From GW to WG

 So,

Been thinking about this a lot recently and how once again I feel that the Games Workshop Hobby for me is gone. GW's current trend of marketing seems to be not for me anymore as they are more focused on attracting new customers for the corporate machine. Us older gamers that have been in the hobby for some time are not important, I know this first hand from my short time working at GW, during training they seem to disparage long time hobbyists, but I wont go into that. All I see is new things to get more money for the company and the current trend of limited supply is unsettling, almost like they are causing this frenzy for their products on purpose.

Well, with that said, I think I may be switching over to Wiley Games and the start playing more of his games. For those that dont know, Jaye Wiley (Barons Blog) is an independent rules writer who is most notorious for  Fistful of Lead and Fistful of Lead Reloaded.

I have been using his rules for sometime for Old West and last year for my Tales of Horror game that I ran. 

Jaye's rules are fast and fun and more importantly will not break the bank! They are a great group game or con game set of rules that will allow you to run multiple people with. I have always liked skirmish games and these rules fit the bill. The other great thing is he offers many different periods and settings using the same core rules.

As you can see above, he does have just a few different periods and settings, besides these there are scenarios and other cool things on his website. Out of the above I am only missing two books, which I will be sure to pick up soon. Jaye is working on a set of Fantasy rules currently and hopefully a Big Stompy Robot set of rules that I keep bugging him about. He has much more settings planned for these fun rules.

As I said above, I think I am going to move more towards actually playing these rules in the future, the game buddies I get to play with enjoy them. Plus, by playing these rules, I can use whatever figures I want to and that is something that I like to do!

So if your looking for fast, fun skirmish rules, look no further, these are the rules your looking for!

TK

Halloween Game of 2019 (forgotten post)

So,

Last October 26, 2019 (on my Birthday) I ran a group game of Wiley Games Fistful of Lead Tales of Horror game for a select group of friends. I love hosting games and I had decided earlier in 2019 that I would host a game on my birthday and wanted it to be a themed Halloween event. I used to play and run Warhammer Fantasy Battles Halloween games here at my house years ago, but just never got back to doing it.

Wiley Games Awesome Supplement for FFoL

 So I set out to paint and model everything for the game, it would be a gift to my friends from me and allowed me to get back into hosting games again. All I knew is that this game needed to look nice and have that Wow factor to the game. I have been collecting up terrain and have used it in other games, so all I had to do was figure out what I wanted to use.

Table and groups of figures for the gsme.

Another shot of the board

So with the terrain and figures done I had to come up with a scenario for the game. I had Vampires, Werewolves, Cossack's and Monster Hunters among other groups. The scenario I decided to go with was modified from the Tales of Horror rules. Basically the Vampires were trying to protect their coffins that were scattered around the board so they could return to them at sunlight. While the other creature groups were their to create havoc and of course the Monster hunters were there to burn the coffins and kill all monsters.

Hunters and monsters prowl the graveyard

We had five players, Tom O, Rob B, Matt W, and Bill and his Wife from Tucson play in the game. Tom took Cossack's, Rob took the Frankenstein Monsters, Matt took the Werewolves and Bill and his wife took the Monster hunters each. I ran the Vampires as they were sort of a NPC group and the object of the game was to destroy them. I kept track of the turns stating that the coffins needed to be destroyed by turn 10, if any were left the vampires would get the victory.

Coffins burn!

I was worried that the Monster groups would over run the Hunters, but they held their own and it seemed that the natural hatred of Werewolves and Vampires was in full effect as the Wolves went straight after the Vamps.

Werewolf pack

Here are a few more shots from the game.

Frankenstein not as tough as we thought. 

Creepy woods with a forgotten coffin

The pumpkin patch hiding a coffin

the lower end of the graveyard

The scary road through the graveyard

All in all everyone had a great time, the FFoL rules are very easy to learn and the game flows very fast. I think many folks were sold on the rules after the first couple of turns.

So how did the game end, well the Vampires were able to survive, one coffin that was hidden in the forest went undetected through most of the game only to be noticed too late, I think one Vampire survived but all that mattered was the coffin was left untouched, because after all, we all know vampires are already dead!

Sorry about late post, I thought I had posted this here, but when I looked, it was only posted to FB group I am in.

TK

The Mummy's Revenge - A Fistful of Lead Gothic horror game!

So, last Halloween I ran a Halloween game using the Fistful of Lead Gothic Horror Rules which was a blast. (which I forgot to post here, will have to correct that). Well this year I have decided to run another game but basing the game after the Mummy movies. This would allow me to use most of my extensive Pulp collection for the game.

But first I wanted to finish up a few items for the game, I thought I had much more to work on, but it seems that I had already painted or assembled those. But what i did have was three market stalls from Sarissa Precision that I wanted to jazz up.

The Bizarre is open my friend 

 The stalls include two tables per each stall, but I knew I had to add some wares to the tables. The first vendor would be a container or jar merchant, these were just beads that I had from another Pulp project. All I did was use some green stuff to make the lids on a few of the jars/containers. I also added tissue paper with watered down white glue to the roofs to provide some shade to the stall.

The finest of quality jars for you my friend.

 The next stall I wanted was a cloth merchant because I wanted some color on the table. The bolts of material are just green stuff  again rolled or folded into shape.

Very nice material my friend, only the best here!

 The last stall would be a fruit stand, I built the boxes holding the fruit out of plastic card and then green stuff for all the fruit. I was surprised at how easy it was to do, I had been putting it off, but once I got going it was pretty easy.

The most delicious fruit for you my friend!

 I also wanted to add another group to the mix, these will either be for the mummy or against, not sure which. Most of the figure just had clubs, but I did add a few swords and machine guns to them from Bolt Action left overs. I think they came out great and were nice little conversions to do.

For or Against the Mummy

 Last batch were these three, I wanted a few more townsfolk to populate the town with, a dancer, bad guy and another fez dude. I can use them for lots of different types and need to get paint.

Dancer, Bouncer and Professor 

So there you have it, some of the upcoming characters and set pieces for my next game, now lets see what else I need to paint?

TK

Fistful of Lead Reloaded!

So,

A while back, I stumbled onto a Fistful of Lead Reloaded rules on another blog I follow, Wargames and Railroads which is a great blog by the way. Anyway, Kris the blog owner did a review of a few Old West rule sets and honestly, I was not looking for another set of rules since I was happy with Legends of the Old West. But the problem with LotOW is that it is out of print and it is hard to get new players to play as most want the rule book. So after reading Kris reviews on the different rule sets, I found myself looking at the Fistful of Lead Reloaded by Wiley Games run by Jaye Wiley.

Now I have been stopping by Jayes blog for years from time to time and never put two and two together that he wrote FfoL. But after reading the review I picked up the rules and gave them a try with my buddy Robert. We were both happy with how simple and fun the rules were and it was not too long of a game. We both said we will need to get this back on the table.

Well about a two months ago, I ran another demo for my friend Richard and once again, I used the FfoL rules. It proved too be a very fun game once again and it took very little explanation to get Richard up to speed with the game, in fact it took about 5 minutes to explain everything.

Set up at Games U for Richard

 One nice thing with these rules is that they are very simple and very fun to play. The reference sheet has all you need to play on it and pretty much tells you how to play without looking at the rules. I have always said, if you can figure out a game by just looking at the reference sheet, it is a solid game.

The Good Guys from Gorgon Studios

 The game I ran for Richard brought a lot of folks around the table and the use of the playing cards for activation, just made everyone get into the mindset of Old West gaming. So with a nice looking table and a quick fast playing rule set, how can this not be a crowd favorite.

The Bad guys from Artizan Designs 

So after thinking about the games I ran and played in, I went over to Jayes site and ordered a few more items from him. I picked up For a Fistful More book, which is a nice scenario book for the game. I also ordered his laser cut tokens since it seemed wrong to use the LotOW counters. I also picked up his special playing cards, these have all the special rules on them, you can use regular playing cards, but heck, why not have these cards.

Even more scenarios!

I also order Viva la Revolucion for doing the Mexican revolution, can you say Wild bunch??? And I also picked up his Horse and musket rule book as well for my buddy Robert. I am curious to take a look at it for some Pirate action! So i see many games of FfoL in the very near future, in fact I may be taking running a few games of FfoL at a local con in July, still working out details.

So if your looking for an affordable fast and fun Old West game, Fistful of lead Reloaded is right up your alley, I highly recommend it.

TK