Category Archives: Pulp

The Chase: A .45 Adventure AAR

This could easily be the bloodiest game I have ever played in all my years of wargaming. It was like a Sam Peckinpah film on my gaming table.

With all the Super System 3 I’ve been playing lately, my Pulp gaming has been neglected.  So I had a couple of friends over for some .45 Adventure. (I have since bought the 2nd Edition, but we used 1st ed. the other night.) We started off with the scenario included in the rulebook, “Shootout in the Park”.  It’s designed for two players, but I modified it a bit to include three different teams. Basically, with the heroes in pursuit, a mob boss and his goons flee across a park (the battlefield), dropping two halves of an incriminating ledger listing all the bribed city officials the mob boss has under his thumb. Both sides are trying to find the ledgers and leave the park with them.

The two teams are .45 Adventure’s resident vigilante The Gargoyle and his ally, Ace Reporter Bridgit O’Rourke; and Mob Boss “Little” Paulie Wolinsky and his two goons, “Full Count” Nocerino and Tommy “Gun” Miller. I added a third team: corrupt cops! These cops know that if the ledgers get out, their crooked activities will be revealed. So why not just grab the ledgers and eliminate the mob boss while they’re at it?

The scenario ended with “Little” Paulie recovering both halves of the ledger and fleeing the park, leaving all three cops dead, and Bridgit O’Rourke out of action, pummeled mercilessly into unconsciousness by “Full Count” Nocerino.

Which set us up for the second (and bloodiest) scenario of the night…The Chase!

The Scenario

.45 Adventure is designed to be played on a 2’x 2′ surface, which isn’t a whole lot of room where vehicles are concerned. So I set up a 4′ x 4′ board as you see here. “Little” Paulie is in his car, fleeing from the Gargoyle, who is in hot pursuit. He has to make it all the way around the board and exit off the top near the construction yard. But a lot can happen before then. There are encounter markers along the road as well as in the city. To make matters worse, the streets are lit, but the rest of the board is dark, limiting models’ visibility to 12″.

The big dump truck in the construction yard contains a load of junk. Any model can take an action to dump the load if they are in base contact with the truck. This will block the road. It’s not a good idea to do that until the last possible second, however, as you never know who might be in the lead and you don’t want to prevent your own team from making their escape with the ledgers!

The Teams

 

The heroes are The Gargoyle (center), ex-prize fighter Moe Shrevnitz (right), and eccentric, driven District Attorney Roland N Seguin (left), who is determined to rid New Commerce of crime! The Gargoyle is in his car, which is a bit better than your average buggy. The Gargoyle is Rank 3, while the other two are Rank 2. If Bridgit didn’t get creamed in the first scenario, she would have been here too.

The hoods( from left to right) are Jimmy Gumballs, “Full Count” Nocerino, “Little” Paulie Wolinsky, Rocco Fortunato (nods to Frank Sinatra), Tommy “Gun” Miller, and around the back of the car, Jack Sacco, the driver. Jack and “Little” Paulie are in the mob boss’s roadster, fleeing from the Gargoyle. The rest of the goons are all on guard duty in the construction yard. Paulie is a Grade 3 Mob Boss, Rocco a Grade 2 Enforcer, and the rest are Grade 1.

The cops are Sgt. Danny Burke (center), a Grade 3 Police Sergeant, and 4 Grade 1 cops: (L-R) Officer James Haggerty, Officer Enoch Conlon, Officer Rory Landry, and Officer Nick Dearcy. And a fine top o’ the mornin’ to ya!

Any surprise the cops or heroes might have enjoyed was pretty much lost on the first turn of the game, when Officer Conlon opened up on DA Seguin with his rifle, scoring a head wound that the DA miraculously survived. From there it went south pretty fast in the construction yard. Within a few turns it looked like this. That’s “Full Count” Nocerino, Moe Shrevnitz, Officer Dearcy, Officer Landry, Officer Conlon and Jimmy Gumballs, all dead. Moe and “Full Count” learned the hard way not to show up with your fists to a gun fight. The star of the show was Officer Landry, who caved in Jimmy Gumballs’s skull with the butt of his shotgun and then, on his next activation, walked up and put a full blast straight into “Full Count’s” chest.

Meanwhile, with Jack Sacco driving, “Little” Paulie was free to fire at the pursuing Gargoyle with abandon. Despite having a faster and more maneuverable car, The Gargoyle was unable to catch “Little” Paulie before he lost control of the roadster after being wounded several times. He swerved off the road, running over and killing Officer Haggerty in the process.

Eventually, The Gargoyle got his car back on the road and once again in pursuit. In the meantime, Sgt. Burke, after spending two turns climbing out of an open manhole he fell into (damn encounter markers!) shot and wounded Jack Sacco, who lost control of the car. It flipped over and landed on Sgt. Burke, who survived long enough to put a few more rounds into “Little” Paulie, wounding him in the arms. Neither Sacco nor “Little” Paulie could use their arms any more, they were so badly shot up. Which of course meant they couldn’t drive. Or shoot. They could just stand there and wait for Sgt. Burke to finish them off.

The Gargoyle had other plans. He swerved around the corner in his sweet ride, pausing long enough to shoot Sgt. Burke between the eyes before running down Rocco Fortunato, killing him. That’s 2 people the Gargoyle had murdered with his car. Over the course of the game, the Gargoyle had been shot so many times that he could barely use his arms and legs. Tommy “Gun” Miller ventilated The Gargoyle and his car a bit more, killing him.

Hedging his bets, DA Seguin managed to get close enough to the truck to dump the junk in the road just in case Tommy “Gun” managed to get to the mob boss’s car and get it running again. Then he hunted Miller down like a dog, killing him. But not before Miller cut him off at the knees with a spray of .45 bullets from his Thompson!

So the end of the game looked like this: All cops: dead. The Gargoyle and Moe: dead. Tommy “Gun” Miller, “Full Count” Nocerino, Rocco Fortunato, and Jimmy Gumballs: dead. DA Seguin: crippled and crawling towards the car wherein Jack Sacco and “Little” Paulie waited, unable to do anything but look sadly at where their arms used to be.

Just another night in New Commerce!

 

Gangsters and Thugz

Adversaries for my army of Pulp Cops, these gat-men are also from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures line. Below is Bugs Malarchy’s Mob (PGJ-02), one well-heeled group of hoods. With three Thompsons (who really believes there’s a violin in that case?), these guys mean business!

My personal favorite miniature is “Chopper” McCoy all the way on the right. He looks like a psycho and reminds me of Eddie Dane in Miller’s Crossing.

Up next is another crew of gangsters from Pulp Figures, These Guns for Hire (PGJ-04) I posed them with a car that purists will know isn’t from the 20’s, but it looks good enough.

Fast forwarding seven decades or so, I picked these guys up from Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy a few months back. They’re from Bobby Jackson’s controversial Thugz line. I love them, but I’m a little bummed I’m missing two of the coolest sculpts. Nonetheless, here are my modern gangstas, probably for use as a gang  in a zombie game.

My favorite is the guy all the way to the left. I’m pretty happy with the way he came out. They’re all packing heat (even the girl on the right, it’s behind her back), except for the big woman. But take a look at her. Do you really think she needs any help?

Here they are posed with some cops from the (I believe) now-defunct Mississinewa Miniatures line.

Uh-Oh, Five-O!!

Pulp Cops

I got the pulp bug again, although to be sure I never really lost it. I painted these cops a while back for use with Rattrap’s .45 Adventure, which is my pulp rule set of choice. In truth, it’s the only rule set I’ve ever used to play pulp. I like it, though, so I haven’t needed to try anything else yet.

 

All these cops are from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures line. Some of them are customizable, like the cop on the right in the picture above. You can give him either a billy club or a pistol. I opted for the club.

When the cops need a little something extra, they break out the big guns, like this machine gun here. The shotgun cop on the right is another customizable piece.

The sergeant with the megaphone is one of my favorite models. These cops were easy to paint all at once, considering they’re all wearing the same colors. Now I have more than enough police to take on my gangsters (coming soon).

Limehouse Personalities

Smoky opium dens and shady waterfront characters abound in Limehouse. Here are a few.

First up, the main bad guys. The burly fellow on the left is White Tiger, from East Riding Miniatures’s Golgo Island Legends line. Because of his striking resemblance to a famous Chinese bodybuilder/actor, I had to own him. The other two miniatures are the Sinister Dr. Koo and his enforcer, Chang the Iron Fist, from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures line. Dr. Koo is out of production while Bob works on a new sculpt. I can’t wait, although I like this one a lot.

Next up: the cannon fodder. These Waterfront Characters are from Rattrap Productions for use with their .45 Adventure game. I like them, and I can always use more goons. I painted them all at once with similar colors to get them done quicker. I’m happy with the result.

Lastly are these two ‘ard lads, from Killer B Games’s “Geezers…Shut It!” line. I don’t play Geezers, which is a miniatures game based on 1970’s British cops and robbers, but I found these two miniatures to be good for any period, particularly pulp. Not the best picture, I know. They look like a couple of tough guys who might cause trouble in a seedy section of town like Limehouse.

Gentlemen… Behold!!

I just love Rattrap’s Professor Kroon. He reminds me of Dr. Weird from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Here is the old-style Professor Tobias Kroon with a small army of Kroonbots. I painted them up a while ago for use with .45 Adventure but I haven’t got around to playing any scenarios with them yet.

The Type II Robots are a personal favorite of mine, although they would have been a cast-iron bitch to put together with a pin vise instead of the Dremel I used. I bored a hole through the bodies of each robot and inserted a 3/64 mm brass rod through the body to pin the arms. Attempting to attach the arms without pinning would have been impossible.  I decided to go with the Cylon look for the optical sensors. The bases are from Micro Art Studios.

Rattrap recently released new miniatures for their most popular characters for the .45 Adventure 2nd Edition. Although I like the new Professor Kroon model, I didn’t feel the need to buy it as the old one is just as good, IMO. (I do like the new Jade Hood model much better that the old one, though.)

I have a scenario idea kicking around in my head for my players to attempt to thwart a nefarious alliance between Professor Kroon and Bob Murch’s Radon Zombies of the Ionosphere.

“Today New Commerce, tomorrow…THE WORLD!!!”

Tomb Raiders

Picked up these “Not-Lara Crofts” from Shadowforge a while back and painted them up. Just dug them out of storage with an idea for an appropriately-themed Egyptian pulp game. The bases are from Wolvesbane, which I’m pretty sure is no longer in business.

Comments welcome.

Bruce the Zombie Killer

A while back I picked up this miniature from Neal over at the War Store. It’s “Bruce the Zombie-Killer”, by Shadowforge/Laughing Monk Miniatures out of Australia. Of course, shortly after I bought him, Hasslefree Miniatures came out with another Not-Ash that I like a lot better, but the die was cast. The base is a Malifaux Resurrectionist base from Wyrd miniatures. I added an old GW zombie hand clawing at his legs for effect.

My criticism of the minature is that his face isn’t quite right somehow…his eyes are large and somewhat diagonal.  There are also a lot of flat surfaces on this model, both on his face and his gun. I did the best I could without (hopefully) making him look like he has raccoon eyes, but if I had shaded them any less they would have looked weird. Maybe not my best work, but overall I’m happy with him.

I wrote a special scenario for him using a tweaked version of .45 Adventure (1st edition) and played it a few times with some interesting results. “Night of the Living Evil Dead” may make an appearance in its entirety on this blog before long.