Saturday, November 8, 2025

Fistful of Lead: Gangsters

In early September, Bruce put on a game of Fistful of Lead with his 28mm gangsters. His table was amazing.


The coppers had learned Mr. Big was going to move out a large shipment of illicit hooch and were determined to send him a message. Mr. Big learned of the raid and decided to use it as a chance to send the coppers a message of his own.


The coppers set up on the far side of the table while the gangsters set up anywhere to about the halfway mark (roughly the bridge in the shot above).


There was an early rush up the table and two cops went down. That pushed play (other than sniping) out to the wings. The right-hand wing saw some indeterminant gunplay and the cops beat a retreat.


The majority of the cops rushed the left wing, eventually pushing back the gangsters and searching one of the six potential spots where the booze was hidden.


The gangsters started to shift their remaining troops to stop this push. Granny with the shotty was first on the scene, wounding and suppressing cops and even KOing one in a fist fight.


In the end, the coppers, who had a very difficult tactical situation, just didn't have the weight to finish the job. Bruce thought maybe increasing the number or possibly the quality of the cops might have evened things up, which makes sense. Another option could be to have most of the gangster start on the boat so they would have to move into position, rather than just snipe under cover.


A different tactical approach might have been to have the cops set up (which was done in secret) to rush the left side of the board, which would have caught the gangster short on manpower, overwhelm them and hope for some lucky searching. Hard to say if that would have been effective.

Overall, the game was a ton of fun with a good narrative developing from the card play and tough decisions to make on the table.

Saturday, November 1, 2025

Halloween thrills!

This week, Bruce and I played a movie-monster themed game in honour of Hallowe'en. Bruce has been adapting the gladiator module for Fistful of Lead to swashbucklers and now horror and this was our horror playtest.

Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, and two wraiths start in the cemetery (left side) and Frankie has an appointment to throw a girl down the well just off the right side of the board. Doc. Frankenstein and various hangers on must prevent him from getting past them. Below is the shot from the "good" guy's starting position.

I pushed the good guys forward, trying to take up a blocking position without anyone getting too far away so they would be isolated. The bad guys moved under blinds until they were were within 12 inches (it's night time, of course). Below, you can see Dracula has just materialized on the far left side of the board, likely scaring the hell out of the guy armed with a rake (?!?).


Dracula and the peasant tangle. The combat system has a very sword-play vibe to it with moves and counter moves built into the simple mechanics.

Meanwhile, mid-board, Frau Blucher encounters a wraith and Frankenstein's location has been revealed. Play starts to gravitate towards Frankie.

It takes all three of the best good guys to put a pasting in this wraith while Frankie tries to slip around the left flank.

Dracula is a tough customer but is starting to take some damage in the three-on-one I had going. He disapparats and then reappears a couple of times but the beating is starting to tell.


Things then take a turn for the good guys as Frankie "Hulk smash's" three characters into pulp (ack!). But Dracula flees to fight another day and, in the end, Igor valiantly avenges Dr. Frankenstein's squishing.

A super fun game on beautiful terrain with almost nothing to look up.

Saturday, October 25, 2025

Star Wars Risk fighters part 1

In the autumn, I bought a Star Wars themed game of Risk because it looked to contain a bunch of fighters as game tokens. I figured the game would suck (it is Risk, after all) but the tokens would be worthwhile.


To my surprise, the game (which focuses on the Battle of Endor) actually looks good, using cards to drive action on three separate tracks (shield generator, space battle, and throne-room duel). I'm keen to play but first I need to paint the figures!


There are three types of rebel ships (B, Y and X wings) that are molded in hard plastic. A bit of spray prime, some detailing, and a wash and voila, a pretty decent fleet. These are pretty small (like 3-4mm scale) but perfect for all sorts of gaming. If I was going to use them for different rules, I would probably base the X-wings.


I still have a bunch of Tie fighters to paint (they are primed but are fiddly as they have no bases to hold onto) and I'd also like to replace a few of the paper tokens with proper models.

Saturday, October 18, 2025

Congo Dinosaur Hunt!

In late summer, Bruce ran a game of Congo, which is always a hoot and offers very difficult decisions around what actions to select each turn. This game was a Lost World dinosaur hunt with room for up to four players: big game hunters, a film crew, a scientific expedition, and some new pulp spacefarers, each competing with all for the highest point totals. We had only two players so I took the big game hunters and Bruce took the spacefarers.


The big game hunters two groups of dinosaurs and engaged them. There were points for killing the dinos and further points for collecting scientific data about them. Getting two groups of dinosaurs right away was a big advantage.


The spacefarers also found dinos but they ran away. The spacefarers then worked their way towards the river, hoping to find some more dinos.


The Bob Murch figures Bruce painted were delightfully quirky.


The big game hunters ended up chasing one of their beasts to the edge of the river and a certain amount of shenanigans ensued as the two groups shot and at chased one another to try to secure the most points.


More dinos also appeared.


In the end, the big game hunters managed to win by a lot of points, but only by the narrowest margins on the board (one more turn and the spacefarers likely would have swung the game).

Overall, this was a hoot to play (because DINOSAURS!!!!). Bruce's table was amazing to see and the rule set offers endless pulpy fun. "You find an ancient bottle containing a dark, viscous liquid. do you drink it?"

Saturday, October 11, 2025

2mm towns

I've been prepping a Rommel game and looking at what I have for 2mm terrain. I decided I would pick up a few more pieces to mark urban areas from Irregular Miniatures to match a couple of pieces I already have.


Right out of the bag, they don't look like much. But a quick painting and they quickly take on the look of a European village.


I also got a few city pieces, which can be connected together to make a larger piece.



Since these are mostly viewed from above, the lack of detail on the buildings isn't apparent.


The fellow I bought them from also threw in a few small pieces (like finger nail small).


Overall, these were a quick paint and a fun project. My next terrain task is to do some 2mm forest sections.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

15mm Battle Droids

Back in the summer, I bought some 15mm sci-fi armies off of Scott. Two of the three were fully painted and the third was half done. I was tooling around flea-bay and noticed some Star Wars battle droids that would fit in with the half-painted, mech-heavy army.


I had purchased some of these figures before, hoping they would fit in with my 25mm WEG Star Wars figures, but they were too small so I donated them to Bruce's collection.


But now that I have some 15mm of my own, I ordered a second batch of 38 (for 13ドル bucks?). These seem to be the "disease blocks" from a Star Wars reskinning of Pandemic, about the same size as the cultists from the Cthulhu reskin I have.


They fit in reasonably well with the 15mm infantry Scott painted. They are a bit taller because of the integral base, but whatever. Maybe the droids are taller? I tried to match the basic dun colour pallet he used but without the fancy brushwork he did.

Overall, they create a nice little force of expendables to supplement the infantry I have. Now I just need to get on with painting up the two types of mechs to finish the army.

Saturday, September 27, 2025

2mm prepared positions for Rommel

Bruce and I have been playing a fair bit of Rommel this summer and, in prepping to get my 2mm tanks on the table, I needed to create some markers for prepared positions. I could have used counters but it has been forever since I have modelled anything.


We play Rommel on a hex grid and my hexes at 4" across so the prepared position indicator needed to fit along with up to three bases and some terrain. I decided on a 2.0" by 0.5" base and that I'd just model some barbed wire coils.


The base was grid plasticard that I had (which is easy to cut into square sections). I use plastic toothpicks to make the posts. Overall, this is a bit out of scale (more 6mm) but it creates the impression I wanted at a size I could still see and work with. Then I textured the base and tried to match the colour scheme from several years ago (a struggle since I never write this stuff down). The colour palette is a vague khaki colour that can do for the desert (if you squint), Italy, or Europe.


The upshot is not bad. The posts are too thick and the coil is a bit big but good enough for my purposes.



I ended up making 12, which is likely way more than I will ever need, but since I was doing it, knocking off a few extra was no big deal.

My next task is to look at doing some markers to denote a forest that I can set atop a green piece of felt.

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