When Nightmares Come Game #1: "Hell is Other People"

Professor Harington spent an enjoyable evening at Bingo, winning $400 in the process. He never made it home afterwards – he was found dead, his throat slit, in the parking lot less than 10 minutes after leaving. According to the police officer first on the scene, Professor Harington’s winnings were still in his pocket, eliminating theft of the money as a motive. The body has been secured and removed, and the other attendees of the bingo hall that evening have been directed to the precinct for questioning. 

 

Arriving at the scene, the Webster Street Irregulars saw two immediate challenges to their investigation. 

 

"Heh, I know those guys. Lemme go talk to them," Paul Carpenter said, hitching up his pants and nodding to the two police officers standing near one of the squad cars. The retired cop called out to his former coworkers, walking over to talk shop with them. While they were distracted, the rest of the Irregulars slipped past the police cordon. 

Examining the keypad to the bingo hall's alarm system, Lisa McLaren chuckled to herself. "This will be easy," she said, selecting a set of wire cutters from her bag. "In fact, watch this, I'm going to show you how simple this is." Under the watchful eyes of her companions, she confidently snipped a wire - and tripped the alarm. 

"Well, it looked like it would be easy," she said with a shrug. 

[With one success and one failure in the narrative scene sequence, the Irregulars scored a draw, and deploy divided between opposite table edges for the beginning of the tactical sequence.] 

 Turn 1:

Paul worked his way across the parking lot, stopping to examine an unlocked trunk on one of the squad cars. Carefully looking around to ensure no one was paying attention, he popped the trunk and took some photos of the evidence collected by the crime scene investigators. 

 Steve Carter, one of the group's wrights (craftsmen and alchemists), started sneaking across the parking lot, but froze halfway across; this was his first brush with lawbreaking in the course of a paranormal investigation.

 

Lisa and Guy split up, with Guy circling the rear of the bingo hall and letting himself in the back door; Lisa rounded the front of the building, eager to talk to a trio of working girls who were potential witnesses. However, as she got close, she froze, nervous and suddenly shy. 

 Carrie Ravencroft, the leader of the Irregulars and the group's sole Weaver, darted across the parking lot, reaching the late Professor Harington's car. The portal at the lower right-hand corner of the board pulsed, disgorging two swarms of rats, which beelined menacingly towards Paul.

 Turn 2:

Spotting the rats, Steve lobbed a bundle of sage,salt and silver shavings over the squad car, sending the rats running.  "Thanks for the assist, kid," Paul grunted. Steve tipped his hat and, seeing Lisa's struggle, hustled across the parking lot.

"I can take it from here, Lisa," he said, waggling his eyebrows at the women. "Man, I know you," one of the hookers said. "You're broke, beat it!"

 Lisa rolled her eyes at Steve, but couldn't get over her own nerves and just kept tripping over her own tongue. Carrie pulled open the door to Professor Harington's car and began searching through the back seat, failing to spot anything interesting until Paul sauntered over and grabbed some papers. "Something something Babylonian cuneiform, something sacrifice... This what you're looking for?" He asked with a wink. Carried rolled her eyes and snatched the papers from him.

 Guy, meanwhile, spotted a set of keys on the floor of the bingo hall, pocketed them, and walked out the front door to see if he could talk up the hookers successfully, but didn't have enough actions available to him to try.

 Portals 1 and 3 belched out two rat swarms apiece, and with the third clue being collected, with a rumble a diabolical stone pillar rose out of the earth - the Nexus point!

 Turn 3:

Paul moved to shoot one of the rat swarms, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber [critical failure], ending his turn. Steve threw another bundle of repellents, sending the rats scurrying away, then moved closer to the Nexus and began to harvest Arcana from it, straining ectoplasm into a mason jar. 

 Giving up on the working girls, Guy made his way to one of the portals, ready to harvest and shut it down. 

 Carrie made her way to the Nexus, successfully pulling Arcana from it as well, and Lisa cut through the bingo hall to make her way towards the rear portals.

 Portal #4, right in front of Guy, belched twice, producing two more rat swarms, which immediately attacked him, though his bulky coat and funky fresh dance moves kept him from taking damage. Steve was not so lucky, as one of the swarms he'd previously scared off returned and attacked him, causing 1 Wound.

 Turn 4:

Blam! Blam! Paul cleared his gun and fired two rounds, sending two rat swarms scurrying for the safety of the sewers.  

 Lisa pulled a Mango Pineapple Punch-flavor Kaiju Energy Drink from her bag and chugged it, then zipped forward, speedily studying the portal, harvesting Arcana, and then shutting it down before the inevitable crash hit.

 Guy managed to smash and scatter one of the swarms attacking him, while Steve struggled in vain against the swarm attacking him. Carrie successfully harvested a little more Arcana from the Nexus, and then used her "Arcane Dominion" trait to shut it down with ease. 

Two rat swarms emerged from Portal 2, while a rat swarm and a red-robed cultist (I ran out of rat swarms) emerged from Portal 3. Rats moved into contact with Paul and Lisa, Guy took a wound from rat bites, and the cultist attacked Carrie, clocking her upside the head with the baton, causing one Wound. "For the glory of the Knight of the Black Blade!" the cultist frothed. 

 Turn 5:

Steve managed to kill the rats attacking him, and tossed a Dazzler (occult flashbang) into the scrum nearby; his aim was a little off, but he still managed to stun two rat swarms. 

 "You wanna see a magic trick?" Carrie snarled. She whipped a pistol out of her pocket and shot the cultist point blank in the stomach, kicking his falling body aside and twisting around. Holding her Relic high, she chanted words of power in a language kept secret for 12,000 years. Ghostly shapes swirled around her, wispy transparent arms and hands reaching and grasping. As she pronounced the final syllable, the vaporous mass exploded forward from her outstretched arm, destroying three rat swarms entirely.Paul got caught in the eldritch wave of power, thrown back against the squad car behind him.

"Easy there, Carrie! I'm not as young and flexible as I useta be!"

 "Get moving!" she called back. "We need these portals closed NOW!" Paul didn't hesitate, but took off jogging towards Portal 1.

 Guy killed the last of the rats surrounding him, and pulled some Arcana from the Portal. Lisa also wiped out the rats threatening her. 

Two cultists emerged right in front of Guy. "Aw, come on," he said. "Look at me, you know who I am! Do you really wanna hit the host of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?" 

The cultists looked at each other. "I've always liked Alton Brown better, to be honest," and swung his club into Guy's face. 

Another two cultists emerged from Portal 3, and approached menacingly but failed to reach Steve and Carrie.

 Turn 6:

Paul successfully harvested Arcana from Portal 1 and closed it. 

Lisa, seeing the trouble Guy was in, darted in and smashed one of the cultists over the head with her purse, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

 Guy and Steve fought back against the cultists attacking them, but without success. However, the cultists couldn't manage to land a successful hit on either of them, either. 

Carrie dodged past the cultist threatening her, made her way to Portal 3 and when she couldn't center herself enough to pull Arcana from it, she simply closed it down. 

With three of the four portals closed, no new enemies spawned. The sound of sirens was drawing near, and the Irregulars (and surviving cultists) slunk off into the darkness to lick their wounds and plan their next moves.  

***

 "Good work out there tonight, team" Carrie said as she popped the cap off a beer and raised the bottle in salute. "I'm proud of the way you looked out for each other. Closing three of the four portals is no small thing, and goddamn, we collected a lot of Arcana. Lisa, Steve, I'll be working with both of you on refining and putting that into use."

Paul put a folder of print-outs on the table. "Going over what we found, it looks like Harington was into some dark shit. We pulled Sumerian underworld hymns and curse tablet translations from his car, and the wounds in the photos the CSI team took of his body look ritualistic to me. I think our next move is going to be to check out his apartment which, thankfully, we're going to have access to. Seems the Professor dropped his keys at bingo last night, and Guy picked them up."

"Rest up, reload and get ready," Carrie said grimly. "I've got a feeling things are going to get rough for us soon."

"What was your first clue?" Guy asked sarcastically. "The red-robed chanting guys?"

"If we're facing more rats, I'm getting taller platform boots," Lisa added. 

*** 

 I'm really pleased with how that turned out! Nobody died, and the team harvested a fantastic 26 Arcana, which will go to improving their gear. I haven't calculated out XP yet or parceled rewards out. 

Kinda wish the parking lot I knocked out from some MDF, sand, paint and glue hadn't warped, but them's the breaks. I'll take the lessons from this and try another one.

It definitely seems like a game that really benefits from putting the work into crafting a good narrative for it; without that, it's just waves of enemies coming towards you while you try to hit a few points of interest. 

All in all, I'm looking forward to my next play through!  

More Devils, Rats and Scatter

The plan is to begin my "When Nightmares Come" campaign on October 2nd (I've got the day off work), so I'm bustling to get as much painted as I can before I start, so that there's less pressure on me between games.

I do have all six games plotted out using the generator tables in the rulebook, so I know what games I need extra "Alpha" Dark Spawn models for and more or less what terrain is going to be on the table during each game, which helps quite a bit. I had a lot of things very close to done at the time of my last blog post, and now they're all finished and ready to be shown.

 First things first, I finished my final five succubi; these are a mix of Heresy and Reaper Miniatures, and will be "Terrors," the most dangerous of the three tiers of Dark Spawn minions. 

 These followed the same color scheme I used previously - base coat of VGC "Gory Red," washed with GW "Carroburg Crimson," highlighted with Reaper "Fire Red" and "Regulator's Scarlet". The membranes of the wings follow the first two steps, but are then only re-highlighted with the "Gory Red."

I'm a very big fan of the chubby succubus from Reaper, she was a delight to paint and I'm looking forward to putting her on the table.  

For those keeping track at home, here's all my devils together:

 Next up, I needed an "Alpha" Dark Spawn for game 3, which is the last game featuring the lowest level of Dark Spawn, which for this campaign are Rat Swarms. These "Alphas" appear as bonus threats with certain rolls on the tables for generating a case file, and are slightly tougher versions of their normal tier. In this case, I dug around in my backlog and found some Reaper Giant Rats I bought ages ago. I glued one to a base and gave it a pretty straightforward paint job. 

 

Base coat in black, drybrush with "Stormy Gray" and "Cloudy Gray," then glaze with GW "Bloodletter" over the areas where the sores are visible. These were then picked out with Reaper "Moldy Skin" to give them a properly pus-filled appearance. The tail is "Tanned Shadow" washed with GW "Reikland Fleshshade" and drybrushed with "Tanned Skin." 

The narrative I've built around game 3's dice rolls is that the Webster Street Irregulars will be investigating mysterious disappearances against the backdrop of a sanitation workers' strike, which means I needed some piles of garbage! These are 3D prints bought from a licensed seller on Etsy, with the STLs designed by "Tiny Furniture" on MyMiniFactory. 

 I kept them fairly simple, without worrying too much about excessive shading or highlighting. They went pretty quickly and were a lot of fun to paint. 

Looking slightly further ahead, I got a package in the mail today with my terrain for game 6.

 These are, as you can see, from Warbases, and are very nice looking little kits. They're going to be customized into summer camp cabins, and despite their small size will have detailed interiors if everything goes right over the next few weeks. I got a couple sheets of laser-cut roof shingles as well, so I will be gluing those over the plain MDF of the roofs. Because why make it easy on myself when I can make it look better instead? 

So let's update that tracker:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 214

Miniatures Painted: 231

Terrain Acquired: 7

Terrain Painted: 10

Scatter Acquired: 15

Scatter Painted: 24

 

Heresy Winged Fallen One 2026

 Last year I pre-ordered the 2026 Winged Fallen One from Andy at Heresy Miniatures. I've been a fan of his demon sculpts for a very long time - I can remember ogling the all-metal Netherlord close to 20 years ago, long before I had the skills to tackle such a beast - and when I saw this one come up I knew I wanted it, could afford it and had the skills (mostly; I'm still not super experienced with resin figures) to tackle it. 

As an aside, if you're thinking of getting one, order soon; Andy's been dealt a full hand of trouble over the past few years and Heresy may not be open much longer, which would be a profound loss to the hobby. 

 

I decided to paint this fiend up as the "Atrocity," the final boss of a "When Nightmares Come" casefile; as such, if all goes according to plan, he'll be appearing on my table fighting the Webster Street Irregulars on Halloween.  

 I bought a bundle version that came with 5 different sets of horns, two right arms, and three or four left arms; not all of these pieces are currently available; looks like the sword-holding right hand may not be available at present. After Tim Curry passed away, I had to assemble this massive fiend with the huge, sweeping horns reminiscent of Curry's appearance in the movie "Legend."

The fit is pretty spectacular; Andy got really ingenious with how the parts were separated for casting, ensuring most pieces fit together in ways that hide the join. 

 Color-wise, I did some thinking about his clothing, because I didn't want it to just be black cloth. With him being draped in a stole, I eventually decided on a color scheme that would give a sense of him dressing in mockery of traditional liturgical vestments. I think it works out pretty well. 

I'm not going to lie, I'm seriously thinking about picking up a copy of the wingless version to compliment this one. 

 He's on a 40mm round base, and I've got some resin flame bits on the way that I'm going to add to the base; while the lesser demons on based on my normal grassy bases, with the idea being that they've been summoned to Earth from Hell, I decided on ash and flames for their boss - he brings a little bit of Hell with him when he appears. 

I've finished a few more things as well for my When Nightmares Come game:

 I needed a few more rat swarms to serve as the lowest level of enemies, and cobbled these two out of some leftover rats from a set of 3D printed resin swarms from Green Stuff World; I've got a few singular rats left still but not enough to make another swarm base like these. Technically I should have two more swarms beyond these (these put me at 8, should technically have 10), but I think I can make this work. Worst case scenario, I ordered a set of rats along with the flame bits so I can make more if I want. 

And finally, a pair of 3D printed two door sedans from Miniature Tanks - though frustratingly, this model, the "Volkswagen Golf Mk 2" seems to have disappeared from their site in the three months since I ordered it! These will be set dressing for When Nightmares Come and other modern-set games. 

 Simple paintjobs befitting terrain.

 So let's update the tracker:

  

Miniatures Acquired: 214

Miniatures Painted: 225

Terrain Acquired: 5

Terrain Painted: 10

Scatter Acquired: 9

Scatter Painted: 18

 

More Seedy Terrain

 I've been very up front that my modern terrain collection is based very heavily on the Rust Belt surroundings I've spent my entire life in. Buildings are run-down, poorly maintained, businesses cater to rougher, less-affluent clientele. Nothing is classy or upscale. 

Which brings me to my latest completed building from Atomic Laser Cut Designs. This is "Retail Store RS1A," which I ended up with two of; Vince at ALCD sent me a complimentary one as a thank you for showing off photos of my finished Urgent Care, which arrived just hours after I ordered one for myself. The complimentary one became my Liquor Store, and now here's the one I bought. 

 

You remember the bit in the movie Beetlejuice, where Beetlejuice makes a strip club ("Dante's Inferno Room") manifest on Alec Baldwin's model train table, and Geena Davis gets mad at Alec Baldwin about it? That scene will forever play a part in my deciding what buildings to add to my terrain collection. 

 Signs are all printed paper as usual, and the graffiti on the exterior walls are all decals from Dave's Decals. Similarly, the curtain in the window is an image taken off an Amazon listing for curtains and printed at my local Office Max. The name and color scheme are a nod to the "Adult Galaxy" superstore on Niagara Falls Boulevard, just minutes from my house, which sits snugly between an Urgent Care and the "Weed King" cannabis dispensary. 

 The interior has some shelves and a check-out counter, also produced by Atomic Laser Cut Designs. I grabbed some posters for vintage adult films, rescaled them and printed them to decorate the walls, and I printed another poster advertising "Welfare Wednesdays" at a strip club and added it to the back room. 

 The floor is printed paper as usual, though a different wooden floor design than I've used in other buildings. There was a bit of a saga there - I'd initially cut the paper floor and pasted it to the wrong side of the base, necessitating cutting a second one to glue to the right side. The second one wasn't quite a perfect fit, so there's spots along the wall where you can see the underlying painted MDF. 

Somehow, I don't think I'll be bringing this one to public-facing events! 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 214

Miniatures Painted: 222

Terrain Acquired: 5

Terrain Painted: 10

Scatter Acquired: 9

Scatter Painted: 16