Empire of the Dead: Artifact hunt 27/1 AAR

Thomas became so interested in Empire of the Dead that we ended up dedicating another weekend at the club to playing this game.

This time around we tried something different, instead of using the 150 shilling starting point we bumped our initial gangs to 200 shillings and allowed ourselves to roll for attribute and skills prior to the first game to have the characters be a little less ordinary.

Thomas wanted to run a "Deep one cult" based upon the "Lyacon" faction but since I had not brought along any miniatures for that he had to run a more regular looking Lyacon faction. My lack of proper werewolf miniatures had Thomas use my two feral looking "vampire spawns" from Reaper as his Beastlord and Packmaster. I also didn't have any wolves, so he had to use stand in miniatures from my collection of regular dogs. The Wolfskins were based upon the "brotherhood" miniatures and worked well since they had the right low tech weapons and look.

I ran the Gentlemen's Club, President (with flower coat) armed with a light pistol and brass knuckles, a Secretary with Steam powered exo skeleton+heavy armor+ man portable gatling gun, and three regular Membership characters (ligh pistol, heavy pistol, hunting rifle and knives.



On the pre-game attribute and skill rolls the following characters leveled up with:

Beastlord: Fighting beast
Packmaster: Zealot

President: Hip shot, It's all in the reflexes
Secratary: Apothecary, Marksmanship +1

The scenario was Artefact hunt, both gangs started on the opposite table corners from each other and we had 4 objectives on the table that had to be checked for their true value.

As it turned out the very first box my Gentlemen found and checked was indeed the artifact they had been tasked with retrieving - it looked as if the game would be over in no time. I still had to drag it off my table edge. The knowledge of imminent defeat had the Lyacons rush across the table at breakneck speed.

In order to slow down the feral enemy the Gentlemen invoked an Angry mob and sent it off in the direction of two wolfskin's who were notching their crossbows in panicked hurry. Crazed dogs appeared and attacked one of the gentlemen Membership's, while the Secretary started blasting everything that moved with his Gatling gun - fortunately  for him not a single full auto burst made the gun jam!

Shots flew wide, pistol, rifle and crossbow missiles were exchanged. Dogs started ripping apart one of the membership while another membership shot dead a charging canine. The Beastlord and Packmaster both ran with the intent of flanking the membership who was hauling the valuable box - but both were caught in the open and received a hail of gatling gun shots. The Beastlord was hit with 3 bullets and cut down, while not dead yet he was crawling around in his own blood. The Packmaster however ran off into safety.

The angry mom made contact with the two wolfskins firing their crossbows and brought down one of them in angry fury but not before themselves suffering a casualty. The remaining wolfskin was fending off the angry villagers for another two turns before the mob was scattered by a failed morale roll!

Dogs had chewed up two membership from the Gentlemen's club and the Packmaster(or Packmistress) had slain the remaining one - leaving the President and Secretary alone. At the same time the Lyacons had taken enough casualties  to drop below 50% of their starting numbers. Both factions would have to take bravado tests for all their characters at the start of each new turn!

It started badly for the Lyacons, the beastlord bled to death all that remained left was the Packmaster and one wolfskin. The Gentlemen's club president also ran away. This didn't stop the Secretary from walking over to the Packmaster, blast her with a burst from the Gatling gun and killing her. At this point both factions had 1 member left on the table, of course the Secratary failed his bravado test despite being within reach of the valuable box - and ran off. The Lyacons won the game and we decided it would be fair to count that as if they had taken the box as well.

The box contained night vision goggles. Perhaps not the most useful item for the Lyacon faction.

Post game injury results:

Membership with Light pistol suffered an arm injury (-1Str and can only use 1-handed weapons)
Membership with heavy pistol suffered a chest injury

Wolfskin lost an eye

All other casualties managed to survive without lasting effects.

Post game attribute and skill advancement:


Beast Lord: Heroic leap
Packmaster: Regeneration, Hammer Blow

President: Sharpshooter
Secretary: Combat +1, Marksman

The nice thing with this game is that you can decide yourself whether or not to make "advancement rolls" for your characters. There are no experience points but rather you pay 10 shilling for each advancement roll, and you are free to choose from Attributes (Stats), Generic and Faction skills tables. So you have relatively good control over how your faction is developing over the course of a campaign.