Empire of the Dud!

You have seen the figure in the dark purple dress before. While at Broadside Crooked dice had a deal on for this sculpt so I bought two of them. They are supposedly stone angels from a Not "Dr Where!" Tv Programme or something quite similar. But I thought for the price why not paint them as Vampires. All this is old news and has been covered before when I showed the figure on the left. The figure on the right though is new, finished it yesterday. If you are incredibly observant you will have noted that I have changed the base colour though from Grassy Green, to Sandy Yellow. There is a method to my madness (.... maybe!).  I have purchased the rules "Empire of the Dead" Being honest I have very mixed feelings about them. They are very like Necromunda, obviously with a different background setting and "gangs" but the rule mechanics are very similar. I know Necromunda works so I am not worried about that, although it might give a very retro game experience and might make me want to play that again. My main gripe with the rules is the campaign system. It really is minimal. Just checking for wound results sorting out money and possible character advances, shopping and then back to another random disjointed game. This is fixable. It will take some house rules and some hard thinking, Take for example buying equipment. As it stands in the rules any hero could have a "steam exo-skeleton" a "Tesla projector" a "steam cannon" a "pneumatic stake" a" possessed weapon" and ride a steam powered gyro copter. From what I can see there is no research or development rules, no mad inventors/scientists or the like. If you've got the cash you can just buy it. To me this seems like a missed game opportunity as players soon work out their favourite shopping list pop down to the "Acme Steam Gizmo Emporium" and do a supermarket sweep to get everything they need. Maybe this does not bother younger players but it does bother me. It seems a very half hearted way of doing things. The rules designers will no doubt say "we were trying to keep costs down" to which I would point out the 20+ pages of background material and countless paintings and images in the book counter that argument, as does the £30 price tag!

I have not given up on it just yet, but at this stage I am yet to be convinced! So coming back to why I painted the Vampire bases again. As a club we have quite a lot of cowboy 28mm buildings. So I thought IF I was going to do "Empire of the Dead" that would be a much easier setting than building a Victorian London terrain board. But for now I will not be working on EotD as I feel vaguely disappointed by the whole thing!

All the best Clint., I'll Blog again on Saturday. And to my Club Members Don't forget Crooked Dice will be running a game for us on Sunday. Game starts at 10:45 am.