Introducing Ste to Empire of the Dead... Fracas!

Last night I had the chance to introduce Ste to Empire of the Dead. Ste has played In Her Majesty's Name, so is obviously keen on the Steampunk/VSF setting, and was interested in giving EotD a whirl. He brought his IHMN Faction of models set for that game, so we adapted them to an EotD Faction as best we could for the demo game...

The layout, again, an edge of town scene...

Ste's faction for IHMN includes a number of dastardly gentlemen, leading some robotic automatons... We mused over how best to use these in EotD... and pondered using them as proxies for 'zombies' along with a DarkFire club Gentlemans affiliation... in the end we decided to keep them as a DarkFire Faction, and the robots would actually be normal human Membership wearing Full Plate armour and wielding Brass Knuckles... A President with Axe and Pistol would lead them along with a Vice President (soccer holligan with colourful scarf) with pistol and firebrand, and another regular membership in purple attire and gasmask with pistol and sword cane...

Ste also brought along a Warehouse building he had got from Warbases... He had also embellished it with roof tiles, cornice work and some nice little posters and signage... and it fitted right in nicely...

I grabbed my sets of barrels, crates and sacks from the adjacent 'pirate board' to further embellish it...

And away we went ... we played a simple FRACAS skirmish (Daytime), with deployment splitting our factions between opposing diagonal corners...

My VP led two membership along the street towards the warehouse...

...where Ste had his President, purple chap, and two metal suits...

My President was leading two chaps across the cemetery looking to head off...

...Ste's VP and two more metal suits looking to link up with the rest of his faction at the warehouse...

Here's a series of in game shots...

I try out the hiding rules, and have my chap with repeating rifle, hide at street corner facing the approach of two 'clanks'...

Firing was deadly, going straight through the armoured suits!

Meanwhile one of my chaps who had been downed earlier bled out in the grounds besides the cemetery!...

Two more 'clanks' tried to chase down my VP and friends down the alley way, but they were nailed by a mix of rifle and pistol fire and good old stiff upper lipped pluck in melee!

Ste then ended up in a shooting duel between our presidents...

As my now un-engaged members look to get him from behind...

Ouch, down goes my president! At the same time Ste's VP charges my membership at the hedge trying to take the Hunting rifle out of the game, but a deft flick of a concealed knife downs the VP!

The subsequent hop over the hedge to finish off the downed VP, ends the game with Ste at 25% faction remaining (oops we forgot 50% break tests again!)...

We played on anyway for the hell of it... with my Pres recovering and getting back up to fight... but losing the scrap! The Purple chap was shot in the back and that ended his activities...

Stes President then jumped the hedge looking to further engage my membership as they all closed in around him... no shooting here, there was a president to avenge and gentlemen drew close combat weapons!

 But another of my membership was cut down before Ste's President was finally silenced in the press of bodies against him...

Lots of fun for both sides and Ste has plans to buy the rulebook from Westwind and see what sort of faction he can come up with for the game...

Looking forward for more!