Pulp Alley - Nazis, Mummies & Heiroglyphs

Hi Folks

Can't believe its been almost a week since my last post and I have been slack - we played agame of pulp alley on Monday and this is the first time I have got round to writing up the report.

Too much work and other real life things getting in the way !

 

I was joined by both Mark, Steve and Legatus we played a four way multiplayer game. I had been able to set up the table over the weekend and prepare the leagues that would battle it out. Following the game it became apparent that four is probably the maximum that can battle it out in such a game so we will need to be aware of this for future Monday nights.

 

the outskirts of Cairo

 
 

The four leagues (made up on Sunday night and assisted by a rather fine Rioja) were as follows.

 

Eisen Schloss (Iron Castle in German)  - A Nazi sponsored group intent on securing objects of antiquity and paranormal interest for the benefit of the Fatherland. This League is headed up by Count Kluge and his rather butch henchman Herr Kutz (who clearly fashions himself on his idol)

 

The Children of the Sun. A mythical cult based in Egypt intent on protecting the antiquities of the Pharoahs. This group is lead by the High Priest Al Quresh who somehow has resurrected the bones of King Thotses 1V

sadly no team photo..Legatus Hedlius figures

 

P.I.T.H. (Paranomal Incidents that Threatens Humanity) A British based secret organisation intent on the destruction of cults, magic and other sinister activities. The group is lead by Ray ‘the gun’ Alan and his partner Lord Charles. Funnily enough all the leading characters wear Pith Helmets. The group was also joined by Doddery Ken
 

 

The Kennedy Research Institute of Histories and Antiquities: An American organisation (possibly backed by the Government) intent on collecting famous antiquities and locking them up in a warehouse. This strange behaviour is almost certainly driven by the fact that the Americans have little of their own history so by default want nobody else to have them. This team was lead by the adventurer Texas Bob and ably assisted by Professor Missouri.
 

 

As you can see these Leagues really had very little thought put against them but do create a flavour of what might unfold.

 

 

Our adventure was set in the 1930's just outside Cairo. (Yes I know very Indiana Jones). Pulp Alley is a game driven by plot points - as the players collect these plots they can progress through to the final task. In this case the final task was located in the centre of the table. An old Obelisk - the winning player needed to collect two plot points (from an available four) that would enable a translation of the Heiroglyphics on the central obelisk.

 

Our four sub plot points were marked around the table using white counters. These were to be found at -

 

• The truck outside the tomb entrance
• The obelisk outside town
• The tall building overlooking the market
• The Bedouin camp

The four players each started in one of the corners.

 

Rather than writing up a full AAR I'll leave that to Legatus who has produced a wonderful write up on his blog. I am just going to post a few piccies of the key actions

 

http://legatuswargamesarmies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/some-old-things-in-my-filing-cabinetand.html  

The Local Bedouin Arab who was himself a plot point

The Mummy stomps towards the Nazis

The Evil Count Kluge dispatching a yankee henchmen..to sieze a plot point

The chaos of the table



Chaos in the Bedouin encampment...Lord Charles comes to a sticky end

Mummy !! - Storms the Nazis at the final plot point.



The Local Market including Mad Mullah

 

The Nazis approach the first plot point and quickly capture this unopposed

The Americans cautiously wait on the edge of the board.....

 

As I stated earlier on a full aar is sitting on Legatus's blog - its a good read and you get to find out who won...

cheers & until next time

 

 

One week to go...

Hi Folks

This time next week, along with 000's of other wargamers will be descending on the excel centre in London for Salute.

To prepare for this event I cleared a load of old stuff out of the shed in the last few weeks and have been quietly selling on ebay. The net result is a sizable slug of cash to invest in new lead, buildings and other paraphernalia - I cant wait.

I gather that there is a bloggers meet in the centre of the hall at 1pm and at 12 noon the food folks from the VBCF are gathering at Dougs Em4 stand. Hopefully I'll get to meet more of my fellow hobbyists.

I will be wearing my BLAM t-shirt emblazoned on the back with Eric the Shed during the day so if you see me please do say hello.

I will of course take lots of pictures.

seven days to go...

Eric the Shed

Building a Volcano - The Results

Hi Folks

So if you have been following the Volcano thread you will know that I was doing this for a competition on the Lead Adventure Forum. Well this has all now finished.

There were some stunning entries and if you have not seen the thread on the Lead Adventure Forum I would strongly recommend a visit.

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=76922.0

In the end my efforts gave me fourth place BUT I was well and truly beaten by some worthy winners. Indeed there were so many good entries the spread of votes were very tight.

This was my final entry..

which if I have already posted apologies

However to get to this montage I did actually take lots of shots - even some with a bonfire behind to get some flame and smoke. Sadly I couldn't photoshop the pictures so this idea was canned.

Here are a few photos of the beast that never made the montage...

So that's it for the Build something competition this year. A big thank you to Jim Bibbly of the LAF for his organisation and congrats to the winners and all the other participants.

Until next year...

VBCW The Posties Unit - the Armour arrives

More on my Postie Unit for VBCW - part 2 here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/vbcw-posties-mechanised-unit-part-2.html

Just a short post here - I finally got round to painting my Postie Units armour...

I personally really like the red - still need to find some gold decals for the livery.

I have also taken receipt of some support weapons for the unit...these all came from Irregular Miniatures

So just need to slap some paint on these and the unit is probably finished.

Finally my local pub always seems to have the local posties sitting outside at lunchtime so in homage to them ...

Until next time

The final part of this thread can be found here...

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/vbcw-posties-heavy-weapon-support-part-4.html

Bug Hunt - The Desert Catacombs

Monday night saw the return of the Bug Hunt to the Shed - this particular game hadn't been played for over four years (before the blog was born) and with a new group now playing regularly in the shed I thought that this might prove a bit of fun.

When the players arrived they were each handed a character record sheet for their soldiers. Each player would command one hero and four grunts. These were the elite special forces of some unknown agency in the near future. (Backstory was quite light as I had too much work going on over the weekend), and given they were special each trooper was able top choose his own weapons from an array of assault rifles, lmgs, flamers, grenades shotguns etc.

The game rules are very similar to my predator set - each turn a figure can perform two actions (eg move twice, fire twice or any other combination of other actions) - this does mean that rapid firing can quickly exhaust ammo.

Unlike my Predator game each team dices for initiative. The highest player including the Umpire goes first. The players automatically get +2 to their die roll but they lose -1 for each figure killed. Clearly as the game progresses the initiative potentially passes to the Umpire.

The umpire commands all the hostiles...more on this in a second.

So as the players arrived they were confronted with my Egyptian temple set against the sandy cliffs of the Valley of the Kings. All they know is that a party of scientists have gone missing and that their mission is one of rescue.



Very Stargate...now where's Kurt Russel



The temple

The Temple Build can be viewed here...http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/egyptian-adventures-temple-build-part-1.html

Behind the temple and the tomb entrance lie a series of tunnels and catacombs. Initially these are all covered and only revealed as the players pass through each zone.

Behind the cliffs lie the catacombs

Each of the cave boards is 30cm x 30cm square with entrances, tunnels and mini caves carved out of foam. I have around 60 of these built allowing for any number of permutations. They are very basic but provide a great setting for cave exploration. As I said these were made sometime ago and could probably do with a major refurb.

The table had been laid out earlier and covered. Unbeknownst to the players the tomb entrance would lead to a dead end and the temple entrance would lead into the hive proper.

no peeking

However all the zones could hold creepies or by empty. I have created a deck of cards indicating what's in each zone. Over a third of the cards are empty caverns/tunnels whereas the rest contain anything from spawn (face huggers) to giant spiders, hive warriors (think aliens) through to some bigger beasties.

The Cards - numbers denote how many

Each of these has different attributes and reacts in different ways

• Spiders drop on characters sucking up their innards in seconds - but are extremely vulnerable to fire
• Hive Warriors are fast, very vicious and splash acid when blown up
• Bigger Hive Guards are heavily armoured, still fast, acidic and very violent.

Put it bluntly if you don't kill these beasties before they get to you are pretty much toast.

The rules are still very much work in progress but they do deliver a quick thoughtful and tactical game in an atmosphere that has a great deal of suspense.



As the games master I get to randomly play 1 or two cards per zone next to the areas the players move through. I may then look at these and can either elect to move them (even if they are blank) or leave them there - best for ambushes. If the characters fail their recon roll they don't know what's there. If they are successful and depending on the rolls success they can either learn the nature of the terrain ahead, are there any lifeforms and potentially the number.

It does pay to recon in my games as all sorts of horrors can happen to the unwary or just plain right foolhardy.


To give the players something to think about before the entered the caverns they discovered a rather large beast rampaging through the scientists camp. This took two squads combined firepower to bring the beast down and in the process got a number of men badly injured from acid splash.




Whats that Sarge...over there in the ttents...

Don't know Son but lets fill it with lead....lots and lots and lots of lead

From this point all the players knew they were in for a tough fight.

fortunately more ammo was found in the tractor unit

The rest of the evening was an enjoyable romp for me as the umpire - for the players it was somewhat different. However they soon quickly learned that grenades were particularly effective in the confines of the caves and that going on overwatch as mysterious blank cards started to approach them was worthy .



Tasty....

Sentry Guns provided some rapid fire support

f**k the flamers run dry

oh dear....

Slurrrpppp

its a dead end...in more ways than one

Sadly we ran out of time to complete the game and the players didn't meet the Hive Queen who was using the scientists bodies as incubators ...but that is another story.

The Queen

If you are interested in reading one of the players accounts head here...

http://legatuswargamesarmies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/bug-hunt-at-shed-and-osprey-black-ops.html