Fistful of Lead game at picture in WI 345

CluckAmok sent me this picture from Wargames Illustrated of the Legionary show.

Lion Rampant: Burn those boats! Pt1

We've been playing several loose linked scenarios with Lion Rampant. The raid has not gon well lately for our viking invaders. Now, they're trying to make it back to their ships with what little spoils they have. The normans are close on their heels.

We had 6 players split into teams of 3. Some players were veterans and others completely new. Each had a full 24 points (actually the Normans had a little more). The Norman objective was to burn as many of the Viking ships as possible. The Vikings, of course have to hold until the tide was going out.

From the start, the Normans had a hard time getting moving (aka failed activations). We attributed this to being wary of cornered animals. The Viking, however, decided to go on the offensive.
The Normans initially were forced back by the Northmen's onslaught but managed to get a few flanking maneuvers going.
Just as the blood started flowing we had to call it. But, instead of packing it up, enough people wanted to see it played out. So now I have to find a way to protect the table from thespear snapping, flag chomping dragons (cats) until next week.

Preparing for September: Update 1

At the end of September is our local convention RECRUITS. I will get on my soapbox, like I do every year, and call out RECRUITS as one of the best wargaming conventions around. It's geared towards, you guessed it, new recruits into the hobby. It's fairly big, there are some quality games, lots of vendors, very kid friendly and dirt cheap!
This year I'm not only one of the Guests of Honor but will have a vendor table myself, selling all things Fistful of Lead including (fingers crossed) the new Wasteland Warriors rules.
If you live anywhere in the Midwest, I highly encourage you to hit RECRUITS.
I, with the help of a few friends will be running 3 games Friday night and most of Saturday. I'll run the Wild West games, Ken "Lead Addict" Boone will run the post apoc games and Chris "CluckAmok" will be running a French & Indian War game using the Horse & Musket rules.
In prepartion, I'll be making some new terrain clothes. Here's how I do it:
1- Go to your local big box fabric/hobby place and buy a couple of yards of cheap outdoor tablecloth material. It makes no difference what the shiney plastic side has, but make sure it has the cotton backing.
2- Buy a quart of latex paint in whatever color you want for your ground. Interior, exterior makes no difference. Just get flat as opposed to satin or gloss, etc. I took a bottle of favorite ground color I use on my bases to match the color.
3- Roller it on the cotton side. THIS STUFF WILL SOAK UP PAINT LIKE CRAZY. But, it will give you great texture as the cotton gets gooped with paint. For my 4' x 4' square I made for the con, it took the whole quart. You may want buy a whole gallon so you can use it for hills or other terrain to match.

The wrinkles come out when it dries.

4- After it dries, you can dry brush little hints of other color. I'll be adding hints of green to my scrub for the Old West, and rust brown to my gray post apoc. Flat color never "sells" the look.
I've used this technique  on all my tablecover. It's cheap, and because you're painting plastic on plastic, it last a long time. I've use my covers once a week for 20 years and it still holds up. Best part, when it does start to wear, put another coat on!
I'll be making a To the Strongest grid cover the same way (stay tuned).

I'm also working on the custom card designs for Wasteland Warriors. Here's a shot of two of the "Loot" deck. You'll notice a suit in the upper left. This corresponds to a regular card deck. I may remove this. You don't need the custom loot deck, you can use a regular deck and look at a chart, but why wouldn't you buy one?
As usual, Fistful of Lead is always better with a scenario, and most of these will revolve around scavenging for loot besides the main objective. Keeping your gang fed and armed will be essential for a campaign surviving the Wasteland. Or, you can just through down and go.
You might come across this:

The heart shows you how many gang members you can feed between missions. The double ended arrow tells you how much it's worth in trade. In this case, this tasty treat can only feed one gang member, or you could trade it for enough food for ten, or trade it for weapons or tech worth 10.

Not all loot cards are food, tech or weapons. Sometimes it's an event. In this case, the deadly Rad Storm.

More later....

More troops for Retro SciFi

 Asteroid Miners

Kronos - The Great Programmer

Some updates

One of the great parts of working from home and part of your job is making games, is that you can playtest during the day, and it's still work!
With the Boy home on summer break, I grabbed every single mounted horse & musket era mini I had to test some ideas I've had rolling around for a larger scale skirmish game to add to the back of the Fistful of Lead: Horse and Musket rules. Yes, those are Hessian Jaegers fighting alongside the French Foreign Legion. Forgive me.....
Without giving too much away, the mechanics are basically the same as the FfoL family, but each player controls groups of troops instead of individuals. Think 25 instead of 5.
The Boy had some terrible dice rolls and we made up Officer rules as we went along, but it worked really well.

Today is playtest #2 with the notes we made.

On another project, I painted up some Warmaster 10mm Bretonnians. I bought in big when this came out in the day. They have languished in lead pile. I decided they work great for a two pronged project.
1- My yet to be named Medieval /Fantasy mass battle rules.
2- Some might have noticed the flag heraldry is from the World of Greyhawk D&D setting. LIke a lot of wargamers, D&D was my intro into painting miniatures and then wargaming. Though I never actually played in the Greyhawk world of Flanaess, I obsessively collected everything Greyhwak, including the Greyhawk Wars game which let you play a boardgame style world conquest game. I always dreamed of running it with miniature battles but never knew how to pull it off. Well, now I know.
I'll be probably add another rank, but leave room for a unit identifier in back. I designed the bases after seeing Simon Miller's (Big Red Bat) bases for his To the Strongest games. Thomas (SkullandCrown)  Foss lasered them out for me.

Fistful of Lead: the Campaign

Last night we had 4 players, and one wanted to try the campaign rules fro Fistful of Lead. I took about 5 minutes to make the gangs (bonus!).
I took 2 guys with pistols, 2 with rifles and one with a shotguns. This went over the 12 point allotment by 1, so I gave the shotgun guy (not naming these guys until they survive a game or two) a Negative trait to subtract a point. He "Buckets of Bullets", meaning if i rolled a "1" or out of ammo result, I roll again. On a 1'2' or 3, he's out of ammo for the game.

I gave my Leader a Positive and Negative Trait, thus cancelling each other out points-wise. He got "nerves of Steal" allowing him to ignore the first Pin result. For his Negative he got "Sickly". Players add +1 to the wounding rules against him.
I broke my rule and named him Plegmy Phil Fuchs, leader of the Dirty Britches Gang.
With everyone's gangs made we pulled cards fro the scenarios. We decided to use the same board, each group playing their adversary, basically ignoring the others (more on that later). Of course, the question was "Can we shoot at the players I'm not directly players?". I simple shrugged.
The first scenario was "the 4:10 to Yucca". Doug, having captured Scott's leader had to run the gauntlet of the town to the stage at the other end, bound for the infamous Yucca prison. SCott had to stop him.

 "All right boys, let's kill this snake."

My mission was "Headhunting". I simply had to kill the leader of opponent, Brett.
We all shared a deck. The first couple of turns were spent maneuvering. I guess I failed because the first shot of the game put down my shotgun toting gang member, wounded. Brett tried an end around down the back alleys, keeping one gang member to cover them from the Saloon.
Meanwhile, Doug took his hostage into the same saloon while his gang attacked Scott out in the streets.

 Phlegmy Phil and one of Scott's gang get pinned down in an alley

 Tsk, tsk. Using civilians as cover.

No one actually shot at players not involved in their scenario, but they did use them as cover.
We were all on a deadline. We had six turns to do our various deeds. Beyond that, the stage would leave, or the law would shut the whole gunfight down.
I was able to outflank Brett on the fifth turn, and using a One-Eyed-Jack, shot his leader leaving him wounded. When Brett rolled to get him up, he got a "1". His leader bled out in the street.
Five Renown for me.
After Scott gunned down must of Doug's gang, he cornered him in the Saloon. Doug made a run for it, and risking hitting his own leader, Scott fired.
Thunk! Scott's leader was free. His captor dropped dead in the street.

 Crusty's down. Down worry, he survive the Mexican War, he'll survive this.

A great couple of gangs and showed the versatility of the rules.
We did the after gang turn to see who was really dead and what happened to the wounded.
My leader made a full recovery, but wounded shotgun, now named Cletus, has to miss a game. I used the Renown to "buy" a new member for the gang.
Brett's leader was dead. Or was he? The campaign rules have a "Lucky" rule. Basically it allows you to save one member of the game, even dead ones. The bullet hit the family picket bible. or a whiskey flask, etc. Which ever way you want to explain it, his Leader made a miraculous recovery.
Scott bought a new guy for his game. Doug had two die of their wounds.
Next time, we'll switch players and the Dirty Britches Gang will ride again!

Golden Age Supers: Island of the Chimera

Our Hero, that daredevil of the skies the Red Raptor, along with his trusted sidekick Ace, have disappeared while piloting an experimental aircraft over the Pacific. He is believed to have crashed on the enigmatic island of the Chimera.

The Liberty Legion has been immediately dispatched to rescue him. Little do they know, the Soldiers of the Rising Sun are also making their way to the island.
Little did either of them know, but the island is the secret base of the mysterious Cult of Chimera. With a dreadful cocktail of Dark Magics and Super Science, the cult has infiltrated all levels of society. With the capture of Red Raptor and his Top Secret plane, their power can only grow!

 Of the Liberty Legion, Klank, Scarlet Speedster, the Sentinel, Golden Knight, Sgt Stone and Warhawk were dispatched to island.

 Tengu, Tsunami, Raiden, Rikishi, Haciman and Shinobi represented the Axis forces.

 Red Raptor and Ace

The Cult of Chimera

The Axis forces were the first to arrive, and Tengu was the first to come under a hail of fire from the Cultist hidden in their Temple Tree.

On the other side, the Scarlet Speedster zipped in, taking out one the Cultists with flurry hypersonic punches.

In the chaos, Haciman superleaped onto the Temple Tree's entrance, quickly dispatching cultist henchmen.

Meanwhile, the Sentinel of Justice made the mistake of disturbing an island idol, insighting the Natives. Soon two more heroes would get involved.

Tengu spots the Cult Leader and attacks! Little does he know, the Chimera leader has the ability to steal powers. The winged super is soon wing-less, and it's the Cult Leader with black, shiny feathers.

On the other side of the tree, Rikishi has bounded up to quickly deal with the remaining cultists.

Tsunami makes the same mistake as the Sentinel and with the same results.

With the cultists dealt with, Hachiman captures Red Raptor and makes for the waiting submarine.

The Sacrlet Speedster tries to intervene, but the invisible Shinobi strikes, taking out the red racer...

Captive in hand the Soldiers of the Rising Sun start to withdraw. Having spent too much time handling Natives, the Liberty Legion tries one last mad dash to rescue the Raptor...

...only to be shattered by lightning from Raiden and knocked down by shockwaves from the feet of Rikishi. It was a dark day for Our Heroes. Who knows what dark plans those villains have for Red Raptor. And maybe worse, during the battle the Chimera Leader escaped!

Next episode: Uncaging the Raptor!

Campaign for the Kingdom: Not the Last Battle

Lionel, Baron of Stonekeep and heir apparent to the throne, had but one battle left. All he had to do was sweep aside Horace, hated Duke of Dunharrow, from the field, and the crown was his.
This should have been the last game in our ongoing Campaign for the Kingdom. Playing Lionel, I had one more victory to gain the 10 points I needed to win. Alas, the dice and cards were said it was not to be,

Both commanders randomly rolled "Plodding" for our command abilities. This would limit our dispositions and our command abilities. This would be become very apparentt when I chose to Charge with my men, only to pull a "1" from the command deck, thus sending the boys in to contact with not enough orders to fight.

That's not to say it wasn't close. Both armies were within 1 unit of breaking. It just happen to be our side that did it first.
So, Lionel lost his head, to be replaced by a similarly named cousin twice removed, and the war would go on.