IHMN: Dark night at the rail-yard - a solo game play

Having recently (finally) got hold of a nice cheap rail set that works (IMHO) with 28mm I have been dying to try it out in anger.

Having recently plaid IHMN I decided to use it again for this play through.

This is more of a scenario game with conflict being a sign of failure for one side.

The Detective and his batman have heard rumors of odd material being stolen from the rail-yard in the dead of night and along with some local bobbies set to staking it out one wet dark night.

For game purposes they will always move first and in pre-determined beats at a walk until they hear or see anything suspicious.

Opposing them are what appear to be ninja clad robbers who's objective is to search every train car and engine in the yard and on the roll of a 9+ they locate an item that must be returned to their employers car at the entrance.

Every one had pluck 5+.

Ninjas have speed 3 (via martial artist talent)

Ninjas make pluck rolls to climb and jump - up, down and across at +2

Bobbies make rolls at -1 unless using a ladder.

Bobbies can only see and hear 6", if someone falls from a height there is a chance they will be seen or heard and a pluck roll may be made.

If a bobby succeeds and spends their action blowing their whistle or firing a gun then all other bobbies will move towards the sound but can only engage those spotted.

The Detective and his Batman will wait by their car at the engineers hut until the call goes out.

The Ninjas get: 

1VP for each item returned.

1VP if they are totally undetected and all escape

1VP if detected but all escape

The Detective gets 5VP for each Ninja arrested.

The layout

The Ninjas assemble

The detective invites his Batman in to make him a cup of tea.

The bobbies patrol their beat

Showing their agility the Ninjas advance with stealth

Oblivious a bobby carries out his beat with shadowy ninjas crossing behind him

The search begins...

An early success, item found right near the start

Another in quick succession whilst the Detective is oblivious near by

Another tempt of fate and another success, still undetected.

Disaster one slips and falls and then fails his pluck roll becoming knocked down,

Luckily everyone fails to hear him as a clap of thunder overhead drowns out his embarrassment!

Must have knocked the wind from him as he fails to get back up!

Meanwhile the rest continue to ghost through the yard unseen

With most of the yard searched it looks like a walk over for the Ninjas

Unbelievable he got up and then fell straight back down and failed again becoming knocked down.

They still hear nothing!!

And just as it seemed all that could go wrong would another fell right in front of a patrolling officer!

A sharp blast of his whistle and the game is up!

The standing Ninja attempts to silence him but he makes his pluck roll and misses with his return attacks.

The other officers close in as they scramble up the passenger car,

The Ninja proves incapable of taking out this pesky coppa, and equally avoids arrest.

Oh NO! the treacherous conditions sees both officers and the detective fall over from the car losing valuable turns

However the Ninja seem incapable of ending his fight and escaping, the law close in and eventually he is pulled down and clapped in irons by the Officers.

"A good night work men, get this fellow make to the jail house immediately."

Having abandoned their fellow the rest of the Ninjas escape with a total of 3 items from the yard,

So a victory for the Detective 5VP to 3VP however he left it late in the day!

A quick fun scenario, fairly happy with how it played considering I made most of it up on the fly and wrote nothing down before this.

Looking forward to some more games using this interesting set up.

For anyone interested the train set used is found here:

http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/super-size-train-set.html

In Her Majesties Name using Heroclix! IHMN solo wargame

I fancied something different for my next solo game, and having both a hankering for another game of IHMN and a desire to get some more use out of my large pile of Heroclix figures I came up with the random solution of trying to combine the two!

At first glance this may seem a strange combination, a steampunk/Victorian era wargame and superhero derived characters but bare with me as Heroclix has some interesting figures that with the use of imagination can be just at home in any setting.

Now for ease of use I stuck to using the names given for each figure but this should in no way be taken as me applying any attempt to utilize them as the character they are designed to represent!

As I was playing solo and fancied trying out a number of different rules than normal for me I decided upon not bothering to work out the points cost but to simply roughly design balanced sides and given how the game went I think I got it about right in the main.

Rather stupidly I decided to have 5 sides all competing at once on a far too small table that kept me as the sole player rather busy recalling which figure had which stats but I just about managed!

I also decided to make all figures have a pluck of 4+ simply to make it slightly manageable, although I found I was quickly remembering the frustration I had last time I played where someone with high Armour and a low pluck is almost impossible to hit and when you do they make their pluck roll with laughable ease! Even at 4+ my pluck rolls were annoyingly consistent compared to when I usually play against others giving rise to some interesting back and forth combats waiting for that failed roll :-)

Dropbox link to word file with stats

Due to my inability to add a decent looking table and having no time to write it all out again here if you would like to see the stats used please use the dropbox link above, apologies.

The setting, Shades gang is busy loading their steam boat with some choice swag, four other rival gangs decide to muscle in on it.

Penguin the rather odd industrialist arrives with all the members he could fit in his car.

Similarly Kingpin arrives with his loyal cohort

Shade orders his gang to protect the boat

Insane criminal mastermind the Joker turns up having been having a drink in the nearby tavern

The Riddler appears too.

Due to the table the action is instant and close quartered.
Penguin orders Patch and Ultron to engage the Riddlers gang whilst Hellboy and Stix protect his advance down the town.

Similarly Kingpin orders his second two-face to engage Stix whilst Typhoid Mary rushes into duel the Jokers gang along with Arashi.

Hawkeye attempts to hold back Shades gang whilst the rest of Riddlers crew engages Shades close combat fighters.

First blood goes to Hawkeye with his sharp shooting making light work of the Lex corp security guard whose eagerness to rush in was her undoing.

Next down was the Puppet master, whilst trying to remain in the cover of Ultron encase he needed repairing he stepped into the cross hairs of Green arrow.

Hellboy evened the odds by putting his fist through Aphrodite IX

Ultron shrugged off both a shotgun blast and the consolidated fire of Viper and Green arrow for two turns before closing and pulping the Intergang agent with his steam fist.

The Riddler used his wit to befuddle Arashi before allowing Yukio to use her Heartrending punch.

The unstoppable Taskmaster made light work of Scarab

Hellboy against expectations was taken out by the Green arrow with some cool shooting.

The kills kept coming with the Riddler leading his crew from the front and his trickery saw Magdalena cut down. Saving Kabuki from certain death having been outfought and knocked over twice in a row.

Kabuki's day only got worse when charging Two-face she was cut down

Entering the fray himself the penguin helped Patch over come Electro after a difficult too and fro fight.

Ultron showed the value of the steam fist and its massive pluck modifier making light work of Viper an then Green arrow fell to Patch, whilst Riddle took out Stix to keep him in the game.

Two-Face continued his killing streak shooting Yukio down after shrugging off her unearthly charms.

Speedy was cut down with ease.

Taskmaster after getting bogged down finally finished off Harley Quinn despite her best efforts to dodge, she managed to garrote Savage twice but couldn't finish her off.

The Joker ignoring the losses to his crew charged the exposed Kingpin cutting him down after distracting him with a joke about a fish.

Savage was cut to pieces but avenged by Taskmaster

Penguins crew finally took down Riddler despite a couple of turns dodging and making amusing comments.

Mandarin had been lending aide but failing to impose himself on the game until he floated over and incinerated Joker who died with a laugh on his lips

The stalemate with Huntress and Hawkeye was ended when Shade led his gang in close and stabbed him through the eye with his sword stick.

Taskmaster unleashed his frustration at being stuck for so long in his last combat and charged straight over cutting Two-faces head in half.

The power of the steamfist was again demonstrated when it overcame the mystical powers of Mandarin whilst Patch engaged Taskmaster,

Unfortunately his claws struggled and Taskmaster cut him down whilst the Penguin abandoned his loyal follower to hide behind Ultron.

Penguin and Ultron fled the field

Leaving Shade and four of his original six to continue their operation in peace having seen off the competition.

A very enjoyable if somewhat chaotic game and for ease of reading I cut out all the stalemate combat sections with knockdowns and constantly successful pluck rolls!

I think next time I will try and blend smaller sides with my usual IHMN models but I would say it didn't feel too out of place using the Heroclix minis.