Project 28mm Atomic Age Invaders and Horrors Part 2 The Humans (with pics)

We are back with the first blog entry where we show off eye candy.  First off, my lighting sucks and I just don’t have good set up for taking pictures of my miniatures.  To be fair, I am not a good painter, and all these miniatures were painted by Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka.  They are good service, but you need to be very careful on painting / assembly instructions as sometimes there is a big disconnect in translation for your instructions.  Overall, I am happy and will continue to use them in the future.  So, bear with me with the quality of the pictures.

I am going to focus on my human miniatures in this blog entry.  These are only my painted figures.  I will have pictures of the unpainted human miniatures that either I have or will buy for this project in a later blog entry.  Hopefully, I will be sending the unpainted figures off soon to be painted and will have them back in several months.  At that time, I will post pictures of them after I get them in all their painted glory.

First, let’s start with the civilians that will either be the first or last line of defense against the atomic horrors.

Yes, it is that buxom, blonde bombshell that proves Bug-Eyed Monsters (BEMs) do prefer blondes.  Needless to say, she will be the primary objective in any capture or defend scenarios.  She and the two male cohorts are from Blue Moon Manufacturing’s set, “Hollywood Nights” from the Pulp Character line. 

Here are the first of the ‘mostly’ harmless civilians.  They are all from Killer B Games’, “Invasion X” line in two different packs, one called, “The Biker and The Mechanic” and the other called, “The Boy and his Dog”.  I suspect you can figure out which figure is which without me explaining it. Killer B has release more unarmed civilians that I bought, but they came out after I mailed all of these to be painted.  More victims, err, characters to come later.

Next is the armed citizens that will give the alien invaders a bit more trouble.  This first group will be more trouble than what they will suspect!  These figures are from Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line.  The line is for a game after a post nuclear apocalypse, so most of the figures from this line tend to have a post-apocalypse look, but most work quite well in most ‘normal’ cases.  These specific figures is one of their two “core” starter sets, the “8th Avenue Greasers”.  It has eight males, one female, and one male mutant hulk.  He came with a stop sign on a pole for a club, but my figure doesn’t have it.  I can purchase another one individually and have it holding the stop sign and pole.  I am still debating on that.

“They were my best bowlers.”  Okay, I really like this set.  This is another Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” pack of miniatures called, “The Michigan State Bowling League”.  I didn’t get them painted up to match the colors for Michigan State though. 

Not to be out done by a men’s sport team, here are some Roller Derby women to body check the unsuspected alien.  These banshees on wheels are also from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “The Roller Girls”.

“M-A-R! Right, boys and girls! V-I-N! N-now it is time for your favorite Moose!”  Why should the adults have all of the fun fighting aliens and monsters?  It is time for these Mooseketeer Menaces to really make the aliens wish they had stayed home.  Another pack from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “The Mooseketeers and Marvin Moose”.  Unfortunately, there was no Annette miniature. (sad face). 

“Is it a blimp?  No, it is Super Duper Man!”  Okay, this is definitely going to be a hard one to integrate into the project, but I am sure that there were cosplayers even in the 1950’s, in fact one the earliest Live Action Role Playing Game was in the 1930’s! (Search for XXX, to check that out).  If nothing else, he can be part of the Mooseketeers group.  Also, from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “Super Duper Man”.

“Float away, little butterfly. Just flutter away.”  The figure on the left is missing his Fender guitar (sad face), but he is the a representative of Buddy from the 1998, cult classic movie, “Six String Samurai”  If you didn’t notice my quote from the Bowlers above, I am a fan of this movie.  I need to buy another figure to get the missing Fender for the figure.  The figure on the right is good match for ‘The Mariachi’ from the 1995 movie, “Desperado”.  While that movie is definitely not a 1950’s theme, I got am adding him in just for the fun of it (plus, I have 28mm Mariachi band that will work in nicely!)  Both figures are sold separately from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “Strumming Samurai” and “Guitar Case Gunner”, respectfully.

Finally, the last of the civilian figures is the Man, the Legend, the Alpha Male and some of Kit Kat girls!  Yeah, if you can’t figure who this is, I can’t help you.  This pack is from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “The Kit Kat Club”.  I have since found some 28mm women in Bunny outfits that I will be buying to have optional team build.

Next, we will showcase the local and state government agencies that are the first response to the save the civilians from the menacing aliens.

Here’s the beginnings of the local police, although one is referred to a Deputy by the manufacturer, Killer B Game (As he is British, I am not entirely sure if understands that a Deputy is a county official, and a Police Chief is normally a city official or maybe meant to have figures for two different government departments in the same pack).  The one on the left is the Deputy (but I have him painted up to be a town cop) and the one to the right is the Police Chief.  As mentioned earlier, they are both from Killer B’s “Invasion X” line in the pack called, “Police Chief and Deputy”.  I might pick up another pack in the future and have them painted up in the typical khaki and brown for a sheriff department, but I wish I can find some in Stetsons since it appears in most of the period movies, the sheriff departments wore them instead of the patrolman’s cap.

My first of two different state police who will be slightly better trained than the local cops in my games.  Plus, staying true to the genre, most small towns didn’t have many local cops, so they had to rely on state troopers to help them out.  Since the various state police departments have unique uniforms, I initially decided to narrow my focus to two states police departments to get painted up.  Clearly, New Mexico had to be the best choice as it is the home of the Trinity Bomb site and Roswell!  Whether it is dealing with giant ants or crashed weather balloons, these are the first real defense to protect the citizens of America.  These figures are from the Brigade Games’ “Atomic Café 1957” line called, “The Local Cops” (well, I upgrade them to be state troopers).  The car in the picture is one of two 1/43 scale Road Champs diecast 1957 Ford Fairlane patrol car with the New Mexico State Police markings. 

As New Mexico was clearly had to be one choice, California is the next best choice as many of the 1950s movies took place in that state.  Using the same figures that I had used for the New Mexico State Police, I had this pack painted up the California Highway Patrol.  Likewise, the car in the picture is same as the one before, but with California Highway Patrol markings.  

Now, it is time to start showing the Federal government response to this crisis of alien invaders or atomic horrors.  What group would be the best to reply, but the US Army!

This picture is what comes with the second ‘core’ starter set of miniatures for Brigade Game’s, “Atomic Café 1957”.  For whatever reason, they decided to call them, “The 314th Federal Defense Force Troops”.  As it is clearly a game based on an alternative history, we will let it slide.  I do want to point out that the man in black in the picture does come in the set.  He is referred to as a G-Man in their description.  There are two versions of the enlisted men, one without gas mask and the other with a gas mask that looks very close to the M9 gas mask that was used in the 1950s – so kudos to them for that!  (See the following picture for closer look of one figure in the gas mask).  The officer and G-Man only come without the respirator.  The individual soldiers are armed with M1 Garand rifles, and one has a B.A.R.  This would be correct for the bulk of the US Army through the 1950s and even into the 1960s.  The M14 rifle only started to being replaced in specific US Army units in 1958 with the USMC starting to get them in 1965.  It is nice that they are armed with the M1, so they can either be Regulars up to 1965 when the last Regular unit was switched over to the M14 or National Guard troops right up to the early 1970s when the last of them were switched over to the M16 rifle.

This next group of solders are from Killer B Games’ “Invasion X” line: “US Soldiers Command” (The officer, sergeant, radio operator, and machine gunner), and “US Soldiers Attacking” and “US Solders Advancing”.  These figures armed with M14 rifles, and the machine gunner has a M60 machine gun.  The M60 while was approved for use in 1957, it wasn’t until 1959 that they really started to be issued to units.  So, that sort of dates them for an “experimental” unit for 1957 to 1959 or more of a unit in the 1960s.  To my knowledge, almost no National Guard units were issued the M14 rifle, so that would make these figures Regular Army in any game that were I would have them and the National Guard on the table at the same time (obviously, the first group of soldiers from Brigade Games would be the National Guardsmen.)

The following picture is some of both figures mixed together along with a 1/43 scale 2-1/2 ton truck.  The heads of the Killer B figures are bigger, but I don’t think too much that it is really distracting.

 

 

You know that he had to be made!  As Elvis served between 1958 and 1960, mostly in Germany, this will date the games if I was really worried about historical accuracy, but as I am dealing with alien invaders and atomic mutants, how historical do you think I am going to be?  (Yes, I know the just give a short history over the M1 and M14 rifles, but still…)  This figure is sold individually from Brigade Game’s, “Atomic Café 1957”, as the “King of Cool”.

Are they really part of the Federal government?  Who knows!  This group of guys are the mysteries Men In Black or agents of Majestic-12, a super top secret agency that doesn’t exist.  They are armed with alien technology and weapons.  Are they the good guys or the future overlords of Earth?  They are from Killer B Games’ “Invasion X” line in a pack called, “Majestic-12 Agents”.

And finally, the head of the Free Worlds and greatest threat to the alien invaders and atomic monsters, Richard Milhouse Nixon, and his Secret Service detail!  Okay, I am going to have to say that even all of the other figures that I really enjoy for the “Atomic Café 1957”, this is probably my favor not only because the details on the face really look like Nixon, but the whole idea of having Nixon in a game.  In Brigade Games’, “Atomic Café 1957” after the nuclear exchange, Vice President Richard Nixon took over as President with the death of Eisenhower.  Due to the destruction of the infrastructure of the US, Nixon is delegated to President for Life as there is no way to have proper elections for anytime in the foreseeable future.  In my games, he is going to be good old Vice President Nixon and may be the target by those communist aliens.  As previously mentioned, they are available as part the “Atomic Café 1957” line in a pack called, “President for Life Nixon with Security Detail”

Project 28mm Atomic Age Invaders and Horrors Part 1 General Overview (with pictures at the end)

 Well, the title of this blog entry gave it away what my next project is, but just to explain a little more in detail, this will be a 28mm scale, sci-fi skirmishing in the Atomic Age (with a 1950’s feel) through the lens of the classical atomic horror or alien invaders B-movies!    

 

First off, I love the whole Atomic Era of the 1950’s monster movies, whether they were alien invasions, a prehistoric monster awakened by an atomic bomb testing, or common animals mutated to giant size through radiation or Science(!).  I also enjoy the 1960’s and 1970’s alien invasion and monster movies too, however the “slasher / gore” effects slowly started to take over and they started to lose that “thing” that I enjoyed as they started to put too much effort on special effects to gross out the audience.   Likewise, I have always had a fascination for the Atomic Era in other things, like art, deco, music, etc., especially if it has a science or sci-fi hint to it.

With my loved those classic sci-fi monster movies, I have always wanted to game them.  I fiddled around with buying plastic ants to fight 1/300 WW2 Americans or some flying saucer looking models to fight 1/300 F-86 Sabers jets, but I never really did too much with those, not because I didn’t enjoy it, just lack of mojo at painting all of it and no real rules to game it.  I will admit, I have since found a rules-set for fighting giant ants, “Myrmidons: Invasion of the Giant Mutant Ants” (2013).  So, that might be a revitalized project sometime in the future.  Sadly, I saw a game on UFO dogfights with fighter planes way back in the day but didn’t jump on it at the time and it is long out-of-print.  I would love to find a copy of the Roswell set as it had a UFO, a weather balloon, and I believe a P-51D (or F-51D, but the switch from “P” to “F” was in 1948), along with a game mat of the Roswell area in New Mexico, and other gaming aids (flight stands, dice, etc). 

In 2009, Brigade Games released a game and miniatures for a 1950’s themed post-nuclear and zombie outbreak apocalypse called, “Atomic Cafe 1957”.  The miniature line has some great looking figures which most of them look rather normal and not that post-apocalyptic survivor’s look to them.  But their game never really took off, and sadly they never added on to this line of miniatures since then.  I have a copy of the rules, but never really investigated them for playability.  Maybe I will do a review of them one day.  I bought some of the figures back then, but they went into storage shortly afterwards as it was not high on my priorities back then. 

Then, in 2017, Killer B Games, started releasing several figures for their not yet released game for 1950’s themed alien invasions called, “Invasion X”, which eventually was released in 2019.  It was really with this last company, that made me go full aboard with this project.  Between Brigade Games and Killer B, they make up most of my figures, but there are other companies that I will be using.  We will discuss more about the availability of figures, including terrain and structures for the project much later in future blog entries. 

Now, let’s discuss my envision will be for what the games will be.

I am looking at trying to do skirmishing with a hand full of figures (1 to 5 per side) to a small platoon (30 or so) to a side.   I really want to keep it smaller than bigger as I rather keep the feel of the movies with a small cast and few extras vs a large battle.  But as I got the figures, I also want the ability to use most of them in a game, plus if / when I run this at a convention, I want to be able to have figures for several players.  Realistically, if I am going to do big skirmish games, (ie., more than 30 figures on a side), I probably will use 15mm or a smaller scale for those type of games. 

Because I know that no one rules will fit every case, I am currently looking at three miniature rules sets and one RPG system depending on the scenario that is to be played out.  The following are the list of the rules in probably the order that I will be using them. 

“Invasion X”, by Killer B Games:  This is the one that I really want to make the primary as it appears to be focused to the genre the best.  However, only after playing some games will let me know if this will be the system that I will love. 

“Fist Full of Lead” series, by Wiley Games:  This will probably be the rules system that will get the most use if I run games at conventions.  Basically, they are a simple to learn system with a bunch of different character traits to make most characters a bit different so I think it will be easier for players who have no experience with “Invasion X”.

“Xenos Rampant” by Osprey Games:  This is meant to be more of a unit skirmish game, say 20 figures or more, but you can make the units into reduce number of figures but will need a method of tracking hits on units.  I think it is very doable, and it will be simple enough for convention settings.  The fact that this system can work for single figure as well as multiple figures for the same type of unit, this might be the go to for most of my games in this genre. 

“Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition”, by Pinnacle Entertainment Games:  Yes, this is an RPG, but since I would like to make a string of games into a mini-campaign to include investigation and non-combat (the Horrors!) at times, I believe these rules will work because of the following:  Savage Worlds started off as miniature wargame rules (The Great Rail Wars) with a RPG integration with their then edition of Deadlands RPG.  It has evolved in several aspects and while it is sold as an RPG and most players use it as such, at its heart for combat mechanics is still very much a fast and simple miniature wargame.  I think this will be my back up if “Invasion X” really doesn’t work out as I can create the unique characters that will be needed for some games (the bumbling professor, the Rockabilly balladeer that can rally a group of teenagers, etc).

I am also considering giving the following rules a try, but I really want to limit the number of rules because I just can’t keep that many things straight in my head.  So, I might get them a couple of tries to see if they work better than what I think compared to the ones listed above. 

“Atomic Café 1957” by Brigade Games; a modified version of “5150” by Two Hour Wargames; “7TV” by Crooked Dice games, “Pulp Alley” by Pulp Alley, and a slightly conversion to “In Her Majesty’s Name, 2^nd edition” by The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare (this is the current editions as Osprey no longer has that license).  

Finally, I am adding the following rules for any big skirmish or battles in a smaller scale of figures (6mm, 10mm, or 15mm).  While this is outside of the scope of this project, I know that I will eventually be getting this started too. 

“Fist Full of Lead Big Battles”, by Wiley Games:  Pretty much the same reasons that I give above for the standard Fist Full of Lead series, except this system is design to use multiple bases for a unit.  If I find myself use the core rules, then I will probably automatically use these by default as they are basically the same mechanics. 

“Xenos Rampant” by Osprey Games:  For the same reason above that I gave for using these at individual skirmish level.  Likewise, if I find that I am using Xenos Rampant for most of my individual skirmish games, I will stick with these rules for the big skirmish games too. 

“Myrmidons: Invasion of the Giant Mutant Ants”, by Tobrosgaming:  This is a very specific set of rules for fighting giant ants in caves or sewer systems.  I will try it several times, but I suspect that I will steal certain ideas from it to add to whatever rules system I settle down with, like decision points. 

“Future War Commander”, by Specialist Military Publishing:  This will probably be the rules for the big battles where multiple tanks, artillery, fighter bombers, etc. will be involved against a sizeable alien landing force.  The rules have section on designing your own units, so I create units that might work, especially for other worldly vehicles or human’s wonder weapons that labs figured out how to defeat the aliens.  For those you don’t know, I have a collection of 1950’s US Army vehicles in 6mm, to include M103 tanks, M59 apcs, and even Honest John nuclear rockets! 

I already got the bulk of the 28mm miniatures painted, thanks to Fernando Painting in Sri Lanka.  I am going to be very open in that I just don’t have the time or mojo to paint miniatures anymore.  That is not to say that I will never paint again, just that I plan to keep using a painting service anytime that I really need stuff done.  I will be showcasing them off in the next few blog entries, so stay tune for future entries.  My goal is to break those future blog entries into the following: painted humans, painted aliens & monsters, future miniatures and terrain & structures to paint and assemble.  

Now for the pictures for this entry and what they are!

 

Not much to say other than these are the rules books, except for Savage Worlds. 

This is the assorted odds and ends that I picked up for this project.  In the back left is a “Miss Atomic Bomb 1957” candy mint box that I bought when I visited the National Atomic Testing Museum.  I really don’t know what I am going to do with it as it is too small for dice, but I will find some use for it. 

 

To the back right is a playing card box with the proper Radiation logo on it.  I have no clue what it was originally design for, but I will use it to carry my playing cards as they are needed in “Fist Full of Lead” and “Savage Worlds”.  “Invasion X” really doesn’t have a fixed initiative system, so I will probably use cards for that as well.  I will be making my own cards with an Atomic Monster / Aliens theme from ArtsCow.  I just have to figure out how to add the additional wordage on the cards for the special rules for Fist Full of Lead system.  

The next row is some dice I have, but I do have some other dice that I might throw it too.  The dice (and the one poker chip mixed in with them is a fun little set of glow-in-the-dark dice with bitty mushroom clouds inside them! (See close ups below).  They are from DnD Dice and called the Nuclear Fallout set.  They are in a 11 dice set: 1x d4, 4x d6 , 1x d8, 1x d10, 1x d%, 1x d12, 2x d20 (one has a radiation symbol in place of the “20” on the die), and the one poker chip.  I plan to use these in most of my games.  The far right is some Alien glow-in-the-dark dice from Koplow.  To be honest, I don’t like them, unlike most dice now with the icon or main icon being on the “6” side for a d6, these have the alien head on the “1” side. I am not also crazy for the alien’s eyes for some of the symbols but do like the landing UFO symbols.  I probably be using my Nuclear Fallout dice anyways. 

So, that leaves all the poker chips in the bottom half of the picture.  Well, Savage Worlds uses tokens for “Bennies” as they are called in the system.  These can be any item, but the commercially available ones are poker chips with some theme art in the center of the chip.  That is what I done here using blank poker chips and using period art or pictures, or modern art done to that period style printed up on stickers and added them to the poker chips, except in the case of the two mini poker chips at the upper middle, which I will discuss later.  I am not going to explain all the rule about what Bennies are for in Savage Worlds, but mostly they are used to do a re-roll of some bad dice.  I might also use them for markers for hidden units or dummy markers in other games.  The two mini poker chips have commercially available stickers on them.   I wasn’t sure how I plan to use them, but in “Invasion X” there are objective markers scatter around the board and I will probably use these for that as I want something smaller than a normal poker chip for that.  Eventually, I will probably replace them with custom built objective markers, like a mutated cattle miniature (oh yes, I am working on that!)

 

A little something of eye candy (picture heavy)

Before the eye candy, a brief discussion: 

Today I got my batch of miniatures that I sent to be painted by Fernando Enterprises Miniature Painting Services (link) in Sri Lanka.  I am quite happy with their services and plan to use them again...matter of fact, I am sending out another batch probably at the end of this week!

This is actually the second batch of miniatures that I sent.  The first batch was a small sampling of 15mm figures for post-WW2 African conflicts as I have a lot of those figures from Peter Pig's AK-47 Republic line.  They were quite nice and the price difference between 15mm Collector and Showcase quality is not that great of difference in my mind.  So this batch was all 15mm figures for a sorted variety of small skirmish games that I like to do.  Unfortunately, I didn't have all of the figures to do any one project complete, so I will eventually have to send more figures later to finish them.

The turn around time was very good in my mind.  I mailed off the figures from the Mid-West USA about the end of July and they should had received it in the first part of August.  It just almost the end of October and I got them back for less than a three month turn around time for about 150 15mm.  That is better than what I could even image doing back when I did paint, plus I think that overall they are better than what I was ever able to do in 15mm.  Now, I will admit that I did not get them based or flocked by them.  I really was thinking of mounting the figures on clear round discs, but since then, I decided that I will base them on penny and flock them so that I can add a flexible steel sheet on the coin and mount them in a box with magnetic sheet to help prevent them from accidentally being bumped and bouncing all around in a storage box. 

My next batch is an example of how I am planning to do future business with them.  I plan to send enough figures for both side of a specific project so that when it comes back I should be able to jump into gaming that project (borrowing the terrain!)  Some of my projects might actually need two batches, but since I am looking at getting away from "big" battles down to platoon size or small skirmishes, this should not be too often.  Even with the "big" battles, I am don't plan to get much over 100 figures per side.  So just a quick note on what my next batch is, will be just about everything for gaming the Allied Intervention into Northern Russian, 1918-1919 at a skirmish level.  Basically, I will have a US infantry platoon plus a MG team and a 75mm gun, a Canadian infantry platoon plus a MG team and a 18 pdr gun, two Red infantry platoons plus two MG teams and some company level command.  The only thing that I will probably add on to this (and will have to be a future batch to be painted) will be a Mark IV Male tank for the Allies, an armored car for the Reds, and a platoon of White Russians with a MG team in support.  I plan to use TooFatLardies Chain of Command for the rules and the winter terrain that I had been slowly picking up.  A bonus addition to this is that I can use the US infantry platoon to fight the Canadian infantry platoon in a fictional War Plan Red scenario if I want to.

Be seeing you

Sapper

Now the eye candy:

All that is missing is the rope for these hitmen while climbing through the air ducts

The boys in blue

Leonard and Bubba, plus some kin looking for sum-tin good eatin'

I heard of the right to bear arms, but two armed deers?

 

 

Daisy May finds that flies are attracted to sweet things! (the two dead flies are actually supposed to be mounted on flying stands)

You are what they eat, Daisy May!

Close kin to Leonard and Bubba

"Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors."

"Where is Annette Funicello?  This party beach is lame!"

 

 

US astronauts' exploration team (the guys laying down are suppose to be mounted on flying bases)

Soviet Cosmonauts

...and more US astronauts!

"Back off, Khrushchev!  This moon is ours."

Yeah, armed astronauts and cosmonauts together...this is going to get ugly soon

"Is Alice going on a date with Ro-Man?"

"Thank goodness that they are not purple with a horn in their heads!"

Huey, Dewey, and...Wall-E?

"This is a laser rifle.  Why do you ask, Dewey?"

“What can it be; what’s the reason?
Is this the end to all the seasons?
Is this something in your head?
Would you believe it when you’re dead?
You’ll believe it when you find
something screaming across your mind ...green slime!"

Some armed scientists in Antarctica

"Crap!, I don't think I have fuel in the flamethower."

"Something went wrong at Outpost 31.  The last transmission was something about an alien life form found in the ice."

The Thing watched on as Childs and MacReady tried to persuaded the Navy SEALS to conduct the countermeasures for the Hoof and Mouth Disease.

Across the plains, another mysterious armed team watches the Navy SEALS interact with the survivors of Outpost 31

Game Review: 'The Department' & 'Ghosts of Hefei' by Joseph Dragovich

I started reading back over the rules for miniature game system by Joseph Dragovich called, The Department, and its related sister rules set, Ghosts of Hefei.  I didn’t back the Kickstarter for The Department, although I regret that now, but I did back the Kickstarter for Ghosts of Hefei after buying a PDF of The Department from Effigy Miniatures, which is now defunct, but you can still buy a PDF copy from Sabersedge.com.  I also got one set of the 15mm figures for The Department (six in total), but I can only seem to find four of them right now.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that they will be remade (here is to hoping that they are remade.)  As of now, I have the PDF of the Ghosts of Hefei rules, but I am still waiting on the figures (according to the last update, all of the figures have now been cast and now the books and T-shirts are off to the printers to be made).

The 15mm figures for 'The Department'

Both game systems are set in the same setting, but in different parts of the world and different objects using the same game mechanics, Goalsystem, which was designed by Scott Pyle.  The games are designed to be totally independent of each other, or to be used together, so one does not need to have a copy of The Department to play Ghosts of Hefei.   The Goalsystem is a fairly simple system.  Basically you roll the number of d6 dice that you have in a skill, or damage from a weapon, etc., and look for a 4+ which counts for ‘goals’ or successes, with a ‘6’ equaling two ‘goals’.  Actually, it might be worth it to make your own set of dice with 3x0, 2x1, 1x2 on the faces if you were to play a lot of Goalsystem games for ease in counting ‘goals'.  

The Department is the most interesting of the two games in my opinion because its subject matter, primarily, and that it was designed to be a solo game that can handle up to four players as a cooperative game.  The background of the game is in future USA were Fabricants, or androids, are being used, or acting on their own programs, for legal and illegal activities.  The Fabricants don’t have the same equal rights as humans, much like in the movie, Blade Runner (1982).   Matter of fact, the design of this game is very heavily under the influence of the movie, Blade Runner.  The player(s) are police detectives for the Dept. of Fabricant Management, sort of a cross between the FBI and the Blade Runner’s bounty hunters.  What is really nice is that the game can easily be transferred into different time periods with some minor modifications to do any detective style miniature game. 

In The Department, there are several scenarios and a campaign system.  I really like how the scenarios and campaign are set up, besides the fact that they are meant to be played on a 2'x2' area for 15mm figures.  First is that you create your primary characters, the protagonists for your stories.  You start off with 100 character points, but you are limited to 50 points per character.  So you will have at least two characters, but you could have more if you spend fewer points on your characters’ abilities.  But I don’t think you want to go over four characters as it appears that characters with less than 25 points will be extremely weak. 

Next, you start off with a budget to use through the entire campaign.  This is not like Warhammer where you buy all of your goodies at the beginning and have them show up every time in every game.  This is because at the end of each scenario, most of the stuff goes away and it can’t be used in the next scenario as part of the campaign!  Also, if any time your budget reaches 0, the campaign ends automatically as a failure if you have not successful defeated the primary suspect.  So, you really have to learn how to husband your budget and make it last throughout the entire campaign.  But no fear, because as the campaign progresses, you can request more budget resources based on evidence gathered.  This reminds me a lot of the another classic Sci-Fi movie, THX 1138 (1971), (Also it is George Lucas’ first movie!) In the movie the police almost have to end their pursue of Robert Duvall’s and Donald Pleasence’s characters several times, only to have their budget increased because they committed another crime, allowing them to continue on trying to catch them.  If you have never seen this movie, rent it.

In the scenarios, the characters can gather certain types of evidence to build a case.  There are five types of evidence, Person, Place, Physical, Electronic, and Financial.  Some are harder to get than others, with Person being the most easy to get.  Plus certain scenarios can not be played until the characters have gathered enough of the right types of evidence first.   As you gather evidence, you can also get certain items to assist your characters in the next game, maybe with a little loss of your budget too, like Arrest Warrants. 

But how do you keep players from being gun happy thugs and think every encounter should end like the final scenes of Bonnie & Clyde (1967)?  Now this is the best part of the game in my opinion, there is a system for Internal Affairs investigations that can range from a reprimand, to a temporary suspension (i.e., the character can’t be used in some number of future games), to getting fired and removed from the campaign.  During the course of the game, if the characters do something undesirable, like shooting at a suspect in crowd (for every shot!), he gains Internal Affair Points (IAP).  At the end of the game, you roll the number of IAPs earned in the course of the game with the same number of dice looking for ‘goals’, but these ‘goals’ you don’t want.  Depending on the number of ‘goals’, it will determined the punishment of the character.  But you can also gain IAPs for in-between games actions, like interrogating a prisoner too hard (yes, there are rules for this too!) 

Ghosts of Hefei, as mentioned above, is set in the same setting as The Department, but it has a different objective.  This game takes place in Hefei, China, a large industrial city that makes fabricants.  In this game, the players are competing against each other in a more traditional type of game.  The players build a gang of criminals whom job is to steal fabricants through hacking and other means and build their power on the streets.  In this campaign system, your gang can either win by eliminating all of the other gangs (players), gather enough wealth to go legit, or gain enough reputation that you can rule city hall.

In Ghosts, the player must choose one type of gang to be from, but other players can also pick the same type as a rival faction.  The gangs available are the following:  Iranians, Russians, Tong, and Yakuza.  There is an option to play the police too, but it only suggested if you have two or more players running gangs for the campaign.  Like The Department, there is a set number of character points and resource points to build your characters, the rest of the gang, and outfitting them.  But in Ghosts, you have more character points so you can easy get five or six characters for your gang, plus some standard thugs.  The author pretty much state that your gang needs at least one character that is a hacker to take control of fabricants. 

Also in Ghosts, there are cyber implant rules.  As the game system is the same as The Department, you can easily transfer the cyber implants and hacking rules to your The Department campaign and play something more in line of the Ghost in the Shell animated series or even Cowboy Bebop rather than Blade Runner.

Some lovely 15mm Sci-Fi civilian vehicles from Darkest Star Games.  They also have some great not-Tachikomas for a "Ghost in the Shell" games

While I have yet to actually play a game of either game, just from reading the rules, they are a fairly solid system.  I think the only thing that would improve them would be have vehicle rules as there are none. One other set of rules I think that are missing for a proper noir type game are for Femme Fatales.  With both of those rules, I could even turn the system into a James Bond like campaign!

It is not Noir without a sexy Femme Fatale!

Cheers,

Sapper

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..." Roy Batty