Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Update & some cool looking tables!

Well,

The Pulp Figures arrived from Canada & they look even better than on the web. They are in scale with Copplestones stuff and just look so cool. Now I can get started working on painting them.

Also last Friday night Mike & I got together & played Chaos in Cairo again using the scenario out of the rulebook, the Package.

As always I took the Evil guys while Mike took the "good guys". Basically the scenario was to get 6 counters off of the table which represented artifacts, the only problem was that only one counter was the real artifact. As soon as the game had ended you roll a dice to see which counter is the real one. Well to make a long story short, my character Baron Von Something, used his skill of "You haven't seen the last of Me" to exit the board with one package. Mike pretty well shot up all the rest of my guys. Well as luck would have it, the one counter I escaped with was the real one! So even though everyone died but the Baron, I had reclaimed the prize to win!


Here is a link from one of the German guys website about a local game event that they ran, Tactica http://www.napnuts.com/gallery_tactica07.htm

There are some gorgeous tables at this event & this is something that I would like to produce for our Pulp project games. it is a blend on model railroading scenery with war gaming scenery. I think it can be done but will take a lot of work...

Tim

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Copplestones Arrived!

Well a few of us, Rob, Mike & Myself ordered a few Copplestone packs last week and they arrived. I ordered these two packs:


C38 Dinosaur Hunters


BC19 Female Archaeologists


Right off hand can't remember what Rob & Mike ordered but I know Rob also got the Dino Hunters as well.


Mike & I both ordered a few packs of figures from Pulp Figures http://www.pulpfigures.com/


Here are the packs I ordered:

PWM1 Werid Villains


PHP6 Scientifc Minds

PHP3 Sinister Spies

PBT1 British Army Tropical Command

Now once the figures are painted I will post up some pictures, the above Pulp Figures were taken from their site.

Tim

Saturday, February 17, 2007

The Quest for Rules

The four guys in our group are all very excited about this pulp project we have started. The first step is finding a set of rules we can all agree on. Rules on audition right now are Chaos in Cairo (a goalsystem game), .45 Adventure, and perhaps a Lord of the Rings (from Games Workshop) modification. Personally, I was looking forward to trying Chaos in Cairo first being a huge Supersytem fan (another goalsystem game).

Tim came over this morning and we busted out some Mordheim buildings Tim had and the Chaos in Cairo figures. Naturally, Tim chose the evil side. After about 2 hours, the game had reached a conclusion and good beat evil. Basically, the purpose of the game was a test drive of the game system more than anything. We did not set up objectives or any story. We fought a big street brawl to the bitter end.

CinC is a pretty simple system. Every figure or henchmen unit has 4 essential stats that drive the entire game. Each stat has a number that represents the number of D6s you roll when you are doing something that uses that particular stat. It can be hiding, searching for an objective, hitting someone in close combat, shooting someone from a distance, etc. Various skills, weapons, etc. add to the number of D6s you roll for a particular action. Anytime you roll the dice, a 4+ is considered a "goal." If it is an opposed roll, and you get more "goals" then your opponent, you are successful. So, if you are involved in shooting your opponent, you would each roll your number of dice based on the appropriate statistic and skills. If the attacker is more successful because he rolled more goals, you move onto the damage phase of the combat. If the defender is more successful, the attack fails. Likewise, if it is an unopposed roll situation and you roll a predetermined number of goals based upon the task you are doing, you are successful. Overall, the system is quite elegant and requires some resource management as the goalsystem is action point based. For instance, every inch you move in good terrain is an action point, it cost 3 action points for a close combat attack and 4 action points for a range attack. You must decide each turn the best way to spend your action points.

After the game both Tim and I decided the goalsystem is very solid. This is the second game we have both played in the series (the first being Supersystem). We obviously need a few more games to really see how the system shines, but overall it was a positive experience. The only rule we talked about modifying was the initiative system as we thought it could really bog down when you add more players to the mix.

All in all a good day of gaming (thanks Tim) and now I look forward to painting the pulp minis that arrived from Copplestone yesterday!

Thursday, February 15, 2007

So what’s this Pulp thing all about?

Well a few friends of mine (Rob, Mike & Tom) have been talking about doing some pulp style games. Pulp gaming is basically something along the lines of Indiana Jones or the mummy movies. The term Pulp refers to the Pulp magazines of the 20’ & 30’s about crime fighting and exploration.

We are also influenced by skirmish style games that you control only a handful of figures. Our little group has been doing this sort of skirmish gaming for a few years now with games like Necromunda & Mordheim as well as a few modifications of these rules. Recently we have been influenced by the Lord of the Rings game by Games Workshop. In fact I have even written a set of rules that are for Pirates using this system.

So after talking about it we all decided to take the Pulp plunge and start doing something. This Blog is the first step, and we have started purchasing figures & terrain to start this little project. Right now Mike is casting Hirst Arts molds, Tom Rob & I are purchasing figures & Mike & I just ordered a few Crescent Root buildings.

We are also exploring a few different rule sets right now which are Chaos in Cairo by Scott Pyle, .45 Adventures by Rattrap Productions and exploring doing or own using a LotR variant that Rob has been working on. Right now we are just trying to get in a few games using each system.

Another great source of our rekindled interest has been the Lead Adventures Forum http://forum.backofbeyond.de/ which these guys do some awesome pulp style games. What makes them so awesome is that they have nicely painted figures, lovely terrain and there games are based around a storyline that is linked from the previous game. This has been something that we all have wanted to do. Terrain is something that can make or break a game in my opinion, and these guys have some beautiful stuff.

So are goals are to find a nice set of rules that will allow us to do gaming from things like giant gorillas named Kong, to stopping evil Nazi’s from trying to take over some religious artifact, to stopping some mad scientist from building a death ray gun to try & conquer the world!

So there you have it, our newest little project, stay tuned for more…

Tim