Felicity Foxcroft, Femme Fatale

I present to you Felicity Foxcroft, dilettante, freelance spy and all-around heart-breaker.

I've had this figure in my stores for quite a while, and for the life of me I can't remember where I got her from. She looks like a Hasslefree, Statuesque, or a Pulp Miniature sculpt. Hmm, I dunno. No matter, I think she's quite the dish with her slinky evening gown, long silk gloves, and, the ultimate accessory for a lady-about-town: a .38 snub nose revolver.

Felicity will be a welcome addition to our Pulp collection. I know for certain she'll charm the socks off of the next Shoggoth we happen across. 

- Curt

Deep One Rising

I've decided to be crafty and enter the Chambers of Challenge via the Aquifer.

I could think of no better way to infiltrate this cold, watery portal than by using a creature accustomed to its inky depths, a beast not easily unsettled by unknown horrors, in fact a creature that is probably more frightening than most things it will encounter.

Behold!! Something rises from the deep! The water breaks and we see the Herald of Father Dagon, the Protector of Mother Hydra, the Great Deep One of Y'ha-nthlei !

This is a fun resin piece from the Strange Aeons range over at Uncle Mike's Miniatures. It's the companion to the full sized model which I did a few Challenges ago. These are such great figures with loads of character.

Just for a sense of scale, here's a shot of them with their Innsmouth relations. Yeah, not really a bunch of lookers, but they are very loyal, just not fond of strangers. 

Thanks for dropping in folks!

Amanda Sharpe 'The Student' from 'Mansions of Madness'

Hi All!

As I need to book balloon fare to Awdry's Atoll, I present to you another resolute heroine from 'Mansions of Madness'.

This is Amanda Sharpe, 'The Student'. 

Amanda's a bit of a miss in MoM as her special ability is focused purely on solving puzzles. This is not bad per se, in fact it can be quite handy at times, but unfortunately it's an activity that only plays a very small part of the game so she often ends up not pulling her weight. 

Like many of the MoM characters, Amanda is also featured in other Cthulhuesque games from Fantasy Flight, and her other renditions are often far more powerful (in 'Elder Sign' she is perhaps one of the most kickass characters in that game). Oh well, you can't be the belle of the ball all the time. 

This all being said, here she is, bespectacled, fresh-faced, in a green jacket and grey skirt. Clutched to her chest is a red-bound book - maybe a university textbook, a novel perchance? But perhaps it is something entirely more significant and sinister...

It can easily be deduced that I am irredeemably slothful as I've not yet traveled a single step on any of the island roads, having taken the balloon for each journey. This is probably for the best, as with Lady Sarah's in-flight stores of champagne I'd be too smashed to attempt to stagger down any of these foreboding paths. :)

-Curt

Worst Case Scenario #18: 'Time Machines, Cultists and Samurai - Oh My!'

Its been a while since we revisited our rollicking Strange Aeons campaign of manly, two-fisted adventure and cliff-hanging derring-do, so I dug up the character sheets and dusted off the pulp figures so we could play another chapter in our story.

To recap: It is 1937, and our team of stalwart adventurers, following a tenuous lead, are  in the midst of investigating a secret cave complex along the Basque coast of war-torn Spain. They have just vanquished a combined group of The Cult of the Yellow Hand and the Nazi Special Action Unit: ‘Dark Ocean’. At the end of that pitched melee, the heroes captured a Dark Ocean senior officer whom they questioned (using a touch of harsh language, it must be admitted). 

The Dark Ocean Officer, plotting his evil plan. (figure painted by Nick)

From that miserable cretin they gained intelligence that the tunnel complex continues much deeper, ultimately leading to a super-secret laboratory of vile, eldritch design.  With this knowledge they set off to find this strange lab.

Upon entering the final cavern, the heroes discover a large foreboding device with a group of Yellow Hand cultists and a Dark Ocean officer arrayed on its platform. The evil commander points towards the interlopers and barks out an order. Before the adventurers can respond, the alien engine glows bright and their enemies disappear in a flash of yellow-green light.

The cultists give the heroes the finger before whisking away.

So , something BIG is being planned by the forces of EVIL and our heroes will need to act with cleft-chin determination if they wish to foil the nefarious plans of The Yellow Hand and Dark Ocean!
How will this end? What unspeakable things are the villains planning? Well, let's find out.

The investigators examine the machine and after some poking around deduce that it is some sort of ethereal transporter! 

On the upper command platform they find the command instrumentation is set as follows:

Ein: 32/3/50.2303 x 131/2/55.5714 + 1447
Zwei: 27/34/25.3416 x 34/30/1.9686 - 1992
Drei: 35/54/7.041 x 14/31/4.821 + 1565
Vier: 19/52/1.8624 x -99/3/35.676 +1262
Fünf: 42/43/39.2046 x -81/2/34.3608 +1602

After puzzling it out, the heroes deduced that the machine has been calibrated to five locations around the world, vis-a-vis longitude and latitude coordinates. The four numbers at the end of each sequence eluded them (but it eventually became clear as we discover below).

Knowing that there was no time to waste, our adventurers, plus two faithful henchmen, calibrated the machine to the first set of coordinates, positioned themselves on the platform, and...

....off they went.

This is the point where I had a bit of fun messing with the players.

The guys thought they would simply be travelling to another setting, playing as their normal, regular 1930s era characters. But instead what happened when I revealed the second play surface was that not only were they in another hemisphere and different time (15th century Japan), but they were also of a different race and the opposite sex! 

Here are the heroes when they left through the Ethereal Transporter

...and how they arrived on the other end(!). Yup, trippy.

So, what happened is that the Dark Ocean ethereal transporter zapped the player characters' bodies to The Dreamlands (one of the Outer Planes described in HP Lovecraft's mythos), while their souls continued onwards to their final destination, possessing bodies in that realm. Sheesh, simple really. 

And here are the Villains which were waiting for them on the other side.

The new body of the Dark Ocean officer. (figure painted by Sidney)

The villains were guarding a Japanese temple, with their leader chanting and chiming the gong. Yep, bad news. 

Undeterred, the heroes advance to make every effort to stop the ritual. Jeremy's character went up the left flank, Sylvain and the parties retainers on the right, and the rest drove up the center towards the temple.

Jeremy's female samurai quickly got stuck in with a mob of enemy ashigaru. While the first few rounds went well, with her killing several with her bow at close range, things turned for the ill and she was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Meanwhile on the opposing right flank, Sylvain cut a swath through the enemy minions with his character's naganata. The rest of the players also got caught up fighting the evil minions and time was slipping away...

At the temple the Villain had completed his dark ritual and turned to deal with the approaching heroes. A smile crossed his face as he knew what he had summoned. 

The Villain's body hideously contorted, inexplicably expanded, and finally exploded in a sheet of viscera (love that word, 'viscera' - a wonderful synonym for 'icky') to reveal that a nasty Japanese demon, a Jorõgumo, had used his body as a gateway to emerge into this world. Ewww!

The heroes were initially horrified, but quickly recovered and put their heads down to attack the foul creature. In the pitched melee, the Jorõgumo tried to cast webs to ensnare the characters but they deftly dodged them (i.e. succeeded in a series of saving throws that defied belief). In the end it was getting a little tense as all the players were severely wounded by the demon. Nonetheless, Peter's female archer notched an enchanted arrow and managed to find a gap in the demon's defences to take down the foul beast. 

It was a fun night out, with the Daisho rules giving a great game. 

As to the characters and their unfolding adventure? It looks like their next destination will be ancient Egypt. 

Have a great week and stay tuned for the next chapter!

Entry #2 to AHPC VIII: Four Heroes from 'Mansions of Madness'

Just a small entry (sorry, still no Ortona yet). This time it's four investigator/heroes from 'Mansions of Madness'. 

The 2nd edition of Fantasy Flight Games' 'Mansions of Madness' has become a well-enjoyed staple within our group since it was released almost two years ago. The first edition used a One-Against-Many game mechanic, where one player played the nasties of the 'Mansion', while the rest of the players worked cooperatively to uncover the mysteries and survive. This mechanism has worked well with many other FFG games (Descent, Imperial Assault, etc.) but its implementation was flawed in MoM to the extent that whoever played the 'Mansion' could quite easily overwhelm the investigators in fairly quick order. 

The publishers, to their credit, addressed this with their 2nd edition by using an app to run the Mansion, thereby allowing the players to work together as a cohesive team. It's been an unqualified success with our group, with us being able to enjoy not only all the old expansions, but the new content as well. I've even used it at work as a team building exercise (nothing like avoiding being eaten by a Shoggoth to bring a group of people together)!

The base game comes with a load of plastic miniatures to represent both the investigators and the various eldritch horrors they encounter. The minis are roughly 28mm in scale and for the most part are rendered quite well. My main criticism is with the quality of the plastic  itself, as the early releases were a somewhat soft, making them an absolute swine to remove mold lines and clean-up flash. Thankfully, the more recent models use a harder plastic which is much easier to work with.

Anyway, until now I've been using other miniatures from my collection to represent the heroes, but thought it'd be fun I'd try to get a bunch of the stock ones done-up during the Challenge. So, here are four heroes from the core set: Mandy Thompson, Ashcan Pete  and his K9 companion 'Duke' and Gloria Goldberg. 

Fairly basic paintjobs on the whole. I tried to keep the colours punchy and as close to the game art as possible. After the hassle of preparing the figures they were actually pretty fun to paint.

I trimmed away the original plastic bases and replaced them with clear acrylic ones. I quite like the look of them, especially with tile-based games. 

I'll see if I can get a few more done over the Challenge and perhaps I'll try to do-up one or two of the beasties as well. 

Thanks for dropping in folks. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Curt

First entry to Challenge VIII ('Challenge Ate') - 'The Unspeakable Thing Under the Bed'

For our eighth edition of the Painting Challenge, the theme is 'Challenge Ate', and so celebrates all things scary, creepy and monstrous. I could easily go off on a tangent on how this could reflect the socio-political landscape of parts of our world today, but lets keep this civil and focus instead on kinder, gentler monsters, such as fire breathing dragons, rapacious werewolves and perhaps even dread Cthulhu.  

Mulling over what I would do for my first entry, I thought back to my childhood, remembering the things that I considered to be particularly frightening and monstrous. I clearly remember having a puppet that seemed quite scary sitting in the night's darkness, and the moon-shadows of the trees outside my window could be quite creepy, but the thing that really caused me bring the covers to my nose was the thought that something unspeakable could be lurking underneath my bed. 

My mind would race, and I would think, 'What could be under there?' Was it listening for me go to sleep before it would make its move? If I ran, would it catch me before I made it to my bedroom door? Should I peak under my bedframe to make sure I was safe? Thinking of all these things while peering over the top of the sheets was such wonderfully delicious torture. 

It's a wonder I got any sleep at all during those years.

Anyway, here is a little vignette I came up with as a wink to those macabre childhood imaginations. 

The bed and teddy bear are 3D prints from files I found on Thingiverse. The bedlinen is tissue, soaked in diluted white glue, while the lone slipper and tentacle were mocked-up from a bit of milliput sculpting putty.

As I was pressed for time to make the submission, I decided to paint this in a fairly straightforward greyscale effect, with only the tentacle being in colour. I would have preferred to experiment with a few more ideas, but considering the time constraints I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out.

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Next Up: Chapter II of Ortona '43