Return to Dracula's America

 It's been a long time since my posse, "The Speakers for the Land," got on the table - injuring my knee and bad weather, coupled with the various holidays, kept me from taking part in Dracula's America for a few months. Fortunately, the campaign hasn't progressed much in my absence, so I wasn't hindered beyond needing a few extra reminders of some of the rules.

I played a quick game against Phil, a member of the campaign I hadn't faced off against before, pitting my Skinwalker Tribes posse against his Twilight Order posse - members of a secret society of monster hunters, armed with silver bullets, medieval armor and the possibility of summoning a sixgun-toting angel to the battlefield. 

We rolled "Escalation" for our mission - each of us would start with half our posse, rounding down, deploying on the table and in subsequent rounds could use our activations to bring the remainder on to the battlefield. For side agendas, I rolled that one of my posse members would be carrying an important letter and would receipt 1 bonus victory point if I still held it at the end of the game, while Phil had a VIP/hostage with his posse that he needed to maintain possession of to score 2 bonus victory points. 

With half-sized posses, the first few turns went quickly, with both of us leaving our corner deployment zones and starting to fan out towards the center of the table. Beyond the agendas, our only goal was to either kill or force a withdrawal of the opposing posse. 

Phil drew first blood, injuring Growing Thunder, a Crow tribe woman armed with a rifle and loosely considered second in command of my posse; one of my new recruits, Zeke Freeman, managed to immediately shoot the varmint what done it in the back.

Midgame, we both played the same card when testing for turn order, triggering an event - the occupants of a randomly determined building would shoot at everyone within 6". And wouldn't you know it, the dice came up that the green building - a dentist's office - that almost my entire posse was clustered around was the one that started shooting!

Six out of eight figures I had on the table were within 6". It was brutal. 

My two lycanthropes transformed, the chief into a bear and the other into a wolf. The bear unfortunately got gunned down almost immediately (he's a big and tempting target), but the wolf chewed through two members of Phil's posse.

The game ended with me still in possession of my letter and Phil's hostage secure (she, and the figure guarding her, never left Phil's deployment zone), so it came down to who scored the most victory points off of casualties. And when all was said and done, Phil beat me by a single victory point. 

Going into the post-game advancement, Growing Thunder sadly succumbed to her wounds and died; Chief Kicking Bird developed a second lasting injury (he'd previously lost an eye, and now has a lingering ache) but everyone else fared pretty well. Zeke's older brother Josiah gained the skill "Lead-Belly," which means his abilities don't deteriorate when he's Shaken, and White Hawk, one of my pistoleers, advanced from Novice to Veteran status, improving his combat abilities. 

All in all, a good game, and Chris gifted me a couple of Native American figures that had been in his leadpile.

Miniatures Acquired: 4

Miniatures Painted: 6

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 0

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

New Recruits for Dracula's America

 So after my last game of Dracula's America, I was down a man and had a significant chunk of cash on hand, which meant it was time to do some recruiting! I figured out what I wanted to spend my dollars on in terms of recruits and gear for them and got to work.

Left to right, we have Strikes Like a Snake (a Novice), Runs Ahead (A Hired Gun - he's a little bit better and has some special abilities but I have to pay an upkeep fee to keep him in my posse), and Zeke and Josiah Freeman, a pair of Buffalo Soldiers who have "gone native" and signed on with my posse out of a shared hatred for the resurgent Confederacy in the game's alternate-history 1875. 

Strikes and Runs Ahead are from North Star, and came included with my initial Posse purchase; the Freeman Brothers are from Artizan Designs.

I'm scheduled to play a game tomorrow, but I may need to take a rain check - the weather's supposed to be pretty miserable with another winter storm rolling in off the Lakes, and I re-wrenched my knee yesterday, just as it was feeling better. I'm not a fan of this at all. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 246

Figures Painted in 2025: 174

Beginning a Dracula's America campaign

 Tonight, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting up with a couple of local-ish guys to start a fresh campaign of Dracula's America - a supernatural western skirmish from Osprey, which really deserves the same level of releases and support as Frost/Stargrave, if you ask me! 

Premise of the game is that it's 1875, and Count Dracula used the chaos of the American Civil War to assassinate Lincoln and his entire cabinet, ensorcelling Congress into declaring him president for life. Various supernatural evils have crept in in Dracula's wake, and other forces have arisen to combat the powers of darkness. The rules themselves are perfectly servicable for a solid, non-supernatural western game as well. 

The table we played on was absolutely lavish - the game technically calls for a 3' x 3', but we played on a 4' x 4', densely packed with the the town of Shady Pines, Nebraska. I brought my posse, a group of Native Americans with a pair of lycanthropes in their midst (one turning into a bear, and the other a wolf), while Chris, my first opponent, had a warband of voodoo zombies. Our mission was to collect as many loot tokens (out of four available) as possible within the 8-turn limit of the game, with an amusingly interlinked pair of side missions - Chris got extra victory points if my posse leader was killed, and I got extra victory points if his posse leader was alive at the end of the game.

Elva Growing-Thunder darts across the street, past a drunken mountain man.

We also had civilians on the board that could get in the way, become human shields, etc. Late in the game, a complication arose - the locals were sick of us shooting it out, and began unloading their own guns at everyone around! 

Ultimately, the game concluded in a draw, though my one shapeshifter did manage to grab a loot token, transform into a wolf, and hightail it away from where all the shooting was taking place.

loot tokens portrayed by fortune cookie-shaped beads!

The second game was between myself and Set, who was also the one hosting the game. We rolled up a mission that saw our respective posse bosses squaring off in the center of town with a pair of underlings close by, and the remainder of our warbands deploying in a corner of the table. He was playing the Dark Confederacy, a group of Confederates who had stolen the secrets of reanimating the dead for their own profit. 

My boss immediately transformed into a bear, but didn't have the available movement to charge the mint-julep-slurping necromancer standing across the street. The necromancer summoned a minor eldritch entity (portrayed by a Confederate zombie holding a flag) between himself and the bear.

Unimpressed, the bear mauled the unnatural thing and sent it back to whatever hell it had been whistled up from. 

Unfortunately, the second game was all downhill from there for me, with the bear being shot down and the rest of my posse being whittled away one after another - though thankfully, most of them bled out the turn after being shot, which denied Set the victory points for either killing them outright or finishing them off. The win went to my opponent, but it was fairly close, with him ending the game with 4 VP to my 3. 

With these being campaign games, there's rolls to make after each game to determine who survived, if there are long-term injuries, and how much money your posse collects between games. Chief Kicking Bird, my posse leader, lost an eye to the Dark Confederacy, and unfortunately one of his followers, Charlie Iron-Knife (the blue-shirted figure in the staredown picture above), died of his injuries and a replacement will need to be recruited. 

All in all, I had a great time, and I'm really glad I connected with these guys and was able to meet up with them for a few games. I'm looking forward to continuing this campaign!

Getting Out of the Funk

 Two weeks without a post - I think that's the longest I've gone all year! Truth be told, I hit a bad slump in the aftermath of Wargames Among the Warplanes and I just had so much trouble even just sitting down at my hobby bench. Or I'd get there, get set up, and realize I'd been staring blankly at my miniatures for 15 minutes while paint dried on my palette. I'm not 100% sure what caused it, but I just didn't get the buoyed enjoyment/urge to hobby after this WATW that I'm used to having after a convention or show. 

I've spent a lot of that time thinking about what I'm missing, what might be bringing me down, and trying to figure out a way forward without going "Why sure, I'll buy a big bunch of miniatures for another new time period - that's sure to inspire me!"

Ultimately I had to remind myself that I'm painting for *me* - not for attention on social media, not for the purpose of putting on games for others (which has been a bit of a crapshoot this year, to be honest), but for my relaxation and peace of mind first and foremost. 

After that it was putting my butt on the stool and saying, "I'm going to sit and paint. Even if I only do one thing, that's something I wouldn't have gotten done otherwise. I'm just going to paint the hair on my Dracula's America figures and see how I feel once I've done that."

And I've got some stuff done.

First up, a group of five "African Militia" from The Assault Group - I had painted these in the immediate aftermath of Wargames Among the Warplanes, with a vague idea towards playing some Zona Alfa with the setting shifted from Eastern Europe to Central Africa. I don't remember exactly why I bought like five packs of TAG Modern Africa figures earlier this year, but I've got 'em and these were a fast, easy paint up - basically one session of painting plus a night to flock the bases.

Secondly, I finished* my initial six figures for Dracula's America - the beginnings of a campaign posse! 

OK, so not finished-finished, I need to do another coat of brown on the rim of the bases and flock them, but the painting figures part is finished! Most of these are from Northstar's official Dracula's America line, but I did include a Crow Warrior Woman from Clearco Miniatures, complete with elk-tooth dress, to mix things up a little. I'm really pleased with how they've turned out. 

What else, what else...

A buddy of mine loaned me a stack of rulebook from Rattrap Productions, covering their ".45 Adventures" pulp crimefighting skirmish and some of its supplements and spin-offs. The rulebooks are a little rough and could use another editorial pass or two (and this is apparently the first edition, not the current version) but I'm interested in giving them a try. 

The downside is they're making me go, "Oh, I should buy some 1920s Gangsters and rewatch 'The Untouchables!'"

I'll be doing a solo playtest this week, and on Saturday I have another friend coming into town to give it a go - he'll be playing the Green Hornet and Kato, I'll be some modern-ish gangsters using the figures I painted earlier this year for Fistful of Lead. 

So that's everything going on here. Time to update the tracker... Oh hey! I'm at 150 figures painted this year! Cool! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150

Go West, Young Monster

 I got an invite to join a group of gamers locally who are gearing up to start a fresh campaign of Osprey's Dracula's America - a western skirmish that can be played perfectly straight as a historical western game, or can be played as gothic horror in an 1870s America where Count Dracula has become President. Yes, you read that right. 

The game had been kind of vaguely on my radar, I knew I had friends (not local) who were fans, but I hadn't been interested in picking up a new period and a new ruleset. 

So naturally, having been invited to join a group who were playing it and loved it, I picked up a new period and a new ruleset, along with one of Northstar's prepackaged warbands. Or, I should say, my wife Gina picked it up for me - the two Wargames Among the Warplanes days excluded, 2025 hasn't been a great year for gaming, especially (non-solo) wargaming, for me. She was so excited that I'd been invited to join this group that she handed me her credit card and told me to buy whatever I needed. 

It arrived today:

And after dinner I set to work getting everyone cleaned up, flash trimmed and mold lines filed before gluing them to bases.

I also recalled I had another Native American figure in one of my project boxes - a Crow Warrior Woman from Clearco Miniatures, a very small (one-man) operation out of Spain that offers an eclectic mix of Native Americans, Neanderthals and modern zombie hunters. I'd received the figure as a complimentary inclusion in an order I'd placed with Mana Press last year and, not knowing what to do with it at the time, I dug her out and assembled her (her right hand, holding a rifle, is a separate piece), adding her to the collection; she might be subbed in for one of these figures, or be available as a future member of the posse. 

Tomorrow I'll get these 10 figures primed and then I can start painting. The current plan is to begin playing some time in October and I will not be caught with half-painted figures, I can tell you that! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 139