Empire of the Dead "Rescue" AAR

3rd and last scenario in the mini campaign depicting the struggle between the Gentlemen’s club and the Nosferatu. Last encounter ended with a severe blow to the Nosferatu, as their leaders (The Graf and the Guardian) were both captured!

The 4 Thrall’s that remained after the last fight stocked up on Scatter guns and armed themselves with additional Shotguns before heading out into the night and towards the secluded farmhouse where the Gentlemen held their prisoners.


Scenario "Prisoner"
Location: Secluded farmhouse
Time of day: Night

Both the Graf and the Guardian were kept under guard by two Gentlemen memberships in the farmhouse. The Thralls needed to somehow take care of the guards so that the prisoners can escape.

Scenario rewards

Win = 20 Shilling
Draw = 15 Shilling
Lose = 10 Shilling
Each kill = 5 Shilling
Each man left standing = 2 Shilling
Moving a prisoner off table gives a 5 Shilling bonus.
Killing one of the prisoners results in a 5 shilling penalty.

The game starts with the sneaky Nosferatu Thrall’s winning the initiative, staying out of LoS due to the reduced night LoS they manage to flank both perimeter guards – firing at them with shotguns and scatter guns. One of the gentlemen is severely wounded and rolls a “Down” result, crawling around in his own blood. The Vice President ducks away at the last moment as a hail of bullet fly by his post – he answers with his heavy pistol but fails to hit his attacker.

The Nosferatu rush forward opening fire with a scattergun at the Vice president who too gets wounded and ends up “Down”, all he can do is try to crawl out of range for his attackers so they won’t slit his throat. Guarding the door outside on the porch the President pops out from behind a corner and opens fire and kills one of the Thralls with a well placed bullet. But not before the Thrall runs up to the window and maims one of the guards with a shot in the back – which starts a commotion inside the small room as guards and prisoners start to brawl.

The gunfight outside the building continues, but one of the “Down”  gentlemen drops exhausted due to blood loss, while the Vice President fails to regain his senses. One of the guards inside the building is punched so hard he becomes “Discombobulated” and staggers about as the Guardian escaped out one window leaving the remaining guard to be subdued by the Graf who then turns to escape out the other window.

Running like mad the Guardian escapes north towards the small forest, and reaches safety. Back at the farmhouse the guards and remaining Gentlemen regain their senses and run up to the window just in time to open fire at the Thrall’s covering the escape of the Graf. Bullets are flying both ways as the Vice president finally becomes overwhelmed with pain and passes out.  Both Thrall’s covering the Graf end up shot which makes the remaining Nosferatu – including the Graf- flee in panic!

Due to the utter chaos os the situation we counted the game as a Draw since only one of the prisoners managed to move off the table in a orderly fashion. The Nosferatu still received extra Shillings because of their current “underdog “ status with their lower standing.

During the post game sequence the vice President rolled a arm injury, the other Gentleman suffered no permanent injury. The Thrall’s also escaped with no permanent injuries, but one of them was captured by the Peelers – but was released “due to lack of evidence”.

And thus ended our mini campaign intended to get a taste of the game. We will reboot and start over, preferably with some freshly painted up miniatures  sometime next week. Already started painting on some of the new Nosferatu sculpts earlier during the week. I also have a couple of miniatures in my collection for which I'm going to write up some Empire of the Dead rules. I will post those unit profiles as soon as they are finished.

Also while I went on to play Flames of War after this game my opponent who already knew the rules introduced the game for two other guys  and ran a little demo game with thrown together gangs of Werevolves and Nosferatu. I just snapped a couple of pictures while I was checking up on them. From what I heard it was bloody as hell and pretty much a battle to the last man where the Graf managed to slay several of his attackers in close combat before being overwhelmed.