Characters for 'Familiar Tales'

Last year I picked up the early release of 'Familiar Tales' as the group had very much enjoyed 'Mice & Mystics' by the same designer (Jerry Hawthorne from PlaidHatGames). 

Familiar Tales is a cooperative adventure game where the players run four wizard's familiars, trying to keep safe a baby girl as they flee evil forces that would otherwise do her harm. The game uses an app to run all the heavy lifting, leaving the players to enjoy a fairly rules-light session of gaming. The campaign is HUGE, with the baby girl growing into a precocious child and then a strong-willed teenager, so there is lots of gaming to be had before the conclusion of the story.

The four characters are:

'Chalk & Tweet' the stone golem with a heart of gold and his bluebird minder.

'Gribbert' the brave frog archer.

'Blaze' the fierce and resourceful fox.

and 'Flicker' the ever-optimistic fairy.

The figures are cast in a fairly hard plastic and the details are pretty good - great for using contrast paints and glazes. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't spend a lot of time on them and it sort of shows. There are many better examples out there on Twitter and other's blogs, but these intrepid adventurers have served us well.

There it is: Familiar Tales, a great, light-hearted cooperative game that is perfect for a evening's diversion with a mixed group of players. We've been playing it with our good friends Gary and Mike, who we get to see about two times a year. FT is a great way to while away an evening, rolls some dice, and have a few laughs. Recommended!

- Curt

28mm Pulp Character for 'Eldritch Horror': Brother Anastasios Sangarangos - Vrykolakas (Vampire) Hunter

Our gaming group enjoys board games almost as much as pushing miniatures around (Gasp! Sacre bleu!) and one of our current favourites is 'Eldritch Horror' by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). 

'Eldritch Horror' is a cooperative game which is set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos (similar in theme to FFG's 'Arkham Horror' but significantly streamlined). The players work together, investigating exotic locations around the globe, gathering clues and combating monsters all in order to thwart the coming of an ancient evil who is set on the world's destruction. The game is very well designed, giving a brisk-paced and very challenging romp which plays out like a rip-roaring cinematic adventure. 

At the beginning of each game every player needs to select a pre-designed character from the dozen provided (though I understand that there will be more featured in an upcoming expansion). The characters represent a gambit of the great archetypes. Some are cleft-chinned, two-fisted heroes, a few are well connected politicians and debutantes while others are unassuming academic-types who can harness arcane spells of incredible power.  

Example of the stock Character Cards from 'Eldritch Horror'.

We've played the game enough now that we've tried out all the characters numerous times, enjoying each one's strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, always liking to tinker, I've decided to make up characters for the game which correspond to each member of our gaming group or are tongue-in-cheek sendups of friends and family. 

Each of these new characters has it's own custom designed card and a corresponding figure to represent them on the game board. Some of these characters I've already shown in a previous post (my apologies for the repetition for some), but as a brief recap they are:

Captain Peter Douglas (retired Royal Navy)

Captain Douglas is a grizzled veteran of the Great War where he made a reputation for himself as a hard-driving commander of a destroyer. He gained both his D.S.C and his prized 'Broomhandle' Mauser from a boarding action where he and his crew captured a light cruiser off the coast of Africa. (The same Mauser shattered his left arm, when he was wounded by the German cruisers captain.)

Major Marty 'Gimme' Mohr (League of Nations League)

Like Douglas, Mohr is also a veteran of the First World War, but that is where the likeness ends. 'Gimme' Mohr ended his Great War as a German Stormtrooper, where he was ultimately captured, severely wounded, entering the outskirts of Paris... by himself. (From this, he has the unique distinction to have personally marked the furthest point the Imperial German army had advanced on the Western Front.) His martial skills were quickly recognized by his captors and he was quietly recruited into the secret 'League of Nations League'.

Lieutenant Jarmilla 'The Hand' Fedorak (League of Nations League)

Jarmila is also a valued member of the elite 'League of Nations League'.  As a teenager she was a member of a Ukrainian nationalist group who fought with the Whites during the Russian Civil War. She attracted attention to herself when it was found that she could, through shear force force of will, throw devastating shock waves from her withered right hand. The League has helped her harness and focus her powers through arcane psychic training and utilizing a unique power gauntlet developed by the renown Nikola Tesla.

The new character I wish to debut today is...

Anastasios Sangarangos, Brother of the Order of Alexander, renown slayer of the undead (Vrykolakas in Greek) and keeper of the Faith.

In fact Anastasios is the real name of our friend Stacy from our gaming group. Stacy is quite proud of his Greek heritage and so I thought for fun I'd make up a character (and select a figure) to reflect this.

For Anastasios' character sheet, I scanned an original card from the game in high-resolution, imported it into Photoshop and then stripped out the contextual information to create one with blank values. Now I can design cards for each member of our gaming group at will. The power is all mine...Mwhahaha!!

This 28mm figure is from the Victorian Steampunk range offered by Brigade Games. Great,  characterful and clean sculpts that I can heartily recommend.

It will be fun to see how Stacy's character works out in the game. I just need to dream up some stats for that funky automatic crossbow he's toting...

Next up: Hmm, Romans or Gladiators or more Pulp Characters - perhaps all three! We'll see what the week brings.

28mm Napoleonic French During the Russian Retreat and FormulaD Racing! (wtf?)

Ahhh, summer has finally made its presence felt here in the Canadian prairies (upwards to +30C temperatures this past week). Admittedly it's a bit late, but I'll happily take it, and so to celebrate I decided to host our weekly game out in our courtyard. This week we played an old favourite: 'Formula D'. 

Yes, they may look a mild mannered bunch but you should have seen the fisticuffs in the street after the game...

For those who may not have tried it 'Formula D' is F1 racing game which has players competing over a variety of tracks which depict famous Grad Prix racing circuits from around the world. Each car is rated 'wearpoints' for its Tires, Brakes, Gearbox, Engine, etc. which the players have to carefully manage during the race. The game utilizes various modified polyhedron dice to reflect gear changes (D4 for 1st gear, D6 for 2nd, etc.) and the trick is to find the 'sweet spot' gear in order to speed down the straights, but yet slow enough for the coming turn. Its dead-easy to learn, a trick to master and a heap of fun to play. The cars models that come with the game are fairly uninspired plastic affairs, but you can find 'after market' models on eBay to pimp your game. My good friend Dallas acquired and painted these cars for my birthday years ago (Thanks Dal!) and they get heavy use in our F1 scrums (I've had to give them a few touchups due to 'rubbing' in the corners!). 

1/300 scale F1 cars (with my favourite, Jaguar Racing, in the lead.)

As one of our several ongoing mini-campaigns, we've been conducting a full Grand Prix season this past year and this was our 4th race (Hungarian Grand Prix - a fairly fast track). 

The only place where you can safely drink & drive... Here we have Peter utilizing his mad math skills and devious slight of hand tricks in an effort to bamboozle the rest of us.  Sylvain, as you can see, was onto him like white on rice.

I managed to cheat better than the rest of the boys and so pipped first place, but Sylvain surprised us all by not exploding spectacularly, or driving headlong into the fan-packed stands, instead he came through with a heart-stopping second place, just in front of Peter. We will not speak of Stacy's appalling luck-of-the-dice as his curse may manifest itself in the retelling... 

Otherwise the hobby desk has been largely neglected in favour of enjoying the weather and working on some yard projects. That being said I have managed to get a few pieces done. Here are four unfortunate sons of France, fighting their way out of snow-swept Russia.

The fellow firing over his frozen comrade, the kneeling chasseur with sword and pistol and the carbine-armed lancer are all Perry models, while Michel Ney, 'The Bravest of the Brave', is from Gorgon Studios.

'Le Rougeaud': The last Frenchman to leave Russian soil.

It was a treat to paint these guys during the recent warm weather as many of their predecessors were grudgingly 'inspired' by the -50C conditions of our past winter (yuk). 

I have quite of few of these poor blighters left to do but they'll have to wait a bit longer as I feel like moving on to something else...