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Grimdark Future at C3 GameCon

Posted by Comrade on March 7, 2023
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I ran a game of Grimdark Future Firefight at C3 GameCon last month! I’ve run many convention games before, and it’s always a real joy to welcome new players to the table and give them a glimpse at this wonderful hobby that has brought so much happiness and creativity to my life.

For this game, I selected Grimdark Future Firefight because I wanted to get my gorgeous infected city terrain onto the battlefield. This was a batch of terrain that I commissioned from Morti5 Studios a couple years ago … my pandemic splurge, as I recall. It’s a big setup, and I haven’t had very many opportunities to get it all onto the table at the same time. That changed last month!

The best advice I can give to anyone who is considering running a convention game is this: “Focus on the spectacle.” Get your best terrain and your most impressive painted miniatures onto the table. You want to attract peoples’ attention, to have them walk across the room to inspect your little miniature world, and have them say “What IS that?!” in a breathless tone of voice. If they do that, you’ve won before a single die has been rolled.

Pick a game that’s simple to teach and explain, and then strip out all the superfluous content. Don’t worry too much about game balance. Toss out special rules and anything that slows down gameplay. A convention game is not the time for flipping through a rulebook. Make sure each player has some cool figures that perform exactly like they’re modeled to behave – the guy with the big gun goes boom, the rogue in the cloak is good at sneaking around, the barbarian charges into battle. Just aim to give the players a taste of the general gameplay and provide a few opportunities for them to explore deeper strategies. If they like the game, they’ll do all the additional research on their own.

Anyway, my game had four players with some basic background in tabletop RPGs, but none had played Grimdark Future Firefight. No problem! I provided printouts of the 2-page rules document as well as prepared teams of commando operatives for each player.

The scenario pitted the four players against two GMs (me and my buddy Daniel). We’d be managing a city full of plague zombies, and they would be running the infiltration teams tasked with killing the zombies and retrieving the data cores from deep inside the infected city.

The game unfolded exactly as I’d hoped, with the players whispering about strategy as they warily eyed the roaming hordes of plague zombies arrayed against them. Who’s gonna take the left flank? What about that bunker full of zombies? Grimdark Future Firefight is a pretty simple game, and after a short explanation they were chucking dice and pushing plastic around the table.

The scenario (players against the GM) is one I’d definitely recommend for future convention games. It was structured so the players couldn’t lose – the only question was how badly they would beat up the zombies before we hit our turn limit and the game ended. This led to lots of high fives and backslaps as the players laid waste to the zombies and generally felt awesome. Again, this is a key goal of a convention game: make your players feel like they’re capable and in control.

We got plenty of onlookers as the game progressed, due in large part to the impressive terrain setup. At the end, to no one’s surprise, the players emerged victorious – though we all agreed that it was a pyrrhic victory, and that the commandos were almost certain to be slaughtered once night fell and the zombies regrouped.

Once again Grimdark Future Firefight gave a great game that was perfect for newcomers. After the game, each player received their very own custom purple dice emblazoned with our game group’s logo – the Majestic Gamers. You can see a pile of them in the lower right in the pic above.

As I was packing up, two other guys from my game group (Lawrence and Paul) were arriving to set up the next session – an introduction to WarCry! Like me, they also had a full house and seemed to have a blast teaching new players about this fun game.

Thanks to the fine organizers of C3 GameCon for giving us space to host a fun afternoon of gaming! We’ll definitely be back next year.

The Raid at Ghorston’s Spur

Posted by Comrade on February 7, 2023
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Last month I hosted two sci-fi skirmish games, and despite using two different game systems, we were able to tease out a bit of a narrative through-line to connect them together. Both games were set on Drusichtor, the third moon of Gamma Euphorion Prime in the Juventius Sub-Sector.

Drusichtor is a heavy industrial moon focused on mining and resource extraction. While Gamma Euphorion Prime grapples with a nascent genestealer cult infestation that is rocking the political underpinnings of the fragile ruling class, miners on Drusichtor made a terrifying discovery that suggested just how long the genestealers had been plotting to undermine the planet…

For the first game, we tried out Rogue Hammer, the new grimdark sci-fi ruleset from Nordic Weasel Games. It was a learning game, so we started small and coached each other through the rules. The game was set in the Pits of Volceradon, a vast and crumbling strip-mining operation that sprawls across the surface of Drusichtor. The warbands were competing to reach a hapless miner who had been infected by … something … that he picked up during his forays deep below the moon’s surface. You can see the miner staggering around near some bubbling pools of green toxic waste. Yum!

The game featured an Inquisitorial kill team, alongside a platoon of Ultramarines, racing to secure the miner before the pox-ridden warriors of the Death Guard could spirit him away and conduct a vivisection to figure out what happened to him.

Rogue Hammer was fun, but it definitely felt like a game that needs some additional material before it’s a truly playable Rogue Trader heartbreaker clone. For example: Many of the unit and character upgrades were specifically focused on fighting vehicles, yet you won’t really be using vehicles unless you’re playing a large game of Rogue Hammer. So for the skirmish sized games that we typically play, most of the anti-vehicle upgrades are useless and a waste of points. Meanwhile, factions like Chaos Space Marines – which have arguably been part of the lore since Rogue Trader – were conspicuously absent from the barebones army lists provided in the rulebook. I had to run my Death Guard using the Eldar (excuse me, Space Pirates) list.

In fairness to Nordic Weasel, I believe his intent is to manage Rogue Hammer like a “living rulebook,” with fairly frequent releases and rules tweaks to deliver exactly the sort of content I was missing.

Anyway, our Rogue Hammer game wrapped up with a shocking conclusion, when the poor miner underwent a sudden and violent transformation – the “final form” of his mysterious infection?

The blood-spattered xenomorph creature lurched toward the nearest target, claws akimbo. It was a deadly dance, but Danie’s Primaris Captain was up to the task!

The grisly outcome led directly to game two, which took place a few weeks later. In this game, the action moved to the nearby mining settlement of Ghorston’s Spur, where another specimen had been captured and stashed in one of the hovels. This game featured two teams of factions fighting to locate and secure the specimen – Dark Mechanicus and Chaos Cultists vs. Sisters of Battle and Orks (temporarily pacified, perhaps, to serve as useful cannon fodder for the Adeptus Sororitas? That was what we convinced ourselves, anyway).

For this game, we used Grimdark Future Firefight, an old favorite around here that we return to time and time again.

I had prepped a little scenario with rules for exploring the little ramshackle outbuildings. You weren’t sure exactly what you’d find when you went a-knocking on those doors!

Shooting is fairly potent in Grimdark Future Firefight, and we lamented the unfortunate lack of cover for Lawrence’s Chaos Cultists. They got chewed to pieces by deadly accurate fire from Rian’s newly painted Sister of Battle. Oops!

I didn’t have it much better … my Dark Mechanicus warband, The Seekers of the Fractal Schematic, were uncomfortably close to the menacing Orks at the start of the game.

Jim’s Orks were on top of me by the second turn, which made it pretty hard to explore the outbuildings to find the specimen.

Eventually (through trial and error) we determined which of the squalid dwellings held the specimen, and all of the factions promptly made a beeline for it. Covering fire was laid down by the Sisters of Battle as the Orks rampaged unchecked through the industrial settlement. Rho-Terak, the Enslaver of Logic (leader of my Dark Mechanicus warband) sustained superficial damage to his mostly-metal body during this chaotic scramble.

In game terms, he went out of action, but of course he didn’t die. He’s just … recuperating, back at base. Shouldn’t have been standing there, guy!

The final clash came when Vethidian the Supernumerary, second-in-command of my Dark Mechanicus warband, met the Sisters of Battle Canoness at the front door of the target hut. His sad little withered body was no match for the Canoness’s power sword!

So the Sister of Battle made off with the alien specimen! Doubtless the Imperium’s best xenobiologists will gather important intel from its carcass. The Dark Mechanicum will lick their wounds and regroup for another assault!

Grimdark Future gave a quick and decisive game, as always. There are a number of mechanics in this game that serve to hasten the inevitable conclusion of a skirmish clash. It’s never fun to see your cool models go down, but it’s important to remember that the game’s gotta end at some point.

It was pleasant to write up these two short game reports and stitch them together into a coherent narrative flow. I’m really enjoying the development of Drusichtor as a theater of operations in the larger Gamma Euphorion narrative campaign. There’s plenty here to fight over, and we haven’t even delved into the soot-encrusted Volceradon Furnace Tunnels…stay tuned for more!

Apoc-Luck 2022: The Gathering Storm

Posted by Comrade on January 17, 2023
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I’m back with a gameplay report for our December 2022 Apoc-Luck mega battle, featuring some stunning and dramatic photos. Recall from my previous post that we set out to do a large multiplayer game using Age of Fantasy. We rented out a local community center, gathered our armies large and small, and arrayed them for a glorious clash. The final tally put the combined points at roughly 15,000 per side, for a total of 30,000 points of toy soldiers on the table.

This post will share some incredible photos from the games themselves. I regret that I didn’t capture much of the turn-by-turn flow of the battles, as I was trying to both snap photos and pilot my chaos army to victory. In the later turns, I had to unfortunately step away for a phone call, which further inhibited my ability to capture the narrative flow.

The first game (The Twilight Forest) featured infantry-heavy armies maneuvering blocks of troops in a wooded glade. My chaos raiders, Paul’s orcs, and Rian’s chaos warriors faced off against John’s human peasant levies and Parker’s sneaky wood elves.

The second game (Blood in the Streets) was more of a “clash of the titans” affair, with lots of solo models and small units of larger miniatures smashing each other to pieces in the cobbled streets of a medieval village.

Here, in roughly chronological order, are pics from the first couple of turns of the first game (The Twilight Forest).

The Twilight Forest – Early Turns

Paul’s orcs looked fantastic together with Daniel’s loaner army (also orcs, also similarly painted).

My giant chaos army featured two (2) dragons, which swooped over the battlefield wreaking havoc.

My Putrid Blightkings led the way on the right flank, soaking up damage from skirmishers on the opposing side. Their advance paved the way for the bulk of the chaos infantry and support units.

Below you can see John’s human army marching to war under the House Begovic banner, along with a contingent of metal automatons.

Blood in the Streets – Early Turns

The photo below shows a closer look at Blood in the Streets, our second scenario which sprawled across a large battlefield dominated by a medieval village and some ruins on the periphery. The buildings are from Lawrence’s personal collection of Tabletop World pieces, and they are absolutely gorgeous – a real treat to play upon!

Lawrence’s Lizardmen raced onto the board and crashed headlong into the undead army helmed by Alex (Jim’s son, the drama!!) and Lawrence’s chaos daemons (composed almost exclusively of gigantic centerpiece models).

The Twilight Forest – Later Turns

The later turns saw the blocks of troops in the Twilight Forest crash perilously into each other. Skirmishers pelted the combatants with arrows and quarrels; dragons swooped over the battlefield breathing fire; and infantry hefted their spears to receive the charge. Epic and glorious in equal parts!

Paul’s orcs did a great job refusing the flank versus Parker’s wood elves. The elves took some early casualties and gave way, melting back into the forest as the orcs advanced.

Both my heavily armored chaos knights and John’s winged pegasus knights roamed the backfield, seeking a ripe target to receive their devastating charges. These units were strong, but fragile, operating more like a guided missile than a take-and-hold unit.

Blood in the Streets – Later Turns

The “big guys” clashed in a decisive battle in the medieval village. Dragons, zombies, dinosaurs, and more dragons sundered the earth with the force of their blows.

Endgame

Blood in the Streets reached its conclusion first – a decisive victory for the forces of darkness (Alex’s undead army and Lawrence’s chaos daemons).

I was focused primarily on the other battle (The Twilight Forest) which was also drawing to a close. We weren’t able to play quite as many turns as the other battle, due to a phone call that I received during the later turns that unfortunately pulled my attention away. But given the outcome of the game in the medieval village (a decisive win for the bad guys) it seemed clear that the forces of darkness would win the day.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the final photo of the game, shortly before we packed up, was a shot of Malathon Scar-wing, the great dragon of the north, swooping low over the battlefield to roast the terrified defenders.

Our 2022 Apoc-Luck game definitely pushed the boundaries of our gaming capabilities and delivered an epic tabletop spectacle. Playing a fantasy game (as opposed to Warhammer 40k) was a certainly a change, but a welcome one in my opinion. Age of Fantasy gave us a highly playable game with an easy-to-learn ruleset, even at a gigantic 30,000 point threshold.

Apoc-Luck 2022: Armies on Parade

Posted by Comrade on December 30, 2022
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Seasons greetings, gentle reader! It’s been a pleasure sharing another revolution around the Sun with you here on Comrade’s Wargames. This is the first of two blog posts about my club’s biggest annual event: Apoc-Luck!

If you’ve not heard about it before, Apoc-Luck is an extended game event paired with a pot luck dinner, where everyone brings a dish to share. Basically, you play a big game of something, and share a meal together as well. We’ve played out Apoc-Luck games in 2018, 2019, and 2021, so it’s been a rewarding tradition that has helped usher in the holidays.

This year we rented out the Girl Scout Center that has served us so well over the years. This is a large, clean, well-lit facility that is conveniently located two doors down from my home, which makes it easy to haul terrain and minis over.

In years past, our Apoc-Luck games have been Warhammer 40k, which has been fun and gave us all opportunities to paint and build big ol’ 40k armies.

This year we decided to do something different, so I planned a fantasy-themed big battle set in Üthdyn, our shared narrative campaign setting. We planned to use Age of Fantasy, the excellent and fast-playing ruleset from One Page Rules, to play out our epic game.

I’ll get to the actual gameplay in the next post. For this one, I wanted to share with you some photos of our battlefield setup, and some pics of the glorious armies that took to the field. Read on, gallant reader!

The Battlefield

We ended up setting up more than 20 linear feet of battlefield, split roughly evenly between a forested scrubland and a typical medieval city. The narrative and victory conditions were outlined in this game handout.

gathering-storm-handout-finalDownload

Players were assigned to two factions: the Forces of Darkness (representing everything savage and vile in the world of Üthdyn) and the Defenders of Dawn (the eponymous good guys and their bannermen). In addition to overall victory for their faction, the individual players had their own personal objectives to pursue (or ignore) on the battlefield. You can read more about those in the handout above.

With that preamble out of the way, let’s meet the combatants! Where possible I tried to capture each army in a single photo, although that certainly wasn’t possible for every player.

Patrick’s Chaos Army

Hey, it’s me! This is the brütal collection of marauders, thieves, and maggots that I’ve been calling my “little ‘c’ chaos army.” I’ve been working on it for several years. It started as what you might call a classic undivided chaos warband, but over the years I’ve mixed in some red-armored berzerkers (representing Khorne when used in the Warhammer universe; otherwise they are just blood-crazeed axemen) as well as some plague-wracked wretches (representing Nurgle when needed). But I tried to keep it suitably generic, so the units and models could be mixed and matched to play all of the glorious rulesets that we embrace here at Comrade’s Wargames.

John’s House Begovic

John has an unhealthy obsession with miserable, grubby humans in all games, so it made sense that he would bring an army swollen with foot infantry and peasant levies. He’s been working on this army for several years, and it’s a true delight to face on the battlefield.

Paul’s Swamp Orcs

Paul assembled a delightful army of the new Kruleboyz models, bringing not just his army but also some loaner models from fellow club member. Both armies were painted similarly, and they looked absolutely stunning on the battlefield together. Check out those swampy bases on Paul’s orcs!

Jim’s Lizardmen

Jim surprised us by showing up with a brand new Lizardmen army! Jim is known for painting armies with relatively muted color palettes, like Imperial Guard with their olive drab camouflage and armored vehicles. So it was a real treat to see him tackle a new, brightly colored army for a change.

Lawrence’s Daemons

Lawrence has always had a thing for gigantic centerpiece models, and Apoc-Luck always gave him a wonderful excuse to drag out all the gigantic models in his collection that didn’t normally hit the table in our smaller skirmish games. Here he brought his beautifully painted Nurgle Daemon army. And lest we forget — Lawrence also outdid himself by bringing a mac & cheese bar for us to graze on during the game. Thanks, Lawrence!

Mark’s Dragons

We weren’t quite sure what Mark was planning to bring to Apoc-Luck this year. All he would say was that it included dragons. Turns out, he built an entire army of dragons for this game, backed up by some Tzeentch-inspired infantry.

Alex’s Undead

Alex’s pre-game prep work went down to the wire … we’re told he was painting the bases of his models just a few hours before our game was set to commence! Regardless, he managed to get it all on the table by gametime, and it looked great!

Parker’s Wood Elves

This was another surprise — Parker had mentioned months ago that he was painting up “some elves” but we had no idea exactly how many he would turn up with. He ended up bringing a respectable and very beautifully painted force of forest guardians! They acquited themselves admirably on the battlefield, despite being pointy-eared leaf lovers.

Rian’s Orcs

Rian is new to our group and found out about this Apoc-Luck game a few short days before. In spite of the short notice, he mustered a nicely painted warband of hulking orcs and savage spellcasters for the game.

Stay Tuned for Part II…

So that’s a look at the armies that took part in this stunning tabletop spectacle. Check back soon for a photo-drenched post about the actual games, as near as I can remember them. Until then, I leave you with one more teaser photo of the carnage that unfolded…

Nightwatch: Slaughter at Bloodwater Canyon

Posted by Comrade on November 28, 2022
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Our Nightwatch campaign ratcheted up another notch at the game last month. This was our fourth session of our anticipated seven-mission Long Hunt, and the threat level was increasing as our heroes ventured further into the Hattendorf Border Marches.

Picking up where last session’s game left off, this game saw the children who had been rescued from a gruesome fate delivered safely to an abandoned minehead located inside Bloodwater Canyon. I’m sure that name is just a colorful local metaphor, right? And I’m certain, absolutely certain, that the mining site was closed down because its local mineral wealth had been extracted successfully. Not abandoned because the crew was dragged into the badlands and eaten alive. Right? Guys?

Anyway, the children were wisely left at the mine site while the heroes set up camp nearby. During the 20 minutes they were gone, however, a band of feral beastmen arrived atop the canyon ridge, war horns a-blaring and skin drums a-banging. It seems the abandoned minehead was not the sanctuary it seemed. To arms, hunters!

This game was an opportunity to use a giant piece of terrain that John had created months ago during the initial worldbuilding phase of our Nightwatch campaign. The canyon wall was placed along one edge of the battlefield to create an imposing physical feature for the beastmen to use as they swarmed into the mine site.

We put two of the four spawn points (from whence the bad guys would arrive each turn) behind the canyon ridge, and by the first turn, the bad guys started scaling the cliffs to menace and mangle the stalwart defenders!!

The heroes initially placed their defenders in the comparative cover of the mining site. They quickly realized that the sheer pace of arriving monsters meant they would be rapidly overwhelmed.

With steel in his hands and determination in his heart, Jim’s bladesman Sir Joshua climbed a ladder to the top of the canyon and stood on the ridge. There he met the marauders in single combat as the sun set and cast a fearsome silhouette against the rocky terrain below.

It was a shaping up to be a real bloodbath up on the gnarled ridgeline. And they just kept coming! Sir Joshua definitely had his hands full.

But this wasn’t the only spot where the beastmen were emerging! Two other spawn points were also located in the grim ruins to either side of the minehead. Per Nightwatch rules, we rolled randomly to select two of the four spawn points per turn to deploy the next batch of bad guys.

So the players had to wisely deploy their defenders to cover the approaches to the mining site. This meant plenty of action for Paul’s elf archer, Vince’s alchemist, Daniel’s wizard, and the various hirelings and henchmen who had been hired over the last few sessions!

By the second half of the game, the really bad guys started arriving — Terrors, in the parlance of Nightwatch. These bruisers are among the strongest monsters that the players will face in a typical Nightwatch campaign.

They emerged howling and snarling in the waning turns of the game, and their sheer brutality challenged the players, whose resources and resolve were in thin supply as the game neared its end stages.

By this point, the ridge was strewn with corpse markers, each one denoting a fallen foe. Nightwatch has several secondary missions that involve looting or harvesting bodies, so we were obliged to track the dead as they piled up. And piled up, and piled up. Poor Sir Joshua was knee deep in the dead by the end of the game!

Despite the absolute onslaught of vermin and terrors pouring into the canyon, the heroes held out — barely. If the tide of darkness had been any stronger, or if the defenders’ resolve had faltered just a bit they would surely have fallen. As it was, they beat the beastmen back, rescued the poor little kids, and spirited them away to maybe a slightly safer venue to rest and recuperate.

Nightwatch provided a great game and kept the tension high. You could see the players’ eyes get wide as the Terrors started arriving in the latter turns! But they kept their composure, worked as a team, and survived this onslaught. Future scenarios will not be so warm and gentle. Enjoy this win, hunters, for it may be your last!