After Action Report: Blade and Rifle

 I'm not sorry. We had it coming.
   - 'Tech Noir', GUNSHIP

look at this insane detail on one of Mangs's survivors

My regular opponent and now game designer Little Mangs of War has been working on a miniatures- and setting-agnostic ruleset, currently dubbed 'Blade and Rifle' while in development. Originally intended as survivors vs AI zombies, he's started playing around with matched play rules. I offered to help him playtest a match a few weeks ago (Sunday 3 August, for those of you tracking how long it takes me to write up after action reports). I only had to bring my own pudgy body; he provided miniatures, terrain, dice (although I did bring my dice and tape measure) and the ALPHA_1 set of the rules.

The rules themselves are a little more complex than, say, Mordheim, but less complex than, say, Infinity. They are incredibly lethal, though, which makes cover essential - Mangs completely coated the board in bushes, abandoned cars, trees, and fences and I think the game would utterly fail to work with any less terrain.

Models roll to climb or shoot/fight, with number of successes counted. Certain actions need certain numbers of successes to work, but failures don't cancel them out. Sometimes fail means increased fatigue or other resources on the sheet are spent; sometimes they mean that the action is 'wasted'. Running or sprinting has other costs as well, such as limiting turning; overwatching holds your action but if nothing then crosses your line of fire, the effect is wasted.

I enjoyed the rules once we got into them, with a few suggestions added (if you run, you should be able to attempt to leap fences or cross small gaps, but with a test - parkour! - or additional penalties ensue). Once we got into it, the rules became smooth and easy to understand.

Each model got a little sheet. Feedback from me and a few others in our small group has suggested further improvements there - A5 is easier to manage than A4, for instance. Each model is assigned a card from a deck, which is drawn for initiative. This is fun and easy, but meaning that you can't control who necessarily acts in a given moment (like in Bolt Action or Infinity). This gives a feeling of random folks thrown together rather than militaristic discipline, which I like for this game.

Some of my survivors enter the suburbs here. On a 6x4' board, there will be a lot of walking (4") to get to where we're going, but we need to hug cover - weapons have no range limits, just bonuses at closer ranges.

In the Graveyard of Terrain

 The 'paint undercoated shit' project continues...

Garden of Morr

This set has a pretty bad reputation. The Goonhammer article describes several mistakes one can make when painting it - and that guy has an airbrush. Ana has several criticisms in her old series where she modifies the hell out of hers, criticising the tacky skulls everywhere. Neither of these guys really go hard enough on the damn thing.

I've had mine for a few years now. I got it through that monthly magazine for Age of Sigmar (in which I think it's called a Sigmarite Mausoleum or something) and was initially keen. It's a big kit, it's plastic, and it works really well for Mordheim. Ana had also done a tutorial on buildings which I wanted to use (and I did, along with referencing her graveyard series and her tutorial on verdigris).

You can even see where I'd undercoated it in 2021 and played a game of Mordheim around it. Very suitable for my Undead warband.

Unfortunately, while 'yeah, paint all the stonework, then pick out the metal railings, the skulls, and the vines' sounds pretty easy in theory, in practice it fucking sucks. There is a LOT of stonework, and it's incredibly boring and tedious to grind through, even using washes, sponges, and stippling. And there are so many fucking skulls holy fucking shit.

I only really enjoyed the buildings, where I followed Ana's tutorials pretty closely (including a first experiment with her trademark white-and-black splatter effect) to give the grounds a pop of colour. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if the initial colouring on the stones hadn't gone so grey.

Anyway, the damn thing is done. It'll make good terrain for Sun Rot, Hag28, Mordheim, or any other horror skirmish game - or even some historicals, if you don't look at it too closely. All the individual buildings are removable from their bases and the whole thing can be split apart to cover more ground.

I have had a little good weather lately, and managed to undercoat a bunch of guys (and some more plastic Age of Sigmar terrain for Mordheim uses), although I have still failed to undercoat my Praetor...