The Doomed

I got home from a fun few days of playing Warcry last weekend, and found a copy of The Doomed waiting for me.

L to R: Probator “Von Sydow”, ogryn reality TRI-D dinosaur hunting phenomenon “Chompers“, Ordo Xenos Inquisitor “Verhoeven“, gun-slinging bounty hunter “Rosa “Digger” Stone” and “Glo-stik“, warrior of the “Boss Drum” tribe.

The Doomed is a miniatures agnostic, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, tabletop miniatures game with maximum, massive monsters and minimal, miserly measuring.

On the left are three “Nexus” models: tins of long-pig, an alien egg and potable water that the Horror in the centre – a “Devourer”, a manifestation of gluttony known as “Marjory” by its Scavenger “Minions” (on the right) – plans to consume.

The game belongs in the “groups of non-conformist, monster-hunter types take umbrage with other bohemians/dropouts/misfits with whom they share low value, monster-haunted real-estate” sub-genre of heavily-hyphenated miniature games. Things like Necromunda, Mordheim and Stargrave share a lot with The Doomed, but there are significant differences.

The design diary for The Doomed on the Osprey website explains all of the design philosophy, if that sort of thing interests you.

I used a 30″ by 22″ Kill Team mat and various ruined industrial terrain elements to represent the “Breakthrough Conflict” (scenario). Note the Nexuses and Horror in position.

There is a heavy push towards kitbashing miniatures in The Doomed book, although it isnt a rule or anything like that. This is absolutley fine, and potentially loads of fun. I may even kitbash a set of figures specifically for this game at some future point (like I did for Forbidden Psalm/Mörk Borg), but for my test game I decided to draft miniatures that I already had painted.

The ruins of Tetanus IV…

They were all prepped with precisely this sort of gaming in mind anyway.

Glo-Stik bangs rusted drums to draw the Marjory out: his tribal trousers will never be green again…

Similarly, many (all?) of the the various types of sci-fi gaming terrain that I have prepped over the years suit the dilapidated aesthetic being pushed in the book.

Rosa sets up a crossfire while Chompers enthusiastically plays the role of bait…

That said, if you wanted to play The Doomed in a more comic book, primary colour driven, raygun-gothic sort of Futurama-esque setting or a Star Trek utopia suddenly awash with monsters, then you could do that too without making any rules changes. The game is designed with broad strokes and archetypes, rather than specific ranges in mind.

…which works faster than anyone expected…

After that test game I’m looking forward to playing through a few fast and fun monster bashing games in the near future.

Credits
The game mat comes from gamemat.eu.
The ruins come from Citadel and Mantic.
Chompers, Verhoeven and Glo-stik are all old Citadel Miniatures.
The Scavengers are from Ramshackle Games.
Devourer/Marjory is an old Leviathan miniature, available from Scotia Grendel I think.
The Nexus items came from a Valquiria Studios.
The Doomed is published by Osprey.

Saga: Age of Magic – Long Live the New Flesh

Last weekend I got together with The BazPaz in his newly prepped indoor/outdoor gaming space for some socially distanced gaming. Having talked about it for a couple of years, we decided to give some of our recently painted figures a run out in Saga: Age of Magic, our first ever look at Saga of any variety.

My force was made out of some of the various ghoul figures that I have been painting recently, fielded as an “Undead Legion” Saga force. The Bazpaz used the lovely faery force that he has been working on for over a year now, on and off, made up primarily of Citadel Sylvaneth, with some Wargames Atlantic Fauns, as a “Lords of the Wild” warband.

Neither force had ever hit a gaming table before, and no game of any variety had ever been played in that precise location before, so it was a session of firsts.

The poorly photographed Grymwatch advance up the East flank

Saga has a significant amount in common with Warcry, another game that I really enjoy. Without going into too much detail, each game has a resource management element based on assigning a number of dice at the start of each turn. Mechanics like that can sound dull, but when they are used to make your feverish, naked cannibal half-dead post-humans pay no heed to casualties and chow down on their opponents at a critical juncture, they are a lot of laughs.

The Bazpaz drafted a number of the “spite” models included in the Sylvaneth range to make up a “Swarm”, exclusive to his “Lords of the Wild” faction.

Saga does a very good job of providing a solid, common base of rules that can be picked up fast, so that the players can focus on actually playing the game. I love this approach to game design. I am very excited to play more Saga soon, and I am tuning my hobby time towards it.

All in all an excellent gaming visit, after a significant social drought. I’m already prepping more Undead Legions for next time.

Stargrave: Dead or Alive – Under a Blood Red Sky

The science-fiction variant of Frostgrave was officially released yesterday, so I played a game.

Venators Laxx and M’Kavin. Mood: sky blue.
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Test of Honour – Tested

PB and I got together for a weekend of testing each others honour with 28mm feudal Japanese miniatures.

Ancestry was besmirched, heads were divorced from bodies and many, many vocal impersonations of the sound of arterial spray filled the gaming dojo.

Samples of appropriate arterial spray sounds impersonated can be found in the clip of research material above.

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The Men/Orks/Squats Who Would Be Kings/Nobz/Hearthguard

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Colonial wargaming in the grim darkness of the far future.

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Knavecon 2017: Dragon Rampant


A handful of my gaming buddies and I got together at Knavecon recently.  Amongst other things, our Dragons Rampaged. Continue reading

Dinosaur Egg Recipe

An extra-real, 100% organic, roughage filled treat for use as miniature terrain.

Although there appears to be a banana skin to the bottom right of the shot, no bananas are used in this recipe, primarily because bananas are disgusting.

Nutritional Information
Kcal: 428,000
Fat: big-boned
Saturates: moderate to good, with a warm front moving in from the East.
Carb: enet Sauvignon
Sugars: honey, honey
Fibre: Bristol rating 4
Protein: Antitein
Salt: 0.4 pints

Ingredients
Cadburys Mini Eggs
Shredded Wheat
Chocolate
The enthusiasm of gaming colleagues partner

Method
Obtain Mini Eggs
Tell gaming colleagues that you have located suitable eggs for Dinoproof game
Apply peer pressure to force them to make “nests”
Eat Mini Eggs
Dont tell anyone
Buy replacement Mini Eggs
Say nothing
Apply passive aggressive peer pressure to gaming colleague regarding lack of dinosaur nests for game via Facebook and #johnstillhasntgotnestsreadyforthegame
Be humbled as gaming colleagues partner sees this as challenge and prepares twenty delicious chocolate nests including eggs

For best results serve the nests with lightly steamed, jurassic geeks.

 

More details on this momentous, prehistoric get together at a later date.

Dinoproof Debut

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In which the rules of the Dinoproof tabletop miniature game are tested and lessons are learned. Continue reading

Void Pirates: The Courier

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L to R: Char’Lee Krown the Foak, Cooper the anthropomorphic arboreal versus Diplomatic Envoy Flarz and Cultural Liaison Unit 615

My buddy PB visited recently and we decided to get our pulp sci-fi on.

We each rapidly chose two of the seven premade bounty hunters from the “Void Pirates” book and selected a scenario from the companion “Blasters and Bulkheads” book, leapt into our futuristic silver jumpsuits and got stuck in.
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Pulp 40k Alley: Firebase Fracas

The partially ruined outpost "FB96"

The partially ruined outpost “FB96”

Human/alien hybrids with 1980s synth pop affectations, motile and monosyllabic trees, fascist space-halflings, moustachioed mankini garbed ork geniuses and rapid fire ion blaster wielding anthropomorphic raccoons and a load of robots are only some of the things that collided at Firebase RB96 last Saturday.

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