Grauenacht

After a dozen games played with my friends, I think it’s time to write a review about the game system. We played a lot of different games and can compare many different rule sets, and Freebooter’s Fate is a rare gem.

It all starts when you open the rulebook, you instantly feel yourself in the middle of a Caribbean island, the book is full of fluff written in a way that suits this setting a lot. There are nice and helpful pictures about different situations, the pictures also strengthen the overall feel of the game.
The rules are simple and easy to learn, we bought the book with some starter sets and learned almost everything in one evening, so that’s a good point for me. Although the rules are  simple, the game certainly has a great depth in strategy.

Terrain plays a big part in this strategy and thus the rules to go in terrain are detailed but easy to understand ( additional rules on terrain can be found in the recent Amazon expansion book), you can swim, climb, fall, sink, jump and even attack from elevated positions. The brotherhood and amazons for example have some traits which take advantage of terrain. The rules are nicely written although there is still some german untranslated but this is just a minor complaint. As said before the pictures clarify most rules in a nice way, you can tell that a lot of work went into editing the rulebook and the design of it.
In addition to the rules in the book, there are character cards for each character, with stats, traits and some fluff to add more character to the game. The stats all have two different values divided by a slash, the left value is the critical status of a body location, the right is the value under normal conditions, the row on the right shows the number of life points and the current morale of the character. In the top right corner on the backside is the cost to hire this crewmember

The starter sets are good for a 300 dubloon crew, but if you add 2 or 3 more models you get  some good variation to play with. Each crew has one leader, deckhands and some specialists ( depending on how many deckhands you take), you can even add some mercenaries. We play 500 dubloon games and it takes us about 2 hours, it is highly recommended to play scenarios.
The best part about Fate are the fate cards, this is a deck of cards just like normal playing cards, but every card has a colour ( either black or white) and a symbol. These cards are used for every action you take; from hitting the enemy to determining how much damage you deal. To hit an enemy both the attacking player and the defending player gets six cards with different hit locations on them, the defender mostly has 3 defence cards and the attacker two. The attacker needs to pick one location, not chosen by the defender to hit the opponent in that particular area, if two locations are hit then a critical hit is caused. A critical hit means that one body location that was hit ( chosen by the attacker) has suffered serious damage in that particular part of his/her body. This whole card based system has a lot of charm, we’ve had a lot of fun when something extraordinary happened, like when someone was really crippled and had only one attack left against a crippled defender, defending just the right part. The whole randomness is gone, this system adds another level of tactic. Sometimes a friend of me just attacked both arms four times in a row and the fifth time when I defended both arms he just attacked something else.
The shooting part is also quit unique ( at least for me), it uses ammo and reloading so you really think about each shot you take, especially the two handed guns ( since it takes a complex action to reload them).
If you are looking for a great game, easy to learn rules with a lot of depth and a lot of fun, you should pick this up as soon as possible.
Some useful links to related Fate sites:
www.freebootersfate.de ( the official Fate page, including a nice forum, many people post in German but can also read and reply in English)
www.freebooterminiatures.de ( the online shop, for ordering the miniatures, tiny useful bits and limited edition miniatures)
www.gamesofwar.com ( great online shop for pirate related scenery and ships)

The whole steelhead idea with hordes of infantry backed up with heavy cavalry in a steampunk game appeals to me, but then I look at the models and think; mwhaa, not really my thing. So I started converting them to look like steampunk ww2 germans, the bases are all custom made with, balsa, green stuff, sand, barbed wire( from antenociti’s workshop) and some steel bars from a 1:32 plastic modelkit.

I also didn’t like the axes, they just don’t look cool on these models, but to show they have reach I decided to replace the axes with spears. The heads and backpacks are from westwind and have the perfect scale. On the base of the horse standing in the trench I will add a steelhead rifleman, but I don’t have these models yet.

It all started about one year ago….a good friend of mine who is a huge fan of Assassins creed bought some miniatures from Freebooters Fate, they resembled a lot like the assassins from that game. He also bought the rulebook and showed it to me, at first I wasn’t impressed because my history interests didn’t involve pirates. But after reading about it and looking at the other miniatures of the range I too bought some minis…I went for the pirates; we played a few games and the game system with the fate cards felt really promising. Recently three other friends took the plunge and ordered a starter each, so it was my turn to start making some scenery for the game.

When I think about swashbuckling adventures, I think about hidden treasure, ships, islands, etc….and I wanted to use all those things to start my next project, so without further ado.

The sketch before the start, which shows the first half of the island, when I am ready with this I plan to make the second half, so the island will be completely surrounded with water ( otherwise it’s no island right). Planning is crucial for such project, you constantly count with playability in mind. The island has to be easy accessible with multiple entry points to ensure that the defender is not invincible. On the island itself there has to be a good mix of cover and space for the miniatures to manoeuvre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first layout of the island

All spaces are wide enough to move a 50mm base through so I can use this terrain for multiple game systems like Anima tactics, although I don’t think it’s really suitable for warmachine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used wall filler to add some texture to the walls, I used a soldering iron to create the rampart cutouts, the walls are hand carved with a sharp dentist tool. All boarding planks have scratched grooves to simulate wood grain, and the planks on the stairs have little holes at the end so it will look like small nails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The palm trees are removable for easy storage, most plastic palm trees have a pin on the bottom, so I have cut some short tubes and glued them into the terrain.

Fine sand is added to the courtyard as well as the little beach section, small tubes are cut so the palm trees can be placed and removed for storage. Palm trees can be easily found if you search for cake/pie toppings and the other plants are just plastic aquarium plants spray painted with an airbrush.

Here are some shots of the almost complete port, I just need to add some paint here and there but that will be donin no time.

And the big mean giant who will crush everyone daring to touch the evil cow :p

Next will be a couple of islands with buried treasure, a native tribe and a jungle, I even have the idea of making some kind of giant octopus pulling a ship down, but don’t see the gaming advantage of such scenery piece despite from being an awesome piece of scenery.

 

 

 

June 6^th 1944

June 17^th 2011, the start of a flames of war campaign with the invasion of Normandy.

After almost a year of planning and preparing, the start of the campaign went well, with just a few hiccups it was a successful first day for the axis forces. I have been given the role of high command of the German forces stationed in Normandy, we buried a lot of our good men but gave the allies some tough nut to crack. They eventually got a foothold on the shores, but we will make sure they won’t go much further.

The allies’ first turn consisted of 12 troop movements, they were divided into 3 rounds since we had 12 players available that day. Here are the battles with their outcome:

-Utah beach ( lost with massive casualties on allied side)

-Juno beach ( successfully defended by me )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Gold beach ( lost with decent casualties on allied side)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Sword beach ( lost with decent casualties on allied side)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Merville battery  ( the axis kept 1 gun out of 3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Point du hoc ( successfully defended by a good friend of me who played his first game alone, taking down almost every allied soldier)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Saint Mere église ( totally massacred the allied paratroopers with a devastating load of machinegun fire)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Omaha beach ( this battle will be played in the near future)

There were also a number of random battles, because the allied general attacked some undefended locations.

 

At my latest flames of war tournament someone came up to me and introduced me to Dystopian wars, I never heard of it, but he showed his painted ships, talked about the rules and mentioned there was also a Japanese fleet…..I was sold :p. I bought the book and battlebox of Empire of the blazing sun, went home and kept on reading in the book, and when I wasn;t reading I thought about making scenery for this kind of game. Which is quit unique if you ask me, I never played any game rules which allow you to play with land, sea and air units at the same time, not to mention the superb detail on the models.

After watching a great tutorial on youtube on how to make a sea table I tried to make one myself and I am more then happy with the result. I have some nice ideas of islands in my head and will try to create them in the near future.

In the meantime I made 2 islands as a test to see if they fit well with the table and the models, I know I need to make some with beaches so that assault boats can go on shore and drop their dangerous cargo.

After painting tons of blood on my miniatures, after the 101th zombie it was time for me to paint something more…..happy. I had this miniature laying around a few years and decided to paint it and show it to my 14 month old boy, he had to laugh when he saw it and called it “Bob” ( he only knows the name of Spongebob). This was a speedpaint, airbrushed the pink and then details where applied with a brush in about 1 hour.

Well, thanx to my big love for japanese anime, I wanted to do something bigger then my usual 28 or 15mm miniatures so I decided to buy myself an anime resin kit. I started to look for a nice one and was stunned by the amount of different models available, it was a really tough choice for me to make but in the end I decided for Rei Ayanami because I thought that her pressure suit would not be a difficult job to do  ( I was mistaken ).

She took me about 30 hours to paint alone, the cleaning and masking took another 5 hours but in the end I am happy with the result and already ordered another resin kit.

When I was done painting I had to glue all parts together and fit her on some kind of base to stand on, but because I had never done this kind of stuff I had nothing to put her on, so decided to take a 60mm warmachine base. I think god punished me for this decision because when I walked away I heard a “bang” sound and she fell, breaking all her fingers in the proces and some small parts flew away. It was a hard lesson to take a big enough base for this tall figure.

I finished my Nebelwerfer platoon a while ago but until recently I decided to add the foliage and tree trunks and stuff to my bases. After seeing my army complete with this I was pretty amazed with the end result, with the nebelwerfers I only need to add the empty rocket shells but that wil have to wait for a while.

Church Agent’s are the special forces available to the Churches highest circles of power. Many have been trained in Caedus since childhood to hunt down and destroy the forces that threaten humanity, while others learn to use the divine gifts they where born with to further the Churches work. While they come from disparate walks of life, every church agent has been drawn to the fold to become an instrument of their god’s will on Gaia.

Elienai is the most great and powerful of all the saints of the Church. For centuries, her mortally wounded body has been entombed in suspended animation in the depths of the sacred city of Albidion, while she projects her soul across the world save it from destruction.