Wednesday 28 March 2018

Those Meddling Kids again...

Hi all

At PAW this year, in between showing my zombie apocalypse game I chatted with the vendors and other demonstrators - a really friendly bunch.  One chap was playing my game, using the post apocalypse "Not Mystery Inc" Scooby Gang from Hasslefree miniatures and he happened to remark about the lack of a Mystery Machine.  This happens to be a sore subject with me, as i've wanted a MM for ages, ever since I got these bad boys and gals! The "not" Mystery Inc miniatures from Hasslefree Miniatures.


Thankfully this conversation was overheard by the event organiser and owner of Clive's Diecasts - Clive Dudley. Clive dashed off and came back with this....


I think most of us can see the potential in this Russian mid sized panel van.  This is of course what I was aiming for.

Image result for mystery machine

When I got home I added some small card circles to the wheels to make hubcaps and a couple of mdf bases to represent the spare wheel at the front of the van.


I then covered the windows and sprayed the whole thing with a grey primer, before painting the body of the vehicle with turquoise acyrlic paint. Then shaded with blue ink before drybrushing the whole thing with turquoise.


I then hand painted all of the decals with a mix of scarlet, knarloc green and black.




Not perfect, but I'm really pleased with the result.





So normally I would leave it here, but I was really lucky to receive the pre-apocalypse "not" Mystery Inc gang from Hasslefree.  I've literally just finished them and here they are...


The observant among you will notice that I've forgotten the black spots on "Scooby-Doo's" shoulders






I thought I would show the "pre" and "post" gang side by side...

Fred

Daphne

Shaggy

Velma

Scooby-Doo, now with markings...


Lastly I've always loved this meme and tried to recreate it!

Image result for post apocalypse mystery machine


Thats the best I could come up with
hope you enjoy
dGG

Wednesday 21 March 2018

Gateway games

Hi all

Another little pause from the ATZ campaign for a little bit later, just while I figure out the next scenarios.  

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the board games club I belong to. I go weekly, when I can and I really enjoy the strategy that has now crept into modern board games.  Of course my first love is tabletop war games and I'm an enthusiastic ambassador for the genre to the club members.  So I figure what we need is a game that bridges the gap between board games and tabletop games - "gateway games".

There are a number of podcasts and YouTube videos around gateway games like this -

https://youtu.be/PlvwYYzagFY

But I didn't want to buy something new, then I remembered that I've built some pretty cool layouts recently with some really basic rules (that fit on 2 sides of A4) and that they have some appeal with most folks, gamers or not. The zombie board I had actually playtested with some of the club members, precisely because I wanted to see if it had appeal to the non-miniature gamer - and it went down a storm!

Then I remembered that I had built the modern city tiles on the backs of my dungeon tiles that I built a while back and my brain went into overdrive! DUNGEON CRAWL TIME!!



Yes, I decided to write some basic rules of my own for a really simple dungeon crawl mechanic.  the rules once again fit on a couple of sheets of A4 paper excluding the character sheets and monster bestiary.  But by limiting the monsters to goblins, orcs, zombies, vampires and super villain - the Dreadlord I was able to keep that down to a minimum too! In no time at all I had knocked up a game that seemed to suit the purpose and took it down the club. To spice it up I took two teams....

The Boys


vs The Girls


Both teams would enter the dungeon at the same time, at separate entry points and race through the dungeon to confront the Dreadlord and stop the summoning of his pet demon. In order to stop the game dragging on and to make it more competitive, I added a real time element to the game that had the teams jumping. It went down an absolute storm with the Girls taking the win!




















All in all, I think I'm making some headway, to the point that i am taking a board to the club's board game convention Uncon 3.0 - an Unconventional Convention.  Next time, I have adapted my hospital rules to fit a more simple ruleset (as opposed to ATZ FFO) and stand alone as a game and see how they like it.












hope you enjoy
dGG