We'll Begin Again - Empire of the Dead AAR

Since the gangs we had started the Empire of the Dead campaign were becoming a little bloated - either because surviving characters were amassing skills or new models were being added faster than older ones were leaving - the group decided to make new gangs, different from the ones we had already played with:

Me - Criminal (Tong)

Gary - Gentlemen's Club (Darkfire)

Bob - Nosferatu

Carl - Gentleman's Club

My new gang's first game was against Carl's club, who were sporting an array of shotguns and rifles. In a Fracas scenario, I was certainly outgunned. Luckily, I managed to get the roll for day/night, and elected to play in the cover of darkness, making it harder for Carl's gang to shoot me.  

We deployed in opposite corners, and my Gentleman of the Road (who adds a +1 to initiative rolls as long as he's on the table) made sure I had the initiative for most of the game. 

My new gang's first game was against Carl's club, who were sporting an array of shotguns and rifles. In a Fracas scenario, I was certainly outgunned. Luckily, I managed to get the roll for day/night, and elected to play in the cover of darkness, making it harder for Carl's gang to shoot me.  

We deployed in opposite corners, and my Gentleman of the Road (who adds a +1 to initiative rolls as long as he's on the table) made sure I had the initiative for most of the game. 

My gang advanced together, with the Bludger rushing ahead, hoping for a chance to use his sawn-off shotgun. 

Carls' Gent's split off into two group - four continued to the far corner of the table, while two headed for the center. 

I sent my Guv'nor and Dipper into the middle of the square as well, hoping to use my Dipper to steal something off Carl's models. Managing to survive Carl's shots, my Tong members - not known for their extraordinary shooting skills - managed to not only hit the Gents when firing back, but removed both models from the table! 

At the other table edge, my Bludger was boosted up onto the wall, where he saw Carl's Gents taking cover behind a low wall. Since template weapons automatically hit, ignoring cover, the gangster leveled his sawn-off and gave the Gents both barrels. This took out another of Carl's models. 

The Gents weren't going down without a fight, however, and the Bludger paid for his eagerness by becoming holier than the pope, then being removed from play.

Having lost 50% of his gang, Carl managed to succeed on his Break Tests, but elected to retreat, not wanting to subject his gang to more punishment now that the Tong, a close combat faction, were ready to charge.

So the Tong won their first game!

As Gary and Bob had played against each other, we decided to try out a four player Artefact Hunt, with Carl and I teaming up against Bob and Gary. We changed the scenario a bit, with for Artefact tokens placed in the middle of the table around a clock, representing that there was potentially an artifact hidden at its base.

Once again, the Tong deployed in a corner by the docks.

Bob deployed to my left, with his vampire Graf, Guardian, and a trio of Bat Swarms. 

Carl's Gents deployed opposite of me. 

And Gary's Darkfire Club deployed to my right. I was especially afraid of Gary's Gatling gun!

The actual game, however, shook down into two separate fights - between Gary and Carl, and Bob and I. The Bat Swarms harried my gang, managing to take out both the Bludger and the Dipper, but the rest of the Tong managed to give the bloodsuckers enough of a drubbing that they broke and ran. 

Gary, seeing that he was now outmatched against the combined Tong and Gents, elected to retreat. This ended the game in a draw, and neither side managed to find an artifact. This game was definite proof to Gary's claim that Empire of the Dead, while certainly a fun campaign game, isn't suited to multi-player games. 

I am, however, eager to receive the Tong box set that I ordered, and to see how this gang turns out. 

Fields of Smoke - All Quiet on the Martian Front AAR

As the 7th Dimension group was unable to gather for another round of our EotD campaign, Gary brought out his All Quiet collection for another game, with my own collection getting added in. This time we were joined by Russ and Carl. 

We were playing table-length again, and this time it was a meeting engagement between the American and Martian forces. No trenches for the infantry to hide in this time!

The Martians only had a 6" deployment area, meaning that they had to keep a trio of Assault tripods off the table, ready to move on in the next turn. Gary had has usual collection of Assaults, Scouts, Slavers, and hordes of drones. Carl would be the other Martian commander.

Russ and I would be controlling the humans. My force was primarily made up of militia infantry and tanks, with some regular military units joining them on the left side of the road. Russ' force were the tanks and infantry on the road, and everything to the left in the woods and beyond.

With the Army rumbling past and the impact of the tripods' movement growing louder, the civilians in the area began to flee their homes.

As the Martians had the first turn, none of their weapons were in range to fire, so most moved twice, hoping to get into heat-ray range quickly. The humans advanced as well, with their armor out front and infantry following behind. Some slight damage was done to the tripods, with the artillery focusing on the Slavers, hoping to take them out and their Drones at the same time. The two squads of Rough Riders moved out, hoping to close and entangle the Martian machines.

Turn two saw a lot of smoke markers getting placed on the table. The Martians opened up with their heat rays, slagging a bunch of the oncoming human tanks. The regular Rider platoon lost two of its three stands, but the two Rider units managed to tangle the two tripods they went after. More shots from the tanks either went wide or crumpled the armor of the tripods to little effect.

Events continued to go poorly for the humans. On the right, only a single Mk II and a command tank remained, and the infantry were forced to advanced past their burning hulks as the Martians kept coming. Russ was having slightly better luck on his side, with most of his tanks intact. 

A cheer went up from the human side as one of the Slavers blew up. It didn't injure any of the surrounding tripods, but it did destroy a number of drones. 

Russ's luck quickly ran out, however, as a line of tripods obliterated his remaining tanks, only leaving a single Mk III that took an unbelievably large amount of firepower to bring down.

With only three tanks remaining on the table, it was up to the machine guns and artillery to do some damage to the oncoming Martians. The infantry, out in the open, was getting hammered by Drones and the heat rays of the larger tripods.

With the last of the remaining tanks wiped out, the humans were getting dangerously close to the break point. Still, the infantry advanced, hoping to take out a couple more tripods in close assaults. the second Slaver did fall, however, and with it went the Drones. Another tripod on Russ' side exploded, but didn't set off any chain reactions. 

Unfortunately, the Martian heat rays swept enough of the infantry off the table to finally break the humans, who were forced to retreat once again. Victory to the Martians!

Russ and I had a rough time of it, with some exceptionally poor dice rolling. Gary and Carl took full advantage of that fact, happily stomping and melting our toy tanks with their big, mean tripods. But it was another great game, and I'm definitely glad that Gary's got more All Quiet items on the way. Hopefully we'll get to see the big town that Gary's had in the works.

Painting Update - All Quiet on the Martian Front

The work on my All Quiet minis continues! Gary's game last week really got me back into painting, and I've finally finished starter set.

Machine guns can be deceptively deadly in All Quiet. Sure, you need a 10 on a d10 to actually hurt a tripod, but a unit of machine guns throws out 3 dice for every stand, so the odds are pretty good. And then every hit scored makes the tripods easier to injure. Plus, they're useful against the hordes of Drones and Lobotons Martians can field, although it may just be easier to target the Slaver tripod that controls them.

While the infantry in the game I had with Gary didn't do much, they're still hard to hit and semi-defensible when they're in trenches or behind fortifications. 

I really like how the blue coats and helmets work with the khaki webbing, masks and backpacks, with the olive drab paints keeping the infantry from looking too much like ACW soldiers. 

And the last of the humans, a unit of MK III Baldwin steam tanks. With three guns apiece, these guys can put out enough shots that are actually capable of injuring tripods at full armor! 

So that's the human forces from the starter box - easy to clean and assemble, and fairly simple to paint. The two units of infantry took the longest, but only because they're much more labor intensive to paint than the tanks. 

In the future, I'd like to get some decals - probably ones from Battlefront for WWII U.S. tanks - to add a little detail to the tanks, in order to break up the somewhat monotonous blue scheme.

Now, onto the Martians!

I decided to go with a bronze/brass color with my Tripods. The one above is a little lighter in the picture than it is on the table. This was also after the very coat of paint, and the brush strokes are still fairly obvious.

I'm happy that the final result looks pretty good. A brown wash and a dullcote spray varnish took a lot of the shininess away from the paint, and made the brush strokes much less obvious.  

One side affect is some 'crackling' of the paint along the upper side of the rim of the tripod's head. It's a little annoying, and I don't know what caused it. but it isn't very noticeable at arm's length. 

I followed some other examples that converted a Black Dust cannon into a Green Gas launcher, and I think it turned out well.

So that's the Martians! Wow, that took a lot less time than the humans. While the tripods are very, very large compared to their opponents, they don't have as much detail as the infantry. I would advise anyone painting tripods to avoid doing what I did - actually painting the main color on over a black primer - and simply chose a colored spray and use that as a base coat.

So now it's on to other projects. I'm working on a Kingdoms of Men army for the newest edition of Kings of War that just released, as its causing a bit of a buzz with the guys at 7th Dimension Games. I've also got some Litko bases coming from Noble Knight Games, and with those in hand I can start working on some Early Imperial Romans and Ancient British for DBA.

Hold the Line! - All Quiet on the Martian Front AAR

This past weekend, Gary finally got a chance to bring out his All Quiet collection for a massive game. I was supposed to bring out my own small force, but decided against it as I still hadn't finished painting everything. Unfortunately, I had neglected to tell Gary this, so we had to do some last minute points shuffling. 

Gary had to drop a trio of Scout tripods from the list, but that still left an imposing amount of Martian walkers ready to deploy on the table. Gary's fantastic looking grey-and-steel color scheme was further accentuated by the imposing red eyes of the cyclopic machines. He would be commanding the aliens during this game (having worn his Marvin the Martian t-shirt as emphasis). 

Not to be outdone, the humans brought along an impressive array of their own machines, with plenty of Mk II and III steam tanks, a Mk IV Monitor, Mk II command tanks, a lone clamp tank, artillery (both static and mobile) and plenty of infantry. 

The Martians would be approaching from the farmland, intent on wiping out the thin line of infantry hiding in their trenches. The humans would try to hold the line as their tanks and artillery would hopefully do enough damage to drive the tripods back. 

My infantry and machine gun squads went into the trenches, with one of the command teams in support. The single unit of Rough Riders was placed to take advantage of the one area of the trenches that had a gap. The towed heavy artillery set up on top the the hill, and the mobile artillery parked on the edge of the woods. One group of tanks sat ready to move up the road, while the other waited behind the woods. 

Gary's Martians were all over the place, with the Grenadiers on the sides and the Slavers and their Drones in the center. Scouts ranged forward while the Assault tripods made up the bulk of the alien attackers. 

The first few turns saw the human tanks slowly trundling forwards as the infantry withstood barrages of heat rays and bombardments from the Grenadiers. What few civilians remained in the area fled as the tripods stomped past their homes. 

As a side note, what I like so much about All Quiet is the fantastic profiles the Martian tripods have when viewed at table height. Imagine seeing these machines marching towards you from the horizon!

While the humans were able to score some casualties on the Martians (including one very lucky machine gun bullet from the clamp tank), the tripods swarmed forward, their heat rays sweeping across the trenches. Infantrymen perished, either burned away in crimson brilliance or falling, choking and wheezing from the effects of the Martian's green gas and black ash. 

While the trenches made it much harder for the Martians to hit the infantry, the Scouts used their targeters to make the infantry much easier to hit. The trenches were quickly depleting even as the tanks rolled up and started to blaze away. 

Soon, the humans were down to three infantry stands huddling in a bunker. The tanks and artillery fired desperately, hoping for a Martian tripod to blow up and potentially damage the others.

It was looking pretty grim for the infantry!

Another round of Martian shooting left the bunker a molten pile of slagged concrete. Victory to the Martians!

Not wanting to end the game there, however, Gary and I decided to continue slugging it out, hoping to see if one side could cause the other to break. Many of the tripods started to take damage. One had its legs crippled before being immobilized by the clamp tank. One of the Slavers went down, leaving only a single controller for the Drones. Two more tripods had their weapon systems damaged and almost shot one another. 

But now that the infantry were gone, the tripods were free to begin firing at the tanks. Mk IIs and IIIs started to blow up all along the line. The back line of artillery, still untouched, continue to fire into the Martian lines. The last Slaver had its legs crippled, and I won control of it, so I drove it backwards, preventing the Drones from doing anything. In retaliation, Gary directed the Slaver to take a shot at my Monitor - and destroyed it!

The game ended on turn six, with Gary still taking the victory. Both sides had been bloodied, with many of the Tripods going down in the second half of the game. I really should have deployed my tanks much closer to the trenches, instead of worrying about them being blown up - Gary would have been forced to decided on targeting the harder-hitting, better protected tanks, or focusing on the infantry to try and win the scenario. In our game, he was able to destroy the infantry, then turn his attention on the tanks. 

This was my second game of All Quiet, and was just as fun as the game I played over at On Military Matters. All Quiet is definitely a great scenario game, but I could never really see it being played all that well as a 'turn-up-and-play' kind of game. There are just too many rules for too many units scattered all over the place. For some - like the Rough Riders - Gary gave me printouts on rules from the All Quiet forums! An update is definitely needed to get all these rules back into one book, hopefully with a better index. 

And as a bonus picture, we had a couple guys playing Command & Colors: Napoleonic at the store using big hexes, terrain and actual miniatures. Pretty cool!

Painting Update - All Quiet on the Martian Front

I'm still plugging away at my backlist of unpainted miniatures. Looking over my shoulder, I can see the 15mm WWII Germans, a couple Blood Bowl teams, and now a slowly growing Warhammer Empire collection for use in Kings of War.

This time it's the humans from the All Quiet starter set. This small force gives new players a taste of what they can expect from the humans in the game - swarms of squishy tanks and infantry that can really mess up a tripod if the Martian commander isn't careful. I've been painting these guys over the past couple weeks, and will hopefully be finished in time for an upcoming All Quiet game this weekend.

Since this is a game of science fiction, not history, I wanted something different from the average greens and browns everyone uses. I wanted something that'll stand out when I bring these guys to use in community games. So here's the 3rd Regiment, New Jersey Martian Invasion Response Unit, aka the "Jersey Blues," who first saw combat when they helped the US Navy defeat a Martian Canister when it crash-landed on the shores of Wildwood.

The Rough Rider unit demonstrates the uniform I'm using for the infantry - blue jackets and helmets, khaki backpacks, straps, and gas masks, olive drab pants and brown boots. While I don't have any pictures of the in-process miniatures, the infantry and machine guns also have olive drab blankets, along with larger backpacks. The coloration works well, as the blue stands out just enough, but doesn't look strange alongside the less vibrant colors. 

Of course, the Mk II tanks catch the eye with their deep blue paint, helped out with a good helping of black wash. I also splashed some Vallejo Tan Earth on the tracks and underside of the tanks, to give them a dirtier look. Using sand for coal also worked perfectly - the effect makes it seem as though these tanks are topped off and ready for a fight!

If I'm lucky, I'll have the infantry and the Mk III's done by the end of the week, and then I'll begin work on the Martians.