Anyone that knows me
is aware that I’m more of an RPG guy than a miniatures guy, but
it’s been impossible even for me to ignore the proliferation of
indie skirmish-level wargames over the last few years. It almost
feels as if miniatures gaming is in a similar place to where old
school RPGs were 15 years ago, first via the nostalgic/newstalgic
Oldhammer movement and events such as Bring Out Your Lead, then
splintering ever further into myriad Frostgrave/Mordheim inspired DIY
skirmish rulesets, most of them designed to be accessible,
miniature-agnostic, and veering strongly away from toxic catpiss
smelling ultra-competitive rules-lawyered wargaming.
Peter Vigors’ Necropolis28 is one such game. It’s a self-proclaimed diorama skirmish wargame, with a thriving play culture that places as much emphasis on crafting ghoulish terrain as it does beautiful (and strictly undead) miniatures, and has very quickly earned itself a massive following alongside other luminaries of the sub-genre like Turnip28 and Space/Sword Weirdoes.
My good friend
Stuart offered me the chance to play in a special one day
Necropolis28 day at his house. He was even nice enough to offer me a
lend of a beautifully painted Bone-themed Gathering (the Necropolis28
term for warband or gang) with a title referencing one
of the greatest brutal death metal bands of all time. Just look
at the setting and paintwork on these beauties.
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| I grew to love them |
Of course, I had to
find some way to crowbar RPGs into the weekend, so I offered to run
an OD&D hack allowing play in the twisted undead in the world of
Necropolis (The Endless City). Like all of my “quick projects” I
ended up putting quite a lot of work into it (read: fuckloads) but
more on that later!
Heading up to Stafford the night
before, I had the chance for a very quick crash course in
Necropolis28 rules from my gracious host, as well as a quick game of
Star Realms (thrashed him). Apart from that there was only time for a
quick rundown of the following day’s events before bed.
The following morning brought a slow start as the whole crew (15+ people!) arrived in dribs and drabs, but this was a blessing in disguise, allowing for many hot beverages and chances to get to know folks.
Once we got
started, Stu handed round zine programmes replete with his superb
artwork, houserules for each of our four games and containing a bag
of PUTRID mana counters and a badge (!) made for the occasion.
Narratively, the event consisted of our Gatherings scouting out
rumoured signs of actual living beings deep in the depths of The
Endless City, while attempting to trounce rivals along the way.
Mechanically this meant four scenarios devised by Stu, each of which
contained new house rules and separate victory conditions. In
addition, we were to keep track of points across the games for kills
(more accurately, ‘Shattered’ undead), spells cast, stylish
death-from-above attacks and various other metrics to calculate an
overall winner for the day’s play.
Excitingly, there was
a special feature in the form of the Mystery Boxes, handed around to
each match, and with special activation conditions based on events
happening in game. They contained extra rules and game components
that were a mystery to all. For example, in our first game the
activation condition was to be the first who picked up a Putrid mana
token.
My Gathering was kindly lent to me by Stu since I
was too much of a poser to have painted up my own set of undead
models. Here’s the roster:
- Sanctus Dismus – Lich leader capable of using the Puppet spell to send enemy models off ledges, Tireless Command to re-activate models for a further attack, and with various other abilities. Strictly Bone-themed, as was the whole crew.
- Azkaron – Armoured fighter with a powerful polearm attack.
- Snapris – Skeletal archer with enhanced speed, as it turned out a very useful guy to have.
- Renlac – Fighter with a shield and bludgeon, allowing him to Push twice as hard (see below).
- Orfang – Quick undead hound with good speed and a light attack.
Necropolis28 Game 1:
My first opponent
was Matt 1 of 2, who I’d bonded with earlier while slagging off 5e
D&D, so he seemed a perfect fit for my first game. We played on
an excellent sanguine red board constructed by Peter that has a sort
of ancient Sumerian/Mesopotamian desert vibe, at least to my
ill-infomed eyes. Putrid mana tokens were dropped on the board and
acted as a generic mana that could be used in place of any other type
of the three standard Blood/Bone/Plasm mana triumvirate. The Mystery
Box, in this case, revealed that this Putrid mana was fermenting and
had a d10 table of very unpredictable side effects when
touched!
 |
| Orfang prepares to plummet |
Matt wasn’t messing around, quickly sending out
his Lich’s familiar to grab an absolute ton of this delicious mana,
which I was aghast to see gave his model a bunch of bonuses. Then,
when my polearm warrior killed the familiar and allowed my Lich to
pick up the dropped mana, the effect was cranial detonation, sending
my dude reeling into melee combat! Not a great start.
It
was a great game that advanced on two fronts above and below an open
courtyard with my personal highlight being when I got Orfang the
undead hound to perform a diving attack from atop an arch down onto
his leader. Ultimately despite my showy theatrics, I was not to
prevail, and the first match went to Matt.
Result:
LOSS
Necropolis28 Game 2:
My next
opponent was Ed, one of the two attendees I already sort-of-knew,
both from the G+ OSR days and from his awesome series of comic zines
The Blade of Arozone.
 |
| Snapris and Azkaron on the move |
Our win condition was interesting as we had to have the most models within 3” of a randomly moving ghost. The match took place on the loftiest of the boards, an enormous chunk of grey rock with flat-topped ruins cresting it. I took the lucky deployment dice roll to seize the high(est) ground, reasoning Snapris’ ranged attack would mitigate the fact I was up against an all-flying enemy Gathering, and just hoping the victory ghost would end the game in one of my corners.
The mystery box this time contained some repulsive models of necrotic Bloated Flies. Attracted by the Shattered undead, they flew around and made a nuisance of themselves by spitting mucus and biting mandibles. We bid or rolled off for control of them each round, but they didn’t get in the way too much. It was fun using them to spit at models who were precariously close to a board edge though (a successful hit in Necropolis28 allows you to Push a model 1” in any direction – preferably to a nasty fall!)
My sketchy plan
worked, and by the game end I held the high ground and the most
models next to the ghost, who had helpfully flown all the way up to
my right hand corner of the band. Thanks, ghost. Thost.
Result:
WIN
Necropolis28 Game 3:
My opponent was Joe,
who had one of the coolest concepts for a Gathering of the weekend –
the necromancer Hob had divided himself into component parts – his
circulatory system, skin, muscles, nervous system, and his eyeballs –
each played by a separate model! The sickening bunch were on a quest
to track down Hob’s runaway skeleton. Not only that, but Joe
played as Hob’s skeleton in
the OD&D game later. Now that’s narrative gaming. Amazing
creativity on a budget too – each model here was constructed of
nothing more than string, wire, green stuff and glue.
 |
| Hob's parts |
The third
scenario was a straight up bloodbath (or bonebath or plasmbath), with
victory going to the player who managed to Shatter (destroy or
effectively ‘unsummon’, since a surviving leader can attempt to
bring lost models back to the board) the most enemy combatants.
Coincidentally, each match I played throughout the day took place on
more congested terrain than the last, and this ruined urban board was
dominated by a large building in the centre. This meant that the
first turns of each side were spent manoeuvring (Necropolis28 uses
boards that are only 16” wide, a design decision to speed up play
in initial turns) – I had to climb my guys down a high starting
ledge, but was able to block one end of an alleyway which was to
prove instrumental to my victory.
 |
| Alleyway carnage |
After the first model was Shattered, it was mystery box time – this time around producing ever-spawning maggots with a high chance of causing damage in combat, potentially spawning each time another kill occurred, again with the chance to roll off for control at the end of each turn.
Although I did end up losing my Lich in this battle, I was able to score a fairly handy victory, achieved by multiple death-from-above attacks off of the very high building in the centre into the aforementioned alleyway, which soon became clogged with maggots and blood and bone mana tokens.
Result: WIN
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| I have dog hair |
INTERLUDE: beer report
(It’s my blog and I’ll write about beer if I want to)
I brought along two fancy dark beers in very different styles: Liborious Dunkel (5.2% ABV), a German dark lager and Clotho (7% ABV), a Belgian Dubbel style from Tartarus Brewing in Leeds. Past Andrew had apparently left a bottle of Titanic Plum Porter (4.9% ABV) at Stu’s house too, which was nice of him.
Clotho (apparently the youngest of the three fates from Greek myth, shamefully had to look that one up) was definitely enjoyable, but I may have been spoiled having drunk dubbels in Europe recently. The alcohol was a bit of an overt punch on the nose, and there wasn’t too much about the beer that stuck in my memory after it was gone flavourwise, but I’d definitely give this another go.
Liborious Dunkel on the other hand, was a treat. I’ve really fallen for dark lager this year and this was a bit of a standout for me. Not as dark as some, great rush of flavours on the front end, nicely carbonated and crisp, with a really smooth aftertaste that swooped in to remind you it was a lager after all. It was around for barely enough time for me to appreciate it and served to wash down our delicious takeaway Jamaican meal very well.
Accompanying my OD&D session, the Titanic was as good as usual, not holding back on the plum but nicely tending more to the dry than the overly sweet in some sips. I’ve got to be in the mood for plum porter but this was the right time, amongst new and old friends with autumn trying its best to strew dead leaves over the calendar in the face of climate change.
 |
| A powerful impy |
The convivial and multi-talented Mönk (a founding member of Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts) was also generous enough to provide a shared bottle of Maelstrom from Docks Brewing - an appropriate name on the label for both the liquid inside and the event in general. This was an 11.5% imperial stout that I had a teeny pour of, I wasn’t letting that get away without trying it. It was like Christmas pudding in beer form, super syrupy (in a good way) with even a slight medicinal or aniseed taste and hints of port. Bloody lovely but that small taste was all I needed right then.
As well as that, in the fridge there was...Tennents Lager, which I’ve never had before and I was veeeerry apprehensive of given its notorious and absolutely rotten bigger brother beer but once curiosity (and possibly running out of other beer) got the better of me it turned out to be fine, a mellow, very easy drinking lager that wasn’t bad at all, if a bit lacking in flavour. None of the rank sugary corn-y taste you get with a lot of other cheap mass-produced lagers, just...drinkable and cold.
Necropolis28 Game 4:
The final battle of the day was against Hugh, a bloke who has multi-classed in the RPG we call life in the twin classes of archaeologist and lawyer, which I thought was cool as fuck. His Gathering was led by a Revenant rather than a Lich, which as I understood it was a leader with diminished spellcasting abilities in favour of just hitting stuff really really hard.
 |
| Maggut attack!! |
The board was absolutely chock full of machinery, ruins and aerial walkways. There was barely a line of sight to be had so poor Snapris wasn’t able to get too much of a bead with his bow. We both sent models up to the walkways (after a brief discussion of what a skeletal horse climbing a ladder might look like) and set to battle.
Neither of us were prepared for what the mystery box held this time though...a GIANT CORPSE MAGGUT. The massive and truly disgusting model tunneled out of the ground, causing anyone on high terrain to fall to the ground and take damage, and then started laying waste to all models around. Not only that, but every time it moved it left a gigantic tunnel hole, very easy to fall into and be instantly Shattered. Snap decisions had to be made about whether or not we would work together to destroy this horror or just stab each other in the metaphorical back, and I pretty much instantly acted like a total prick and started trying to kill Hugh’s Gathering with long range bowshots instead of cooperating.
His revenge, gentlemanly and sportsmanlike though it was, didn’t hold back and he deftly sent one of my models plummeting down a maggot hole, following which the Giant Maggut surfaced right next to my Lich and ate him in one bite (14 points of damage in one go...ooff). After that it was a matter of all my guys falling like dominoes and cheering on Hugh as he eventually destroyed the maggut in a battle that reminded me a little of the hex-and-counter classic O.G.R.E. game. For my treachery and cowardice, I ended the game with a grand total of zero points. Hugh was the victor and so read out the envelope containing the narrative text of the ‘Win’ condition, which ended with a downbeat YOU ARE NOTHING.
RESULT: (pathetic) LOSS
So
overall, an even split between defeat and victory. Plus, when the
end-of-play tallies were compared, I pretty much fell dead in the
centre with 28 (if I recall correctly). The winner, Pablo, scored a
staggering 60 points
by some unholy means. Prize
badges were handed out to Pablo and Mönk,
placing
first and last in the respective leaderboards.
Take a big whiff
After some
food and libations, it was time to head on to the RPG section of the
day...
NecropOD&D Session AAR
 |
| Coming soon... |
This was using my hack of the 1974 3LBB OD&D rules to allow players to use a new undead character class, The Amalgamated, sort of proto-Liches in the world of Necropolis28 who were as yet unaffiliated to any one of the three mana schools of Blood, Bone and Plasm, roughly equivalent to 4th level Fighters from OD&D.
PCs had to split 100 points between the three mana schools at character creation, representing their dedication to each. I had constructed a d100+ Gamma World-esque table for each of the three schools, with players then rolling d100+half of their points in the given school to be granted Gifts, special physical abilities of spells. Examples might be an Intestinal Lariat, Blassug’s Dental Proliferator, Aspect of the Flea, or dark and unknown magics such as Invoke The Liege of Leeches.
The
% score in each mana school was then used as a rudimentary ‘skill’
system for tasks relating to Blood, Bone or Plasm abilities, and was
also the chance to retain a spell after casting. Amalgamated HP were
equal to double their CON score, with no obvious sources of healing
(I mean, they’re already dead). Combat was to be conducted in DEX
order. Can you tell I’ve been reading Arduin recently? I’ll be
posting the ashcan version of these rules up on the blog and itch.io
in the near future.
After
spending quite a while on these rules and the adventure I was
running, I was a little nervous when only three people in the
pre-event admin had confirmed their interest to play. As so often
happens, I needn’t have worried as I had a total of eight
players in the end. I’ve run
OD&D for as many as 11 before, but this was the X factor of all
the whacky untested abilities I’d written. However,
I had the confidence that only experience and being three beers deep
can bring, and I’d set a timer for a 2 hour session, so we dived
in.
 |
| I talk with my hands a lot |
The adventure was a jaunt into the ruined manor grounds of Gyaddergut The Persistent, an incredibly ancient Lich who had mastered every longevity spell except for those concerning his physical form, and gradually just crumbled away, leaving behind a selection of bodily relics scattered around the manor and gardens – his mummified brain, hands, heart, ears and balls. Finding three of these and Gyadderguts magick circle would enable the Amalgamated PCs to complete the ritual to ascend to Lich-hood and claim his manor for themselves.
Across the 2 hours, the group discovered a puzzle unlocking an aerial bridge of coagulated blood, a fight in the air against a swarm of screeching reanimated foetuses (leading to Mönk coining the death metal song title Foeticide upon the Bridge of Blood), magical stained glass windows that shattered into swarms of flickering shards, a magical miniaturisation trap, a poltergesit haunted dining room and a battle with Gyaddergut’s lover, an undead witch who clutched his heart to her chest. They only managed to retrieve two of the relics, Gyaddergut’s heart and his hands. Lots of the group said they’d have loved to carry on, but looking around at the players faces everyone looked pretty faded after hours of miniature gaming and I could feel myself starting to flag too, so I thought it was best to call it a night. Shame I didn’t get to describe the Undead Boglins living in the privy and playing contact sports with Gyaddergut’s balls, but as DJ Beats says in People Just Do Nothing, always leave them wanting more.
The various
abilities and deformations of physical form that the group possessed
seemed to be a lot of fun. Eight players probably was a little
too many for this rules hack as there was some redundancy in the
abilities across the group, but it still went well and I had some
very encouraging feedback. Among the best was Peter’s remark that
“it felt like the old days” – what more could an old-school DM
ask for?
After that it was simply a matter of staying up way too late for an
al fresco screening of
Fulci’s masterpiece Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi aka Zombie
2.
The following
morning was spent feasting
upon fried breakfast at a nearby biker cafe (Staffordshire oatcakes
are a new discovery for me, I’m hooked) and watching
some playthroughs of Ryan of Blightbones Miniatures experimental
sci-fi
terrainless miniatures game
set on a world entirely consumed by flies and lit by eldritch
lanterns! The combination of insanely far-out concept and a ruleset
concise enough to fit on a pocketmod looked great and I’m very keen
to see how that develops. Oh
yeah, and the Crokinole set came out.
All-in-all
this was a fantastic weekend full
of necrotic energies and stupid death metal voices
and I have to give props to Peter for such a fun game that’s
inspired so many, and to Stu for hosting our foul carcasses in his
home. The talent
on display was insane, I’m shocked at the level of kitbashing and
model-sculpting I saw, especially
from some people who apparently were very new to sculpting and
converting. The
terrain in particular
was awe-inspiring and lent a
real dose of atmosphere to the proceedings.
Plus,
I might be cynical, but from this event
and the brief glimpses I’ve had at the indie wargaming community,
it’s in a much healthier place than RPGs are right now. It could
well be a case of the necrotic grass being greener, but
it seems in this side of the gaming hobby, the Cool Shit comes first,
with less of the endless theory, cynicism,
in-fighting, factionalism and bitterness that
regularly soaks the independent and old-school RPG scene.
I think we could learn from
this.
I’m way behind on my con reports as I still need to do a writeup of
Norwich Games Con ‘24 too, it’s only a month late, but that’s
coming soon!
######
Some links to creators and artists I rubbed
shoulders with this weekend:
Peter
Vigors and Necropolis28. Rules are here
and the Discord for the game can be found here.
Ryan
Blightbones Miniatures: As
close to ‘official’ Necropolis28 miniatures as there are.
Amazing talent
Pablo Silvestrus: Beautiful
demonic linocuts and jawdropping miniatures.
An
article on Blades of Arazone, the DIY comic by J Edward Scott
that wouldn’t be out of place on the gatefold of a Hawkwind LP
Stu
‘Herman Inclusus’ Kolakovic: Disgustingly
talented artist. I hate you Stu.
(Only half the crew pictured the morning after. Note the Necrobin.
L-R: Yours truly, Stu, Pablo, Alex, Dan, Chris, Peter, Ryan, Mönk
)