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TRE Games Relaxing Dead Casualty Markers

 The Relaxing Dead

These charming fellows are from TRE Games and are The Relaxing Dead Casualty Markers.

I wanted some interesting casualty markers for Mars Attacks and Fallout tabletop games and my Fallout roleplaying group. The kind of markers that show that someone was ashed by a critical laser beam shot and these MDF markers were just the thing.

They are 28mm scale and a little on the fragile side. So be careful when you push them out of their frames. I had to glue some severed limbs back to bodies on a couple of these, as you can see from the photos below. But they are holding together well despite their little mishap.

I added dabs of PVA glue (White glue) and sand to a number of these markers to give a more 3-dimensional shape to the flat MDF cutouts. This then became the focus for making it look like glowing ash and charred remains.

One flash, and your ash!

The paint job was basic and so it's nothing to write home about. Just black primer spray and the sand painted a few shades of red to orange, and then a drybrush of grey over the whole model. They are casualty markers. No need to bust a gut doing an amazing paint job. Just get them on the table.

Ghostbusters roleplaying game - a Halloween one-shot

 

I've been remiss in keeping the blog up to date. But that's been for good reasons. I was developing a homegrown d20 version of the Ghostbusters roleplaying game with a view to running a one-off Halloween game for my roleplaying group. Well, time got away, and we were only able to catch up for the game last Sunday evening.

These pictures are from a critical moment in the opening act of the game. The game began with the lads hurtling down Main Street in Ecto 1B in hot pursuit of The Driver who had possessed a taxi. Being new recruits to The Ghostbusters, they weren't entrusted with using Ecto 1A. As it stood, they and a police car were chasing the taxi as it drove recklessly narrowly missing pedestrians and other vehicles on the wrong side of the road. The police car lost a tyre as it was attacked by mutant spookflies and was taken out of the chase. The lads, hanging out the window with their proton emitters, managed to take out a number of spookflies (the driver also took out a couple with one splatting into the windshield of Ecto 1, and another slamming into the rear window when he slammed on the breaks).

Finally, the lads managed to take out one of the possessed taxi's wheels and it came to rest in a blocked off intersection.

This was where the fun began when The Driver possessed one car after the other sending them careening forwards into the intrepid players. They managed to get out of the way and a car pileup at the intersection ensued. Eventually they were able to make The Driver manifest and hit him with their proton streams before wrangling him into a trap. Job done; they felt pretty good about themselves.

Slimed! Down for 1d4 rounds. Bloody spookflies!

This was Act 1 of the game and meant to teach them how to play using some of the special mechanics for ghost wrangling and capture. But it turned out to go for longer than I expected and was a blast. I have to say that it's the first time I've seen my players actually pull together as a team.

I didn't get any photos of Act 2 of the game. But what was supposed to be a one-shot adventure has turned out to be longer than I expected. The idea to do a Halloween special one-shot was done on the fly, and you can see that I still haven't fully finished basing the miniatures. Nor did I have any decent road terrain, having to make do with an old grid board. Still, everyone enjoyed themselves and felt involved in the action.

Anyway, once I've finished painting and basing the miniatures properly, I'll post some better photos. But these were caught in the middle of the action and so I thought I would share them given how absent I've been on the blog of late.

The cars are all 1:43 scale. The miniatures are all Crooked Dice Miniatures Paranormal Investigators. The lads were all recruits and so aren't the main characters from Ghostbusters. The setting had them standing in with minimal training whilst the main characters all were interstate at a conference somewhere.

Halo for Gruntz15mm - Halo Ground Command

I was fortunate enough in the day to have purchased some of the Halo Ground Command miniatures from the now defunct Spartan Games. These are 15mm metal miniatures. But I wasn't a fan of the game system or the multi-bases for the soldiers. I only prefer multi-bases for 10mm and below.

Finding Gruntz 15mm recently has breathed new life into these miniatures. My test squad is finally finished and ready for the tabletop.

Painting was a very simple process.

• carefully cut off the plug that is attached to each miniatures foot that's used for the multi-base.
• Prime in black spray
• drybrush fatigues in light grey
• paint combat armour in a suitable green colour
• paint the skin
• drybrush the weapon with a gun metal metallic paint
• wash in Agrax Earthshade
• do the base...done!

Sarge!

This is the combat medic

Field comms

Fireteam Alpha

One team down. Just a few more to go.