Pulpocalypse: The Enclave

The third warband I have ready for my Post Pulp game is based on the group of characters we've been playing in our Other Dust rpg sessions for more than a year. Our party is only 4 people, so the Pulp Alley squad I made is small but very capable.

A have a lot more scavenger / wastelander figures than I need for my 4-person warband... enough, in fact, to easily make another Pulp Alley league. I just haven't gotten to it yet.

Pulpocalypse: Signs and Walkways and Other Bits

One nice thing about doing the post apocalypse in 15mm is that I can use a ton of my Afghanistan terrain. I want to jazz up some of the fairly plain buildings, though, so I created some dusty, peeling signs and rusted walkways to add to the buildings to give them a bit more of a wasteland look.

I may do a few more signs, as well as rooftop gardens, air con units, solar panels, and whatever else I can come up with. I have a lot of these buildings, so I can populate a large-ish town - I just need to apocalypsize them a bit.

I have also gathered together some urban wasteland bits from Khurasan (dumpsters) and Gamecraft Miniatures (jersey barriers, shipping containers) that I can use to clutter up my table:

...as well as two wastelander survivalist camps (also Khurasan). These can be objectives, spawn points, regular old scatter terrain, or whatever I want to make them.

Pulpocalypse: Kombinat

I suppose these guys aren't necessarily post-apocalyptic, but I thought they looked cool and they will fit well enough. Besides, there's always room for elite cyborg warriors in the wasteland.

Were they created by a megalomaniacal genius bent on revenge? Are they remnants of a pre-war military project? The vanguard of an invading alien species?  Who knows?

In Pulp Alley terms they whole team has the 'flying' ability, which allows them to move 16" on the table, ignoring intervening terrain. That will be a huge advantage when trying to capture plot points, but they pay for it in having a small team with only two really strong team members.

Pulpocalypse: Power Pylons

I was able to secure a set of plastic high-voltage transmission towers on Amazon. They were easy to assemble, and they're big, especially next to my little 15mm wasters - I didn't think to throw in some miniatures for scale, but the bottom cross-piece probably comes up to mid-chest on one of the figures.

I used a heat-gun to soften the plastic enough to make them lean in a properly post-nuclear fashion.

The only downside to these is that in the real world, they would be so far apart that two of them would never appear on my game table. I'll just have to use the power of IMAGINATION to justify having a row of them towering over my buildings!

Pulpocalypse: The Sons Of Atom

I posted an in-progress photo of a couple of these guys earlier, but here's the whole batch. They are Khurasan 15mm figures, and I think they are great. Every one is different and has his or her own particular mutation.

And here is the Pulp Alley roster I made for the group. Baron Sunday is the short guy in the top hat; PepNChed is the two-headed guy in the back; Chompy is the guy with tusks in the back left; Springheel Jack is the one wearing red and yellow; Humpy is the guy in the front with the hump back (and the shirt with his name on it); Zits is the muscly guy with the gross tumors; and Slick William is the tentacle-armed guy in the center. There are a couple of muties left without a spot in the team, but they can be brought in as allies or reinforcements or whatever they're called in Pulp Alley.

Pulpocalypse: Roads

Taking inspiration* from Stu's post here about making ruined roads, I bought two vinyl flooring tiles and set to work on making my own set. I don't think they could have turned out any better!

*translation: blatantly stealing ideas

This is just a representative sample - I have 6' of roads in total.

They take a bit of work with scissors, an X-acto knife, and a fine-scale gouge, but the end result is great. I made a stamp with some foam glued to a piece of wood to do the lines, and that resulted in a really patchy look, which worked perfectly.

Pulpocalypse: Pharma Jon

I spent a lot of 2016 not really thinking about miniatures much, but in the last while I got inspired to start building the assets I need for a 15mm post-apocalypse game. I have a bunch of stuff made and painted, and I'll start posting pics over the next little bit.

First up is a drug / aid shop. I built this out of scraps of styrene card, on a frame built out of pieces of a high-voltage transmission tower. The lower half of the tower was laid on its side and I slapped a bunch of random bits of crap on it to form the walls, but the underlying structure isn't very visible. The upper half of the tower got turned into a little watch-tower of sorts next to it.

More soon!

Perilous Island: The Temple Of Futility

After an unplanned but predictable hiatus, Bryan and I returned to Perilous Island this weekend. We played at Bryan's house and took the game in a slightly different direction than previously: this time, we set up a huge dungeon using Bryan's Dwarven Forge sets and fought it out in there.

We chose the Jungle Trail scenario, which seemed appropriate to appropriate for this setting. The scenario has the leagues chasing "Native Youths" around the table, trying to catch them and question them. It looked like it was going to be easy for us to corner the youths in the dungeon, with the limited paths available, so we decided that the youths knew secret passages and tunnels that let them travel freely. More on this later...

The initial layout. The She-Wolves of the SS entered the table at south center, and The Shadow entered from the northeast. The Native Youths started in the northwest and southeast corners of the temple.

Black Sascha and the She-Wolves approach the entrance with optimism. Native youths? Easy!

A few of the She-Wolves head off to catch the Youth in the northwest. "Hey, I thought this temple was abandoned? What's with the raging fires?"

The Shadow heads for the Youth in the southeast, easily avoiding the perils of the fire. The Youth cowers, Blair-Witch-style, with his head in the corner.

Black Sascha and her lieutenant, meanwhile, head off The Shadow's two lieutenants and some of his mooks at a central doorway. It will soon prove to be a black day for the various junior members of the two leagues...

The Youth in the northwest has just popped through a hidden passage and landed quite close to Emma and Inge. They get ready to leap into action and subdue him!

The Shadow is less lucky, as his quarry actually climbs out of the temple altogether and starts running around on the lawn outside. Damn kids!

Things begin heating up in the center! Black Sascha and Gertie jump on Andre, while two German troopers exchange fire with Mr. Wu and The Shadow's less-glamorous hangers-on. The dead cultist with the dagger was a hostile bystander who suddenly appeared from the shadows and interfered with Mr. Wu just long enough for the She-Wolves to set up a blockade in the doorway.

In the northwest, what looked like a fairly ordinary perilous fire suddenly exploded, thanks to a card played by Bryan, applying the fire's peril to everyone within 3 inches, and rendering that area extremely perilous for the rest of the game. Despite some heroic, escapes and even more heroic returns into the inferno, none of the people you see here ended up surviving. Half of the She-Wolves team, felled with one card!

In the north, the Youth pops through another wall, leaving him just inches as the crow flies from the burning She-Wolves, but several long turns of running through the corridors, even if the She-Wolves still had their skins and eyes and a desire to run. Still, one German trooper gamely runs north, trying to head him off.

When a team catches a Youth, a new one spawns nearby. When one team has caught three Youths, they win the scenario. At this point, maybe six turns in, neither team has even come close to catching one of the Youths.

Mookageddon has come in the center - Andre lies wounded next to a dead German trooper, more mooks are bleeding out in the corridor, while Gertie faces off against a wounded Shadow. Mr. Wu takes off, making a play for one of the Youths, but BS runs him down and begins flogging him mercilessly with her whip.

The Shadow tries to beat up on Gertie, but...

...he is not particularly successful.

Gertie returns the favor, landing a solid blow! When The Shadow tries to shrug it off...

...he is not particularly successful.

Meanwhile, outside the temple to the north, Boy Tarzan (a temporary recruit to The Shadow's team) tries to reason with the Native Youth. This is the first and only time one of the characters manages to make contact! This could be the game winning play!

Unfortunately, he is not particularly successful.

The game ended with everyone on The Shadow's team dead or dying, and just Black Sascha, Gertie, and an irrelevant German trooper left standing on the She-Wolves' side. The leagues managed to capture zero Plot Points between them, and retreated shame-faced from the Temple of Futility.

Perilous Island: Blood Sacrifice!

With their feet finally on dry land, the Okkulten Forschungabteilung and The Shadow moved inland, both groups intent on discovering the secret of Perilous Island for themselves. After only a few days of exploring, cries from the jungle brought Black Sascha and The Shadow to a clearing, where a shipwrecked sailor was about to be sacrificed to the dark gods of the islanders! Both teams sprang into action, hoping to snatch the sailor for their own purposes.

Irma, with an okkultentrooper and a friendly native guide, stake out the left flank.

Black Sascha, with two more troopers, gets ready to go ask the witch doctor in the center some questions. Gertie and two of the she-wolves get ready to run up the right flank towards some Perilium they spotted there.

In the middle of the clearing stands the strange altar, with the shipwrecked sailor surrounded by fire!

The Shadow and his men get ready to rush the altar.

One of The Shadow's mooks tries to climb up the roots of a giant jungle tree and get to the crate stowed there, but falls to his death in the attempt.

Irma and her boys rush for the altar, but The Shadow is too quick - he leaps over the flames and grabs the sailor.

Meanwhile, Black Sascha and Emma have words with the witch doctor.

The Okkultentroopers exchange fire with The Shadow and his men, while Gertie and Inge dig Perilium rocks out of the ground.

Irma and the native guide move up to where they can annoy Andre as he wrestles with the mysterious remains, while their trooper runs up to the edge of the fire to shoot at The Shadow.

With the sailor and the mysterious remains in hand, The Shadow's team regroups at the giant tree.

Sascha, Gertie, and the rest of the F.A. move in cautiously, but nothing they do seems to faze The Shadow or his men.

A giant scrum develops around Andre, but he shrugs off every attempt by the three She-Wolves attacking him.

At the end of the day, The Shadow remains in possession of the main prize, turning his back in contempt on everyone who tries to shoot him off his perch!

Another fun session of Pulp Alley. Bryan had terrible dice luck in the first half, but the tables turned in the latter half and I wasn't able to do any damage to his people. I had a card in reserve that would have allowed me to snatch the Mysterious Remains from Andre if I could have just knocked him down, but it wasn't happening. Bryan played well and nabbed the Major Plot Point right away, so fair play to him: dice aside, he had the better strategy!

We didn't end the game with any new pages of the Professor's journal, so we are no closer to moving on to the next stage, but maybe that's best - the scenarios in this section are harder than previous, so more experience wouldn't be amiss!