Some New Figures for Alternate History Games

The Dreams in the Witch House

Next up are some figures to add to the Alternate History games I play. I have really tried to limit this but I have had a lot of fun with these games and they are quite popular in Montreal. Aside from the games represented below, I also play Pulp Alley but we will see some figures for this game in my next post.

Two Hired Guns for Dracula's America. These are both North Star figures and they painted up quite nicely. Unfortunately I can not use them in my present posse but they were there so I painted them. On the left is a Skinwalker Archanist and on the right is a Carpathian Guard.

I can us this figure now for my Rashaar Gang in Carnevale. The Karcharos is a Hero in this gang. I have left it with gloss varnish as he is a water creature. 

Finally up are two figures from my Devil in the Wilderness game, I have not had much success in introducing this game in Montreal. It was locally developed and I think it is quite interesting and a lot of fun, but there are some gaps in the rules that require further development. I am told this will happen but I am not so sure.  More about the game here. I am a Lovecraft fan so I could not resist these 2 figures from Dreams in the Witch House: Keziah Mason and her familiar Brown Jenkin.

Devil in the Wilderness at L'abyss

 

I got in a second game of Devil in the Wilderness last night in Montreal at the L'Abyss. This is really an impressive gaming spot with a large shop with an amazing selection of gaming supplies and materials. I have never seen a larger selection of paints. The place is on 2 floors with the main floor have the shop and maybe a 30 table board gaming area, there is also a bar and you can order drinks and food right to your table while you are playing. Downstairs there is about 20 tables set up for miniature wargaming. There is also a very large selection of terrain boards and terrain pieces. Again you can order food and drink directly to your table. 

Despite the massive telecommunications failure yesterday in Canada (Rogers), I was able to get together with my friend Luis and we made it to the east end for a game. I was really looking forward to playing Devil in the Wilderness again as I have been having a tough time teeing up games in Massachusetts. I have invested quite a bit of effort in the game so would like to play. I lugged all my stuff up to Montreal. I am trying to decide whether to leave it here or not as I have not been able to set up one game in the Salem area, which is a little odd, since the game is set in 17th century Salem!

Although, Luis is a very experienced gamer I decided to go with a pretty simple set up with the objective being to discover traps/treasures and with this and the taking out of the 6 main characters would decide whether good triumphs over evil. I find the Witch Hunters are a little more powerful then the Witches, so I took the Witches and Luis the Witch Hunters.

Here are some photos from the game, they are just some general shots and not really meant to chronicle an action report.

Probably could use a bit more terrain on the table but it worked.

I use 3D printed discs for the trap/treasure tokens.

I also tag each building as I will quickly forget which is which.

Nothing like a wandering Werewolf

Luis was able to use his diplomatic skills to force my Milice to the side of good and attack me. I use different coloured discs to identify each figure, and record their colour on the figure tracking cards.

The game went very smoothly and I was only unsure about 1 or 2 things which is pretty good as I had not played for 6 months. We got in a complete game in about 2.5 to 3 hours with the Witches reigning supreme after taking out Increase Mather and John Alden but the game did go back and forth quite a bit. Both Rev Burroughs and Pukjinkwes, were both down to a single point. I got the initiative in the last turn and was able to turn the Witch Hunter's militia to the dark side and with 11 activations was able to win the game.

Some New Figures

Three or four years ago, I played a game of Flint and Feather at a local convention. It was a fun game but what struck me were the figures with which we played from a British Columbia company who put out both the game and the figures for it. The game is designed around pre-contact North American aboriginal peoples.

I finally ordered some figures a couple of months ago and although I have not painted any of the Native Peoples yet, I have painted a couple of their Spirit Creatures which I hope to use for Devil in the Wilderness ruleset. I also was looking for some more figures to use for civilians set in North America for Devil in the Wilderness, Muskets and Tomahawks as well Sharpe Practice. Devil in the Wilderness has 2 cards for giant Supernatural Creatures which will be used.

Spirit Creatures

The Naked Bear

I will use the Chemoo Card

Flying Head

I will use the Aglebemu Card

European Settlers set

These figures were entirely painted with the new AP Speed Paints, I was quite pleased.

I really enjoyed painting these figures and looking forward to getting to the Native Peoples. 

Some Puritans

I have been looking for some figures that I could use as Witch Hunter aligned militia for Devil in The Wilderness. I found these figures in the Brigade Games: King Philip's War line. As is usual with Brigade Games miniatures, these were quite impressive. I am trying to use up my Citadel acrylics (excellent paints but sick of their pots), I am down to about 20 pots now and most of them are muted colours so excellent for the late 17th century. I am not sure where I could use them playing Muskets and Tomahawks, but if pressed I am sure I could work it out. I believe, I could have done a bit more prep work on them but I am quite happy how they came out.

These are extreme close-ups, so they look a little rough, but for the table top I am quite pleased. I usually do not take close-up but I was intent on showing what great miniatures they are, rather than to demonstrate my painting ability.

 

Some Figures for Devil in the Wilderness (and the FIW)

I have been adding to my DiW collection, I really needed some more Supernaturals as well as some support unit for my two factions of Witches and Witch Hunters. I left my FiW collection in Montreal so needed some Milice Acadien as well as local Massachusetts Militia. I also need some civilians but I have not sourced them yet, the civilians for the FiW from Conquest Miniatures (now sold by Warlord Games) and Brigade Games are excellent but I have them all and would like some different ones. If anyone has any suggestions please put them forward. I still have a few FiW figures lying about unpainted so I am trying to use these up. Of course I appreciate the FiW was a hundred years after the period of the Witch hysteria in New England but they work for me.

Lately, I have a look on what is available in the 3Dprint world and although my resin printer (or it might be my 3Dprint skills) does not pump out figures near as nice as the metals from the above 2 sculptors, they are nice enough. I also latterly been using metal bases for all my figures to prevent transport damage and as I plan to be moving about my DiW collection, I felt this was necessary. I found some fairly nice supernaturals on MyMiniFactory, the Zombies are OK but I quite like the Werewolves.

We have 5 Zombies and in the middle is a Witch. Three different poses for the Zombies., this will probably be enough for most games. I do have a bunch of SAGA Revenants that could easily be substituted for Zombies. They are nice enough figures but the definition was really not the best. 

The werwolves came in a pack of 4 from MyMiniFactory, here are 3 of them.  I really like these figures, they are a little delicate so hopefully they will stand up to the rigours of wargaming. They were a lot of fun to paint, I used progressive colours in Scale75 Black and White paint set. The set is useful although it is a little tricky to get good at using them.

I am thinking these miniatures are from the first Brigade Games FiW kickstarter, although they certainly could be from Conquest Miniatures or perhaps a mixture of both although the style is very similar. My friend Iannick tells me there is not a lot of difference between Compagnie branches de la marine and Milice canadien in respect to uniforms. I will use these as Milice for DiW and French Marines for my FiW gaming. I have modelled them as Trois-Rivières.

Certainly very nice figures, these were primed white and then Citadel Contrast white contrast paint was used for the uniform, this really is a great product.

Next on the painting queue are the Militia. They are almost done so hopefully I will get some photos up within the week.

Exporting Devil in the Wilderness

Ten days ago, I had my last game of 2021. It has been a great year for wargaming with a record number of 67 games played. Most of these were of course virtual but I have grown to enjoy these games almost as much as those played in person. I have cemented my relationship with my friends in Finland, started the year playing virtually but ended up getting four in person games with Pierre-Yves, Iannick and Luis in Montreal last week, as well as got a few in person games with my friend Adam here. I seemed to have lost touch with three CoC players locally which is a pity and I have really not been able to get much going at the local game store.

I recently played a very interesting short campaign based around the first day of the Soviet invasion of Finland on November 30, 1939. I am waiting for Eero to post his excellent battle reports which I will pass on from here when ready. 

Anyway enough of that. I was quite keen to bring what I think is a great game that was developed locally to Montreal, so 10 days ago I set up a Devil in the Wilderness game for my friend P-Y at my new apartment there. This was an inaugural game for my place in the Mile End neighbourhood and the first of what I hope will be many games. I have transported quite a few figures as well as terrain there in preparation for my semi-permanent move there in just 6 months. I am looking forward to getting back to my native land after what will be almost a 25 year absence. 

So on to the game, as I have previously noted I had a recent learning game with Dave Valentine, the creator of Devil in the Wilderness, so I was pretty confident in hosting the game. I perceive that the Witch-Hunters lead by Cotton Mather have a bit more oomph than the Witches so I gave this faction to P-Y. I had transported all the specific terrain for the game much more easily than I thought so you can see the layout below.

Well it was a bit of a strange game as the Witches got to deploy first, unfortunately they did not get down with a many initiatives or good cards so when the Witch-Hunters deployed in an adjacent location with great cards and a large number of initiatives, two of my supporting character got killed in the first 2 turns of the game. This really put the the Witches on the back foot and despite another 60 minutes of play where unable to recover enough to prevent Good from prevailing on the game counter. 

Despite this it was a fun game and I will be surely replaying it again the next time I am in Montreal. we were left with very few questions about the ruleset but I understand that Dave will be soon publishing an errata for the ruleset.

 Anyway on to Covid Year 3!

Devil in the Wilderness

I finally got in a real game of DiW yesterday with an actual opponent. Also got introduced to a new gaming store which was about an hour away in New Hampshire. Midgard Hobbies and Games is quite a nice place, with an excellent and large gaming area and a good stock of gaming accessories, such as mats paints, terrain etc. Maybe a little less in respect to rulesets than the Hobby Bunker in Wakefield, MA. 

Myself and Adam met up there with Dave Valentine the rules writer to have an instructional game. I was pretty familiar with the rules but Adam had not played with the final version before. Notwithstanding, Adam picks up ruleset extremely quickly and this did not slow the game. I had several questions about the game, mostly in respect to the card play as the mechanics are quite straight forward.

I played the Witches with Adam playing the Witch Hunters. The game has an excellent narrative and each player gets 3 main characters with the ability to add several extra characters to your posse or to add unnatural characters to the game which essentially act as automatons, they are best avoided. Dave has a beautiful set up as you will see below. 

We got in several turns in 3 hours, and although there was no clear winner, I did get what would reasonably called a marginal victory and I had pushed the game clock towards Evil rather than Good! There are several different objectives that can be set up in any one game, Dave had set up a trap/treasure scenario for this scenario. At the beginning of the game we were more focused on building up our rosters as well as engaging in several melees. We also were able to place several unnatural creatures on the table which we both spent quite a bit of time dodging. As the game progressed, we started to focus on finding the treasure. I was able to find 2 of the 3 treasures, while we both killed one of the other's main characters. Finding treasures and killing main characters are the path to victory.

Here are some photos from the game, I had a great time and many thanks to Dave for putting on the game. I will really look forward to playing more games as it clearly has a lot of replay-ability. I also understand that there is a Victorian Horror variation coming out in the new year. I may finally get to field my Empire of the Dead figures.

Dave explain the rules, you can see the excellent character cards in the left foreground. 

The game set up, there 7 named locations on the table.

A gallows which I suspect Dave constructed from scratch

Treasure or Trap, six of these well crafted markers were placed on the table.

My early set up with my 3 characters, as well as an Indian Zombie and 3 French Milice, unfortunately the malice immediatedly betrayed me by going over to the Witch Hunters.

Some of the Witch Hunters posse, town folk and a militia sergeant.

I was able to trigger 2 treasure traps in my last turn.