The Faces of New Hope City

I've been collecting, building and painting odds and ends for a few years with the intent of a Two Hour Wargames 5150: New Hope City campaign series.  This morning I pulled out most of what I've finished; I'm overdue to get this going.  

This started as a shopping center for All Things Zombie, but I just never was all that into the Night of the Living Dead and it's reboots.

S-Mart is 22" X 28" and can be the entire scenario.

I'm still getting around to stocking this with Binford tools, especially chainsaws.

Foree Electric was my first project making paper terrain on a computer to cut, fold and glue.  The building started life as a Starship Troopers base game box lid and I did almost nothing to disguise that.

The Drunken Clam and Mike's Hardware were actually made from leftover material when I made S-Mart.

Soylent Industries is inspired a little by the movie and a lot by the scenario from Irrational Number Line Games

Jerry Rivers, Investigative Reporter, Hank the Cameraman and Pavel the Engineer are from the West Wind 'Nam series.  Paulie & Joey Baggadonetz are Hasselfree Legends of Gogol figures.




The moment I first saw Hasselfree's Maddog I knew he'd be a Street Preacher.  I don't remember where, when or from whom I acquired the platinum haired, leather clad young lady.  Beach Babe Libby shall be playing the recurring role of Trophy Wife.  The photojournalist is from the same 'Nam set as the TV crew; this fellow just screams, "Dennis Hopper" to me.  Mr. Belushi will likely be the proprietor of every establishment in NHC.  Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner started life as a Bolt Action Chindit given to me by my best friend, Scott.


I don't know of a scenario in which Those Meddling Kids aren't appropriate, useful and fun.

Armorcast's Big City PD were specifically bought for the Soylent Green scenario, but are just darn useful all the time.


Old Warzone Imperial Wolfbanes were going to play the part of mercenaries until I found these Foundry Urban Violence mercs in a bargain bin.  I've painted them so that they can reasonably be a SWAT team when required.

I picked up these Star Wars Battle Droids along with a dozen Trade Federation droids for $0.25 each and I like them as Symon better than the idea of fully human appearing, "Data" androids.

Some concerned citizens who've formed a highly proactive neighborhood watch.

Alien Abduction Mothership

So I was in a funny mood yesterday morning, fired up Powerpoint, and drew this.  Last night after work, I printed, cut and glued it.  This is the result of the second attempt, and the artwork is a little cartoony, so I'm calling it a prototype.  Saucer crew is Flying Frog Martians.  Abductees are Bobby Jackson's Thugz, and Reaper's Bonzo because... Evil Clown.

Life's too short to not play an alien abduction game, and especially to proxy the alien saucer.

She's Got It... Venus

Not all that long ago, Evil Eli and I were talking about how to get people to buy into a game so we'd have more opponents and / or allies.  During this conversation, he looks at me and says, "the most important thing to get people to come to your table is awesome terrain".

Rewind to 1997.  I'm hanging out at my parent's house with my Daughter 2.0®, when my good friend Valpurgius calls me.  Actually, at that time he wasn't Valpurgius yet, that's coming up.

Anyway, he says to me, "you should come over to [the new comic & games shop just three miles from my parent's house, now long out of business], my friend Steve is running game demos".

"What's a game demo?", I asked ignorantly, which turns out to be blissfully.

"If you play a game he'll give you some miniatures, come over here".

"I'm with Daughter 2.0® right now".

"Bring her along, they have comics and toys".

"Okay, fine".  <click>.  Yes, back then we were still on landlines, and the phones went <click> when you hung them up.  True story.

So we drive five minutes (yes, there was a time back in history when you could drive somewhere in Atlanta in five minutes) over to the game store, and are underwhelmed by the sight before us.  A couple racks of comics, a small display with blister packs of miniatures I'd never seen, that said, "WARHAMMER" on them, whatever that was, and to one side a table with a few model railroad trees, chunks of that white styrofoam they use to make coolers (it probably was once a cooler) poorly painted to presumably represent rocks, and a handful of unpainted, funny looking miniature guys with guns.  Standing nearby was Not Yet Valpurgius, a very bored, stereotypical comic book shop clerk, and a grumpy looking, paunchy, balding man who was then enthusiastically introduced to me as Steve.  That is to say, NYV was enthusiastic, Steve grunted while the expression on his face indicated painful chronic constipation.

"So where's the game?", I asked, still blissfully ignorant of wargames.

"THIS is the game, it's called WARZONE, and Steve's going to give you a demo", NYV explained with the same look he's had on his face every time he's had a hidden agenda since the first time Dixie, his charming smartass of a mother, caught him sneaking cookies when he was five.

"Okay...", I said while dubiously eyeing the table full of model railroad refuse.

Steve suddenly gained some minor command of language, and asked NYV, "this is the guy who's going to run demos?", inexplicably seeming to indicate me.

That's when I realized the look on NYV's face was because his hand was in MY cookie jar.

Giving my, "good friend" a, "we're going to talk later" look, I asked Steve, "so how do we play this game?"

"you're those guys there in the corner, and you have to kill this big robot before he kills you".

"It's just like D&D, but different", was the brilliant insight offered by NYV, agent provocateur.

Daughter 2.0® was still holding my hand and announced, "I have to go potty", in the grand tradition of every six year old girl ever.  NYV siezed this opportunity to gain as much geography as possible between him and me by generously leading his Goddaughter to the back of the store, which also left me standing at this table of stuff with Svengali Steve, who says, "first we roll for initiative"...

 A few months later, I had run a significant number of demos at several area stores, having collected and painted miniatures representing Capitol Corporation and the Demnogonis and Muwajie factions of the Dark Legion, and was hanging out at The War Room, the greatest gaming store in the history of both games and stores, when Valpurgius (yes, by now he's Valpurgius and I'm Martian Banshee) announces, "we're invited to run demos and a tournament at Dragon Con".

"Tournament?  Isn't Dragon Con comic books?"  Yes, I was that ignorant.

Okay... cutting to the point now.  Inspired and tutored by Dave the Firstborn Canuck and Evil Inside Dave, the local Chronopia demo team, the best demo team I've ever heard of, we knew we had to raise the bar on terrain.  Yesterday, seventeen years later, I hosted an episode of, "This Old Terrain", in which I ressurected the remains of the Venusian jungle battlefield I had made for that convention, and which turned out to be my introduction into letting my creativity loose.  After over ten years of being stored in plastic grocery bags and moved more times than I care to recall, I brought it back nearly to it's original condition.

 

The pieces, mostly broken, having been sorted.

First to be mended were the banyan trees, mostly because they have the most readily identifiable components.

Next was the Crunchberry Tree forest, because this collection of hacked up artificial flowers is the most memorable, though not my favorite, feature of the terrain set.

The Magnolia seed pods are the only remnants of my Martian Desert terrain, and will now take the place of the long-lost Venusian Blue Spruce trees.  I like these because not only did I acquire them by picking them up for free from under a magnolia tree, the "pod" appearance at this scale inspires me to use them as a "natural hazard, malicious flora" adding an seldom used feature to my games.

Last up are the Oak Leaf palm trees, which also used to see a lot of duty when I was gaming Vietnam.

The set stretched out on a 3ft X 6ft table ready for Bugs to explore the Pleistocene era of Sol III.

The Longest Running Project I've Ever Had

Actually, I think it was around 1998.  (Checks Google) Nope, had to be about January 2000.  Episode I came out in May of 1999, and while shopping an after Christmas sale at my local Target, I saw this on clearance for seven dollars:

Most importantly, it came with this one plastic figure.  About 35-40mm tall, close enough to my Warzone 28mm for a horrible groaner of a joke:

I bought it and later that afternoon presented it to my then seven year old daughter, who expressed little interest, but was polite enough to try to play the game with me.  Moments into actual game play, with all the brutal honesty children of that age are loved for, she said to me, "Daddy, this game is stupid.  Jar Jar Binks is stupid and I don't like him.  Can I have some chocolate milk?"

These words filled me with joy and inspiration, and I immediately said, "you're right, this game is just junk, let's make some chocolate milk", and I made glasses for each of us that we drank while ceremoniously throwing the game into the trash can outside.  Everything except that orange plastic symbol of everything wrong with George Lucas' decision to prioritize merchandise sales above making a great movie.  That went to the Mountain of Lead in preparation for what was to come.

Fast forward to Dragon Con 2000, the last one I attended.  Chris (Valpurgius) Seebacher and I were hosting our third Warzone demo and tournament; the 'gang' had grown to the point where we had ten tables in continuous use, only two were for demos. That JarJar figure had been painted and made cameo appearances in nearly every photo of tournaments and demos as everybody passed it to each other.  After the third and last round of the tournament, we presented swag as prizes at our "#1" table, which had been cleared of most of the terrain while Jar Jar stood alone in the center of the battlefield.  After the prizes were awarded we asked the group, "now, anybody who wants to can grab one squad and one individual to try and kill Jar Jar Binks".

I had figured this would get a few laughs and smart comments and that maybe two or three people would want to get in a quick pickup game.  The reaction was intense as some people actually ran to retrieve their miniatures before the table filled completely.  We ended up with 11 or 12 players crowding each other as they placed their units on the edge of a 4'X4' battlefield, and the smack talk was loud and proud.  Initiatives were rolled and the order of play sorted out; when I announced that JarJar would be taking his actions fourth in the order, the table went silent as every pair of eyes locked on me with the realization that killing JarJar was not going to be all that easy.

Units surged forward under command of the first three players and then I leaned in, rolled a d12 and scatter dice and read the results from my chart.  "Jar Jar runs from the advancing troops into a unit of battle droids, becomes tangled with one and it's blaster begins firing randomly", and measured Jar Jar's random movement, rolled the scatter dice again and placed a blast template which caught two figures and told the controlling player to make an armor save.  Evil grins developed on every player and the rest of the turn involved movement that was much more tactical than the first players, and then it was Chris Seebacher's turn.

I have to take an aside here to properly describe Chris Seebacher.  The guy is frighteningly intelligent, has a photographic memory and is a brilliant tactician, whether you're programming a computer, role-playing or fighting a battle, but the really scary part about Chris is his positively evil sense of humor.  I served five years in a Long Range Surveillance Company with Chris and wasn't the first person to call him by his well-earned nickname, "Blue Falcon".

Seebacher examined the tactical situation for only an instant before announcing, "I'm firing at Aimee's squad", and rolling to hit his neighbor's unit.

Shouts of, "oh, it's ON!" erupted from the group and for several game terms, everybody prioritized eliminating their competition over the actual game objective.  Eventually, the players, with only a tiny bit of assistance from JarJar, killed each other until there were only two players left, with only a few miniatures each, but every single player stayed, commented and cheered as if they were watching the Superbowl.  I don't remember who won, because I believe to this day that everybody walked away from the table, "winning", and the entire group went for pizzas in a cloud of nonstop laughter.

Here's some previews of my "new and improved" game of killing Jar Jar Binks.