Weird War Adventure Game Report

The Evil Mastermind Stahl-Mask with Hitler and his aides in Paris 1940

Hi everyone, as promised here are some more pictures from the first Weird Wars Episode which we finally played two weeks ago.

Pvt Skoneiczny lies in wait for the Zombies

The game session was six hours long with a break for pizza half way through.  Overall it went really well but I was concerned that it felt a bit rushed despite the players telling me it was fine.  In hindsight I think I should have split the game up into two sessions and let the players figure out more for themselves and find their own solutions.

As it was I ran the game like a car chase, the action carried on from one scene to the next without much time to draw breath, it was exciting and kept the tension high (as did the the background music and sound effects).  

If your think you might play this game please stop reading now! 

Deep in occupied France Professor Ulrich Von Samstagg is trying, under the supervision of SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Stahl-mask  to create immortal Nazi Super soldiers.  Stahl-Mask intends to use the twisted genius to gain immortality and invulnerability for himself and invulnerability for his trusted minions and to then overthrow Hitler.

Von Samstagg had in fact accidentally created a Zombie Serum and one of his Test Subjects (a 14yr old French boy, Pierre) escaped and started infecting a horde of Zombies.  They are classic Rage Zombies with rudimentary intelligence and a pack mentality and Pierre wants revenge on the Germans.

The heroes were an odd bunch.  

A small selection of Lars Lukas'
(fictional) movie posters

The leader, half Scottish half Norwegian Captain Lars Lukas was a big name in Norway's film industry and although practically unknown outside his homeland is convinced he is as heroic as his film roles despite comprehensively failing to have the necessary skills.  

His second in command, Lt. St. John Smythe followed the more traditional route to command, he went to Eton, Sandhurst and was commissioned an officer.  He has the all the skills for leading men in combat except for the charisma to actually make them want to follow.

The Heroes and their Resistance
allies prepare to hold off the Zombies

Next was Corporal Ken Cambell, a Tank driver without a tank.  Most of the British Army's tanks were abandoned at Dunkirk and Ken was rather resentful of having to join a 'normal' unit.

The Zombie horde gets closer

Private Garath Evans is somewhat predictably a Welshman.  As the Units sniper he was equipped with the superb De Lisle silenced carbine, and a terrible welsh accent.

Captaion Lukas leaps onto the
wall to inspire his men

Private James 'Jimmy' Dobbs, a tough man from the East End of London, despite being a good soldier he has secrets that he takes care to keep quiet.

The Heroes fall back just before being overrun.
Leaving Pvt Skonieczny cut off and surrounded!

And finally, Private Aleksander Skonieczny, a rather vicious Polish soldier who had seen Steel Mask order his family's murder, he had tracked the evil mastermind across Europe and joined the French Resistance for the chance of revenge.

A German patrol is ambushed by the Horde

During the chaos Pvt Evans leaps aboard
the Halftrack and opens fire on the
Horde and the Germans with the MG34

The adventure started with the group getting a dressing down from their CO for getting involved in a punch up with some Canadians in the pub.  Another officer rescues them and they're sent to RAF Tempsford for special training and a mission.  After their briefing at the Airfield they are parachuted into occupied France and join up with the resistance (cue the obligatory pretty french Resistance leader) and they head cross county through a forest to Chateau Montbrun.  

On the way one of the Resistance members goes missing and shadowy forms are seen from the corners of the heroes eyes.  Once they reach the edge of the forest they realise they are being stalked by 30 or so Zombies and they engage in a fighting retreat to a nearby farmhouse where they hold out till morning.

With the dawn comes a German Patrol who get jumped by the Zombies and the heroes take the chance to grad the patrol's half-track and race the the Chateau.  They infiltrate the castle (my group dressed up in the patrol's uniforms) and neutralize the guards.

Doktor Von Samstagg before and
after he injects his super-serum

On the first floor they encounter Von Samstagg and who injects himself with his latest Super-serum which doesn't work as well as he hopes, the heroes fight and kill Von Samstagg only to find that Stahl-Mask has escaped in his rocket powered escape ship.

The full adventure is available on request.

Weird War Adventure - The Comic!

So I just ran my Weird War adventure for my regular role playing group and I wanted to show you how it worked out.  

I'm waiting for some photos of the game so a full game report will follow soon but in the meantime one of the players, my good and talented friend Roy has put together a Comic of the game.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Weird War II adventure final preparations

With my eagerly anticipated (at least by me!) Weird War II game imminent I finally got my act together and finished off the last few miniatures I had taking up space on my painting table.

Just a quick note.  I know the British Royal Marine Commandos wore Green Berets and the Paratroop Regiment wore Red, these models are intended to represent a fictional unit similar to the SAS (who wore also wore red in Europe at that time) and for that reason their Berets are a different colour.

I had three French Resistance soldiers (from Artizan Designs) to complete and one of them is to represent a player character.  The kneeling figure with several days stubble will be Dave's Polish soldier.  I also painted another British Commando bringing the full complement of player character models to six.

Not much more to say at the moment, I want to share the details of the characters and the plot they'll be facing on Sunday but I don't want to spoil the surprise for my players so you'll just have to wait!

How to: Make a Custom GM Screen

In preparation for my Weird War II game I went looking for a GM Screen, unfortunately I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

So I decided to make my own and you can too.

You will need:

3x 25mm Ring Binders with display pockets on front & back.  

1x Roll of Double sided tape

Scissors

4x Plastic Document Pockets

Lay out one of your folders making sure (and then checking again) that the opening to the pockets on the other side is at the top.  

Cut eight strips of double sided tape and stick them on the inside covers.  Carefully peel off the backing tape on the strips.  

Take your next binder, and again checking that the opening to the display pocket on the front is at the top, carefully line up the edges and place the folder on top of the sticky tape and repeat on the other side.

You can just use two binders but I like a lot of room to roll dice and keep my handouts and maps organised so I recommend using three, they still fold up neatly.

Next prepare the Document Pockets.  Stick the double sided tape on one side of each pocket, I found a long strip at the top & the bottom worked well.  Stick the pockets to the inside covers of your screen,  try to keep the pocket taught so it doesn't gape open.

And your pretty much done.  I printed some appropriate art for the four pockets facing my players and the rules and tables I'll want to check often in the pockets inside.

When you change games to a different system or genre you can just switch out the art & rules pages to suit the new game.  

Getting my Weird War II game ready

I've been planning my next turn at running a RPG game for rather a long time, in fact thats the first project I had planned at the begining of July when I started this blog.  Well the time has come and the game is due to start on the 25th November so I have a few things left to do.

I can't share everything i'm going to do just yet as I know some of my players will be reading this blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise.  I have got four more miniatures to paint  which will bring the total number of miniatures i'll have ready to 55.  

The adventure is fully written (i'll share that with you once we've finished) and I have most of the scenery and vehicles i'll need.  I've chosen the background music which will add ambiance and i've got some WW2 books with photos of the war as props to help the guys get in the mood.  I've also got some documents the players might find which i've translated into German (and in English to give to the character's that took German as a Skill)

I'm using the Savage Worlds system which uses playing cards to determine who acts in each round and 'Bennies' to represent a hero's luck.  The heroes get three tokens which can be cashed in to get a reroll or other benefits.  For this game i'm using rather distinctive tokens....

My very talented photographer friend Roy has helped me out with some excellent scenery and vehicles including an abandoned french farmhouse and lots of German half tracks, tanks, trucks and motorbikes.  I think this is the most prepared i've ever been for a game.

I do still have a few things to do though.  I need lots of trees and I need to make a GM Screen, i'll make another post on making a custom modular (and importantly Cheap) GM screen soon.

Weird War II on hold and Pulp Sci-Fi

Hello again, sorry for the long gap between posts but i've been very busy with work and a bit distracted with Guild Wars 2.  Don't worry that distraction didn't last all that long and i'm back to painting.

Due to some scheduling problems with one of the players my Weird War II game is unavoidably delayed.  This is good and bad news as on one hand I have a little more time to get my act together and paint the French Resistance models but on the other I can't share the adventure or the in game photos with you.   Stay tuned, it will be along in the next few weeks.

In the meantime we've been getting ready to play Mubaris' (our regular GM) Savage Worlds Slipstream game.  I didn't intend on buying any figures for this game especially after spending a silly amount on the Reaper Kickstarter but when I saw some of the Pulp Sci Fi models available from Reaper and Hydra Miniatures I couldn't resist.  Actually, my ability to not be able to resist buying miniatures seems to be a recurring theme!

Anyhoo, We have the following characters for our upcoming Flash Gordonesque game:

SAM-66 is my character.  A Mechanical Man from Mechano who is the ships Doctor and Engineer.  He's softly spoken and avoids combat and danger but has quite a hidden past for the other characters to learn about. I chose the Reaper ALF 24 Robot Assistant for this character with a set of Tool Bots to go along with him.  They haven't arrived yet (i'm in the UK and its a long way from Texas!).

Next we have Rob's character. A RAF Pilot from World War II, spun out of control in a storm he awakens in his trusty Spitfire in the thin atmosphere of The Slipstream,  time will tell how he gets out of this new predicament.  Its probably a good bet that a pretty girl will be involved though!  For this one we chose Captain Biggleswade from Artizan Designs (on of my favourite miniature suppliers). 

The next character is for my friend Bob.  He doesn't know that he's going to be playing a Space Chimp yet, we'll have to talk him into it but the figure was just too cool to pass up.  I forgot to take a photo of it unpainted and can't find one online so this one is one from their website. 

My friend Simon will be playing a One Eyed Psiclops and finding a suitable figure is really hard.  I toyed with the idea of getting the Torso Evans Strontium Dog figure from Foundry Miniatures  but it just doesn't fit that well with the pulpy nature of the game in my opinion.  In the end I opted for the Illyrian Ranger miniature from Reaper.

I'll put up some photos of the finished models over the next few days as they arrive.

West Wind Nazi Zombies Reviewed and Painted

After my little treat of painting Reaper's Damian Helthorne I thought I should get on with the Nazi Zombies i've been procrastinating over for the last few weeks.  Well I finished them this evening so here they are.

To be fair they weren't as big a chore to paint than I thought and i'm satisfied that they came out to a fairly good tabletop standard.  More importantly I think they'll scare the bejeezus out of my players when we play my new Weird War II game!

Click to Zoom

The miniatures have generally been well sculpted and fit in perfectly with the Artizan Designs German Infantry I painted last month.  I was rather disappointed with one of the heads though as it looks like its been squashed by someones thumb and still mass produced anyway.  This wasn't a major issue though as there were half a dozen different heads to choose from so only two or three of the pack had to use the bad one.

One of the things I did with these miniatures to bring them to life (if you'll excuse the pun) was to hand paint over the blood with gloss varnish.  This makes the blood look fresher without having to make it unrealisticly bright red.  I'm not sure if you've noticed but when you cut your finger what comes out isn't much like the ketchup coloured 'Blood Red' that Games Workshop sell, but much more like their 'Scab Red', in fact I darkened Scab Red down a little more and painted it in vertical lines down from the wounds to make it look like the blood has dribbled down.  I think it worked but i'd like your opinions, please leave a comment!

What’s on the painting Table? Space Marine Librarian, Reaper Miniatures and Warhammer Wolf Riders

I often have too many miniatures to paint, not that I have any deadlines as I usually just paint for fun and not profit, but because I can’t resist them.

So here’s a run down on each of the miniatures I’ve currently got on the painting table waiting for my attention.

1. Space Marine Librarian. 

I used this old Games Workshop figure to test out Fairy Power Spray’s ability to strip paint (its fantastic!) and once it’s dodgy Blood Angels paint was gone I thought it would be interesting to paint it properly. I used to speed paint my Blood Angels chapter with Blood Red, wash with Black ink then pick out details with gold. Very basic but looked pretty good on the table. I am curious about how good I can get the miniature to look if I spend some longer painting it. I also think I might try auctioning it off on EBay. 

2. Games Workshop Wolf Riders. 

I painted one of the wolves last year to represent one of our D&D player’s animal companions. It came out rather well so I thought I’d finish off the rest, I also wanted to try out a technique I used to use for goblins and orcs. First you paint the skin yellow and wash with Green Ink, this gives a very vibrant skin tone with the yellow brightening the green from underneath. I’m not sure if there’s any market for Goblin Wolf Riders so I might try them on EBay but I’m happy to keep them if they don’t sell and use them for tabletop role-playing. 

3. 60041: Eando Kline, Pathfinder , 03201: Damian Helthorne and 02909: Nienna, Elf Ranger .

These Reaper miniatures have been sitting in my paint tray intimidating me with their complexity for months. I bought them because they are just exquisite but I’m a bit concerned that I won’t be able to do them justice. The level of detail on the Elf Archer and Eando Kline is very challenging so I’ll probably attempt Damian Helthorne first to build my confidence (and because he looks awesome). 

4. Artizan French Resistance. 

I have three more of these models needing painting to join the Michelle model I painted last month. They are needed for my Weird War II adventure (which I’ve finished writing) so I really ought to get on with them, but I’ve been enjoying painting more colourful miniatures recently. 

5. Secrets of the Reich Nazi Zombies. 

 I’ve got 20 of these to paint also for my Weird War II game and they have to be prepared, primed, based and painted before I can run it. I still have some time and I’m generally pretty quick when it comes to painting large units which can feel like more of a chore than concentrating on just a couple of models at a time. 

As you can see I have lots to choose from, watch this space and you’ll (hopefully) see each of these projects completed over the next few weeks.