So apparently I have no willpower or how I got into Empire of the Dead

I type this as I sit and paint models for yet another game. After demoing Empire of the Dead at Carronade and plans to demo it at further shows, I must admit I wasn't entirely sold on it. I like steampunk and was looking for a game of that ilk, and so was keeping an eye both on Empire of the Dead and Wolsung SSG by Micro art studios. However a week ago I was in my local game store, and noticed they had the full stock of Empire of the Dead they're. After toying with the box of Lycaon for a while, I eventually decided aye why no, and picked it up.

So what do you get for your £25

The contents of the box

As you can see you get 2 x Wolves, 4 x Wolfskins (humans who've joined up), a packmaster (the smaller of the two werewolves), and a beastlord. They're all single piece models and all pretty well cast. There was a few small mould lines on them, but they're pretty easy to take care of, though annoyingly some of the mould lines on the werewolves run through fur, which can make them a pain to remove. All fairly nice models, and should paint up well, so look forward to seeing them, at somepoint in the future knowing my painting speed.

So what about the game. The rulebook is £30 and for that you get a nice hardback book, with some generaly world background, told in the form of a diary kept by the manservant of a gentleman, background and rules for the various factions, the rules themselves and various scenarios and the campaign system.

What about the factions. Well there's four of them for now (whether they have plans to add more I don't know). There's the Vampire, who are out to spread their curse upon the world, and generally do evil vampire like things (none of your sparkly Twilight vampire romance stuff here), and they are considered an evil faction.

The Lycaon (werewolves) are rather than rampaging monsters out to eat everybody, are more into restoring the natural order of the world, and thus are enemies of the vampire (as they're undead), though will fight mankind as well as he pushes ever forward with technology and destroying the natural world as he marches forward. They're considered a neutral faction

The Brotherhood are basically the militant arm of the church. They have the usual Deacons and Brothers and what not, and are out to protect mankind from the things that prowl in the night. They are considered a good faction

Gentlemans clubs. Now they're a bit special, as you can just have a regular club, and generally they have the best access to all the weird and wonderful gadgets and they are generally considered a neutral faction. However what you can also do is affiliate them to one of the other societies. There are currently 4 in the world. The Sons of Empire are all about bettering the Empire and their fellow man. They are a good faction. The Darkfire club are all about nefarious black magic, and control through fear. They're an evil faction. The Wulfen Jaeger are monster hunters essentially, and can also hire on hunting hounds. They're considered a good faction, and lastly the Zendarian Officers club are swordmasters without peer, and are considered a neutral faction. If you affiliate, you gain slight stat changes, some extra rules and other things, though it does come at the cost of 10 shillings.

There are also various special characters, including Holmes, Watson and Jack the Ripper that can be hired, and the rules for them are available for free from Westwind.

Rules for Gentlemen & Jackanapes

The rules are pretty straight forward, nice and easy to pick up so they are. They are pretty much the same as in the demo rules, though they've been expanded for the full game, including a campaign system and a whole range of various weapons, both mundane and more weird and wonderful (steam powered exo-skeletons and pneumatic stakes to name a few).

The scenarios are nice, including the usual "having a fight" scenario (called a Fracas), rescue the prisoner, save the bystanders and what not. There are several locations as well, from residential areas, industrial areas, the countryside and the best yet being "The botanical gardens of Professor Julius Ford-Talbot", with a whole list of weird and exotic plants, all with various rules for interacting with your models.

The campaign system is a bit different, as rather than the usual experience based system that I was expecting, instead you use money to pay for advancement rolls, with every roll being 10 shillings. Means it's more of a balancing thing between buying new gear and people and advancing your existing ones. There's also rules for visiting the doctor for healing wounds, and going to the pawn shop to hock your old gear. 

Well I think I've probably rambled on enough about this, so I hope to see you all in the foggy streets of London sometime soon. And remember

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
— Samuel Johnson

Pictures of the Club Demo game

So it's been a little while coming, but I haven't had a great deal of time of late, so hopefully the wait shall be forgiven.

Just thought I would post up some pictures from our club demo game at Carronade 2012, which was a great deal of fun so it was.

The board at the beginning of the day.

Jack the Ripper waits in an alley, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting citizens of London.

Meanwhile on the other side, Holmes and Watson get ready to intervene.

While the people of London go about their business.

Jack claims a victim, while Holmes and Watson close in.

Holmes rushes in to try and save the citizenry (yes the dead guy has become a woman)

But too late, and while Watson tries to keep up with his injured leg, the Great Detective himself is felled.

Jack then uses his "Unusual Occurance" to disappear into the fog (effectively he can teleport 12"), and claim another two victims. Alas the game is lost.

A quick shot of the biggest murdering spree of the day, that's 4 civilians, 3 peelers and Holmes and Watson.

And lastly the team. That's Andy P on the left, then Barry Kelly, myself, Spencer Warner, and lastly John McGrory (who also took all the pictures). Holding aloft our mugs of victory.

There's a whole load more pictures, that I didn't put up due to it just being one massive long post. Instead I've hosted them here at Carronade 2012 on Flicker If you're so inclined you can go and have a look at more pictures of the board and figures that were used to play the demo game.

Mecha Ace out.

Carronade 2012 post show and a victory

Just a quick post to talk about the Carronade 2012 show, which was yesterday, and which was the first outing for our clubs participation game Empire of the Dead. There'll be more pictures later, as one of the other guys at our club was taking pictures of the board, so once he's sorted through them I'll get some of them up to show off the board in all it's glory.

So for a quick basic picture of the board and what it looked like

The board just after set up

The brick buildings in the lower left are the ones I painted, with the roofs being done by fellow blogger and G3 member LeadLegion. The other buildings and the gas lamps were all painted by various club members, along with the miniatures which don't feature in this shot.

The show ran really well, with 5 of us there manning the table we worked with 2 people on for an hour, then they would swap for an hour with the other guys, while the fifth guy helped when he could as he isn't feeling great, and we just did this for the show. This meant we weren't at the table too long, and the shift went reasonably quickly, especially as we generally had a decent amount of interest in the game, with a demo game being ran every shift.

Everybody enjoyed themselves, the people running the game, along with the people participating in the games. The scenario was Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper, with the Ripper having to kill 4 civilians and harvest their organs within 10 turns. If he managed this, he was the victor, otherwise if he was killed, or 10 turns passed, Sherlock was the winner. I think by the end of the day we had 4 victories to the ripper, with only 1 to Sherlock.

 During my off time I wandered round the show as well. For a start I picked up my Critical Mass pre-order, which now gives me enough Arc Fleet troops etc to have a fieldable army. So they'll slowly be getting painted up in the scheme that has been shown before and properly based up, now I know what I'm doing with them. I also bought some Mercs for things like Blasters and Bulkheads and Tomorrow's War. And cause I'd pre-ordered to collect from the show, they threw in some goodies of some free figures, a couple of the small objective markers and some sticks for mounting figures on for painting. All in all more than £10 worth of stuff, which for the size of order was pretty good.

Then the final surprise. As we were running the last game of the day, we were approached by two of the guys from Falkirk District Wargames Club and were informed that we'd won best participation game of the show. Needless to say we were all pretty chuffed with ourselves, and to top it off we were all handed a prize.

No champagne to fill it with though. I'm sure tea will do.

So it just comes to me to thank the guys from the Falkirk District Wargames Club for running the show, which was really enjoyable. It's a good show, and while it's far from the biggest, it's done in a reasonable space, so you're not crammed in, and there's a decent amount of traders there.

And now it's looking onwards to Wappinshaw in July, we are going to tart the board up some more for the demo game, and we will see what we can do there.

Mecha Ace out.

Club demo game at Carronade 2012 and Dropzone Commander

Just a quick post to say my club, Glasgow Games Group (G3) is running a demo game of Empire of the Dead, the new game by Westwind productions at Carronade 2012, over in Falkirk this Saturday, the 5th of May.

Carronade 2012

If you're in the area come and say hello, would be great to see people. I'll be one of the guys wandering around with a Glasgow Games Group t-shirt on. If it's not me you find, I'm sure one of the other guys will be able to point you in my direction.

Of course the good news is, after a bit of help from LeadLegion, and a bit of last minute painting by one of the other club members, and a lot of help from Mrs Mechaace, I finally got my contribution of buildings done for the demo game. I'll grab some pictures of them on Saturday and put up some pictures, along with the rest of the board.

Course it now means I can get back to my own stuff, so hopefully there'll be some more things appearing soon, I've already got a few more Critical Mass Arc Fleet done, and I'm expanding my army on Saturday, so I can actually play with it. Also going to be getting into action and start assembling an Old Republic force with Jedi, soldiers and smugglers etc for some Blasters and Bulkheads action. Also going to take a look into doing Spectre Teams and Alliance stuff for again using Blasters and Bulkheads to do some Mass Effect gaming.

And since it wouldn't do to not have some pictures, I thought I'd post up all the previews that have been shown by Hawk Wargames for their new game, Dropzone Commander that was previewed at Salute.

 The Post-Human Republic

The Alien Scourge

Another Alien faction, The Shaltari Tribes. They use teleporting technology, so instead of dropships, get gateships.

The United Colonies of Mankind (my potential faction

 I must say as well, for 10mm figures, those infantry are chock full of detail. I also really like the way that the tanks are actually designed to fit into the dropships so everything works. I don't think I can state how excited I am about this game.

There's still not much info over at Hawk Wargames other than a pre-order date and a release date. Though my FLGS is talking of stocking them, so that would be good.

If you want more info, I'd get following them on Facebook, as they are posting daily preview shots (that's where these all came from), and any info I imagine will appear there first.

Hawk Wargames on Facebook

Mecha Ace signing out