Smugglers' Docks, part 1

Here's a little plan I've been mulling over. Posting it to spur myself onward in execution. I want to get started again in miniatures skirmish gaming, and build a scenery setup I can use for a few games and do some rules comparison on. Three rules sets will be in the first go. West Wind's "Empire of the Dead" is one I have been reading for several months without actually getting a game together. The theme is Victorian Steampunk/Horror and it is a campaign oriented set of skirmish rules along the lines of Necromunda or Mordheim. I have some of the figures for it unpainted and a miscellaneous collection of 28mm stuff in various genres that I can use to fake it until I get around to painting those and the ones coming from their recent Kickstarter. Black Scorpion's "Cutlass" is the second contender. It is a pirates/fantasy pirates themed set of campaign oriented skirmish rules. I have been painting some pirates lately, with a Pathfinder Skull and Shackles campaign I have been playing in as the proximate driver and Cutlass as a secondary goal. So that's what I'll be using for them.

The last is my own Rencounter rules that used to be up on my Hobby Hovel site and have been awaiting renewed attention and reposting for close to a decade now. Rencounter is a skirmish rules toolchest for anything up to around 1900, as automatic small arms and modern grenades are two elements I never really integrated. Hopefully I will find enough inspiration to get it back up on the web.

Given those disparate sets of rules, and some prepainted dock terrain pieces from a post-Christmas sale I never got around to using, my plan so far is to set up a coastal town docks area with half timbered buildings suitable for a pirate town or old backwater smuggler's village in the 19th Century.

The roughest outline of an initial scenario is that one faction will be smuggling cargo ashore in the middle of the night, while a second faction that is either the local lawful authorities or a rival gang that has tumbled to their plans charges out of ambush to arrest them or steal the cargo.

Goals:

• Organize factions for each rules set that can be used to start campaigns.
• Finish up enough pirates for two factions, roughly 24.
• Craft whatever scenery & ships I need to round out the stuff I have on hand.
• Sort out from the existing collection and then paint figs for Empire of the Dead trial games.
• Run some games with the usual suspects or drag in some of the guys I usually only see at conventions.
• Write some rules reviews, comparisons, battle reports, and general discussion of skirmish rules design here.
• Get back into minis photography by posting some pics of the figs for these games.
• Have a scenario that I can post here for each game and use for convention games.
• Both Cutlass and Empire of the Dead are essentially two player games. Look for or put together multiplayer sequence variants that can boost each up to around 6 players for a typical convention game.
• Possibly extend the comparison to some other skirmish sets.