Pharoah's Amazon Jungle of Terror

[cwchmc]

Here's some pix from a .45 Adventure game we played over the weekend. i'm sorry I don't have time to come up with a clever story write-up to go along with the pictures.

The Board Set-Up


Victor Enrique Fernando Pantera and his Chico-Chico followers creep towards the hidden temple


Jungle Jim, Evelyn the spunky American reporter, and Manuel the driver head through the dense jungle.


An Elephant suddenly appears out of the jungle


Opium Plantation guards dart across the open ground.


Chico-Chico head hunters creeping through the jungle.


The Chico-Chico headhunters reach the temple


The undead emerge from the ancient tomb.


More undead from the back of the temple!!!!


After sacrificing the Chico-Chico's to fight the undead, Victor enters the temple to face his destiny.

[Operator5]

Looks like a great board!

Did you use Encounter Markers at all?

[cwchmc]

Yes, we did. The Elephant was the result of an encounter marker and the zombies released from the back of the temple was the result of an encounter marker. After that, everyone was afraid to go near the other markers.  ::

Chuck

[Operator5]

Awesome! It's good to keep your players jumpy.

 ::

Seriously, I'd like to hear all about the game and anything interesting that occurred.

[cwchmc]

Ok. I didn't run this game, but I'll pass along what i can. We played a little loose with the rules. We used card activation instead of the regular Intiative rules, which I thought worked pretty well. Grade 3's got 2 cards each and everyone else got 1 card. An idea stolen from GASLIGHT I think.
The other change John(who set-up and ran the game) made to the rules was with damage. Instead of the normal damage rules, we made an opposed DR vs WS roll for every attack and only ever marked off one box. This was to make the characters a little hardier because of the larger than normal board. I think it worked ok with all the weapons with WS 3 or 4 but the higher WS weapons were weakened a bit much.
There were only 4 Encounter Markers and i believe John had the results for each pre-determined instead of using a random card draw as per normal. The Elephant moved a random distance in a random directiuon each time his card came up. He rarely attacked anyone, but he had a trample attack. If he moved over a figure, it had to make a Dodge test of take a hit to each location. Made avoiding the Elephant a big part of the game at the beginning.
I'll probably use the card activation in some games I run. I liked the way the random intiative worked out. The Damage changes I don't think I will use in any of my games.
If you have any specific questions let me know.

[Malamute]

Cool!    I really like the jungle terrain pieces as well.  

[Operator5]

One thing you may want to try for card activation (to tie it into DODGE like it is written) is to give out 1 card for every 2 DODGE points (rounded down). Then you could give a bonus card to Grade 3 models. Some models could have up to three cards with that system, but it keeps it closer to the intent of the rules.

Just a suggestion.

[cwchmc]

Thats a good idea. I'll try that when I run my next game. I'll be sure to let you know how it works.

Chuck

[Grimm]

Very nice Game Report : )
Please can you tell me what you mean with Grade 3's got 2 cards each and everyone else got 1 card.If that means that Grade 3 get wo turnes and everyone else got 1?

cheers Grimm

[cwchmc]

Grimm: Yeah...thats basically it. Instead of rolling intiative and activating characters in DG order, we had a deck with all the characters in it. Each Grade 3 had 2 cards in the deck and Grade's 1 & 2 had 1 card each. We would flip cards and that character would activate. By the time we went through the deck each Grade 3 had activated twice and all other characters activated once.

Chuck

[jizbrand]

Just to clarify the WS issue:  none of the weapons we used met the criteria for inflicting two wounds (two boxes).  All of them were WS 3, 4, or 5; all the DRs were 4 or better, so no weapons were WS >= 2xDR.

[cwchmc]

:oops: oops...you are right, John. i was thinking the SMG had a higher WS at close range. But there was no instance where a model would have taken more than one wound from a single attack. So basically the only change we made to damage was always doing an opposed roll. It felt fine when we were playing, it was later that i was thinking the SMG's maybe should have been more powerful. Actually it probably didn't change their effectiveness much at all.

Chuck

[tabletop]

Actually card activation is a good idea imho. I often find my players forget the activation order half way through a turn so started giving them '1,2,3,4' etc tokens, but we still occasionally have issues forgetting which figures have gone etc.

I should have thought of activation cards for Pulp .45 earlier...because we already use card for Mordheim! I'll gleefully steal this idea for my next campaign I think because anything that reduces book keeping is good.

[mahon]

There's an alternative version of card activation which does allow higher grade/dodge characters to activate earlier, but doesn't give them additional turns:

Give cards as usual (eg. 1 per 2 points of dodge, +1 card for being grade 3, maybe -1 card for being grade 1/2) but you only activete ONCE per turn, when your first card is drawn. Then you ignore the next cards for the same character.

More cards for some characters mean that even though they don't activate more often, their cards can be drawn earlier (just because there are more of them).

Worked good for me in other games.

[Operator5]

That is exactly what I meant when I posted (just more clearly stated by Mahon). It keeps the figures at one activation each but still makes it random.