Rafe Donovan - 17th Century Star for By Savvy and Steel (Two Hour Wargames)

I've had "By Savvy and Steel" for some time now.  Read through it a few times but never got around to starting a Star character for the game.   I recently re-read "The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas.  This along with watching "Black Sails" on Starz has gotten me back into the mood for some swashbuckling adventures.  What I like about BSS is the "imagi-nation" of the fictional nation of Edenstein.  This, along with "And a Bottle of Rum" and the recent release of "Free Ports" now rounds out a (hopefully) ongoing campaign following my star character, Raphael "Rafe" Donovan.

Aaron Stack HeroClix figure

Rafe Donovan - Work In Progress

One of the things that has kept me from gaming this period has been my lack of swashbuckler and pirate figures.  Enter some cheap Heroclix figures that I picked up on-line at Miniature Market.  I was able to troll their Heroclix section and find some extremely inexpensive figures that I envisioned converting into swashbucklers and pirates.   So here is Rafe Donovan before he gets a make over.   I started with the Aaron Stack figure.    Not much of a swashbuckling figure you say?   I have to agree.

However, pop him off his base, attach to a 1" fender washer, cut off his mechanical attachment on his right arm, add a spare sword from the bit box and we have a start.   Still need to finish up the base and give him a touch up paint job.


Rafe is the third child of a gentleman from the North Central region.  His older brother, Gabriel,  has inherited the property in Saintsbury after his father's recent passing.  His older sister,  Lillie, has married and moved to Hawkesport in the Northwest Coast region.  On his 21st birthday Rafe asked Gabriel for his inheritance in order to make his way in the world.  After celebrating Christmas and New Years with his brother at the family estate, Rafe makes his way to Hawkesport to visit his sister.

Traveling from Saintbury to Hawkesport should not have been too dangerous.  However, having never been to Hawkesport before, Rafe turned off the main road to the ruined watch tower on the hill overlooking the city.  He stood admiring the view of the city and the harbor beyond.  The smell of the ocean, the sight of the ships anchored in the harbor and the sun setting on the ocean beyond stirred Rafe's blood like never before.   Then he heard the sound of boots on the broken gravel and a voice say "Only a fool comes up here alone.  And they say a fool and his money are soon parted"...

Game notes:  January 1625 - Rafe travels from North Central Edenstein to the Northwest Coast.  I rolled double 4s resulting in a Robbery.   Next time, the results of the robbery.

CD terrain

Ok, so I've picked up a bunch of old CDs along the way.  The old AOL CDs, information sent to me at work for different topics, etc.   I've seen a lot of CD terrain posted on the internet and wanted to give it a try myself.  I also had some of the pink foam insulation used by others to carve into stones, walls, etc. So with a bit of free time (i.e. 30 minutes here and there over two weeks) I managed to come up with an idea for a magic stone circle for a place of power for Song of Blades and Heroes.  Part of the inspiration was because my wife found a used copy of Bernard Cornwell's "Stonehedge" novel.

  Here are some photos of the work in process.

CD, Cut foam and a marked up base.

hand carved runes

The standing stones

Painted Base

Almost Finished

HeroScape Elven Mage for scale

Another View for scale to show the runes

Elven Warband for Song of Blades and Heroes

I haven't had much time to actually get any gaming.  However I have had time here and there to read through Song of Blades and Heroes again.  I started working on an Elven Warband.   One of the miniatures I wanted to have was a tree man.  I had an old Mage Knight Oak Mage that I had picked up a while back and decided to convert. Here is a photo I found on line of the original miniature (forgot to take a before photo).  

I popped it off the base, glued to a 1 1/2" diameter metal washer and added some additional 'branches' to his back.  The branches were small twigs that I had picked up along the way to make trees.  The texture on the back allowed the twigs to be glued into the pits and fit nicely to look like they are growing out of his back.

I also repainted the figure adding highlights.  I also added some moss to the upper branches as well as textured the base.


This is Wandelenboom (Dutch for Walking Tree).   He is a young tree man who helps the elves defend the forest from the nasties who would come in and cut down his brothers and sisters who have yet to be awaken by the elven druids.  Since he is a young tree man I figured I would give him Q4, C3, Big, Forester, Tough, Slow.  This keeps Wandelenboom down to 47 points as he is a personality due to his Tough special rule.

Here are the after conversion of our young tree man.  Photos aren't that great as I didn't have enough lighting.

Thanks for reading.

Chain Reaction -Swordplay!

Had a chance to get in a few games with John, a friend of mine yesterday.  Introduced him to Chain Reaction Swordplay! from Two Hour Wargames.  I tried to keep it simple but also showed him Warrior Heroes - Armies and Adventures and Rally Round The King.  He wanted to play a Beastman warband so we used the WHAA tables.  He created a Greater Beastman as his leader (named Grendel) and rolled three more Greater Beastmen, a Beastman and a Beastman Archer.   This was a pretty tough group.

To introduce him to the game we used the CR-Swordplay rules.  His first game was a patrol.  We rolled for terrain and had a pretty open board.  There was a hill and rough terrain where his band entered.  Since it was a patrol we rolled for PEF locations as well as the EAL (which came up 5!).   I chose the Northmen army to be the enemy.   As the beastmen came onto the board the PEFs began moving towards them.  As they resolved themselves I had two large main parties (C) and a small group.   The beastmen gained the advantage quickly and Grendel charged the one main group, quickly killing one of them.   My dice were cold and with the one kill that group failed the man down test as well as the group cohesion tests... and promptly routed from the table!

Grendel's other Greater Beastmen moved onto the other main group and an ensuing melee broke out with 6 Northmen going at it with two beastmen.  Melee resolved into an evenly matched event.  Next round Grendel charged into the melee and turned the tide for the beastmen.

The fight continued with a Greater Beastman going Out of Fight but the northmen suffered due to cold dice (I couldn't get more than one or two successes with 5 dice in melee).

The short end of the first battle, Grendel and the beastmen warband wiped out the balance of the northmen.  Granted, I forgot to roll the man down tests to see if they ran away.

That battle lasted about an hour including set up of terrain and the flipping back through the book.

So, we tried another game as a follow on.  Since Grendel and his followers had such an 'easy' time of the patrol we followed the campaign system in Swordplay! which led Grendel and his followers on a Raid - Attacker.  This table came with a bit more terrain with forest all along the entering table edge and along the one side.  Two buildings were located on the far side of the table.  PEF were rolled for and the first one was located in the area just in front of the beastmen.  They were resolved into a group of northmen of equal number.  Activation resolved that the beastmen would go first.  The second game proved to be the downfall of Grendel and his band as the dice reversed themselves.   Two of the Greater Beastmen fell Obviously Dead in the first round of melee.  Grendel and another Greater Beastman took out two northmen with an out of fight and obviously dead as well.  The one northman archer took out the minor beastman.

At this point Grendel and his remaining band withdrew from the field as there were two more PEFs to resolve and his warband consisted of himself, one Greater Beastman and a Beastman Archer (who was Rep 3 and couldn't hit anything).

Overall a fun afternoon while our wives were off at the flea market!  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures...

Which now gives me a great idea for a solo campaign.  The Northmen now send out a party to hunt down the remaining Beastmen who are roaming the highlands and attacking lone homesteads.

Haven't been able to get any gaming in since Christmas.  Plan to post soon as my wife's friend's husband is a wargamer.  He has made many a statements that we need to get together and roll some dice.   Hope to get some in this weekend.  Plan to introduce him to Two Hour Wargames.   I will run a small CR-FV based Star Wars encounter.  Plenty of clone troopers and a few Jedi to make a patrol through a suspected separatist base.

5150 - New Beginnings

So it has been a while since I've had a chance to do any gaming. With the Holiday Season here I'm hoping to get some games in. I recently purchased 5150 - New Beginnings from Two Hour Wargames. After reading through a few times I created my first Star, Jax Alexander - Bounty Hunter.

Jax is Rep 5; Fitness -4, People-3, Savvy-5, and Science-0

Jax follows the Mercenary QRS and has Profit as his motivation (he IS a Bounty Hunter after all).

He has Charismatic and Resilient as his two attributes.

He is armed with a BA Pistol and a knife. He wears an armored jacket and carries a Combat Comlink.

He has three grunts that he has recruited to start the game. A Rep 5 Guide (helps find the leads in the darkest of New Hope City), a Rep 5 Gunslinger (muscle for those tough encounters) and a Rep 4 Pilot (for when we need to get off-planet).

Hope to post some over the Christmas weekend.

Merry Christmas!

Six Gun Sound : Blaze of Glory

Found a recent post on the Two Hour Wargames Yahoo group with a link to a write up on the boardgamegeek.com that I had posted shortly after I purchased Six Gun Sound. Here is the link to that write up.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/312166/shootout-in-big-rock-nevada-generating-a-\
character

Re-reading that write up along with recently returning from vacation out west in Wyoming and Colorado got me interested in gaming this genre again. I looked through and could not find in my files any more on this character. Glad it was pointed out to me a few years later... look for more soon.