I see that aggro84 already beat me to throw-ups for PacifiCon 2013, but I'll just add my shots here. I'm actually a worse photographer than he is but these pics need to go somewhere!
Fantasy Gladiator Arena
After the
MEST Tactics Groups member ssendam asked me about setting up a tutorial or introductory scenario I got the idea to build an arena. The goal was two-fold; the first was to have something that I could lug around that looked visually impressive. I could bring these bits to a gaming convention for example. The second goal was to have some figures and terrain that I could use to conduct training sessions.
So, @sssendam, I will eventually answer your request with a video or HTML5 animation! Work-in-progress gentlemen; this stuff takes time. =)
For those who want to know more about these figures,
see my earlier posts. These are Schleich and Papo figures.
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| Spartan vs. Cyclops |
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| Gladiator vs. Northerner. |
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| Roman vs. Egyptian |
As a side-note on the gladiator display; we used it as a quick and easy visual grab for new-comers. The idea was that we'd use the arena to explain the basic game mechanics before migrating players into the main game. Some people that signed up for the Retropocalypse event (basically a "Wasteland" or "Fallout" scenario) had thought I was doing a switcheroo on them.
Retropocalypse Board One
We set up two 48" x 60" boards for the Retropocalypse events. This first board focused on a rural town; much more like Cormac McCarthy's bleak
"The Road". I think that thematically it wasn't what people expected because the imagery from
Fallout and Wasteland is much more like a desert town than something rural. Next time we'll just ditch the mid-west rural towns and go all Southwestern.
Retropocalypse Board Two
This is the board that we ran our games on. We ran a session in both of the 4-hour blocks. Each player chose an assembly of 4-6 characters. Here's a sample of what they look like at this
link. I prepared a lot of hand-out materials for the game. Each attendee to our games received a saddle-stapled copy of the plain basic rules (via
here), a
mission brief introducing new weapons and traits for the Retropocalypse genre, a faction card, and several character cards. I'll create another blog post and introduce these assets more properly later.
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| I think this is from the first game session. |
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The long strip of road in the middle makes
for a crazy barrier that few would cross seeing
that it would be sort of suicidal. |
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| Long view of that same road. |
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Those familiar with our rules would know that we
emulate the UK gamers and use measuring sticks.
Very useful to get range and direction at one time. |
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| Yep. That's about 8". |
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Those tokens with the stars are Objective Markers.
aggro84 will try to get prettier stuff painted up for these
in the near future. When an OM is touched it is removed
and the player gets to draw a Resource Card that
can confer intragame benefits. |
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Whee! I got one! Not a good position to be
in even though behind Hard Cover. |
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A.J. Smithson of the Vault Dwellers is an Elite
with a Heavy Machine Gun. Nasty even without
using the Fire-lane benefits. |
Miscellaneous
This is Mike O'Brien's Dust Warfare/Tactics battlefield. It had 8 players and 4 GMs. The table was 24 feet long. He is not affialiated with Noble Pursuits but the guy is legit. He informs me that the flying saucer at the center are two ski-pads glued together. I saw it close up; the smoke plumes are lit by flickering electric votive candles. A very nice effect.
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| From Mike O'briens vantage looking down-range. |
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| Looking across. |
Banner Stand
We placed this custom-made banner and stand next to our tables. Unfortunately for us our tables were next to the vendor booths and more than once I had people asking me if we were selling anything. Also, I didn't figure that the lighter airy design would fade into the walls at a distance. I think for the next `Con I'll chose stronger colors and more contrast.
