Dress Rehearsals, Ripper Wars.

I love horror be it movies or books I just love to be frighten, now when I say horror I don't mean gore a bit of gore is ok but its the trill of the build up of tension that really gets me, that something seen from the corner of your eye or the classic seen from Halloween the one were the camera is focused on Jamie Lee Curtis but out of focus you can see the bad guy getting back to his feet.

Now needless to say that using model figures with still shots on a blog such a scene could never be done, but I think you can build tension & atmosphere, can you be drawn in so that you care enough to route for the side of good or evil ? well going on how people told me I'd have to rescue Carter on the O.W.I The Base post I think maybe you can & I believe that's the key to most stories are characters that people care about, the 3 things combined can  make a good horror :) well that's enough waffling out of me for now, I'll instead let the script writer see if he can create a little atmosphere for what's going on.

In another place & time stands the village of Whitehurst, there was nothing remarkable or outstanding about Whitehurst & the people went about their lives in a peaceful & harmonious way, but about 6 months ago all of that started to change, first it was the glimpses of a strange man roaming in the woods, then the howling heard in the night.

But worst still was to come, the disappearance for loved one's dragged off into the night, who would then be seen a short time later wondering as undead lost souls after dark, now the people of Whitehurst live in fear but the disappearance's keep happening is there to be no end to this nightmare ?

Right what this post is all about is me trying out Ripper Wars which is a Gothic Horror set in Victorian London & has all your classic horror villains from werewolves to Dracula, now I don't have any such models but do have some that can fit into horror if I move the time & setting.

The game is meant to be played at 1K plus points on a 6x3 table but to make things a bit easier I cut the sides down to just over 500pts & set up a 4x4 table.

 Now I have to point out that when playing a game I like to have a book (call me old fashioned) but I got these rules from over on Vagabond's blog which has a link in the blog roll to the side & if you never pay it a visit you really should,( that's another advertisement you'll have to pay for John) a link to the rules are in a comment by Eduardo so my thanks to him.

Anyway where was I, yes trying out the game the idea behind this is I'd like to expand the type of movies I make :) & horror is one of the types I'd like to do, at this point in time however I don't want to invest in more model's as the make up department is busy enough, did I ever mention I don't like painting ?

So after one game how did I find Ripper Wars ? well I've got to try to be fair to the game here & there was somethings I did like as well as some I didn't.

The good, the activation which is done using cards works like this, each unit is deal a playing card at the start of each turn & acts on the card number starting with the joker followed by aces & working you way down to the two, units can go on hold & then act on a lower number is they wish, this I find works well especially for solo play which I should point out the game is not design with solo play in mind.

The units are pre-made up but you can give them some upgrades which is also good, but if you just want to throw a game together quickly you could just put a couple of units for each side together.

There's a terrain table for picking what terrain in on which area of the table which divided in to six parts & each player set up the terrain on his side of the board in the way he thinks will be to his advantage.

 Random events that can happen through out the game, now I know a lot of people don't like this kind of thing but I'm not one of them plus when playing solo I always find it to be good if you don't have complete control over things.

The bad, there is no real indication as to how much terrain you should put in each area & terrain seems to play a bit part as it can slow units down & give cover, with from what I can see the evil side having very little shooting this is very important.

Hard to kill units, now this could be just my crap dice rolling or maybe just the units I used but it did feel like it was hard to kill things, while hero's should be hard to kill I think the other units shouldn't be so hard.

Bennies, these let you do a few different things like rerolls (which I dislike tbh) or if a model is shaken undoing it without needing to roll to do so.

Line of sight & who do I shoot or hit, it might be just me missing something but there doesn't seem to be any indication as to how either works, is it true line of sight ? I think it has to be, but the bigger problem is in shooting & close combat, when a unit shoots do you shoot model by model with each one picking a target ? or do they all just shoot together at one unit, also which models within the unit takes the damage, this is very important as models within a unit can be shaken on a one by one bases & if a shaken model takes damage its removed from play, same for close combat but you could do this on a model by model with the fight between each one that's in base to base.

Final thought's, like I said above I don't want to be to hard on the game as only trying it once is not really enough & some of the faults like who shoots at who are easy to fix, things like units been to hard to kill wouldn't be, I'll most likely try it out once or twice more as I'd like to be able to play a horror game & this feels like it would switch easily to a different setting, Eduardo also put a link to another set of horror rules set in the wild west by two hour wargaming, but as a revival studios uses rules which around this is set I don't want to go down that road.

Now before I go here are some picture's for John (Vagabond) but I'll add the link for anyone else interested :)   

These things are pencil sharpeners but are cheap enough if you order a few together to help with the postage, this wagon I think works very well with 28mm scale, as you can see from the 28mm model I put in the picture. 

 To use the carriage inside need's a bit of work removing the sharpener, but I did that on the car below with out to much problem. 

 This wagon is not as good scale wise & I don't think would work in a western setting but would be ok in some others imo

 The car I think also scales well, but the problem is you won't know what does or doesn't work  untill you buy them unless you've seen someone else use them, so it's a case of pay your money & take your chances :)

 Here's the link to the site.
http://sharpenking.com/

That's a rap for this post as always my thanks for dropping in & if you'd care to leave a comment it would be welcomed :)