Empire of the Dead demo 7/4/2013

Johan at the club was interested in trying out Empire of the Dead so I gladly put together a demo (after writing my 78th demo game army lists I really need to transfer it to Microsoft Word and print it out).

The game was around 150 Shilling per side and the two factions looked like this:

Gentlemen's Club (No affiliation)

President: Two pre-game advancement rolls which added +1 to Bravado and +1 to Combat.
Armed with a light pistol.

Vice President: One pre-game advancement roll which added 1 spell (Banishment)
Armed with a heavy pistol, and wearing a charm adding +1 to Arcane.

2x Membership with Light pistols and swords

2x Membership with Hunting Rifles

Nosferatu

Graf: with two pre-game advancement rolls which adde: "Dawn Chaser" and 1 spell (Killing Gaze!)
Armed with a sword

1 Bat swarm

2x Thrall's with Pistols and Swords

2x Thrall's with Hunting Rifles

We played on a smaller table due to lack of gaming space at the club this weekend, but it worked out quite OK (2x4' instead of 4x4' which is the standard table size). As this was Johan's first game I just made it about wiping the opposing gang off the table so we could focus on the rules and game mechanics.

The game was played during "Night time" so the Gentlemen were at a slight disadvantage but both factions soon came into firing range of each other anyway. The gunfights were mostly won by the Nosferatu (played by Johan), his Thrall's scored some nice hits which killed off a Gentlemen membership and the Vice President, while the Batswarm managed to bring down a another Membership single handedly despite ferocious hand to hand combat spanning several turns and ending with the Bat swarm being down to 1 wound!

I personally liked that we got to include the Arcane powers, and that I decided to make a few pre-game advancements of the characters as that gave the fight a bit more flavor, it also showed that a Graf with no guns can still be VERY scary if he has killing gaze, which he used to kill one Gentleman with, before rushing in to duel with the President.

In the end game brawl the President ended up fighting the Graf, the Bat Swarm and two Thrall's but still held his ground! He actually scored a DOWN result on one Thrall which then bled to death, and wiped gutted the Bat swarm, the remaining Membership armed with a rifle also killed a Thrall so it almost looked as if the battle was turning.

However, after much fighting back and forth the Graf killed the President, and the remaining Gentleman Membership failed his Bravado and fled off table!

Johan enjoyed the game, and I talked about the various aspects of building a gang, the start boxes, factions, level up and the whole post game sequence. He had already picked up the rulebook a few months ago but now looked to buy miniatures as well (he seemed interested in the Gent's "Darkfire Club" and the zombies). I hope we get to play more Empire of the Dead at the club, there is a bunch of people with both rulebook and miniatures at this point - and it's a really fun and quick game which should be easily squeezed in between all the Flames of War stuff dominating the gaming time down there.