Xenos Rampant and Space Hulk

For our monthly session we played a 4-player game of Xenos Rampant. The centrepiece of the game was Rick's Upzone terrain. The scenario had an Eldar force (commanded by Adrian and me) trying to destroy a Necron pyramid (defended by Rick and FG). A series of poor command rolls on the part of the Eldar players and excellent rolls by the Necron players made it a rather one-sided affair.

We then played two games of 1st Edition Space Hulk, with FG and I each taking turns to play the Space Marines. It's a testament to the quality of the scenario designers that both games pretty much came down to one die roll during the final turn. We hope to play more Space Hulk during our next session on September.

Legion Mk VI Tactical Squad

I have done pretty well this year (so far) in terms of not buying more new figures; I did buy and convert and paint a couple of sci-fi models, but since these were meant for the collection of my friends, it doesn't really count. But I had to make an exception for the new Warhammer The Horus Heresy Mk VI Space Marines figures.

My first Warhammer 40K figures were the plastic "beakie" space marines box set, which I split with wahj; we painted them for use with the Battlesuit board game; mine were painted in white, while his were painted in black. Good times.

Years later, when the multi-part plastic Mk VII space marines became available, I decided to start expanding my army, but not wanting to paint a whole new army in white again, I decided to go for an easier paint scheme of Dark Angels green. The old beakies went to Adrian, but I've always had a soft spot for them.

So when the new "true scale" Mk VI marines were released, I decided to get them, and once again I split the box, this time with FG. In my fluff they represent the Veteran Squad in my chapter, and have the same colour scheme as the rest of the chapter. I did however give them the classic 80s stripe down the middle of the helmet.

These models are not exactly easy to build. The pauldrons with the studs actually come in two pieces and have to be glued together - you can see the seam in the photo if you look closely. The arms and weapons come in three pieces: left arm, right arm, and both hands holding the bolter; it took a bit of fiddling to make everything line up. The models are "true scale", and therefore stand taller than the Mk VII models, especially the earlier Mk VII models. The box comes with 32mm round bases, but I based them on some thinner 25mm round bases I had from another purchase, which compensated a little. They are built pretty much as is, "out of the box", but I replaced the sergeant's plasma pistol arm with a "modern" one to make him look more in line with the rest of the force.

I am very pleased with how they turned out, and hope to filed them in a game of Grimdark Future or Xenos Rampant soon.

John Wick #3 and #4

Having escaped from The Provincial with Yulian, our party decided to take him to New Windsor in Jersey, where he claimed he had a safe house. They drove north, switch cars (stole a car) to mask their trail, but were still pursued by the Russian mob. After a gunfight in the suburbs, they barely made it to the safe house, where the gangsters ceased their pursuit.

Here they were taken in by Dmitri Pavlov, Yulian's uncle, who was formerly in the Tarasov crime family. Although retired, he still commanded a measure of respect from the Tarasov family, but he knew it would only gain his nephew a respite and not escape from Viggo's wrath. They informed Bruce of their location, and the fugitive policeman joined them (see PC profiles here). Soon afterwards, John Wick arrived at the door to politely inform Dmitri that Viggo had given Dmitri 24 hours to surrender his nephew.

Yulian made a desperate attempt to save himself and called Viggo to beg for mercy, but it was useless. Viggo then spoke to the party, offering to help Joseph and Mori pardoned by the High Table, and to use his political influence to exonerate Bruce, and to give Jason a job in the Tarasov family if they could find the person buying information from Yulian, and to eliminate him in a way that would leave a clear message that Viggo was the one who gave the order.

Realising there was no escape, Yulian beseeched our party to help get his girlfriend Charlie to safety, promising that they will find clues to who was really responsible for the murder of Roger Zelany through her. He explained that someone had approached his girlfriend at the exotic dance club where she worked to offer to buy information regarding the activities of the Tarasov family at a generous price. The money and information would be transferred through Charlie, so Yulian did not know whom he was selling the information to, except that they were from the Calabrian mafia. Charlie would hand part of the money to Yulian, while she deposited the rest in a number of bank accounts. When Roger Zelany, an associate with the Calabrian mafia was murdered, Yulian feared the worst, and decided to seek the protection of the FBI. He now feared that Charlie would be implicated, and asked the party to get her to safety, beyond the reach of both the Tarasov family and the Calabrian mafia. He handed the party a pendant he wore as a proof they were from him, together with a safety deposit key, and left a message on Charlie's phone, and awaited his fate

The party armed themselves from Dmitri's weapon cache, and took his car to the dance club. At the carpark they noticed that someone else was watching the club. They entered the club and waited for Charlie to come on stage. Soon afterwards two suspicious men also entered the club. When Charlie finally came on, Bruce moved to the stage and flashed Yulian's pendant at her, and the party left, hoping to enter through the back door and link up with Charlie. However, they found two men waiting in ambush at the alley behind the club. A firefight broke out, followed by sounds of gunshots from the front of the club. The party broke in through the back door to find dancers fleeing. They rushed to the floor of the club to find Charlie being held by two armed men.

Joseph quickly took down one of the gunmen, as well as two more who came through the front door, while Bruce knocked the other one out with a flying kick. They then grabbed Charlie and left, just when the sounds of police sirens were heard.

They explained the situation with Yulian to Charlie, and then drove her to a bus station, where she could take a bus out of town. Charlie told them that she too did not know who in the Calabrian mafia was buying the information from Yulian, but that the two people who contacted her each time were Ricardo, who Joseph shot, and Gabriel, who was knocked out by Bruce.

The party now realised that they had to get to Gabriel to learn who their boss was. Fortunately, Bruce had knew which hospital the police would bring Gabriel to for treatment of his wounds. Driving to the hospital, they stole a couple of orderly uniforms, put Bruce on a gurney, and wheeled him right up to the cop guarding Gabriel at the emergency room, where Bruce knocked him out. They then uncuffed Gabriel from his bed and placed him on the gurney, while Bruce put on the cop's uniform and placed him on Gabriel's bed, and fled the place.

Once they were in the car, the party gave Gabriel the choice of either telling them what he knew for some money and a ride to the train station, or be turned over to either the cops or his boss, who would no doubt punish him for his failed mission. Gabriel considered his options, and decided to spill the beans.

Francesco Cortone, a rogue capo of the Calabrian mafia, had taken advantage of their weak head of the family to plan a hostile takeover of the Tarasov family's territories. He did so in collaboration with certain corrupt persons in law enforcement, aiming to use police powers to help him take down the Russians. To this end he bought information about the Tarasov family's businesses, so he could send his men to attack them. These were small skirmishes that did not really affect the Tarasov family's bottomline, but calculated to give the sense that the Russian mob presence in the city was a problem, which would make it harder for the High Table to shield them when the police decided to move against them. Gabriel informed the party that Francesco would be meeting the contact person from law enforcement at a chemical warehouse in Jersey before dawn that day.

Our party planned their attack. After stopping and breaking into a sports goods store for rope, Joseph and Bruce rappelled down the roof of the warehouse and crashed through the second floor windows to reach the catwalk, yelling: Viggo says hello! as they landed. They surprised the thugs guarding the place, who were quickly felled by Bruce's shotgun and Joseph's assault rifle. Through the ground floor windows Jason could see more gunmen rushing to the stairs to get to the catwalk, so he drove the car through the shutter door of the warehouse and joined the fight.

Joseph took down the thugs who swarmed out of the corner office to repel them in a fashion that would make John Wick proud, but the party were stopped in their tracks by a gunman shooting from inside the office, whom Bruce recognised to be Frank Krothers, the District Attorney's bodyguard.

From inside the office, Francesco called out to the party, offering to match and exceed whatever deal Viggo was offering them, but the party was not in a mood to deal. Jason dashed back into the car, and drove it into the steel columns holding up the mezzaine office, causing the office to tilt and Franceso to tumble through the window. Frank Krothers managed to grab him and begin to haul him back, but the brief exposure was enough for Joseph to shoot and kill Francesco. With Francesco dead, Frank saw no reason to stay, and made his escape.

Their job completed, the party called Viggo, and were picked up. Viggo then informed them that he would soon give them an "impossible task" to perform as he completes his revenge against the Calabrian mafia...

Prepping and Running the Game

I compiled the last two sessions in this post as I am way behind my blogging schedule.

The third session of the campaign was based on the modules Badabing Badaboom! and Fuhgeddabouti!. Both provide a central plot, but are valuable for the vignettes, which I picked for my purpose. 

The final session was based on the module Burning Crosses, which is a short investigative scenario that provided me with some idea to link Yulian back to the Calabrian mafia without making it too direct.

The scene at the hospital however was improvised. When the players realise they should have taken Gabriel away for questioning instead of letting the police take him, the needed to get to him. I initially said that Bruce knew which station he would be brought to, but immediately realised that it would be more appropriate for him to be brought to a hospital for treatment first; the players agreed, and we moved the action to the hospital. Once the action moved there it was easy to set the scene and orientate ourselves, since the hospital Emergency Room is so widely depicted in media we all had a common understanding of how things look like without me spending too much time describing things.

This was also the case for Dmitri's home, where we all knew what everything looked like, down to how the front door looked. This is one advantage of playing in a modern campaign, which I hadn't really appreciated until now.

The rules were quite apt for our purpose, allowing the characters to do some really cinematic stuff like doing double double-taps in a single round, or running and gunning down four thugs in one round. If we ever do another modern campaign again, I may use the same rules.

For the next campaign we will be returning to Savage Gamma World, when I plan to have one or two guest players join us for each session. More on that in a future post.