Pulp Alley

Last Sunday night, I went to Luis's for a game of Pulp Alley. This was my second game, but the first was a virtual game with P-Y so I was looking forward to pushing about the figures myself. It was also the first game that I had a chance to get some of the multiple figures on the table which have never seen action.

I am not sure of the actual scenario we played but as you can see the game was set in the sands of Egypt. Luis's terrain is really quite amazing and the gaming aids he has were really well done. I am not 100% sure what league Luis was using, but there were a lot of women and one automaton, his leader was from a French Graphic novel. He also introduced horror into the game which was a lot of fun.

I put together a Baker Street League but also added Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for a bit of fun as I wanted to see how a shapeshifter worked. 

Holmes

Dr Watson

Inspector Lestrade

Hell Division

Dr Jekyll

Mr Hyde

I am sure a lot of you will recognise these figures from the Empire of the Dead collection from Westwind. They are great figures and I have quite a few more which I can use for Pulp Alley. I have a lot of the Villains from the Victorian Age, as well as a nice collection of Tong leaders and gang members. Here is my league sheet.

I took Long Range as my perk, so it is a 10 point league.

So we set up the game and off we went.

The table with 5 plot points, the major plot point was in the middle . The left side is west. You had to capture one plot point before you could go for the major plot point. I started in the lower right corner while Luis started in the upper left corner. On each turn a creature spawned on one of mid points on one of the edges. These all had  a horror characteristic.

Turn 1/2. I was the director.  Image from the south. I moved Dr Jekyll to the middle and shapeshifter into Mr Hyde, there was a creature guarding the major plot point, so I thought this would be a good distraction. I moved the Hell Division Gang to the centre, while I got Holmes who was hidden to get into position for the centre while I got Watson to take the first plot point. He failed! Not a good start. It was especially made bad as I had used Lestrade initially to try to take this plot point, I learned this was a big mistake as he was an ally and really had no ability to pass challenges....he died!

Looking from the west, same turn.

Looking from the east. You can see that Luis has moved two of his characters into the centre of the table where the major plot point is. He has also moved the automaton towards the right upper plot point. Mr Hyde has engaged the creature, in the centre. Watson is still wasting his time with the plot point in lower right of the table, but now has to think about it as a creature has spawned. Luis has 2 of his charters including is leader at the top of the photo, out of sight. I moved Hell Division up my left to the west.

Not much happening here, but Luis has moved another of his characters towards the plot point with the automaton standing guard.

Turns 4/5; lots of action here. One of Luis's characters was able to take the major plot point after his other character took the minor plot point. Mr Hyde however was able to kill the creature with the help of Watson and then were able to move onto the middle of the table, Hell Division was able to move up in support. Luis's character was wounded by Hyde and dropped the Plot point. Hyde picked it up.

Turn 6; a Baker Street Victory

I really had a great time with this game and it was nice to win. I might need too make some adjustments to my Character's Abilities, but I thought they over all worked well. I will definitely use them again. I should also say that Luis made some excellent tacos, I will look forward to my next game of Pulp Alley.

Attack of the Old Guard Redux

 

I had my third game of GdA in a couple of weeks yesterday, this was with another new player (I am pretty new myself), so I again left out skirmishers. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the rules now and when I reviewed our game this morning, I only found one error (dispersed units cause the parent brigade to falter) and I have had to ask one point of clarification online.

I met David through the Stratégistes FB page, he had commented on one of my previous posts that he had an interest in playing some Napoleonics so we set up a game yesterday. We had initially planned to play at the Abyss but there was an enormous Age of Sigmar tournament planned for yesterday which we found out about 2-3 hours before our planned game......quick change of plans had David coming to my place. It actually worked out because I had the table set up before he arrived (Napoleonics is pretty complex and I find to set the table as well as to organise the troops takes over an hour), so we had more time to get introduced and play the game. David is mostly a skirmish player but had played grand tactical Napoleonics using the L'aigle ruleset as a boy with his grandfather.

I had used the Attack of Old Guard scenario from the 1815 source book as I had with P-Y. The only thing I changed aside from the skirmishers was to make all units line and to remove the casualties. This again worked well and the game went quite quickly, David grasped both the tactics of the Napoelonic Age as well as the ruleset quite naturally. So well, that he actually gained a marginal victory in the game. My third loss in 2 weeks to novices!

I took the Allies and David took the French, we got in 8 turns and had lots of action. I will not bother to post the OB, but I can highly recommend you purchasing the source book from TFL to get all the details. Some photos to follow to document some of the action.

The Set-Up

The battlefield, with the Allies to the left, with most of the troops out of LOS on the reverse slope.

The Emperor's daughters

The Brunswickers

The French  centre

French cavalry brigade on their left flank

Halkett's Brigade with attached RFA

The Nassau brigade 

The Game

A wholesale French advance.

Crumbling French brigade.

The Brunswickers smash into the Old Guard.

These 2 cavalry regiments wrecked havoc on the Allied right flank.

Successful Infantry Assault

Ending positions, I believe the French had 2 brigades on Infantry Assault and 1 brigade on Forwards Tasking, while the Allies had 1 brigade on Infantry Assault. we had been at it for 4 hours, we got in 8 turns which is quite good for a teaching game. The allies had lost 3 battalions, while the French had lost 2 battalions. A marginal victory for the French!

Another enjoyable game of GdA, I will look forward to the next with the skirmishers.

Combat at Osma-Vitoria

  

Battle of Osma

Tuesday evening myself and P-Y got together for our first in person game of GdA at my place. We had played a game the week before virtually so I thought another go would be good to solidify the rules. I decided to play the first scenario from the 1813 source book for GdA, Vitoria. 

I had most of the appropriate troops so very few substitutions were necessary. We played all the rules in the book aside from fielding skirmishers, we will be ready for the best part of the ruleset in our next game. 

I played the French this time and P-Y played the Anglo-Portuguese. I had 2 brigades with one in reserve and P-Y had 4 brigades with 1 in reserve. I added an ADC to each side as having just 3 and 5 ADC's is not a lot of fun. When applying the ADC's to each brigade, we allowed a dummy ADC to make it a bit of fun!

I will not put down the actual scenario as the pdf is cheap enough and if interested you should buy it. But essentially the French had 2 brigades and on table reserve which could not be released until one of the brigades had been lost. The Brits had 4 brigades and an off table brigade that could come on in turn 5 for free. The game was only 10 turns and the Brits had to force 2 French brigades to retire. 

The table at the end of the game, the Brits were attacking from the right.

As usually I will not do a full report but I do have some photos. It was a very entertaining game which went 10 turns. We had several charges and 3 Infantry Melees! The French lost twice as many battalions than the Brits but did not secure a complete victory, so a marginal victory was given to the Brits....P-Y's 2nd victory in less than a week.......

The Allied left flank early in the game, PY rolled multiple 10, 11,12 on his artillery dice with Artillery Assault, causing my 2 veteran Légère batallions to disperse.

Those damned RHA

Caçadores

The French left flank early advance with the Légère in AC.

The allied left flank advance midway through the game.

The withdrawing 1st French Brigade on my right flank

My 2nd French brigade was much more successful on my left flank, causing the Portuguese brigade to disperse off the table. The same brigade then charges a 2nd Allied brigade with some success. 

View from Allied left flank late in the game, they have driven off a French brigade and the French reservists are scrambling to join the fight.

French left flank late in the battle

My reservists breaking out in line, they arrived too late to effect the battle.

The French CoC joins the battle in turn 10 declaring a COMMAND-allows removal of 2 casualties  from each unit in the brigade, first charge even though not holding the initiative and Glory in any Melee, costs 3 ADCs. French left flank.

The French CoC surveying the field

I have another GdA game this Saturday at the Abyss, looking forward to it. This Friday I will have my 2nd game of Pulp Alley. Have to put together my League today.

Pulp Alley

We had our first game of Pulp Alley last night, I had only recently become acquainted with this game but it looked quite interesting and most importantly for me it gives me a chance to bring a bunch of figures to the gaming table that have yet to be used. I have a lot of painted figures that have been sitting in cabinets never being the light of day. These include figures from the Carnevale and Empire of the Dead kickstarters as well as a bunch of Lovecraftian figures from the Mansions of Madness tabletop games. 

The really cool thing about this game is that you completely get to design your gang (called Leagues). Each character depending on their level has multiple possible abilities to pick from and the League itself can take on characteristics of their own. 

Since last night was a virtual game and all the figures I have for Pulp Alley are in Montreal and I am in Salem now, I used P-Y's Purple Cultists and constructed a league around them. Certainly in retrospect, I would have done things quite differently but it was an excellent exercise for me as League Construction is one of the most important and fun aspects of the game. Here are our 2 leagues.

The terrain was set up according to the first scenario in the Perilous Island campaign. First up was pulling a random event for each league, I got an extra figure, a simple shooter called Vladimir. I forgot what P-Y received. I will not go into the game play but we were able to complete the 6 turn game in a little over 2 hours. this is pretty good virtually as well as the fact that I had not played before. I think P-Y has played a couple of times. Although, I got completely crushed, I learned an enormous amount about the game and it was a great deal of fun.

Bruno took down both Dragon and Slobodan

By the end of the game I had only 1 figure standing!

Initial Set up