Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Introducing Ste to Empire of the Dead... Fracas!

Last night I had the chance to introduce Ste to Empire of the Dead. Ste has played In Her Majesty's Name, so is obviously keen on the Steampunk/VSF setting, and was interested in giving EotD a whirl. He brought his IHMN Faction of models set for that game, so we adapted them to an EotD Faction as best we could for the demo game...

The layout, again, an edge of town scene...


Ste's faction for IHMN includes a number of dastardly gentlemen, leading some robotic automatons... We mused over how best to use these in EotD... and pondered using them as proxies for 'zombies' along with a DarkFire club Gentlemans affiliation... in the end we decided to keep them as a DarkFire Faction, and the robots would actually be normal human Membership wearing Full Plate armour and wielding Brass Knuckles... A President with Axe and Pistol would lead them along with a Vice President (soccer holligan with colourful scarf) with pistol and firebrand, and another regular membership in purple attire and gasmask with pistol and sword cane...


Ste also brought along a Warehouse building he had got from Warbases... He had also embellished it with roof tiles, cornice work and some nice little posters and signage... and it fitted right in nicely...


I grabbed my sets of barrels, crates and sacks from the adjacent 'pirate board' to further embellish it...



And away we went ... we played a simple FRACAS skirmish (Daytime), with deployment splitting our factions between opposing diagonal corners...

My VP led two membership along the street towards the warehouse...


...where Ste had his President, purple chap, and two metal suits...


My President was leading two chaps across the cemetery looking to head off...


...Ste's VP and two more metal suits looking to link up with the rest of his faction at the warehouse...


Here's a series of in game shots...





I try out the hiding rules, and have my chap with repeating rifle, hide at street corner facing the approach of two 'clanks'...


Firing was deadly, going straight through the armoured suits!


Meanwhile one of my chaps who had been downed earlier bled out in the grounds besides the cemetery!...


Two more 'clanks' tried to chase down my VP and friends down the alley way, but they were nailed by a mix of rifle and pistol fire and good old stiff upper lipped pluck in melee!




Ste then ended up in a shooting duel between our presidents...


As my now un-engaged members look to get him from behind...


Ouch, down goes my president! At the same time Ste's VP charges my membership at the hedge trying to take the Hunting rifle out of the game, but a deft flick of a concealed knife downs the VP!


The subsequent hop over the hedge to finish off the downed VP, ends the game with Ste at 25% faction remaining (oops we forgot 50% break tests again!)...


We played on anyway for the hell of it... with my Pres recovering and getting back up to fight... but losing the scrap! The Purple chap was shot in the back and that ended his activities...


Stes President then jumped the hedge looking to further engage my membership as they all closed in around him... no shooting here, there was a president to avenge and gentlemen drew close combat weapons!



 But another of my membership was cut down before Ste's President was finally silenced in the press of bodies against him...



Lots of fun for both sides and Ste has plans to buy the rulebook from Westwind and see what sort of faction he can come up with for the game...

Looking forward for more!

17 comments:

  1. Excellent stuff! Another recruit for the campaign at some point perhaps? Glad to see you found your shooting dice when I wasn't there ;-) The warehouse looks great, starts to give an impression of what a fully urbanised table will look like.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Paul, yes excellent indeed. Ste thought the game play was great. He's alos looking to move out to the Kapiti Coast (from Wello) ideally within next 6 months, so I'd say defo for the campaign.
      Yes I managed to get some shots to count! ;-)
      Indeed, looking forward to getting more urban terrain on the board - I've started brick etching the Tavern now... long job, but we'll get there. I am also exploring the option of using Stryofoam for buildings instead as the brick work would be easier to etch...

      Delete
    2. Indeed, count me in for the campaign. Now I just have to figure out my faction to fit the models I've got (those ironmen were a little underwhelming!)

      Delete
    3. Yes I think the faction turned out too melee focused, with the tin men not having firearms, and their armour was not proof against said firearms! But it was just a game to show you how the rules work, so in that respect it was a success :)

      Delete
  2. That's a nice table top you played on. Great report. cheers

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very nice looking table! Certainly sets the mood for the game very well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice report. The table looks awesome. Very impressive work :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wonderful looking table Scott and great report!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great table. Game sounds a blast. And I love those robots...where are they from?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Entertaining table and read Scott! I must look into this.

    Christopher

    ReplyDelete
  8. Excellent! What are the key differences with IHMN?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EotD is quite similar to LOTR SBG so if you are familiar with that mechanism, you will find the game easy to get into.
      IHMN, I have not played but Ste has. From the chat we had about the two systems I got the impression there are fewer stats in IHMN, and there are elements of card driven mechanics and an activation mechanism meaning you dont always know whats going to move when. But due to this it can handle multiplayer games easily and 'fairly'... check out Stes blog "Offt'club" he's bound to have a blog post about it soon...

      Delete
    2. Weird question. How do you pronounce "Ste" ? I keep thinking sainte, in the French way... Or is it "steh" ? Can't work it out!

      Delete
    3. "Stee" short for Stephen/Steven I guess... :)

      Delete
  9. Great looking game guys but it illustrates one vexing point you can never have enough barrels boxes and sacks on the table! More terrain like that makes melee guys more effective. None the less great fun.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Love the atmosphere of this report, great job and great looking pictures...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Great report Scott and great looking factions and table from the both of you. Love the idea of full plate armour and brass knuckles for the clanks.

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to comment on my blog. It is always nice to get feedback.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...