The Road To Perilous Island: Casablanca to Athens

This weekend Bryan and I were able to continue our Pulp Alley race to find clues pointing to the secret of Perilous Island!

We had planned on playing the Last Flight Out Of Casablanca scenario, but when that one wrapped early, we forged ahead and set up a different table to do the Warehouse Throw-down scenario (not the actual names of the scenarios, but I don't have the book in front of me).

Casablanca Airport

Following on from our fight to get some answers from the famed archaeologist's daughter at a dig site in Mexico, we found ourselves at cross-purposes once again, this time at the airstrip in Casablanca. The Shadow and his sidekicks, Andre and Mr. Wu, were trying to secure the last tickets out of Casablanca and see the archaeologist's daughter safely on the plane. Black Sascha and the She-Wolves of the SS, meanwhile, were trying to find a mechanic who could sabotage the plane before it left.

The scenario was further complicated by crowds of people and the presence of French gendarmes. The police would crack down on anyone using violence, so the scenario was designed to discourage direct fighting.

An overview of the airstrip: Black Sascha deployed on the lower left corner, and The Shadow on the upper right. BS's first objective was among the barrels near her corner, and The Shadow's first objective is the ticket booth near his. The Daughter and the Mechanic only appear after the first Plot Point is found by their respective teams.

The Shadow reaches the ticket booth swiftly and begins barging his way to the front, while...

...in the opposite corner, Black Sascha races past the objective, leaving it to her sidekick, Gertie.

Andre and The Shadow's mooks sneak around behind some tents and quonset huts.

With the first objective of each team quickly achieved, The Daughter (red dress, center left) and The Mechanic (brown shirt, giant wrench, center bottom) appear in the crowd.

The covert battle is about to turn hot! On the left, Mr. Wu has approached The Daughter, only to be interrupted in his fierce whisperings by Black Sascha, who thunders down out of the sky on her experimental jetpack! The Shadow positions himself to interfere with everybody.

Emma of the SS begins talking to The Mechanic. Gertie approaches the (very recently assembled and yet--unpainted) biplane. On the other side of the airstrip, the first shots are fired as some German troopers and She-Wolves open fire on Andre and the mooks.

The photographer must have caught a stray bullet in the firefight, because the pictorial record apparently ends there. Witnesses on the scene report that Black Sascha spent precious minutes flogging the snot out of Mr. Wu, but it seems she mistakenly packed her late-night tingle-time whip instead of her fighting whip, because Mr. Wu just laughed off every attack and peril played on him.

Andre and The Shadow's mooks fought a bloody, but mostly irrelevant, fight against  on the other side of the airstrip.

Emma got beaten up by The Shadow while trying to speak to the Mechanic. Gertie ran in and took her place, managing to "convince" the Mechanic to come along with her. While this was going on Mr. Wu ran past them and tried to get The Daughter onto the plane, but he was betrayed by an oil spill on the tarmac and fell to his ruin. This allowed Gertie to return to the plane, with the first two objectives in tow, and get the Mechanic to wiggle the fuel line loose, bringing the scenario to an end.


Casablanca was a fun scenario and felt quite different from the usual miniatures game, with the rules discouraging the two sides from fighting each other at all. My big coup in the game, flying BS over to try and steal The Daughter from Mr. Wu, was a bit of a damp squib, as nothing I did had any effect on him. My luck turned around in the last turn, though, as Gertie managed to salvage all three plot points and end the game. In every game I've had so far, Gertie has had a much greater effect on the game than my leader. Maybe a bit of a shake-up is in order?

Athens Warehouse

Following the events at the Casablanca Airport, the two teams found themselves embroiled once again, this time late at night in a vast customs warehouse in Athens. Because Casablanca ended so quickly, we had time to play this one immediately after. I don't have a 3x3 warehouse model, but we were able to put together something representative with some wooden blocks I won at Science World last halloween.

This time the plot points were two night guardsmen, a customs official, and a box of records. Once a character had one of these plot points in their possession, they could approach the center of the table and try to find the major plot point hidden somewhere near there.

The layout before deploying any characters or setting out the plot points. There are entrances to the warehouse in the center of each of the four walls. We treated anybody touching any of the obstacles as being in perilous terrain from falling boxes, and anyone on top of any of the obstacles as being in extremely perilous terrain.

One of the guardsmen patrolling the warehouse, oblivious to the beefy female nazi danger his will shortly be facing.

Nearby, the clueless and nearly-blind customs official walks across the teetering piles of packages, focused wholly on his paperwork (or maybe he's texting his girlfriend?).

Mr. Wu and Black Sascha quickly come to blows over the package of customs paperwork nearest their respective corners. One of The Shadow's mooks tries to get involved, to his cost.

Gertie and The Daughter (who, inexplicably, has decided to join the She-Wolves for the time being [because I won the last scenario]) approach the guardsman and begin beating some answers out of him.

Emma, one of the she-wolves, climbs the stack of crates and tries to talk to the Customs Official. He apparently doesn't see her and bumps her elbow, causing her to lose balance and fall down. Spoiler alert: she never gets back up! Meanwhile, below, Andre approaches a pair of German soldiers, who manage to take out the giant Frenchman, but both perish in the doing.

Due to a series of terrible rolls, The Shadow spends almost the whole scenario talking to the other night guardsman. By the end of the game, he had only just made it back to the center of the table where the action was. We also figured he must have missed a turn at some point in there.

The scenario came to a close at the mandated end of the sixth turn, but by that time it was (due to a misreading of the rules) impossible for either of us to take control of the final objective. We had thought that doing a plot point challenge was a full action, and therefore you couldn't move up to a plot point and do the challenge on the same turn. When we figured out that this was erroneous, we decided to play a seventh turn with the correct rules, and in that time Gertie (yes, Gertie again!) seized the opportunity and nabbed the major plot point. After Gertie succeeded at the challenge, I think Bryan realized that he could have sent The Shadow in there to do the same thing, but his brain was still operating according to our wrong-headed version of the rules.



Again, another fun scenario with lots of action and drama. One thing we both really like about the campaign system is that the rewards and penalties to winning and losing scenarios are minor and temporary, only giving a very small advantage in the next scenario. This is in contrast to other systems like Mordheim, where one really big win or really bad loss can wreck the balance between the two warbands for the rest of the campaign.


The next stop on our itinerary is the mean streets of Soerabaja, Indonesia, which may just happen to visually resemble a half-ruined Normandy village. I have other friends who are interested in trying the game, too, so there may be further complications on our road to Perilous Island in the future!

Throwback Thursday: Some Weird Guy

I painted this figure yeeears ago - back when I lived up north, before moving to Vancouver for animation school. It's another one I got just because it's cool, not because I needed it for anything specific.

I think this fig is some sort of important character in a world-wide Warhammer Fantasy campaign that GW ran back in the 90s. There was a tie-in with Warmaster, which I was heavily into at the time (reminder to self: photograph Warmaster minis for a future Thursday...), but I didn't get involved. Anyway, I think it's a cool figure. Maybe one day I'll have reason to use it.

Pulp Alley: Perilous Island Inaugural Session

I got a copy of the Pulp Alley rules a few weeks ago and right away I thought they looked like a lot of fun. The emphasis on the characters and telling a gonzo story, embodied in the Plot Point and Peril rules, seemed like just my sort of game. A couple of friends and I had a game and that was enough to confirm my impressions of the rules, so I ordered the Gadgets and Vehicles book, as well as the Perilous Island campaign. The new books arrived on Thursday, and on Saturday I played the inaugural scenario with Bryan, my pulp-enthusiastic friend.

The scenario pitted The Shadow and his team (giant Frenchman named Andre, a mysterious Chinese man named Mr. Wu, and two henchmen) against Black Sascha, the leader of the SS Occult Research Division, and her team (Gertie, the woman-mountain hybrid, three female SS followers, and three German troopers). A famous archaeologist had gone missing and we were competing to make contact with his daughter at a dig in Mexico in the hopes of getting a lead on where to look for him.

Our mission was complicated by the lady's Mexican bodyguard (Extreme Peril for anyone within 8" of the center of the board), the lady's maid (an Extreme Peril unto herself) and various other dodgy areas of the board (the burial mounds, the tracks, the rock outcroppings, etc.)

Original setup, before deployment. Burial mounds, with an ancient artifact in a crate, are on the left, the lady and her bodyguards in the center. The lady's maid is just visible behind the palm tree down and left of center. There is a package next to the more distant tent, and the last plot point is somewhere in the car next to the closer tent.

A better view of the lady, her bodyguards, and her maid.

The Shadow's two henchmen and two of the she-wolves are positioned for an early race to one of the plot points.

Meanwhile, Black Sascha and her sidekick, along with a friendly local who joined just before they arrived at the dig site, jump out of a truck. The Shadow is caught trying to sneak around the tent and he exchanges dirty looks with Gertie.

On the other side, Andre gets ready to race to the artifact against one of the she-wolves and a German trooper.

The friendly local recruited by the SS Occult Research Division decides that fortune favours the bold and rushes The Shadow by himself...

...and swiftly learns why level-1 henchmen recruits shouldn't try to take down the boss of the opposing force. Still, he wounded The Shadow and reduced his combat effectiveness for the rest of the turn.

On the other side of the tent, one of the she-wolves manages to take out one of the Shadow's henchmen, but The Shadow himself pops around the corner long enough to shoot her, then flees back to where he came from. The remaining henchman begins a multi-turn struggle to open the cases.

In the center of the camp, Black Sascha and Gertie "convince" the lady and her maid to join them over by the rocks for a little while. Mr. Wu and Andre work on the artifact by the burial mounds together, while the last remaining she-wolf begins rifling through the car.  Things are looking good for the SS...

...until the last couple of turn. From about the time they took possession of the lady and her maid, Black Sascha and the rest of her team couldn't roll a success to (literally) save their lives. They swiftly lose both plot points they were holding and can't recapture them.

The game ends in a bloody catastrophe for the She-Wolves. By the end of the final turn, I was in possession of no plot points, and didn't have a single character standing. Still, The Shadow only got away with one or two minor plot points, so it wasn't a complete shut-out.

The game was a ton of fun, even with the disappointing ending for my team. Next stop: an airport showdown in Casablanca (? I think?)!!

Throwback Thursday: Low Life

On Sunday my rpg group and I finished off our Low Life campaign, which has been running for about a year. In that time we had a load of silly, flatulent adventures and the group got to meet a broad cast of ridiculous characters.

I had hoped that the Low Life miniatures line, which I bought into on Kickstarter, would be in my hands by the time we started the game. As it turns out, a year later and with the game now finished, I have only received a small portion of miniatures I paid for. I don't think I'm being slowly ripped off, and I'm confident I will get my figures eventually, but it's too late to use them in my game now.

Anyway, here are some of the miniatures I received that fit a slot in the game, and which I* painted up:

From left to right: a Horc, a Werm, and a Cremefillian (*painted by Grace)

Grace played a Cremefillian descended from ancient Snowball stock, and so there wasn't an appropriate miniature for her. Instead, she needle felted one for her Cremefillian and her pet Contanimatronic Minion:

Ma Petite Bonbon and Minion

I'm sorry to see Low Life come to an end, because we had a blast playing it, but I think everybody was pretty much ready to move on to something new. Here's to the memory of MPB, Shae, Rectus, Ribcracka, Xozz, Shitsticks, and Rhinoceloptapus!

Throwback Thursday: The Ol' West

My original intention in starting this blog (or, as I call it, my phlog) was to document the miniatures that I have painted, mainly so I have a record of what's hiding in all those plastic shelf sets in my closet. I haven't felt constrained by that intention at any point - I'm perfectly happy posting battle reports or capsule reviews or whatever, and I have done so.

In keeping with my original motivation, though, I decided to start posting photos of some of the figures that I have painted either before I started this phlog, or that never made it on here for one reason or another - one offs, role-playing figures, and other odds and ends. So I'll aim for one post a week, showcasing some figures I have in reserve.

This week, have two sets of Black Scorpion (I think?) Old West figures. One set is a group of western ladies, and the other set is a bunch of rough, and possibly drunk, cowboy types. I got these figures just to paint them, with no game in mind, and they were a ton of fun.

LAV III In Afghanistan - Finished

After having endured the dirty looks of my LAV model for the last 6 months, I finally got back to the diorama this week and finished it off. There was actually very little to do, at least when viewed against the project as a whole, but I had other things on my mind (as you can see on this phlog).

Here it is, all together at last!

Hadwin Returns

Last night I reprised the Saga scenario I reported on here. This was the last Trumpeter meeting before the convention at the end of March, and I wanted to have one more go at it before I host the game there.

As is normal in Saga, it was a bloodbath. The result was very close - the Picts resigned close to the end of the allotted time, but I think the VPs would have been close to even, despite the casualties.

Vikings mass on one side of the river, Picts on the other.

The first band of Viking Warriors race across the ford and attack the
 Picts in and around the near building, but are rebuffed 
without casualties on either side.

Reinforcements from the neighbouring farm race across the farmstead to engage the Vikings on their left.

More Vikings fight across the river, but the Picts hold fast and prevent them from gaining a foothold on the near bank.

The Viking Warlord enters the ford, while his Berserkers
slog across through the deeper water.

A band of Viking Hearthguard achieve the far side of the bank, but the Pict Warlord and his Hearthguard race forward
on ponies to intercept.

On the other flank, the Vikings have smashed the defending Pict Levy and gained the bank.

The Pict reinforcements race to stop the Vikings.

The Vikings have destroyed a unit of Pict Warriors and surge across the ford, but the Pict Warlord and his Hearthguard
still stand between them and the main building.

The Viking and Pict Warlords face each other at the bank.

The Pict Warlord and his reduced Hearthguard still hold fast on the other side.

The Viking Warlord and his berserkers manage to kill the Pict Warlord.

In the final act of the Saga, the Pict Warlord and the Viking Warlord exchange blows over several activations,
but the Viking eventually manages to slay the Pict and the Picts surrender.