Pulp Alley on Remembrance Day

Terry hosted his annual Remembrance Day game on the weekend and he and Bruce cooperated to run a game of Pulp Alley. Six teams were pitted against one another to capture the Or of Ra (?). Details of how to do this were sketchy so solving plot points brought clues.

Below, the British team (including Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson) are approaching a sphinx statute when a giant hand appears.

I drew the Nazi faction and immediately got most of my troopers killed. Nevertheless, Captain Heinrich and his goon Stutgard managed to decipher enough hieroglyphs to figure out where to go to move the adventure along.

Our irritating Anglo-Saxon cousins were close on our heels as Captain Heinrich tickled the lion under its chin and opened a secret passage.

Various other factions helpfully gunned down the Brits while I was out of the room seeking more coffee and dodging the booby-trapped stairwell.

Stutgard was stumped by the first door in the catacombs and had to wait for Dr. Watson to open it.

Meanwhile, various evil creatures were triggered as other players secured victory points by examining various statutes of the dark gods. Below, Terry's troops are running from rats. I missed Craig's fellows being savaged by dogs.

Meanwhile, in the catacombs, there is a tussle in the entrance way which became a bottleneck. At this point, I thought I was so far behind that I mostly tried to control the activation sequence to keep the guys up top from having room to get into the catacombs.

This was mostly successful.

As figures explored, the catacombs were reveals room by room. The mummies were foughts, skeletons were dismissed, and Chen was wounded when someone got fancy with a pistol in the entrance way.

Eventually Dr. Watson tackled the mummy and they managed to knock each other out of the game.

This allowed Stutgard to grab the orb and snag enough victory points that I won (no one was more surprised than me).

Overall, it was a fun game and I think we have found the practical player limit for Pulp Alley (6). Terry's terrain was excellent and Bruce put a lot of work into the story and various behind the scenes mechanics (e.g., doors below ground opening only when tasks above ground were completed).

The incomplete information was a good mechanic and Craig proved the better man when he turned down the $20 I offered him to shoot Jonathan's gang up while Jonathan was getting coffee (do I have to do everything myself?).