The Men Who Would be Kings at Campus Game Fest 2024

Other than my usual home RPG group and my wargaming group, I have been gaming off and on with a public gaming group at a community centre these past few years. The group plays mainly RPGs and boardgames, and some Battletech Alpha Strike; I run the occasional one-shot RPG there, and play the occasional boardgame.

This year, the group was invited to take part in a games convention at a school, and I was invited to put up a historical wargame there.

This was when I realised that, while I do have many paired armies, most of them are sci-fi or fantasy, and the historical armies that I do own both sides of are not painted by me, but cobbled together from various ebay purchases. The only armies which look presentable are my Indian Mutiny forces, which were mostly painted by a single painting service.

Now while I do enjoy The Relief of Luckpore, I thought that a grid-based wargame would not be a good representation of most historical miniature wargame, so I went through to my library and decided on Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would be Kings, which I helped playtest with these same figures in 2015.

I modified the command rules a little to allow for five players - two on the British side and three on the Mutineer side - with three units each. I picked out a scenario from Colonial Conflicts: The Indian Mutiny, adjusted the set-up to fit, and with the help of a few friends tested the scenario, made some adjustments, and we were ready.

The set-up

Civilians in the village

The British train

We were scheduled for 4pm to 9pm, and I imagined that gave enough time to run two or maybe three games, each with five players on each side and FG and I umpiring. As it turned out the crowd were mostly there for the e-games and card games, and we didn't draw much attention apart from the other miniature wargamers who were there. One of them played the mutineers against me, and beat me resoundingly with incredible dice rolls.

We then had a student of the school walk by and he decided to take a swing at playing the British. He had better luck than me, and almost made it to the mutineer lines before his luck ran out.

The situation at the end of the second game

Over all the amount of gaming we did out of the session was probably not worth the effort of preparing the charts and cards and traveling down, but I did make friends with some historical wargamers and we might be getting some gaming in in the future, so that made the whole evening worthwhile.

Malifaux test games

Set-up for the first game. A 3' x 3' playing area is pretty big for a low figure-count game.

Yes, I know I said we were going to use Empire of the Dead for our Victorian period game not more than a week ago, but a week is a long time in wargaming...

Anyway, after discussing the rules last week, fg and I decided that neither EOTD nor In Her Majesty's Name fit what we were looking for. I went on google to try to find a set of VSF skirmish rules, and after a while Malifaux came up. Now fg had talked about Malifaux a while back - he bought two starter packs and had painted one faction up. I downloaded the free fluff-free version of their rulebook, and after a brief read thought it was do-able.

I chose the most human of the factions to represent my Penny Dreadful party, and within the Guild faction I picked the Ortega family as their special rules emphasise sticking together and protecting each other, which to me is in the spirit of the party in the show (except for the end of Season 2, which was kinda stupid...).

Instead of the Resurrectionists, fg picked the Nephilim sub-faction of the Neverborn faction to represent his vampire party, which actually fit pretty well too. I suppose I will pick the Resurrectionists to represent my Mummy faction, and fg can use his Chinese Tong for the Ten Thunders faction.

Fg brought some very nice terrain.

Malifaux is a 'small skirmish', competition-orientated game - you run a handful of models, but each has its own special rules which interact with the other members of your warband (called a crew), and on top of that you can buy upgrades for the models, adding even more special rules and interplay to the mix. This means that it takes some studying to figure out the best way to put together a crew and to use them in a game.

We played the first game with 25-points crews, with the scenario awarding victory points for being within 6" of the centre of the board. I found that my supposedly shooty crew actually have very short shooting ranges that are really shorter than charge range of the vampires. Fortunately, some of the crew can hold their own in melee.

The first game ran seven turns, and fg won on victory points. Although we were slowed down by our unfamiliarity with the special rules, we had plenty of time left and we decided to play a second game with a Master added.

Lots of crunch.

For the second game we just needed to inflict casualties on the other side, and I additionally chose two secondary victory conditions that gave me points for being in the enemy half of the boar - this turned out to be a mistake: I should have stayed on my side of the board and shot at the vampires as they came for me. The game ended on turn 2, when my boss characters were killed.

Our heroes are outmatched by the forces of evil!

We enjoyed the game enough to want to play it again, perhaps this time with more thought!

Empire of the Dead party

From L to R: Mr Nathan Sandler, Dr Frank Ernstein, Ms Veronica Clives, Sir Michael Moray, and Sam Benett.

Here are the West Wind Empire of the Dead figures which fg passed to me and which I painted as a not-Penny Dreadful party, based on the cast photo below:

They are not a good likeness of the original (for that, see here), but I thought it would be better to paint something 'good enough' while the interest is there than to spend too much time looking for the perfect figures and losing steam before the whole thing is done.

I kept the colours to a muted black-grey-grey-brown as in the photo, but decided to tie all the figures in the party together by giving each a red accent around the neck region.

For the fluff I thought I might stick close to the Penny Dreadful storyline (spoilers ahead!), and have the characters be an Amercian (non-werewolf) shootist, a medical doctor, a woman with arcane powers, and an explorer and his faithful manservant, in this case a native American instead of an African (because the figure looks like it can pass for the former but not he latter).

Our intrepid party will face the malevolent forces of Merneptah (will Professor Flinders Petrie swtich sides mid-campaign as Professor Lyle did?), and the diabolic vampire master and his thralls that fg is current painting.

Will good triumph over evil (or at least be left alone to do their Victorian things)? Will the mysteries of our heroes' past come back to haunt them? Will I have enough terrain for this campaign? Stay tuned to find out...

Heroic Maps Pharoah's Tomb and Finger and Toe Models Catacombs

I blame Netflix, I do...

After getting the rules, painting up the figures, and doing some terrain boards, our VSF/EOTD project stalled as we moved on to other genres. Now, after watching Penny Dreadful (excellent series - great acting, and the sets are just begging to be reproduced on the tabletop), I felt the need to do some work for the period.

As my faction is Egyptian-themed, from the outset I have wanted an Egyptian-themed headquarters for them, so this became the choice for my project. I imagined a Victorian mansion that looked Victorian from the outside, but had Egyptian decor on the inside.

Due to a lack of storage space, I knew I wanted something that can be taken down and packed more or less flat, but I also wanted it to be interesting from a game-play point of view.

I went to my usual source for 2D terrain: Heroic Maps. After looking at a few of their Egyptian offerings, I ended up getting their free Pharoah's Tomb - Upper pack (there is a - Lower pack which depicts the underground part of this pack.

The pack shows a pillared courtyard that rises in a few levels to lead to an interior.

The architecture of the area represented made me decide to try something I have always wanted to try: a 2.5D terrain. This would involve gluing multiple layers of materials on top of each other, and I knew that the material I would use is 1mm PVC foam sheets, which are now my favourite craft material. Instead of representing the pillars in full-height, I would use something that is about man-height instead.

For the interior, I decided to go for full-height walls. For the texture of the walls, I went for Finger and Toe Model's Catacombs pack. This pack provided walls and pillars "skins" for Egyptian, Greek, and Roman interiors.

After some calculations, I decided to get the foam sheets in 1mm for the courtyard, in 3mm for the walls, and in 5mm for the interior. I had planned on getting wooden thread spools for the pillars, but the art shop did not have them, so I settled for corks instead. To colour the sides of the foam sheets, I also bought a coloured marker.

After four straight hours, I managed to complete the project, shown here with the walls tacked together by removable tape.

Here is a more lateral view of the set-up, showing the elevations of the terraces.

The whole set-up is broken down into three parts: the courtyard with a platform in the middle, a terrace of steps, and the interior space. Broken down, the largest piece has the footprint of just under 28cm x 22cm.

I am quite happy with the result, except that the corks aren't tall enough to block a figure entirely; I might glue two corks narrow-end to narrow-end instead, or just buy some wooden spools from ebay.

(Added: Check out this large battle-board made with Heroic Maps' geomorphic tiles.)

Out of Egypt...

I like mummies.

They are one of those figures that you can use across periods and genre, from fantasy and mythical to VSF to Pulp, and even games like Blood Bowl.

The latest addition to my small collection of mummy figures is the one from Northstar which they released as part of their Of Gods and Mortals Nickstarter. You can see him standing proudly atop a resin base from Fantascape, showing off his six-pack abs. I also managed to paint up two bases of Egyptian-themed critters, which are Bones miniatures given to me by fg.

I really like the Northstar mummy because it wears the double crown of Egypt, which to me speaks of the ancient history of that land.

The next figure on my painting list is the Harbinger of Set figure from Crocodile Games. Hopefully I can get that done over the New Year break.

Lledo Days Gone vehicles

I bought these two Lledo Days Gone horse-drawn vehicles from ebay for our Victorian games.

I broke the hitch on the M&S wagon off while trying to pry the horses off..

As you can see, the vehicles themselves are about the right size, but the draught horses look more like ponies.

Curiously, while they used the same horse models for both wagons, the drivers came in different scales! The driver for the Fuller's wagon is about the right scale, but the M&S one has to go. Sadly, my Clydesdale seems too big for them. I need some horses which are in between these two in size.

The artwork on the wagons are probably wrong for the period, but I don't think I will repaint them seeing how nice they look. I particularly like the beer wagon, and can see it being a scenario objective in our games...

More Victorian terrain bits

Finally managed to get my horse and cart painted and posed with the Celtic Cross monument I made earlier.

And to accompany the picture, a factoid about Victorian England from here:

One odd point was that men in charge of a horse drawn vehicle were prohibited from leaving it unattended, in case the horse bolted. They still needed to pee however so a law was passed to the effect that 'the driver of a vehicle requiring to relieve himself can do so against the front off-side wheel of the vehicle providing he shouts 'in pain' loudly three times before commencing'. This may sound pretty unhygienic but remember the horses were depositing their urine and manure all the time.

More Victorian Terrain Boards

Well, I managed to make the second canal section for our Victorian terrain set-up.

It wasn't easy.

When we got to the store, fg and I found that they ran out of the 1/4" plastic tube I used for the first section, so I settled on 1/4" wooden dowels. Then while getting the dowels out of the car, I snapped them against the roof.

But I managed.

We also bought some stuff to make additional 4" wide grey board sections, which I glued some wooden knobs painted black to look like iron bollards. Placed between the basic ground sections and the canal sections, it hints at a dock. I've ordered a goods crane to add to the appearance, and some crates will also help, I think

To squeeze even more mileage out of our work, we decided to use the canal sections as bases for our train tracks too. With some thin cork sheets reinforced with duct tape and some train tracks I bought years ago, we've got our railway platform too.

That's no canal - it's a track!

fg will build a station building, and we are now wondering if it's worth the investment to buy a train...

I hope to work on the Botanical Gardens next, which will mean a trip back to the art supplies store and the local florist...

Coming up...

Carried by the momentum, fg and I are planning to work on more VSF terrain stuff over the coming weeks.

While we have the basic boards and a canal and bridge more or less settled, we do need quite a bit of stuff to litter about the table to break line-of-sight and block movement. I've ordered another bridge kit by Wills along with other bits (one crossing point makes for a boring game), and we will be making some bollards.

One piece that I managed to make from stuff on hand is this monument:

Professor Fliners Petrie enthuses over the find; Abdul is not impressed.

It was a simple build: a Celtic cross on plinth from the Renedra gravestone set, glued to a Renedra 20mm square base, glued to a 25mm square base with a recessed top, glued to a Renedra 40mm square base, glued to a Renedra 60mm x 50mm base. I added a thin square of plasticard to the plinth as a bronze plaque. It's much smaller than a real monument should be, but it should add to the overall look of the table.

Also, my small order of Reaper figures arrived yesterday, which gives me my Thor figure for my Norse Dwarf warband for OGAM. This is the original figure:

Even though he is only man-sized, his proportions fit those of a LOTR dwarf. To make him more Thor-like, I simplified the hammer's head and shortened the shaft. I snipped him off his integral base, added some putty to repair the lost bulk from his shoes, and drilled the pin holes to fit him on a Fantascape resin base with runes on it.

Suddenly, it occurred to Dili that maybe this guy wasn't a god-sized dwarf, but a normal-sized human...

I am very tempted to paint him in the scheme of the Marvel Comic Thor: red cape, black top with white metal rivets, yellow metal on the belt, black skirt, blue pants, and yellow-brown legging and boots. The bracers will probably just be yellow metal instead of red though.

Mjolnir will be all white metal though, and I will make him a redhead as Thor was is.

Thor will be the priority project now, and once he is done it's a wrap for my OGAM warbands (which reminds me, I still owe you readers a group shot of the Fomorians...) and I will hopefully devote the long weekend next week to completing the VSF terrain.

Canal and Bridge

I know I promised a shot of my Fomorians, but I've been working on these terrain pieces these past couple of days and I just want to show them off.

"You shall not pass, Merneptah!"

fg and I pasted the paper onto the foam boards last week and I cut them to size last night. The six boards give us a playing area of 115cm x 123cm, which is close to the 4' x 4' stipulated in the rules.

I made a trip to the art shop to get some materials to make the canal sections, and since they were having a sale I bought those lovely lamp posts from Barcelona too.

The canal sections are just 1mm foam boards with lengths of square plastic tubing glued to the sides. I unfortunately miscalculated the number required and ended up with only enough for one section - hopefully I can replicate the colour when I make the next one; we will need two to span the width of the playing area. The raised bit to the left of the bridge are bits from a 1/4" square sheet which I used to strengthen the joint between two lengths of tubing.

I sprayed the whole section black, then painted the embankment grey-brown. I then painted the water surface with a brown in an uneven manner to give the impression of flowing water. Once the whole thing is dry I brushed watered-down white glue along the length. This gives the surface a glossy, reflective look - you can see a lamp post and Teddy reflected in the water.

The walking surface of the bridge is made from modelling materials from Wills, as are the sides of the bridge. The sides of the bridge come brick red and are "painted" by rubbing plaster into the gaps between the bricks. Of course from an engineering point of view the bridge isn't really viable, but it's an easy build and looks passable for a piece of wargaming terrain.

We still need a whole lot of buildings before we can have a proper game, but I think we've got a good base to build on.

Streets of London

fg came by this afternoon with the PVC foam boards he bought and we made the first two of the six boards we will need for our Empire of the Dead campaign.

The street surface is a cobblestone pattern printed on A3 sized paper which we glued to 60cm x 45cm x 3mm PVC foam boards using some tacky spray adhesive. The pattern disguises the joint between boards quite well - you can just about make out the joint in the background.

The building is a pdf from Stoelzel's Structures, glued onto 1mm PVC foam board. The pavement is from Metcalfe - I used it 'as is' for the shot here, but we will probably make the pavement wider for the actual set-up.

We need to print out a few more A3 sheets to complete the project, but at least now we how to do it relatively painlessly.

The boards will just be the beginning of the whole project: we need to make enough buildings and board clutter to make the whole thing look good.

Will take a while, this...

Merneptah and his followers

I haven't thought of a catchy name for the gang, but at least they are all painted.

The figure in the brown suit and fez is from Artizan's Thrilling Tales range, and the rest are from the North Star set.

With the mummies I've got and the figures from my Blood Bowl fantasy Egyptian team, I am set for our Empire of the Dead campaign as far as figures are concerned. We now have the task of building a set of terrain boards and buildings.

Meanwhile, Spartan Games has finally announced the release of their Ottoman ships for their Dystopian Wars range. It's going to be a busy year for me...

Cultist No. 1

All great villains need henchmen, and Merneptah is no exception.

After some discussion with fg, I decided that my robed cultists will be dressed in off-white with an Egyptian Blue trim. I did consider getting some decals of the Eye of Horus for the robes but then I decided they were cultists, not a football team...

Anyway, here is the first of the cultists, fending off an intruder to Merneptah's mansion using a stick of the stout persuasion.

One thing that painting this figure has done is to convince me that I need reading glasses...

Professor Flinders Petrie

History records that the mummy of pharaoh Merneptah was found in 1898. History is wrong.

The mummy of the pharaoh was in fact discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie almost two decades earlier. The ka of the pharaoh possessed the body of the young Egyptian assistant at the professor's side when his sarcophagus was opened; it was in that form that the pharaoh won the professor over to his plan of recovering the ancient artefacts that will restore him to his full power and allow him to reign over Egypt again.

Keeping his find a secret, Professor Petrie returned to England with his newfound master and the duo began to recruit followers with promise of arcane power and earthly wealth and luxury in the afterlife...

Portrait of Sir Flinders Petrie, c. 1886

The Merneptah stele, discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1896

Mummies!

I managed to paint up another one of the figures from the Servants of Ra pack over these past three evenings, and it joins my little gang of mummies.

The new addition is the one in the middle. Most of the rest are from Wargods of Aegyptus, a line which I love. The guy on the extreme left is from Eureka, and the tall guy on the right trying to blend in is a Reaper figure - I like their Nefsokar range too.

One reason why I chose to base my gang on the Darkfire Club in EOTD is because the Club President has the power to raise zombies - naturally, mummies are the logical equivalent formy gang! The rules call for a group of ten mummies when raised, but I think it's rather silly that mummies are being raised right here in London, so my fluff is that they are summoned magically, and so they will be accompanied by some of my animal-headed figures to bulk up the numbers. Or I can use the skeletons from my Blood Bowl team - in fact, the new guy can play for my team too...

Return of the King

While I wait for my next order of Xyston to arrive, I decided to start working on my gang for our VSF campaign.

My choice was the Servants of Ra set from North Star, chosen because I already own a few mummies and fantasy Egyptian figures used for my Blood Bowl team. Coincidentally (or maybe it's just a case of racial stereotyping), the boss of the gang spots the same bald look as my Blood Bowl team coach. I decided they would represent the same character in his Victorian and "native" dress respectively.

The character represents a young Egyptian man possessed by the ka of Merneptah, son of Ramses the Great, who plots his return to power.

Olde Towne

With fg investing in one of the upcoming VSF Kickstarters, we decided to get down to he business of recreating the Victorian urbanscape on table.

After some discussion, we remembered that we have the Streets and Sewers of Malifuax sets, which provided a base for the tabletop. For the buildings themselves we are tending towards card buildings, not just due to costs reasons but also storage space. After experimenting with some of the fantasy buildings I have, I've streamlined by process to gluing just the four walls onto a mounting board, cutting them out, and then taping them together with masking tape, leaving the last joint free so the whole piece can be stored flat - assembly will be made with the aid of an L-clip from the Malifaux set.

Then yesterday, while browsing at the local art supplies store, I found a new material: 1mm PVC foam board. It has a non porous surface, cuts more easily than cardboard, and looks like it may be more durable. An A3 sized sheet costs only S$1.75 and is just enough for a building.

Today, acting on a tip-off from a TMP discussion thread, I bought the Olde Towne set from Stoelzel's Structures. It looked expensive at US$12, but the pdf is 461 pages long and the way the graphics are organised fit my mode of operation (even if it can be a bit hard to scroll through all those pages to find the page you want).

I printed out the required pages, glued them to the foam board, cut them out (some slips there - I'll be more careful in the future), disguised the edges with a brown marker, and made this:

Each of the graphics come in three shades: daylight, night-time, and monochrome night-time - a blue overcast look to simulate movie darkness. The one shown above is the night-time version, which is darker in real life but looked bright when I as viewing it off my monitor...

Sadly, I didn't have any of my VSF figures handy to pose next to it.

The ground is a tile from the streets of Malifaux set.

The building doesn't look much on its own, but I believe once we have the numbers we can have a rather nice stage for our VSF games.