Church of the ???

A few posts ago, I showed a church I had scratch built for Stange Aeons. I have now pretty much completed painting it up.

Instead of a steeple to hold some sort of emblem, I'm planning on painting a symbol on the wooden planks across the apex of the roof. I just haven't decided what to paint yet.


I know I was a bit heavy handed with the brown wash under the windows on this side.


Yep, that's the back of a building.


The mossy stuff on the roof & growing up the building is Underbrush from Woodland Scenics. Mason from Lead Adventure Forums used it on one of his buildings as ivy growth & I really liked it. It's a great way to make small growth in corners & around buildings.


The inside turned out a lot yellower than I intended, I was trying for a pine look. The side walls are plastic sheet, & the brush marks left in the paint ended up making it look a little like wood grain after I applied a brown wash.


Father Edmund can get a little messy some times.


& a quick shot of the steps down to the larder.


The interior dimensions of the building are pretty small, so I don't expect to do any actual gaming inside the church. But I'm very happy with how it come out, being my 1st attempt at a major scratch building project. I'm thinking there still needs to be some sort of symbol or mystic circle on the floor or wall behind the altar to finish the whole thing off.

I must say Skrapwelder helped out a lot. He gave me the resin roof & a lot of advice during the whole process.

Strange Aeons: Catch and Release

Continuing with the Strange Aeon's campaign for Skrapwelder's Threshold Agents, I ran him through another 2 games.

In the 1st game, his Agents were following some clues found at the Moonwineshine still. The clues took them to another backwoods shanty town that seemed to be the main collection point for the wine.

Unfortunately, the shiners got the drop on them. The Agents were able to take out a few, including their zombie dog.

But the Agents were all taken down & captured by the shiners.


In the 2nd game, the Agents woke up in some sort of industrial building.

The Lurkers were in the main warehouse preparing their stock for another shipment.

The Agents were tied up in the rooms in the smaller warehouse. They were able to escape their bonds & find their weapons.

The lead Agent quietly observed the activity in the main warehouse and came up with a plan.

Quickly sharing it with the rest of the Agents, they would shoot their way through the Lurkers & search the office in the main warehouse to find any accounting books or other incriminating evidence.

The Agents were surprised to see they were confronted both by humans but also GUSTs again (Group of Unknown Scuttley Things).

The Agents did take a few casualties, but they were able to finally bring both the humans & the GUSTs down, achieving their goal. & just to add a cinematic ending, a truck full of G-Men came busting through the warehouse doors.

Unfortunately, they didn't find any useful evidence to further their investigation, but all the Agents fully recovered.

In case you're interested, the buildings are from the Virtual Armchair General's Mean Street/Mean Sets range. The sets are not like normal paper buildings, but are designed to be wrapped around 1/4" foam core to give more solidity to the walls. I put the peel & stick business card magnets on the end of the walls, so the whole structure collapsable. Here is a prior post I made about my construting the buildings.

New House on the Market

Below is my 1st serious attempt at scratch building a building. My only prior attempt was making the quick & easy hobo shacks featured in my 1st Strange Aeons post. But with Skrapwelder's guidance & gifts, & lots of shavings left all over the living room floor, I have completed the Church of the Eternal Flame/Eye/[insert your favorite ominous but abiguous adjective here].

The Church elders are keen recyclers, so are happy to use abandonded buildings for their meetings.

The church is a direct copy from the Plasticville Small Church. I picked one of those up, but decided I wanted a more American rural looking building with clapboard siding, instead of the rough stone or plaster siding that the Plasticville church had. So I traced the Plasticville church & used it as a template to build this one.

The wooden planking at the front roof eaves was originally a way to hide the fact that I'd trimmed too much off the peak of the roof, so there was a big gap there. But now I'm going to draw something on it, not sure what.

The roof is some resin extras that Skrapwelder kindly gave me.

Initially, the inside of the building look very rough, lots of badly cut foam core edges. So I decided to finish the windows & inside too. I added the planked floor & walls, & raised dais with the altar.

& every good church needs access to the crypts (or labyrinthian caverns) underneath the altar.

While it's not a Skrapwelder or Empey (http://a28mmbrain.blogspot.com/ ) original, I'm very happy with how it came out. Lots of fun to build. Now just have to paint it.

Nightmare on 34th St

For our next game of Strange Aeons, I ran the Nightmare on 34th St holiday theme scenario. The scenario rules can be found here. Basically, an evil Santa is trying to grab kids before the Threshold Agents can rescue them.

Here's the main Lurker figures in the Christmas posse: the Elves, Santa & Rudolph.

Santa is the Horrorclix Jester figure in a padded putty suit.

The Elves were the Cannibal Clowns, also from Horrorclix, with a bit of repaint. Rudolph is Skrapwelder's & from AE WW2.

Here are the sugar drunk troublemakers that the Agents are supposed to rescue.

A picture of the overall board

& one from the Lurker's side.

There wasn't much to the the game though. Since the scenario required Santa be a 7 pt Maniac, & I had 16 pts with which to buy Lurkers, I bought a bunch of 1 pt Cultists to bulk out Lurker forces. This meant the Lurker gang didn't have any commander figure. So, while all 4 of the Threshold Agents were activating at a time & rescuing the kids, only 1 Lurker could activate, which made it almost impossible to chase down the Agents or kids.

Santa was able to cut down Officer "Just Arriving on the Scene", but the head Agent then took out Santa during melee. I should have forced all the kids on to make a Resolve check after seeing their rescuers slaughter Santa, but I didn't.

The Threshold was able to rescue all the kids, only for the loss of the Police office. Overall, a quick but fun game. & now I've got the Santa figure ready for next year. I just have to find some more of those Elves.

Escape from Witch Mountain

We played our 2nd Strange Aeons game a few weeks ago. This time, we did just a 1-on-1 game & it went a lot better than the larger game last time.

We rolled up the Escape scenario where the Threshold agents have to make it across the board. I wanted the game to follow on from the end of the last game to continue the storyline. So the Theshold gang were trying to return from investigating the ritual circle they discovered last time.

But the County Sherriffs were in the pay of the Moonshiners. And since the agents had just busted up the Moonshiners, the Sherriffs decided to mosey on over to make sure the Threshold gang didn't make it out of the back woods alive.

We also used the Twisted Fate deck for the games. It certainly added some big cinematic moments to the game. At 1st it seemed like drawing a card every turn would be too much, but having more cards to use in defense definately helped. It did seem suspicious that my opponent Skrapwelder, who printed up the cards, was the only one who got the "out of ammo" card. & that really hurt when he played it on my Lurker with the Tommy Gun.


Game 1

The 1st game had Skrapwelder running his new Threshold gang against my Sheriffs. & you know Sheriffs always have to have a bloodhound with them, so they brought a Zombie Dog.

Skrapwelder's Threshold character, Murphy, the Old Groundskeeper

The rest of his gang: Betty Joe Bialowski, Jack MacAdam, & Officer "Just arrived on the scene"

The Threshold agents left the ritual circle after they completed their investigations, but were quickly spotted by one of the Lurker Sheriffs.

"Hey Sarge! I can see those damn Carpet Baggers from up here. They're just leaving the Ol' Jed's nekkid dancin' spot."

The Sergeant let loose his prize hound, Bubba. Which quickly tracked down and tore up Office "No longer appearing in this film"

Bubba was gunned down after that.

Betty Joe then gave good evidence as to why she had been scouted by the local All Women's Baseball team. She quickly struck down 2 Sheriffs with her bat.

This was one of the more fun cinematic moments caused by the Twisted Fate deck. The Lurker Sheriff had no melee weapon, so had to face Betty & her bat unopposed. Luckily he survived her 1st swing. Then Skrapwelder played on Betty the Divine Intervention card (immune to all damage) & Killing Blow card (+2 close combat). I then played Bad Luck (cancelling Betty's immunity) & my own Divine Intervention. So, even though Betty had a +2, she effectively couldn't use it. & the Sheriff at least had a chance to do some damage to her, which he didn't. She quickly beat the Sheriff down. That was all her 1st action in her turn.

She then activated her Heroic skill allowing 3 actions her turn, with which she ran up behind another another Sheriff & beat him down in 1 blow. So in 1 turn, she just about took out half my Lurker gang, earning her the nickname of Bludgeoning Betty.

With the immediate Lurker threat dispatched the agents quickly tried to high-tail it off the board. Unfortunately, the remaining Sheriffs' marksmanship took a heavy toll, gunning down both Jack & Betty as they ran off.

Here Murphy stops for a quick forelorn glance at his collegues shot in the back before escaping to safety.

Game 2A

We then reversed roles and I ran the Threshold gang from the our 1st game a few weeks ago through the same scenario.

Skrapwelder based his Lurkers around an 11 point Maniac. He gave the Maniac the Sneak skill, which put him within 1 move of the Threshold on the 1st turn.

"Peek-a-boo!"

The Professor went down 1st. Then, after watching the Maniac slaugther her father, his daugther blasted him with her shotgun for 1 point of damage. But the Maniac tore through everyone else so fast the game was over in about 15 minutes. The other 2 Lurkers never even moved.

Game 2B

We decided to run the game again, but this time Skrapwelder came up with another set of Lurkers, 2 Deep Ones & 2 regular Cultists. Luckily, he kind of forgot the objective was for the Threshold to get off the other side of the board. So he was momentarily surprised when my agents just kept running past the Lurkers.

& yet again, the Reporter accompanying Threshold was caught & savaged, this time by a Deep One.

I think the local paper is going to stop sending Reporters on these expeditions (or I'm going to have to get a bigger variety of figures to denote Civilians).

My agents quickly outpaced the flopping Deep Ones.

"Hurry up, Professor!"

& rushed off the board.

"Come on Dad! Just through these trees & we should be back at the Wardrobe."

& here is our Strange Aeons mascot. Skrapwelder's wife found it somewhere. So now whenever a figure dies in the game, we squeeze this little guy to make him utter a hideous shreik while his his eyes flash red.

Overall, we both enjoyed the games, & will be planning another one soon. We will probably be having the 2 campaigns diverge from each other, so we can develop in secret our own nefarious & dastardly plans for the other's agents.

1st Strange Aeons Game

INTRO & SETUP

I recently ran my 1st game of Strange Aeons at our local weekly club night. Strange Aeons is a skirmish level game where government special agents fight against Cthulhu cultists. Think Necromunda in the 1920s/30s with Tentacles.

Usually Strange Aeons (SA) is a 1-on-1 game. But due to our club nights having up to 6-8 people, I doubled the number of gangs, so there were 2 per side. & I made the gangs a bit larger than normal so they could be split in half to support more players.

The scenario had a Treasury Man with military support investigating a possible moonshine operation. At the same time, Threshold agents (a secret government agency to fight supernatural threats) were investigating reports of some sort of backwoods sacrificial rituals.

Here's the Treasury team with the lead investigator (Character), Sgt w/ SMG(Agent), 2 riflemen & a reporter to record taking down the moonshiners (all 3 Civilians).

& here's the Threshold Team with the main Investigator in the center (Character), a professor of ancient languages & his daughter/assistant to the right (both Agents), the local farmer who reported the rituals & a police office for protection on the left (both civilians).

Here's a picture of the board layout. The flat terrain pieces outlined in brown in the picture are what I call "terrain blinds" & are explained in a prior post.

Normally, an SA game is played on a 2'x3' board. But because I doubled the number of gangs, I doubled the size of the board. So the board was 4'x3'. The 2 "good" gangs (Treasury gang & Threshold gang) entered the board from the left. The 2 "bad" gangs were in hiding as part of the terrain blinds.


GAME REPORT

I allowed both good gangs to do a single group move, activating their whole gang at once to get them within conflict range of the bad gangs. This allowed the moonshine operation to be seen & put on the table.

With the moonshine shacks on the board, the Treasury men made an immediate attack against them. Unfortunately, the police office was the caught in the crossfire and the 1st casuatly of the game. The weight of the Treasury gang's fire started taking its toll, and the moonshiners took their own casaulties. This allowed the G-Men to clear out the front shacks.

But unbeknownst to the G-Men, something had been scuttling through the underbrush & was about to pounce. [I used one of the extra terrain blind pieces to allow the 2nd "bad" gang to move unseen (or at least unidentified) across the board. & again, until they were in direct visual range, I allowed them to activate & move as a whole group all at once.]

Finally, the GUST (Group of Unknown Scuttley Things) broke cover & the Treasury men saw the full horror of what had been stalking them. [These were run as Vermin from the Shocking Tales #1 suppliment, with 1 Cultist Henchman as their Pied Piper. Because the GUST were just Vermin, they didn't actually cause any Resolve checks. "the full horror" just sounded good in the narrative.]

Here's a shot from the other direction showing just how vulnerable the G-men were to the gnashing beaks of the GUST.

Luckily, the head G-Man quickly & calmly started gunning down the horrible GUST as they rushed his team. Below is evidence of the GUST's unfortunate luck for one of the few that got into combat. The 3 white 6s was the melee roll for the head G-man, while the 2 purple 2s was for the GUST (& that was even on my special cthulhu dice).

Finally, one got past the Treasury gunline & attacked the reporter who had gotten too close trying to take pictures of the horrible GUST. The Sgt in the background recoils in surprise.

The reporter's lack of formal combat training was telling, and he was ripped apart. He did win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his final picture.

The rest of the GUST were killed in their tracks, and with over half of the moonshiners taken out, Good prevailed and both the moonshiners and the cult were cleared out.

But the Threshold Agents thought certain references to Moon-tree Shine found in the shacks indicated a connection between the moonshiners and the cultists. What else, other than providing moonshine to other-worldly beings, could explain the size of such a large still?

SUMMARY

Unfortunately, my design of the gangs kind of led to difficulties during the game. Having the cult gang be all melee-only figures meant the moonshiners (shown below) had to face all the fire from both gangs on their own. Also, since the leader of the cultist gang didn't have the Command skill, each GUST was being activated one at a time, meaning it was very difficult to allow the GUST to support each other in melee.

Also, I probably didn't explain the significance of the Command skill to the moonshiner players. They hid the head of the gang (classed as a Cult Leader) at the back of the moonshine area to protect him. This meant the moonshiner gang was only activating 1 figure in a turn facing to the good gangs activating 6 figures a turn (I allowed both gangs on a side 1 activation each turn, & the good gangs would always activate their leaders with their Command skill. This allowed each good gang to activate another 2 figures, for a total of 6 for the whole good side.)

Therefore, between the bad side having half the number of guns, & not being told how to effectively use the few skills they did have, the game wasn't terribly enjoyable for the bad side. The good side players loved it though 8).

But a few of the players enjoyed the concept of the game, & were able to look past my bad game design, to be willing to try it again. & one player not only specifically ask to play again, but bought some of the rule books. So, he & I are planning more 1-on-1 games to try to work the kinks out more before trying another large game.

& before I get deluged with questions about the GUST figures... I got them off ebay, from a seller who's name I don't remember. He'd had them custom made & was just selling off the extras.

/|\(;,,;)/|\