays). A fun game with a hoplite rule as well.

Up next: Either some 54mm AWI or some 25mm Romulans. And maybe gaming with Bruce.

54mm AWI militia

After a much needed break, I'm back at painting 54mm troops for my Tricorne project. One of the challenges of AWI is the need for lots of militia!

These six fellows are a mix of manufacturers (I've painted the poses above in 1/72-scale as well).

To make this go a bit faster, I'm painting figures in batches of six. This allows me to adopt a pallet of colours (blue and buckskin in this case). When mixed in with other batches using different colour pallets, the result is the mix-and-match look I want for the units.

I've momentarily lost track of which set of militia this is, but I'm guessing rifled militia based on the gun lengths.

Up next: Tuesday is club night and I'll bring out some CCA. Then back to more 54s.