Night of the Alchemist - Kublacon EOTD game pictures

[Skrapwelder]

So the big day came and went. The game went splendidly and I think everyone involved had a good time. Commissar Moody was able to jon us for the game. Its always great to be able to put a face to the people here on the board. Big thanks to Leadfool for being my Zombie Wrangler. As well as to Alfrik, Black Cavalier and Laughing Ferrrett for all the development help and the feedback from the playtest that changed some things in the game radically for the better.

Quick synopsis:

The players were each supplied with a pair of figures. Each player represented one of several factions:
The Westminster Vampire Hive
The Brighton Vampire Hive
Torchwood
The Loyal Charter of Busmen. A cult devoted to the great machines that ferry people around the city.
The Bow Street Special Branch for preventing outbreaks of infectious Undead
The Eglington Tournament Society
The Deathguard, a more militant branch tasked with containing and eliminating outbreaks of infectious undead.

Every group had the basic objective of rescuing civilians and escorting them safely to several strong points on the tables edges. For each rescue they received a small reward. They also had secondary, more difficult, objectives that were particular to their faction and yielded larger rewards. Some groups had a third set of secret objectives that rewarded them for removing members of other factions from play. There was great compensation here as well. This last set made play much more dynamic and got a lot of the action away from an "Us vs The Zombie" kind of game. It was kind of like a school dance. Once the first player got over the initial shock of being shot at with such glee by another he was able to shoot back gladly and sooner or later everyone was doing the same dance.

Zombies were generated every other turn from four points on the table and always moved towards the closest player. For the denouement, three wrecking crews of zombies, led by two much tougher shamblers and The Alchemist of the game title break out and attempt to wreak havoc on whatever is left.

At the top of each players turn (each player got to act twice in any given turn) they rolled to see if they pulled a card from the Something Good or Something bad Event decks. The events ranged from broken weapons, mistakenly applied acts of violence to the arrival of various vehicles to ferry civilians away to safety so the players could get back in the fight faster.

Anyway, on to the pictures.


A very atmospheric shot of the major portion of the street.


Members of the Eglington Tournament Society, whose main goal was to kill zombies in close combat for the glory of it.


View down one of the side streets


Lady Carriager of Torchwood loading a captured zombie into a special carriage. Torchwood's special objective was to capture zombies for study.


A long view in the middle of the action. In the lowest part of the picture are the Eglington Tourney men. By the burning wagon is the Brighton Hive vampire faction. Up by the gate into Trubblat Mill are a couple of members of the Loyal Order of Busmen.


The Evening Star Omnibus. One of the special vehicles. This one the Busmen had a limited ability to summon. Once in play it moved off the table collecting rescued civilians from any faction close enough and ferrying them to safety.


Torchwod at one of the Zombie generating holes. A glitch in the rules quickly appeared to the Torchwood player when he found he got a fairly large bounty for capturing live zombies. I had meant to limit it to one or two zombies total but that didn't make it into the rule handouts. So the TW player camped his faction there and proceeded to capture as many zombies as he could, racking up a huge reward in the process. We told him later that Torchwood had such a high overhead on operations that most of his bounty would disappear in the covering of costs.


Chaos in the streets. Apparently the Westminster Hive had it in for the Brighton Hive, who had it in for the Busmen. They all met in the middle of the street and row and a ruction soon began.


Lady Carriagger as seen through the Blacke Books passageway.


One of the barricades set up by the Deathguard to contain the zombie outbreak. These were the primary rallying points where players had to escort their rescued civilians to collect the reward.


I wonder what that big red "X" is for?


A long view of the barricade. Against the building is Tobias Tottenham and his faithful dog Obadiah escorting some civilians through the barricade. Tobias was one of the player faction.


Another view of the Omnibus.


Spannerman Bob of the Busmen gets his licks in.


Finally the Alchemist makes his appearance. He led a wrecking crew of zombies. At roughly the same time two other wrecking crews were breaking through the red "X" doors at opposite ends of the table.


One of the wrecking crews breaks out right in the middle of the Torchwood Zombie Mining operation.


Another view of the Alchemist and his Soul Cannon.


Challengers arrive in the form of the remaining Brighton Hive member and one of the Eglington Knights. The Alchemist was a fearsome opponent and require Bravado checks in order to charge. It took a turn for the men to work up their courage.


Very shortly after this one of the challengers broke through the line and dispatched the Alchemist with a massive cleave, signally an end to the game.

I had a great time running this and thanks again to everyone that helped and participated.

Thanks for looking,

Mike

[aggro84]

Oh man that looked great! 

I had high expectations with all the lead up you have been sharing with us, but the final product was way better than I might have imagined. 

What a fantastic looking game.

I'm kicking myself for not making it to Kublacon, I would have loved to seen this in person. 

The burning carriage, the red double decker tank, and the energy swirl around the Alchemist were wonderful touches on top of an  already beautiful project.

[twrchtrwyth]

Great report.

[Pappa Midnight]

Looks like it was a really cool game! 
Really impressed with your table.... You have some very nice toys.

I have had similar ideas about different groups having their own agendas. Really adds something to what could have been just another skirmish game.
I'm thinking of my "Hunt Club" members employing non-combatant photographers/reporters to accompany them on excursions to record their exploits. They game extra rewards for ensuring that their kills are properly catalogued.....

PM

[Dr Mathias]

Looks great and sounds like a fun game. The rules work pretty well for just two figures per player?

[oldskoolrebel]

I love it, I really like the premise and the set up!

Also I love the fact everyone has their own agenda... I'll need to try that sometime.

Cheers
Andy

[thebinmann]

STUNNING

dam you for having such lovely toys

STUNNING

[commissarmoody]

It was a great game with a great set up. Lots of folks were asking about Empire of the dead, and supposedly the few box sets it cleared out pretty quickly.

And thanks to Skrapwelder and leadfool for a great game, next time I am up in Sacramento I will defiantly track you guys down for a game.

[Anatoli]

That looks crazy cool, wish I had access to city terrain like that 

[Mason]

 

What an amazing set up!
Beautiful scenery and miniatures.
 

You have some cracking ideas to add character.

I love the armoured bus and all the seperate elements contesting the game.
Genius, pure genius!


BTW: Do you any more shots of that amazing building on the bottom left of the first picture?
All of your scenery is great and I have admired it in various threads, but do not recall that one.
It looks wonderful. Is it scratchbuilt or can us mere mortals purchase one somewhere?

[aircav]

Brilliant Stuff 

[Skrapwelder]

Thanks everyone. Both for the comments here and all the great feedback I've gotten on the WIP posts.

Pappa Midnight: Consider yourself the fount from which a lot of this inspiration flows. Really, anytime I'm at a loss for ideas I tend to open up the Zombie thread or one of Malamute's Dracula threads.

Dr Mathias: The rules worked fine for the duos. With the various agendas each pair had everyone had plenty of options for things to do. There were some changes we made to speed up game flow with such a large crowd. We did away with the Combat Phase and simply fought combats as they happened in the Action Phase. We removed the Wound Effect roll for Zombies. If you were good enough to hit and then wound it, it was dead, again. We also played the zombies as individual models instead of using the Mob rules, which are perect for a small action but would have seriously slowed things down here.

Mason: I've got some earlier WIP shots here: http://rotanddrivel.com/hotelmandragora.html Its built from pieces I have cast for other buildings so in essence it is scratchbuilt but not so much so that it could not be repeated.

Right now any casting is on hold. While I am very happy with the way these came out I'm not content with the texture of the brick. It does not paint easily. If I'm to offer this stuff up for sale I need to come up with a better brick texture.

[axabrax]

The game was amazing! Thanks so much Skarp! I went out and bought the rules after playing...

[oldskoolrebel]

I've been pondering your idea of the three objectives; How did the scoring system work? Did the players gain points for completing these missions? Did they know how many points each mission was worth?

Cheers
Andy

[Skrapwelder]

Not all players had three objectives and the rewards were somewhat arbitrary and led to a certain amount of exploitation, especially by one of the Torchwood players.

Each player was given a unique little guidebook that had an introduction to the game, their characters stats, the various objectives laid out, cheat sheets, and a map of the area.

I used shillings as a reward level. The basic reward was one shilling for every three civilians safely escorted to a strongpoint and 1 shilling for every three zombies killed.

The secondary rewards were based on a players affiliation: Each of these was worth 2-3 shillings.
The Busmen got a bonus for putting civilians on a transport vehicle.
The Eglington tourneyers got a bonus for killing zombies in close combat.
Torchwood got a bonus for capturing a zombie intact. Which was the cause of some imbalance as the Torchwood player proceeded to camp the zombie spawn point, bonking them as they came out. I had written in a limit but it didn't make the final print for some reason.
One of the Vampire groups had to rescue Chinese Vampire dignitaries on holiday.
There were others. Each group had a specific, unique secondary reward.

The third level of rewards were put in to get the players fighting each other. About half of the groups were given 5 shilling bounty offerings for taking members of other groups out of the game.

There you go.