It Snows In Hell: Battle Report

Just to prove I haven't been completely idle in July  I want to share with you what I have been secretly working on. It's a Zombie Apoc game set in a rural village in Finland. It grew out of a challenge on Lead Adventure Forum, to make a game that would fit into a PAPPIS storage box from IKEA. The box is roughly 25cmx33cm and 25 cm high- not very big really.  With very careful planning I managed to cram in a whole village. It's not quite finished, a few of the building need painting, but the deadline is the first of August, and this is as finished as it is going to get before then. It's good enough to use for a play-test battle report. 

I used the FUBAR modern horror rules, with a few minor adaptions. This is as free to download set of rules which comes on a single A4 paper and is very easy to learn. This has the advantage that I can easily fit several copies of it in the PAPPIS box without having to compromise on space. 

We found FUBAR to be a good system for a one off game. I played with my son Charlie, and he found it was easy enough to pick up. We both found that there was a good narrative to eh game, which was evocative of the zombie genre. In FUBAR the characters don't always do what you want them to do, and this can lead to some exciting and unexpected moments. I hope you enjoy the dramatic style of the battle report, as I have tried to capture that feeling. 

Introduction dispensed with: Now on with the show...

The survivors are, from left to right Arttu aka Grandpa, an old hunter; Nico,  an ice-hockey jock; Tapio, a tough poliisi detective; Johannes, an inquisitive journalist and Helena, Arttu's teenage granddaughter. 

Tapio is the toughest, and Arttu is the best shot. Helena has her grandfathers hunting rifle, but she's not a great shot. Nico doesn't like guns, and prefers his machete. 

 The survivors minibus has run off the road in a blizzard, and they need to find some transport out of the village. There are a couple of ski-mobiles at the far end, by the police station. The only trouble is that the village is crawling with The Dead. 

Johannes spots the first pack of The Dead moving in from behind the red house. Johannes fires, but misses. Arttu gives them both barrels with his shotgun, and decapitates two. Nico charges in, killing another with his machete. 

Moreof TheDead arrive from behind the red house, and threaten to overwhelm the party. Nico cuts down two more in a fierce fight, but staggers back clutching his wrist: He has been bitten!

 The others see a look of fear and desperation in his eyes: He is under no illusion what this means. The look turns to hatred. He points at Helena- "Get her out of here!" he yells. "I will buy you some time." He hefts hes machete and charges into the horde of The Dead.  

Nico cuts down two more of The Dead before he is dragged down and ripped apart by the ravenous creatures. 

Seeing her childhood friend killed, Helena panics. She is separated from her companions as they move up the street towards the ski-mobiles. Two of The Dead who have been tearing at Nico's flesh spot her in the open and charge towards her. She manages to shoot one dead, but the other one closes on her. 
Hearing the shot Tapio turns and sees the danger. Without thinking of his ow safety the policeman charges back to help.

Tapio kills The Dead and drags Helena back towards the others. Out of the corner of his eye he sees something big advancing from near the sauna. It's one of the Abominations!

Johannes and Arttu move up to the corner of the police station, close to the ski-mobiles. Johannes spots more of The Dead moving towards them from the direction of the radio mast.

The Abomination rushes towards Tapio and Helena. Tapio gets off a shot, but the bullet bounces off the Abomination's ice encrusted hide. Helena and Tapio have no choice but to run for the ski-mobiles. 

 Arttu and Johnannes get the ski-mobiles started and race towards their companions. Tapio leaps onto the back of Johannes ski-mobile and, thinking the others are right behind, Johannes and Tapio race off to safety. 
Meanwhile Artuu and his granddaughter are surrounded by The Dead. The old hunter can't get his ski-mobile started, and the two are forced to fight a desperate battle, fending off The Dead until the engine finally roars into life. The two of them escape, racing off into the blizzard after their companions, leaving the village, and their fallen friend, behind forever. 

I hope you enjoyed this battle report. I will get round to finishing the rest of the buildings soon. I promise. 

Winter Survivors

This was my latest Lead Painters League entry. They are  some survivors from a post-apocalypses zombie filled winter. Initially they will be used for fighting zeds, but eventually I can see they might be useful in my Force on Force games set in Finland. I might need some armed civilians for something? 

Other, more off the wall ideas I have had include a 'The Thing' type scenario, or as a explorers in a Cthulhu-modern game. Perhaps they could even be armed civvies for AE Bounty? Lots of possibilities. 

They are, from left to right, Mojo, Mojo, Hasslfree, Fenris Games and Mojo. 
Mojo Miniatures is a new small company with a nice range of winter survivors  Fenris mostly do resin bases and so on, but they have a small number of investigators for a Cthulhu-modern setting, and Hasslfree are...well Hasslfree is just the place to go for zombie-apocalypse survivors. 

Force on Force: T-55 MBT

Just another quick one because I am rather excited. This is a Russian made T-55 Main Battle Tank, as used by both the Nigerian and Finnish army (Hmm, very useful indeed!). 

This one is a 1/55 scale die-cast model I bought on eBay. It is a James Bond collectable replica from the film Golden Eye (you may remember the scene when Bond drives one through a wall). It wasn't cheep, costing me £15 including the postage, but that is still cheaper than buying a resin tank. I have another one on the way too. 

It obviously comes ready assembled and painted, so I can use it right away. In all probability  I will repaint it at some point, as it looks a bit flay and boring in real life, as it has been painted a flat green with no highlighting or shading, let alone weathering.  

To those who don't know 1/55 scale is just about right for 28mm, and finding military vehicals in that scale is something of a coup.  Here it is in my garden with it's happy owner- a Nigerian Army peace keeper. 

Force on Force: Radio Areial and Cell Phone Mast

Here is a couple of quick WIP shots of a cell phone (mobile phone) mast and a radio aerial I have made as objectives for Force on Force. They are made from Hornby Trains OO gauge pylons I got form the local model shop. I built them and then trimmed off the bits that stick out the side to hold the power cables. Then I rooted through my bits box of Games Workshop tank parts and added some bits and bobs to make them look the part. The cell phone mast also has some plasticard receivers too.

The Radio Free Zugando aerial

The Cell phone mast is to be used in my modern Finland campaign  It will be painted up and given a light dusting of snow flock. The Radio areal will be part of a radio station complex for my Zugandan shanty town. Both will be important objectives, as securing them can effect the oppositions command and control. 

A mobile phone mast in Finland

The Pylons come with three in a box for £15.99. The other one might get made up as a more traditional BBC radio mast without all the satellite dishes etc to be used for Very British Civil War. 

Winter War 2015: WIP

This model is a bit of a sneak preview of something I have floating around in my head for Force on Force.

He is a soldier from the Finnish Defence Force. This one is a test model, and I am rather pleased with the results.

Basically, although I love developing my African Force on Force campaign setting, set in the fictional country of Zugando, I felt that I would like to explore other areas of the world. Not feeling terrible comfortable with gaming in Afghanistan or similar locations, I began to look further a field for somewhere to set my new campaign.

The  ‘eureka’ moment came when I was researching the 1939 ‘Winter War’ between Soviet Russia and Finland and I thought ‘Aha…I could use this for Force on Force”. All I had to do was let my imagination go a bit wild, and to engineer some sort of conflict between Russia and Finland, set just a year or two in the future.

This has the added advantage of being more appealing to my regular gaming buddy Pulp Citizen. I think its fair to say that the FoF bug has never really gripped Pulp Citizen, and he is decidedly cool on the whole Ultra-modern thing. But as he is by decent part Finnish, and still has relatives over in that frozen Land, I reasoned that he might feel more motivated to play Force on Force if it involved protecting Fins from Russia.

As to the back ground…well I think I have a lot more work to do to iron that out. Rather like VBCW I will do some research, base some things in facts, make some leaps of logic, and then just fabricate a whole lot of stuff, to end up with a semi-plausible background to the conflict. I know Russia isn't really going to invade Finland, and that the two countries are on fairly good terms (diplomatically at least) but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a reason for the conflict. Just look at Georgia in 2008.

As to the time scale for this project? Well I am still planning to get my Bolt Action Burma stuff finished first, and to wrap up a lot of Modern African stuff I have in the pipelines, so it will be a while before Russian tanks cross the border into Finland, but I am hoping I will be able to get the first few games in before the end of the year.

This figure is from The Assault Group and is a Russian soldier in a wool hat. It’s fair to say there are some similarities between the look of the Finnish Defence Force and the Russian army, and the TAG figures will serve for both, with different paint schemes. Red Star also makes some nice modern Russians.