Across the Dead Earth Factions #3 Finally I've repainted my first ATDE gang the "78th Smethwick Irregulars " Based out of a settlement made in a ruined sports stadium simply known now as 'the Thorns'. They are led by Sarge. He likes loot and more loot. He's very handy with his axe and shotgun should someone else think that the loot is theirs.

Doc Rita is the gangs medic though she is equally happy dishing out pain with her shotgun or pain relief with her medic bag.

Selene is a born fighter, raised as a slave and trained in the bearwood fighting cages until one day she snapped and escaped after killing her owner and ten guards the new fighting pit owner decided it would be best (for his health to) to let selene go.

Dead Eye Dave is the gangs crack shot, he spent his teenage years high in the watchtowers of the Thorn keeping the borders to the Valley cĺear of God knows what. Sarge offered him a chance to earn more loot and see the world but mainly earn more loot

Adahy was a forest kin living in the Valley until he ate some strange coloured mushrooms and woke up naked in the Thorn's town square. Sarge intervened when some of locals fancied a lynching now adahy is part of the Irregulars

SNAFU is a plain oddball but always good to have around in a fight. If you don't mind him talking to his giant rat skin coat. 'charlie' is snafu's advisor, friend etc he'll always look to charlie in times of trouble.

That's the 78th Smethwick Irregulars all set to fight it out in the ruins of Smethwick.

Post apocalyptic scenery

I'm gathering a fair collection of ruined and post apocalyptic terrain. Mostly  it's ruins made from foam board (£7 for 2 A1 sheets). I made the basic templates my self then cut them out and pva glued them together. This gives the game table a good ruined town feel.  I'm hoping soon to get some roads from
http://www.black-ronin.com/index.html
These guys do awesome pdfs that you print off your self. They do roads buildings rivers etc. You should definitely check them out. Now is love to be able to show you pics as we go except the blogger app does not let you do this easily :-( so I'll stick them at the end. The biggest ruin I have is a line of three terraced houses. This was also the most awkward to pva! That's why there is only one!  Gonna paint them a basic grey and add some flock. Should give with roads a nice ruined town feel. To add to this we obviously need abandoned vehicles. I've got a few so far but need to scour some car boots for the right scale of toy car. I have a few pick up trucks, a lorry and a bendy bus. I also have an abandoned vehicle I entered in an Across the Dead Earth gaming group terrain competition. The bus and maybe lorry need some flock to give them a bit of an overgrown look. Also have started to gather scatter terrain such as trees, craters etc.
Plus all these can be used in other war games such as Mars Attacks etc.

Cheeky plug!

Why not visit my Facebook page for more random things that are a bit short for a blog. Go on! It's only a like. :-)
https://m.facebook.com/trialsofacasualwargamer

Across the Dead Earth Factions #2 The next gang to scrap over the post apocalyptic Smethwick is Section 14. A unit of state troops heading out of New Venice (The flooded remains of London) to spread the glory of the State to the savage midlanders. The state believe they are the government in the. F-UK (former United Kingdom) and everyone should obey them. In the interest of openness and fairness I think I need to share that I bought these pre painted off eBay for £4

Lieutenant Tanner was raised in new Venice and is a firm believer in the state's ideology and is determined to make sure all settlements and cities poverty the state.

Sgt Rico is Tanners right hand man, brought into the state by Tanner after Tanner saved Rico from a tribe of angry forest Kin.

Eddie joined the state's military to get out of the city see the country and kill people. Several higher ups are concerned about Eddie's attitude bit Tanner keeps him in check..

Cool, calm and cold as Ice. Not a lot is known about Kara and that's the way she likes it (if she had feelings) Give her a target and get the hell out the way'!

Natasha is the demo specialist and has an affinity with her missile launcher. Truth be told she likes blowing things up and the state don't appreciate explosions on the capital.

Jessie is the newest member of Section 14. She used to be a Choobie living on the tunnels under new Venice jeweler she have it all up to get out onto the city. Thanks to her Choobie upbringing her sense of direction is second to known. And that's Section 14 ready to do battle on the post apocalyptic battlefield.

Across the Dead Earth!

Last night paid my first game of Across the Dead Earth. If you don't know what that is, it is a new skirmish game set in a post apocalyptic world. The game is based around the UK post apocalyptic setting but  the rules are open to set it anywhere. (new expansion just out with a bit more info on other parts of the post apocalyptic world). Each player controls a gang  and fight over loot and territory.
https://m.facebook.com/acrossthedeadearth is the link to the Facebook page. Also check out the across the Dead Earth gamers group. Great bunch of people always willing to offer advice and ideas.
We played a loot game,  five loot counters were placed around the battle field. The game took a while since we were learning the rules so lots of referring to the book but once you've got the basics down the game flows. The game has event cards you can play to throw a spanner in the works of your opponents plans. They give a nice randomness to any thing you might try. As your opponent may drop a card and ruin your day. My gang the 78th Smethwick Irregulars took a marginal win but my opponents gang the Coggers got a nice haul of loot also. After the game you can upgrade your gang with new skills new weapons etc.
Overall had a cracking evening can't wait for the next game.

Games Night Time!!

Last Friday was games night, so the son was packed off to his nan and grandads (no zombie killing for him tonight) and off we went to our friends house.

Tonight's game was called super dungeon explorer. It's based loosely around old school computer games so you fight 8-bit, 16-bit and super baddies.

You select your hero,  I chose a paladin knight packing a good old sword and shield. The wife picked a druid who can shapeshift into a rather large bear! Our one friend selected Nyan Nyan, an angry cat with steel claws. The other friend was the evil dungeon master in charge of all the evil dungeon monsters.

We were playing the forgotten Kingdom expansion so the evil characters were based around forest dwellers. There were walking plants, duck billed pike men, frogs riding giant chickens and plants that look like the plant from the little shop of horrors. There were also 3 ' supers ' who appeared one you'd destroyed a spawn point. The three were a troll called Boris, a tree man type creature we dubbed Angry Groot and the last was the evil dungeon master himself. The game is played on tiles (much like zombiecide). These rules are really well made and high quality plus the models are stunning.

The aim of the game is to clear out a dungeon of evil things and swipe the treasure!! The game mechanics revolve around blue, red and green dice. Each side has a number of stars on. Blue has one to two stars on , red had one to three stars on and green has one to four stars. Blue is the most common dice and green is the rarest. Everything you do (fight, magic etc) uses certain numbers of dice depending on what your characters stats are. These can be augmented with treasure.

You get a certain amount of lives and action points. Most things cost one action point to do. However your characters abilities usually cost two. ( my character has a smite move which sets the enemy on fire). Killing enemies earns you loot and opening treasure chests gains you treasure. You use these to upgrade your character. Each character has for coloured slots and every treasure has a colour so you can only have four bits of  treasure on your character. So you have to consider carefully what equipment you want.

Drinks and snacks ready we dived in! We had three tiles to explore so we started with the middle one. We piled into the fight,  it was a close battle with us coming close to losing all our lives as we were getting used to what our characters can and can't do (plus no loot to upgrade us) we took out the spawn point and Boris appeared!

Boris was a huge club wielding troll type creature luckily though we had an angry bear on our side!  The bear and Boris went toe to toe for a few rounds while the paladin and Nyan Nyan finished off the other monsters. Boris fell to the bear and we collected the loot. All the loot goes in the group backpack and you spread it out amongst the group. We seemed to have quite different characters so we all got a good mix of equipment. Tooled up with a few treasures we headed into the next tile. Once more into battle!  We found my wife's druid had a good ranged magical attack so she blasted away. A monster that looked like the plant from little shop of horrors was on this tile and though it could not move out had long branches that grabbed you and pulled you to it. We cleared the tile, gathered up the loot and headed back through the middle tile. We all had a nice equipment set up now,  my paladin had a blessed spear (adding a nice rare green dice to my attacks) a new sword and some bits of armour to help take the hits. Nyan Nyan had acquired a good mix of armour and weapons meaning she could dodge attacks and then pounce! Our druid had got a magic amulet and some holy pope type robes which give him 2! green dice to add to his magic attack so he became our archer.

As we almost made out to the last tile we realised we had forgot to spawn the second super!! Our mischievous dungeon master spawned the angry Groot behind us!! And plenty of enemies in front. My paladin turned to face the tree monster while Nyan Nyan and the druid got stuck into enemies at the front. After a few rounds of fighting the paladin took down angry Groot and went on to help dispatch the few remaining bad guys (Nyan Nyan was an angry cat!). One all these had been dispatched the evil dungeon master appeared!! After a vicious battle the dungeon master was vanquished and the forest saved! I really enjoyed this game. Once you've got the rules and your characters abilities down the game flows really well. There is also an ' arcade ' mode where you don't need a DM. Cracking fun and would happily play it again.

Games Expo

Last Saturday, me and two friends went to the games expo at the Hilton hotel on the NEC complex Birmingham. This place is a board gamers dream! I saw loads of games is like but I settled on the firefly board game and one expansion pack for it. Looks a hefty game, all the game pieces look well made so can't wait to play it.

The expo itself was really busy. We all felt it could have easily fit in one of the NEC halls as it was difficult to get around the stalls due to the crowds. My friends picked up a game and two more characters for super dungeon explorer then we headed back home with our spoils!

That's all for today folks. Next up should be either a post about my across the Dead Earth engineers being painted or a game of across the Dead Earth. See ya soon

Games Night!

Last night my wife and I had our regular games night with our friends (plus our son who would not go to bed).
The games on tonight were
Zombiecide and Takenoko, we started with Zombicide.
For those who don't know Zombicide is a Co op boardgame where each player chooses a character and you all pick a scenario (There are plenty to choose from). The board is made up of tiles. Each tile has building insides and roads printed on both sides allowing great flexibility. The scenarios tell you which tiles to use and where to put them. The scenario we chose was a small one (4 tiles)  and we had to rescue a survivor who was in 1 of 4 locations. Once we located the survivor we all had to leave the board where we started.
The zombies appear from various spawn points (scenario tells you where to put these). They also appear in a building the first time you open the door. They are spawned by drawing a card for real spawn point and room in a building you've opened. The 4 types of zombie are :
Shambler / normal
Runners
Fatties
Abomination
The bigger zombies require certain weapons to kill them. The number of zombies spawned depends on how many zombie kills you have. There are four levels the higher you go the note zombies you get!  Your character does get bonuses as the levels go up to.
The characters start with the bare minimum of equipment. A crow bar,  fire axe,  pistol and frying pans! All spread out amongst the group. The characters we had were :
Phil (my character)
Doug
Ned
Amy
Wanda is the survive we are out to rescue.
My character Phil is a cop so he starts with a pistol so I had that and a frying pan.
A turn in Zombiecide involves every player getting 3 actions plus any bonuses their character gets (my character's bonus was he started with a pistol. Another example is Amy who gets a free move). Your 3 actions can be move, shoot, reload, search, open doors and check objectives. You can only search one per turn though, you can search vehicles or the room you are in. Once all the characters have gone is the zombies turn. Each action you do could create sound,  this is represented by sound counters with a loud action obviously having more sound counters. The zombies all move one square towards the largest pile of sound counters. (runners can do to actions such as run and attack where as other zombies either move or attack). After all the zombies have moved you spawn more zombies!
Our game began,  we checked the closest building and had to battle a Fattie almost straight away! After Ned took a wound (2 and your zombie meat!) we took him down. A plethora of weapons were found in an abandoned police car in the centre of the map. I ended up with a sawn off shotgun and a machete., Amy had a rifle and a katana. Ned a crowbar and fire axe. Doug has twin sawn off shotguns! The first building was cleared by Ned and while Ned checked the objective Phil Doug and Amy held the crossroads. Ned made his way out and headed over to the next building. With zombie numbers growing out was getting harder to hold the crossroads. Amy's rifle picked zombies off at long range,  Phil took out the fatties with his machete and Doug cut a swathe through the zombies with his twin sawn off shotguns. Need broke the door down cleared the room and found Wanda!!  Now we had to beat a retreat. The group fell back off the board with Doug watching the rear with those trusty shotguns. I racked up 14 kills but Doug took the most with 20+ (notable mention to my son who insisted on rolling some dice and scored 6 zombie kills). It was a great game,  I'm so glad my friends introduced me to this game. The Co op games are excellent fun and much different to the competitive ones.
Next up was Takenoko. I had never heard of this game before, it involves growing bamboo and getting a panda to eat bamboo. Everyone gets a turn where you can do 2 things. The simple aim is to gather as many points as possible so when the game ends the person with the highest scores wins! You get points by doing 3 types of mission. Gardener missions involve trying to grow bamboo of various colours and heights. The Panda missions involve trying to get the panda to eat certain colours or colour combinations of bamboo pieces. The last mission type is terrain,  the game is played on different coloured tiles and the terrain missions involve you trying to get certain patterns and combinations of tiles. This game was so much fun and you need to think a lot about strategies and how to react when someone upsets your plans. My friend took the win while I came last :-(
Overall a cracking night with great friends bring on the next game night!!
If you want to read something different give my friends blog a read (she won Takenoko and was Ned in Zombiecide)
http://lifeinthekawaiilane.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1
Have a good one folks!!