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.

Some May the Fourth Pulp Alley

I ran a Star Wars-themed game of Pulp Alley for May the 4th at the club this week. Scott has most recently seen a Star Trek episode (TOS no less) so got to choose gangs first. He picked Planet of the Apes. Craig selected Buffy and the Scooby Gang. Chen picked Klingons. And that left Richard with Han Solo and friends.

Players got points for killing figures, solving minor plot points (which revealed NPCs), and for capturing and escorting their NPC off the board (e.g., Klingons had to capture a Romulan). The setting was the stockyard section of Sunnydale and The One's manipulation of time and space to brought our gangs together.

The Apes quickly ran towards a plot point which set of a flurry of dashing about. (Plot points were tribbles). By the end of the first turn, each side was firmly on the board.

Which is about when the Zeds started crawling out of the sewers (in lieu of a major plot point). This was a surprise to everyone.

The Zeds moved at the end of each subsequent turn (with additional reinforcements appear out of each manhole) towards the nearest figure and seeking to brawl. The players had quite surprisingly bad rolls for zombie entry (everyone rolled maximum zombies for several turns--I almost ran out of zombies!) and great roles when playing the zombies against other players.

Several figures got trapped battling (and basically farming) zombies. For example,  Chen's Uwan spent the entire game calming dispatching the undead in this spot

Scott had a similar experience with Cornelius being essentially taken out of play by endless Zeds. Craig used Buffy to farm Zeds and earn points. I suspect next time there would be more running from the Zeds rather than getting trapped.

The Apes eventually solved a plot point to reveal the Romulan that the Klingon's needed. Scott immediately wanted to kill her. I hadn't thought about such a blood-thirst strategy but went with it. Scott and Chen then battled over the Romulan for much of the rest of the game.

The Scooby gang had a tonne of trouble with their plot point. Xander blew himself up. Willow eventually solved it to reveal the droids needed by Han Solo.

The north side of the board continued to be inundated by Zeds. Han Solo discovered the Ape general by solving a plot point and quickly dispatched him (so blood thirsty!). Uwan killed more Zeds.

Solo and Chewy made a move on the droids with a rebel trooper hitting Willow with fire. Chen quipped "Your archaic religion is no match for a blaster."

This was, sadly, the high water mark for the Star Wars gang as the zombies washed over them shortly afterwards ("ummm, Chewy...").

We called the game at the end of Turn 6. Chen narrowly won on points but was also the only player to recover his objective and be heading towards the exitd. Scott and Craig were close behind in points. The Zombie mechanic was a good idea but slightly over-powered: one Zed per manhole per turn would have been fine.

Thanks to the players for their good humour. I was so happy I remembered almost everything. I left Luna Lovejoy's wand as the initiative marker at home so we McGyverized a solution (a box of paper clips). Thanks also to Red Claw for hosting us.

54mm AWI and 28mm horror

I had a pretty productive week painting. I finished another 8 of the 54mm AWI militia I have been working on.

Above the buff-whites; below the white-mints. Only eight more militia to go!

I also did some work on some 28mm Reaper figures I got in a holiday trade. A flying ape and a flying demon bot got a bit of TLC to improve their paint jobs.

I added a wash to a spider and then did a tiny bit of improvement on three horrorclix figures. The tall guys look like The Gentlemen from Buffy while we also have a partially de-cloaked predator,

Up next: More militia plus some goblins.

28mm horror plus Buffy Lego

An order of bases finally arrived a few weeks back and I finished off some 28mm Horrorclix repaints I did over the Christmas holidays.

These three demons are sweet little sculpts with insanely nice detail totally lost by the lousy Horrorclix paint job. I highlighted and washed and they really turned out well.

I also painted up a bunch of other 28mm Horrorclix. Some villains, some adventurers. Not sure how they will be used but nice to have then finished and available.

I also picked up some Buffy not-Lego figures. Below there is Cordellia, Willow, Xander and Oz.

I also bought Angel, Giles, Buffy and Spike. Nice enough--shame the red plastic so blows out the colour balance on my camera.

Up next: Likely some more 54mm AWI fellows (coming to the end of the militia--just like Washington!).

Ogres and pumpkins

I picked up a mixed lot of Reaper figures on the internet a few weeks back, thinking they would be useful to Pulp Alley and Dragons Rampant.

First up were four ogres. They got a white undercoat and then a bunch of washes. They are big figures (28mm Batgirl for scale).

Each of the poses is unique and there is one armoured fellow.

I'm still getting the hang of pictures with white undercoats (the figures glow more for the camera than for my eye) but the musculature turned out nice enough.

I also painted up four Hallowe'en-themed pumpkin figures. Again, white undercoat with washes and some highlights.

The pumpkin-vine creature is really big (25mm Buffy for scale). The orange looks a touch washed out here and pops more in person.

Up next: A bunch more 25mm figures are on the workbench--awaiting a delivery of clear plastic bases.

Buffy plus monsters

For Christmas, Santa brought me some Buffy the Vampire Slayer minis in 25mm. These have a real 1990s vibe to them, with lobster hands and gun-fight poses but they do a pretty decent job of capturing the characters.

Above we have Giles, Xander, Willow and Cordellia. Below, Spike, Buffy, Tara and Angel. I had to do a few swaps as there wasn't a Xander or Cordellia figure so rand0-vamps were converted with paint.

I primed these white and painted with washes. Combined with white skin and black duds, that lead to some issues when taking pictures so pardon the washed out snaps. Below we have the Master and Drusilla (centre) with two more rando-vamps flanking them.

I also bought a fistful of Reaper plastics on line. These include the worm and werewolf below. I think these were pre-paints? So I added some highlights and wash.

There are quite a few more of these to come, although the rest require painting.

Up next: some clix-repaints, assuming clear bases arrive.