Pulp Adventure games have grown in popularity during the last fi ve years; their small-scale nature, kooky fi gure ranges, sense of humour and ability to recreate what we see in various forms of media has seen them adopted by many in the wargaming hobby, although they might not be strictly wargames. This month Tim Eagling of ‘Spirit of the Game’ explains a little about their home-grown Pulp Adventure game ‘End of Empire’ which has made regular appearances at SALUTE and SELWG in the last few years.

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The problem with miniature manufacturers is that they keep producing really great models, and then they have the cheek to advertise them in magazines like this one, preying on the weak willed nature of the wargamer and toy soldier collector. Every month it is a trial of will just opening Wargames Illustrated and not picking up the plastic and

getting online to order the latest batch of white metal wonders. Now, this is not necessarily a problem if you are a prodigious painter or, like many gamers, are happy to have an ever increasing lead mountain - in the past I was defi nitely the latter. A few years ago however I developed a streak of common sense that pointed out that unless I had a use for a

range of models I shouldn’t buy them, (yeah, I know!) so the conundrum was this: how can I buy models from different ranges of fi gures and use them in one game? The answer was simple - create the game to fi t the fi gures and thus ‘End of Empire’ was born.

Unlike most Pulp Adventure games,’ End of Empire’ is not set in the 1920s or 30s, rather it is set in the last few years of Queen Victoria’s reign. With tongue fi rmly in cheek it is quintessentially British. (The game system is based on a D12 rather than a D10, because the decimal system is not British.) The heroes tend to have stiff upper lips, bristling moustaches (or bustles!) and the bad guys are cads, bounders and Johnny Foreigners.

END OF EMPIREHOME-GROWN PULP ADVENTURE GAMING. By Tim Eagling.

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THE TOY SOLDIERS

The root of this game was defi nitely the fi gures, so where better to begin. It all started with my 28mm Old West collection, most of which, at the time, was from Wargames Foundry. As a skirmish wargamer, I have always enjoyed fl eshing out my games by adding civilian models and I had most of the Foundry range of Old West Bystanders. This range offered everything from stiff gentlemen in suits and top hats to drunkards and dance hall girls, but the model that really got me thinking ‘Victorians’ was a limited edition Foundry fi gure of Professor Moriarty. This is, in many ways, a completely pointless fi gure as it is just a well-dressed gent holding a top hat behind his back. However it painted up really well and then I wanted a game to use it in. Many years previous I had been a great fan of the role playing game, Call of Cthulhu, especially Cthulhu by Gaslight so with a friend of mine I settled on Victoriana as the period of choice. This turned out to be a pretty good choice as it was just at the point that several companies were turning their hand to Victorian fi gures.

The majority of our Victorian collection originally came from Foundry, Westwind and Eureka. All three companies had very good ranges to get us started. Going for iconic looks fi rst is the order of the day, so early on we bought gentlemen in top hats, ladies in bustles, bobbies and fl at- cap-wearing thugs. As the game evolved

we added fi gures from many other companies: Blue Moon make several sets of Gothic horror fi gures, we used Artizan and Copplestone, Dixon, Ironclad and Black Tree Design. Many of my favourite fi gures in our collection have come from

the very talented hands of Bob Murch at Pulp Figures. Many of his fi gures work well for us, as anything that is really too modern becomes the invention of the mad genius: Rocket Men and Zeppelin Truppen appeared very early on in our campaigns.

WHAT’S THIS NON-HISTORICAL NONSENSE?You won’t see Science Fiction or Fantasy in the pages of Wargames Illustrated very often, but every now and again we break our own rule and feature something that isn’t historical. We will never stray far from the historical path however; you won’t see articles on Elves and Goblins, Chaos Daemons and Space Marines, but we will occasionally feature alternative history or pulp fi ction features. [The WI Editors]

Above: Crowds gather to hear the latest doomsayer.

Below: Redcoated soldiers fi ght the hordes of the evil Count Orloff.

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WRITING YOUR OWN RULES

When we started this project we decided that what we needed was a straight forward set of rules that would allow for all the strangeness that was to come. We considered a few sets of commercially available rule sets, especially the Warhammer Historical Legends rules, but we decided we needed something a little more specifi c; writing a rule set from scratch seemed unnecessary so we decided to adapt our Blaze Of Glory Wild West rules.

When producing your own rule set, you need to decide on a few guiding principles which will form the structure for the whole. In our case we wanted to develop a rules set that avoided complicated paper work and worrying too much between different weapons and other equipment. For example, we decided that in our game it isn’t necessary to be too concerned with minor differences between similar weapons, as being shot by an arrow, a crossbow bolt, a rifl e bullet, or the ray from an alien’s

ray gun, in game terms would do similar amounts of damage to an unarmoured man even if the effects in real life might be spectacularly different, so we decided to not differentiate between them. All of these weapons are grouped together as two-handed weapons. This means that any fi gure armed with a weapon that is used in two hands such as a rifl e, shotgun, crossbow, felling axe, will do roughly the same damage to a character. Other weapon types then include single-handed weapons - pistol, sword, hand axe - and fi xed weapons like machine guns and bolt throwers.

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Opposite page top: Chinese Tong fi ght it out in Limehouse.

Opposite page bottom: The Thin Red Line face a daemonic adversary.

Above: The Thin Red Line about to be made even thinner.

Left: Hansom cabs and gas lamps really capture the period.

Below: The action moves to a remote Scottish loch.

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Another principle of our rules set is that we would not try to write rules for every creature or eventuality. The nature of our games means that players seem to always do the unexpected, something which our rules would not cover, so we devised a simple set of mechanisms to allow this kind of thing to happen and then the players or GM choose what is the best fi t mechanism to use at the time. The rule set for End of Empire has evolved over seven years or more and has now become able to cope with almost anything the over-zealous adventurer can throw at it. If you are interested in the rules for End of Empire, which are far too large to include here, take a look at our website to get a set.

www.spiritofthegame.org.uk

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CAMPAIGNS

The key to Pulp Adventure games is the scenario. To be honest, each scenario can take quite a lot of preparation and setting up so you need to make it worthwhile to play or the getting out and putting away can take far more time than playing it. Our usual inspiration for scenarios comes from fi lms or books. End Of Empire is a very fl exible game and pretty much any storyline could be worked into it. We have run campaigns based on ideas from Indiana Jones, Big Trouble in Little China, 39 Steps, Riddle of the Sands, The Mummy, Land that Time Forgot and many more. Characters and creatures from popular culture often appear and we are able to blend real events with fi ctional ones with ease. End of Empire is a world of Jules Verne, HG Wells, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle; it is a world where magick and daemons are real and the Empire is threatened from all quarters. Our adventurers pretty much save the world every week or so. Our games can be set in all corners of the world from Darkest Surrey, to the Heart of Darkness and everywhere in between. This of course allows us to introduce new models from different ranges whenever we fancy and the challenge of building scenery to accompany it.

Top right: Our heroes pose for a photo.

Right: Seedy East End streets.

Below: The London home of Colonel Sir Henry Templeton Smyth.

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Empire only ever featured a handful of fi gures for any one scenario, but as we have played and developed the game, we have come up with more and more extravagant ideas involving more and more fi gures. Recently we have played more regular looking wargames as part of our campaigns, albeit with some pretty unconventional troops on some sides, like the corpse army of Count Orloff, who typically set his sights on destroying London and would have succeeded had it not been for those darn toffs! To our delight we have found the rules easily able to cope with much bigger games.

ADVENTURE GAMING ISN’T PROPER WARGAMING!

Purists may claim that End of Empire isn’t a ‘Proper Wargame’ and they might be right. But take a look at the list of games at SALUTE 2011 and you will see a very high proportion of non-historical games (although this year I ran a F&IW game). In many ways our game melds the best parts of traditional tabletop wargames, the cool models (more of which next month) the painting and collecting of fi gures, with the best parts of roleplaying games, the endless scope and the impossible situations. Our fi rst few campaigns for End of

So whilst you may think this isn’t a proper wargame, it does do one of the most important things that a game is designed to do. It brings us together to play games and have fun. To the characters in the game everything is deadly serious and real, the humour comes from the way the game is played and the roll of the dice. We always aim to play in the Spirit of the Game (hence our group moniker); we combine our creativity and skills to complete a joint project which is deeply satisfying to play and which has been warmly received by many folk attending wargaming shows for the past six or seven years and in that time it has claimed several awards including Best Game at both SALUTE and SELWG. In 2011 we are resting End of Empire at shows and playing proper wargames instead, but I am sure it will rise again. So don your top hat, grab your swordcane and venture out into the pea-souper and risk your life saving the Empire from imminent doom….

Left: Adventures in the Heart of Darkness.

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In last month’s issue of Wargames Illustrated we introduced you to the weird and wild world of End of Empire (see WI286), this month EoE author Tim Eagling (member of the club Spirit of the Game) tells us more about the buildings and terrain involved in his miniature twisted Victorian world.

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Scratch-building models is the aspect of the hobby that I enjoy the most and End of Empire has afforded me many opportunities to indulge my passion. This article features many of the buildings Spirit of the Game has made for our games of Victorian Mayhem.

BEGINNINGS

It is true that from small acorns great oak trees grow. One Christmas I found some working street lights designed to go with Victorian Christmas houses. I instinctively knew they would look great on a wargaming table so I bought several sets and then had to come up with a way of using them. The light sets come with a battery pack and a great deal of wiring, so it was necessary to create something to disguise all of this. I dug through my bits boxes and found an armoured knight and many smaller items. I then realised that my son had two identical lions in his zoo animal collection so I procured the surplus lion so it could become the main feature of a statue. I set about making some street furniture, large statues and impressive gaslights. At the time this was really an exercise in modelling and having made a couple of rather

impressive scenic pieces, I then had to work out what an earth I was going to do with them. This was defi nitely the beginning of our London adventure. It was these pieces of scenery that swung our decision to set our pulp adventures in Victorian rather than 1930s England. And the lion statue even gave the name to our fi ctional area of London, Lion’s Square.

Like other Spirit of the Game projects, the game play went hand in hand with the model making. The aesthetic of the game is very important to us. Well painted miniatures on a full and detailed table-top really help to create the right atmosphere for the game. End of Empire has been a seven year model making project, which in some cases will never be fi nished. Every new campaign usually commences with a frantic burst of building. Between three model makers we have built: pubs, churches, abbeys, a museum, shops, houses, stately homes, a theatre, factories, warehouses, castles, docks, boats, jungle,

END OF EMPIREHOME-GROWN PULP ADVENTURE GAMING. PART 2. By Tim Eagling

Above: Lion’s Square by Gaslight.

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monuments and a whole host of other things. A campaign often springs out of an idea for a new model. Early on our campaigns were diffi cult to play easily as we always seemed to be building. Now we can start a campaign and only have to build the odd model (usually) where the climax takes place at the end. We can now make most locations in the British Isles, many from deepest Africa and from lost worlds, and I think we’re heading for the Middle East next.

BASIC RULES

We try to stick to two over riding principles when we make new models which are: longevity and interactivity. One of the fi rst things I consider when thinking of building a new model is: “How many times can the model be used?” It is no use making a model that will only be used once. In what other scenarios or games systems could we use it in? Making our games look Victorian is fairly straightforward, using period vehicles like Hansom cabs and then putting period posters on all available surfaces set the scene well enough. The street furniture has been a major contributor to getting the Victorian feel right. At some point I am sure we will use most of the London scenery for 1930s games and WW2, then all we will need to do will be to add

phone boxes and appropriate vehicles and we should be in business. Change the phone boxes again and add a Capri or two and we can move right up into 1970s, Diamond Geezer territory.

The ability to be able to get inside the model is crucial for skirmish games. The detail inside can often be as important as the outside. Some buildings are left empty, others get a full detailing. In some cases we make all the details and in other cases we use commercially available scenery parts

especially those made by Front Line miniatures (who in some cases have added products to their range as they have made things for us) The theatre has a fully detailed backstage area, two levels of seating and stage with scenery; the Old Green Dragon pub has two bars, a snug and rooms upstairs. Sir Henry’s town house has a two fl oored library, a lower ground fl oor for the staff and even a Botticelli on the wall of the ball room. Some buildings have room

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Below: Inside the Green Dragon pub.

Below: Colonel Sir Henry Templeton-Smyth’s

London house.

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layouts that are removable whilst others have permanently stuck in furniture. The key issue here is to ensure that you can get both your hand and fi gures into the rooms.

CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN

New buildings are great fun, they often come after discussion as to what we might need in our next campaign. Sometimes I will draw concept sketches to see if the ideas might work; on other occasions I will leap in with both feet and see what I come up with. Inspiration for models can be as varied as the models themselves. It might be from somewhere visited, an image seen in a book or fi lm, or in some cases a cool toy or even a piece of rubbish that makes an interesting shape. I tend to use the same material for my buildings, foam core. It is strong and easy to work with and relatively cheap. Unlike my models for earlier periods I decided that one of the features that Victorian buildings required was regular and consistent features, so it was off to the railway model shop. Unfortunately there is very little made for 28mm, in fact many manufacturers can’t decide on exactly what scale it is (it usually comes out as somewhere between 1/48th and 1/54th), so browsing the railway model shop’s component shelves is the only

way to fi nd the right thing. I have mostly used OO/HO windows and other features. The other most common railway kits I use are sheets of moulded roof material. Making roofs from regular components like this helps to create the feel of mass produced building materials. Roof lines on buildings are very important. I try to vary roofs and heights of buildings as much as possible to make the table varied and realistic.

Above: The fi rst End of Empire table made up of four 2'x2' squares with a canal running through. The seedy end of town.

TABLE TOP GAMES

Playing surfaces have caused me many headaches, especially as we have a tendency to take End of Empire to shows where we have a huge table. From the earliest stages of my wargaming, I always fancied a modular battlefi eld and after several attempts I think I am pretty much there. My fi rst table for End of Empire was four 2' by 2' squares with a canal running

Right: Adventures in the Lost world.

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through it. This proved too big to store though, so I went for a slightly smaller standard size. I now use 45cm (somewhere along the line I went metric) by 45cm boards, or versions of 45cm by 90cm rectangles and for a couple of pieces 90cm by 90cm squares. I use a 12mm chipboard as a base framed by 25mm softwood surrounds to guarantee a good joining edge. The main board is then 25mm low density polystyrene which can be cut into if desired. Polystyrene is covered in PVA and coral sand to give it a hard durable surface. Urban boards then get a coat of grey masonry paint, rural boards get a paint and fl ock coating. I now have a large selection of different sized boards, both urban and rural. The rural boards work for both ‘England’s Green and Pleasant Land’ and also most other green places around the world, like ‘Darkest Africa’. Having made all the boards the same, means that I can also mix them when I want urban areas like London with large areas of parkland. Some judicious placing of walls and suchlike disguise the blends between board sections and the green rural boards work perfectly well against the grey urban ones.

ALL AT SEA

One of the other scenery features I have really enjoyed developing has been the boats and ships we use. Much of our action seems to take place amongst the quays and wharfs of East London and the vessels that work there. I have made many model ships for 28mm games, but came upon a new solution for End of Empire. I found a couple of those ship ornaments (the kind of thing you fi nd on the seafront at Southend, Blackpool or the Isle of Wight, and with a few crafty adjustments (like sawing off the base, I was able to make some quite effective gunboats and tugs.

End of Empire still offers many modelling possibilities. I am sure there will be new projects in the future, after all we keep coming up with great titles for campaigns. I am not sure what I will have to build for ‘The Gibraltar Incident’, but I do have a plan for an entire modular Middle Eastern city, so you never know where our intrepid adventurers will turn up next. Rest assured wherever it is, it will be made from foamcore and balsawood.

The models in this article were made by myself, Pete Malcolm, and Ben Shilito. For further information about End of Empire, head to:

www.spiritofthegame.org.uk

Top right: Roof Tops and hansome cabs, A view across Lion’s Square.

Middle right: London docks, tugs and gunboats.

Bottom right: Saurius Trouble (sic).

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