Surviving Nam, Sherwood Forest style

Welcome back to another season of gaming blogs. Although I did paint and game over the summer, I spent a lot of time in the outdoors. One of the summer games we tried was Surviving Nam, which is a cooperative miniatures game wherein the players play the Yankees and a card deck drives the actions of the VC. We thought it was a good game for Vietnam and then Bruce adapted it for Robin Hood.

The basic scenario was the four players (running the side of evil King John) had to enter on the south edge (bottom right of photo), search the village for weapons caches, and then exit off the north edge, not leaving any fallen comrades behind.

The first few moves went quickly as the Merry Men were no where to be seen.

Eventually, they appeared and (purely by chance), all arrived on the north edge, blocking our exit path. In the meantime, there was a message from King John that we also needed to search the bodies of five merry men before we left the board.

One of Bruce's troopers enters a building and started searching for the weapon cache there.

In the meantime, Robin Hood appears in our rear and starts making life horribly difficult, pulling out troops back towards the starting edge to deal with him and to collected those he has felled.

More baddies appear in the building and have to be dealt with.

At this point, the Merry Men began advancing (thanks to failures on our activation dice) and they began to whittle down our forces, including knocking out the evil sheriff. We were able to successfully find the weapons caches. We also killed Robin and Little John and searched enough bodies but things were starting to get difficult, with King's men down and pinned and generally in disarray.

By the end, we felt like we had things in hand and called the game as a win for the King's forces.

While Surviving Nam doesn't have the swashbuckling vibes you can get with other rules, it does offer a fun solo or coop game pitting a higher tech opponent against insurgents. I've ordered form WW2 resistance fighters to see how this plays in that era.

Some palm trees

I've had zero time to paint these past few months but I did manage to finish some terrain, inspired by Bruce's latest addition to his Vietnam collection.

These are cheap cake decorations and came 12 to a pack (I bought 36). The palm fronds come a nice two-tone green and I left them as-is. The trunks were a dark brown and I did the sloppiest wet-brush I could to bring up the highlights. 

I also glued them to washers for stability and sanded the bases. Bruce used poker chips for his bases and I think his wider base was likely the better choice. When combined with some bushes and some figures, I think the effect is good enough for wargaming.

Up next: I have some more Indiana Jones figures from the 1980s on the paint table, if I can find some time to sit down and get to them.

More 25mm Indiana Jones

I finished off the box of 25mm Indiana Jones figures that I started last week. These figures represent the baddies from the first two films.

Below we have Chatter Lal, Mola Rama and a Thuggee from, I think, Temple of Doom.

From the first film (I think), we have Deitrich, Belloq, Toht, and a mine guard (so maybe he is from Temple? I initially took him to be the dude with the scimitar that Indy shoots in the square--whatever).

For 40-year-old sculpts, the detail is pretty good (note the scar on Toht's hand). I've no idea what Deitrich is leaning so far forward.

25mm Indiana Jones

Back when I was a kid (1984), there was an Indiana Jones rpg released by TSR along with a set of minis. I finally found a box of them for a reasonable price and bought it.

There were 12 miniatures in the box, representing key characters from the first two films. The figures are described as 25mm and have bases that are both very thick (stupidly so, really) and very small. After some dithering and messing with slotta bases, I stuck them to some washers and used sand and glue to try to smooth them out (meh).

There were five "good" guys, including Indy and that's what I finished this week. Short Round was probably the most fun to paint. I used movie stills where I could to get the colours right. I did give him a brighter ball cap and I decided against trying the checked pattern on his sweater.

The other Temple of Doom alum is Willie. I haven;'t seem Temple since it was in theatres (1983?). The mini mostly matches the pictures I could find. Indiana is a pretty good likeness,

The two sidekicks from the original movie are Marion  (note the monkey on her shoulder) and Sallah and both are pretty accurate sculpts. I painted them pretty much as they were in the film even though the embroidery on Marion's short doesn't really translate into paint.

In terms of scale, although these are listed as 25mm and from 1984, they fit in pretty well with contemporary 28mm figures. Interestingly, a different set of 25mm figures from the same era (Mayfair's DC Heroes from 1985) are clearly smaller (see partially painted Superman below). 

Up next: The baddies.

28mm Vietnam Xenos Rampant

A few weeks back, Bruce and I played a game of Xenos Rampant with a Vietnam theme. Bruce set a beautiful table with some palm trees. The Yanks need to eventually capture with village and they start with three units on the edge of the table. The open area is a landing zone for the choppers, which, when the LZ is clear, can deploy additional troops as well as hover and provide heavy support fire. The Men in the Black PJs can deploy into any cover that the Americans have not yet moved through.

The first turn saw the American's enter the board while the VC moved their one on-board unit into the LZ to slow the US reinforcements. Additional VC deployed into cover to start harassing the US troops.

 

There was a sharp fire fight on the right side of the board but the US managed to clear the LZ and drop their first reinforcements. Heavy MGs quickly chewed them up but the helo lifted off and was annoying as hell for the rest of the game.

The VC eventually managed to start eliminating the US units on the board while jamming up the LZ and setting up a defensive line between the US troops and the village.

The US finally withdrew due to losses. We'd probably change the deployment to slow the rate of VC deployment but otherwise, the scenario worked really well.

I just cannot get over how slick Xenos is for modern small arms combats.

Up next: I may be posting a bit more sporadically as my real life has become a bit busy these past few weeks. We'll just have to play this by ear.

28mm furies

I continue to paint when I have some time and, this week, I finished off five 28mm fantasy figures.

These are some kind of feathered, bird-based monster. Maybe they are sirens or furies or some such? Anyhow, they were an easy paint and I think I have finished all of the monsters in the fantasy boxes Chen gave me. Now it is on to the last dozen or so adventurers.

Up next: Hard to say. I would guess some 28mm adventurers.

Three 28mm adventurers

Alright, the last few months have been a bit crazy with family stuff and it has been awhile since I have sat down long enough to make any progress on painting,

This week, I managed to crank out three 28mm fantasy figures (at a guess, a bard, a fighter, and a thief?) and a base of wizard fire. These were some nice figures Chen traded me. I wish I had done them a bit more justice but, well, things have been crazy.

Up next: Hard to say. I may actually be taking bit of a break for a few weeks since I have nothing in progress and not much time to start anything new.

FoL: Robin Hood

Back in January, Bruce hosted Richard and me in a Fistful of Lead Robin Hood game. Bruce's terrain has reached pretty epic proportions and we spent some time admiring his handiwork (the buildings are also finished and furnished inside...).

The basics of the game are that the Sheriff has discovered the blacksmith is in league with Robin Hood and, thus, the Sheriff has decided to run the smithy down (requires lighting three fires--the red game tokens). Robin Hood must prevent this. 

 

I had the Sheriff and three mounted men at arms and our plan was to make for the smithy and get it cooking. Unfortunately, Little John was defending it along with one archer. The rest of the hoods were coming to their aid.

On my left, Richard commanded 6 shoot7 and stabby foot guys who would block Robin Hood and his band of Merry Property Thieves.

 

Richard's troops did a bang-up job. Not so much my guys as we could neither lay a glove on Little John nor get the thatch and wood to kindle. Truly terrible rolling.

Richard tangled with Robin Hood in front of the church.

And laid him low! That was the turning point for the Team Sheriff and now it was a foot-race between Richard breaking the Merry Men's morale and Little John causing the sheriff to flee.

Richard even had the time to send a stabby guy up to deal with the annoying sniper!

Below, we see pretty close to the end game: the Merry Men are decidedly un-merry but Little John had KO'ed the Sheriff and is methodically beating the hell out of the rest of my guys (a complete slaughter).

Too late to matter, I finally got some hot dice and pasted Little John a good one (or two). The Sheriff must have been sold some defective flint and tinder or something because nothing would bleeding burn for me.

And this was Richard winning the game for the forces of capital... errr... evil... errr... whatever. The Merry Men fled to steal the rightful property of the rich another day and the Sheriff's forces (presumably) burned the smithy.

A very fun game and a visual delight to play out.

Terrain painting

Terry kindly gifted me some 3-D prints over the holidays and I quickly painted up three of them over the holidays.

First up is this large stone outcropping. A pretty slap-dash paint job (two dry brushes over black then some green and a wash) yielded a great result.

I used a similar process on this wood pile and it looks fantastic.

And finally there was there was this set of mysterious doors. It could lead to a cellar, a mine, or a crypt.

Super fun painting of super useful terrain items. Thanks Terry!

Scooby and Buffy vs Movie Monsters

Over the winter holidays, I had some friends over and I finally got my horror figures out on the table. We played a two-scenario game of the Scooby gang and the other Scooby gang against various Hammer Horror monsters. The rules were an adaptation of Fistful of Lead's Arena of Death rules that Bruce put together.

Scenario 1 saw the Scoobi approach a graveyard. Inside were Igor, digging around in some graves and The Monster walking slowly towards a little girl while giving the nearby fountain a thoughtful stare. Being no dummies, the original Scooby gang figured that. whatever Igor was doing (fetching a brain, as it turned out), they definitely did not want to let him succeed at and a big barney took place around the open grave.

On the other side of the table, the new Scooby gang mixed it up with The Monster and various lesser baddies and managed to save the girl from being dunked.

A clear win for the Scoobi, aided greatly by some pretty lucky rolling. The girl helpfully told them that there were more monsters in the crypt and we adjourned to the basement, where I had a second table set up.

The good guys started on the far side of the crypt and all of the monsters were off table. Each time the monsters got an activation card, they rolled to see if one appeared. If so, it could appear anywhere and then move normally the next turn,

There were also some traps. Some, like this stone ball than smashed Velma's glasses, were proximity triggered. The bigger trap is being sprung in the photo below: offering the players a choice of two paths which caused them to split up their party. And that was really the story of the second half.

Here we have the new Scooby, gang, going on a walk about and setting off lesser traps.

Meanwhile, the original Scooby gang, which was much less suited to fighting, would up in the soup, battling all sorts of baddies.

More wandering around.

Ruh-roh, here comes Bridezilla, and she is pi-iiiiissed.

Due to some incredibly bad dice rolling, it took the baddies forever to finish off the Scooby gang and The Monster somehow got KIAed in the process. This must have gone down very much like an actual cartoon fight. Yiokes!

As the new Scooby gang finally made their way into the fight, the baddies were able to catch them at a pinch point,

In the end, it came down to Willow versus Dracula and The Bride and the Monsters rolled boxcars for a convincing win.

Overall, a pretty fun game and thanks to everyone being a good sport about it.