Some 28mm Coppers

I found myself with some birthday cash this month and no pressing purchases so I decided to buy some additional figures for modern gaming. I was short on cops for Gotham the last time I played so I ordered some packs from Pulp Figures.

I painted up the cops right away. These are a bit old-school (1930s) but go with the gangsters I also ordered. Foundry has some lovely 1980s cops, but I'm trying to keep my money in Canada!

The figures paint up nicely enough (given my limited skills). This group was a white base, washed on colours, details, and a dip. Looks like the grey base needs another coat. I based them on washers and used some white glue to smooth-out the join between the washer and the integral base.

They scale reasonably well with the superhero figures.

They are a touch smaller in stature when compared to the Heroclix cops (below, centre) I have. I think in separate units, they will do just fine. I also picked up some additional clix singles that I'll get to in November.

Up next: I'm moving onto some zombies for Zombtober. I also hope to run a Hallowe'en-themed game on October 15 at the club.

Last of the Ghostbusters

So I finished off the Ghostbuster box painting this week.

This batching included the four ghostbusters plus the bad guy (Vee-Ger or Gozer? I can't recall). So-so figures for the ghostbusters. A bit cartoonish and with limited raised detail.

They fit in okay with 28 and 25mm figures. The Ecto-1 is was under-scale (like 1/64 figures with a 1/87 car).

But the Ecto-1 fits in nicely with the other HO-scale vehicles I have so that is just fine.

Need to think through a Hallowe'en-themed game to use these with. I have some odds and ends on the painting table with a bunch of zombies ready to start for Zombtober.

Gotham redux

So Bruce dropped over last week and we re-played the Gotham scenario that I ran at the club the previous week. I was interested in his take on the rules.

Same scenario (find the tapes and get them to the police station or TV station). Bruce played the heroes. I was keen to play the baddies and see what I could do with the shooter gang.

I brought the two squads of goons on together (the melee group serving as a meat shield for the shooters) with the Terminator as their back up.

Pretty picture.

The main heroes and villains took to the roofs for a fight.

Katana attacked Penguin but he drove her back and inflicted some wounds.

Then Bats arrived and beat-down Penguin, after taking some hits. There was some hopeful umbrella branching but Penguin just didn't have the cards.

Poison Ivy then jumped Bats but drew a crap hand (all defensive cards and low ones at that). Bats managed to knock her out and then moved in to finish Penguin.

In the meantime, the shooters had taken out a unit of cops and the Terminator had found the tapes.

The shooters then took out Katana while Black Lightening wailed on the Terminator and eliminated  squad of melee thugs. The game basically came down to who went first in the last two turns--could Terminator get around the corner, dispatch the last of the cops and get to the TV station? Alas no.

Overall, things seemed fine. The scenario took an hour (so we could have played twice). One rules tweak might be to allow players to spend honour points to avoid a wound (if they have at least two wounds left).

Yet more Ghostbusters

More Ghostbuster figures rolled off the painting line. I'll start wth Stay Puft. 

Big but nice and easy. I looked at painting on some burn marks (lovely examples online) but decided against it.

I finished off all of the rank-and-file ghosts, this time in blue.

I've got one more boss ghost, four ghostbusters and Ecto-1 left to do (painted, just need a wash). I also hauled out a bunch of Zombies for Zombtober and spray-primed them. These are from one of the Zombicide expansions I bought last year. I'm going to start with the regular Zombies and then maybe to the radioactive ones with a green wash?

Gotham at the club

A couple of months back, Bruce introduced me to this game called Tribal ($10 on wargames vault) designed for skirmish gaming among low-tech cultures. The key thing about it is no dice: it is card driven. I was skeptical but it was a hoot to play and Bruce morphed it slightly to do so Three Musketeers. 

My thought about the combat system (which is basically a five-part card game) was that this would work for superheroes. So I brought a small game out to the club to try last week. Andy and Taylor (above) played the heroes while Terry and Richard played the villains.

The scenario was that Gotham was on the edge of chaos and tapes demonstrating the mayor's corruption had been hidden on the board. The heroes had to find them and carry them to the police station (where they would get "lost" in the evidence room) while the baddies wanted to take them to the TV station to boost Penguin's bid for the mayor's chair.

The first two turns saw movement onto the board and rules questions. Back Lightening soon found the tapes and now the Bat Family had to hustle them to the police station.

I found some thematic cards online so each side had an appropriate deck. Below, the bad guys are starting to form a ring around the cop shop (brick building on left) while someone's crotch looms over Gotham.

Scenic building shot because the table looked pretty decent.

Here come the cops! Taylor moved up his melee-coppers to run interference for Black Lightening. In the background. Katana poses on the top of the TV station.

The cops were met by some thugs and had a rumble by the school bus.

The cops beat the goons pretty handily and also inflated a lot of damage on Bane (who is actually Deathstroke but I couldn't recall that when I was writing the rosters).

Batman and Penguin move up to join the fight. Bats eventually disposed of most of the opposition.

On the other side of the board, the shooting coppers and Katana move up to put some pressure on the shooting villains while Bats ducks into the alley to attack Poison Ivy.

To my surprise, everyone took to the top of the building for a showdown.

Katana dispatched Poison Ivy, a flowing a badly wounded Back Lightening to make a break for the police station.

Meanwhile, Bats cleaned up the rest of the goons. A fairly convincing win for the heroes and the mayor remains in power. Who knew Bats was for the 1%?

Overall, the rules worked out. A lot was determined by the cards and we forgot to add in some of the special abilities at the beginning. I was happy I managed to get everything on one QRS including rosters and scenario goals. I need to run down one question about shooting. Thanks to everyone who played!

More Ghostbusters

I finished up a second batch of ghouls from the Ghostbusters game. These fellows all got a fleshy treatment.

I also finished off a long-neglected Cthulhu mini from RAFM that I think I got from Chen (some kind of undead dragon?).

And I painted a 40mm Qui-Gon Jinn that I got from somewhere. Weird scale, but I have a matching Darth Maul who is next on my list.

Up next: Some superhero action from the club and then back to the ghouls.

Napoleonic 20

Last week, Bruce put on a couple of Napoleonic boardgames from the Napoleonic 20 series. We started with Waterloo.

The mechanics are pretty simple but the real game is managing army morale (which you can degrade for tactical advantage). I've never really understood Waterloo (or cared to) so seeing it played out at the grand tactical scale with only 20 counters per side was very helpful.

You can see me advancing on Day 1 to push Bruce back and bag a couple of important supply points.

I let Bruce fall back, which gave him time to recover his morale (likely a mistake). The terrain in the middle of the board really constrained my attack options and let him re-form a defence.

Eventually we came to blows again, with some lucky cavalry strikes on the right flank de-stabilizing his line.

I think, in the end, I was able to degrade his morale and his units broke and retreated.

We then switched to the Russian front, with a Russian spooling attack running into a surprisingly large French force.

The Cossacks pushed the French back but eventually reinforcements arrived and it was possible to push the Russians and break their morale.

Very slick rules that took away the button counting that I hate. There are still the usual hex-and-counter gimmicks to think through but the low unit count means there are no stacks and limited ability to get three-on-ones.