Innsmouth Gold-Pulp Alley

I have been recently experimenting with the Pulp Alley Ruleset, it is an enormous amount of fun and I am getting figures on the table that have never been there. I am a big HP Lovecraft fan and I was going through the Pulp Alley videos on YouTube a few weeks ago and saw one entitled Innsmouth Gold. Right up my alley for gaming and all the figures I have painted from the Mansions of Madness boxsets.

I went ahead and downloaded the scenarios from the Pulp Alley store and got some figures out, had a look and put the following league together: The Arkham Investigators.

I took the Company of Heros perk, so I could have 2 sidekicks. The names are all from the Mansions of Madness game. I have maybe 12 investigators painted up, so I can rotate out the sidekicks and ally easily, but I decided to send these characters in first. 

The Arkham Investigators

The next challenge was the terrain, and I am certainly not set up for Pulp Alley gaming yet, but I did remembered that I had a bunch of Venetian mdf pieces that I got from the Carnevale kickstarter that would work for the Innsmouth scenario. Could have had some buildings but the excess bases are standing in for the same. I have ordered some more buildings from TTCombat, they are well priced and are quite nice to put together. I suspect that I will be putting some Venetian leagues together in the near future.

This was the ending position of the characters with Joe Diamond making it to the boat. The trick was  for the supporting characters to engage the Innsmouth denizens (NPC's) as they spawn very quickly.

Here are some Deep Ones and a couple of Innsmouth denizens before they have taken to the sea.

Dexter Drake did a great job and must of taken out 4-5 creatures.

They just kept on spawning

Agatha Crane and Father Mateo had a tougher time as their skills were not really up to taking out the Innsmouth inhabitants but they were pretty good dodgers.

Well it took about 20 go's for Joe Diamond to get the Golden Idol on the the motor cutter so he could make his escape but I did learn a lot on how to play the game.

 

Some Painting

I have been doing a bit of painting, these two figures were set up some time ago but the process of getting them on clear acrylic bases is a little more time consuming than other figures. Still have plenty of investigators and monsters to paint. I thought I might do these two.

Harvey Walters

 

They came out ok, these were done with contrast paints, I am still getting the hang of them.

Sister Mary

 

I really do not have much on hand to paint, well there is stuff on hand but not that keen to paint them. I do have some little planes coming, as well as some more Conquest Miniatures for the FIW and some LotR miniatures from GW, which is a little shocking to me!

A Plunge into the Dark

I have decided over the last couple of years to take the opportunity afforded by the AHPC to do something different. Last year saw my foray into a 6mm miniatures with a Blood Angels Epic army. This was quite novel for me as I had never painted any 6 mm models nor had been involved in anything to do with Fantasy wargaming. For this year's Challenge, an unusual series of events and observations sent me down a path I would have never predicted.

This past fall found me with far fewer wargaming opportunities than had previously been the case. What was I do? Through a Kickstarter a Boardgame had landed in my lap. I gave it a go and discovered that boardgaming was a possibility but at the same time it was still a challenge to play solo. Somewhere along the way, I believe Curt mentioned that there were Boardgames out there where the story line was driven by a computer programme. In fact he had recently painted some figures for a same said game. 

So I bought Mansions of Madness. I had heard of HP Lovecraft but had never read him and the Cthulthu Mythos was unknown to me, although I had wondered what it was. I like main stream Science Fiction but had never really been into the horror genre aside from maybe Steven King and TED Klein. I set up a game and found it quite interesting and fun to play and as a bonus one day my wife and sister-in-law were watching me play and quickly got talked in to having a go. They were immediately drawn in by the character profiles of the Investigators in the game. At the end of a 2 hour session, they both said when are we going to play again!

Being obsessive, I really could not play with unpainted figures, so I set about painting them. A further conversation with Curt gave me the idea that it might be interesting to paint the Investigators in polychrome while painting the Monsters in a monochrome. But while putting the project together, I started to ask myself who was HP Lovecraft?

Well I suppose this is where I started to lose control of myself. Reading about him certainly revealed a somewhat unusual character; both parents going mad and dying in asylums, riches to rags, and a quite extraordinary fan base. His books are out of copyright, so Kindle versions are easily obtained. I read The Dunwich Horror, a strange story and I liked the writing style. But what was this Cthulhu Mythos. While researching this, I discovered that many of his stories have spoken versions and are easily available without cost. I discovered HorrorBabble and I was hooked. 

I suspect in the last two months I have listened to maybe 20 of HP Lovecraft's short stories and novellas over and over again! At the Mountains of Madness is my favourite, but close behind is The Shadow over Innsmouth and of course The Call of the Cthulhu. I suppose it does not help that I live in Salem, Massachusetts, the dead centre of Lovecraft Country. 

This immersion has also sparked an interest in 1930 and 40's pulp magazine cover art. I am going to have to stop myself from starting a collection.

I could go on and on, but I should stop. If you would like to take the plunge, here is a link to my YouTube playlists of HP Lovecraft stories.

Anyway, please excuse my ramblings, time to get back to the challenge! Below find the start of my Mansions of Madness figure collection. The figures are mostly semi-hard plastic, the faces are somewhat soft but generally I enjoyed painting them. The polychrome Investigators were easy enough to paint but I am not really sure if you can call my Monsters true greyscale, so I decided to use the term monochrome. The black background is a real challenge to get right. I have photographed all the figure 3-4 times. I initially tried my iPhone 8 but I just could not get it right. I then went back to my Cannon and in iPhoto I was able to adjust the background (make it black) using the blackpoint adjustment without destroying the image. Still not an hundred percent but improving.

The Investigators

Carson Sinclair, Joe Diamond, Father Mateo

Kate Winthrop, Rita Young, Agatha Crane

The Monsters

Cultists

Hunting Horrors

Mi-Go

Ghouls

Cult Leader, Witch, Priest of Dagon

Innsmouth Rioters

Deep One Hybrids, Barnabas Marsh

Ghost, Hound of Tindalos, Maniac

Deep Ones

Chthonian

Star Spawn

Shoggoth

Well another year's challenge has gone by: Many thanks to Curt and a very patient Sarah. Also thanks to my minion Ray as well as all the other helpers. And finally congratulations to all the participants, each year the submissions are just more and more brilliant.