Big Game of A Fistful of Kung Fu

Had enough stuff done to roll it out for real tonight. We had a big turnout with six of us playing, and I knew the rules better thanks to the previous trial game and the one with Zach Walter who showed me the bits I was missing the first time.

6 players x 250 points and 3 Chi each. It played well except that six people is pushing it for this system in terms of time spent waiting. We started the second turn with a rules revision to have each player on a side activate one guy at the same time to move it along a bit faster, instead of card activation. But it happened that Eric's protagonist found the secret martial arts scroll in the shepherd's tent and whisked it offboard in his first activation of the second turn, ending the game, so that option did not get a full exercise. This time it was mostly my terrain, and a mix of my collection and Eric's, some painted by John, for the figures. 

We used two rules tweaks to make bruisers worth taking at 35 base points. They got Quality 3 instead of 4 and took one more effect point than a regular Extra to knock out (2) or kill (3). 

Aaron, who won our first outing, had a terrible time this game, with his protagonist getting knocked down several times in the first turn and burning all his Chi to keep the bad results down to that degree. He reacted several times, mostly just to stand back up. 

This is a good rules set, very cinematic in feel, and I recommend it highly. Just aim for games of 2 to 4 people.

Pirates Progress

Got in several hours of painting on the pirates batch for Fistful of Kung Fu Saturday. Maybe 1/3 done? Less, if I use them to learn to do non-metallic metals. Here's where I left off. Some were still wet with glazing for shading/highlighting, they looked much more matte the next day. Anyway, feels like they are moving along. Aiming somewhere between my usual tabletop quality and a fancier glazing style, for maybe a couple hours a figure overall. Sunday was an all day game of MMP's Angola, so didn't make any more progress this past weekend.

Pirates vs Ninjas in A Fistful of Kung Fu, Part 1: The Plan

A few months ago I picked up the Osprey rules "A Fistful of Kung Fu" by Andrea Sfiligoi, based on the skirmish system from "A Song of Blades and Heroes". Reading them through I liked them enough to gush a bit to a couple of my minis gaming friends. Aaron was intrigued enough to go off and order some ninjas to paint up for it. I figured to do a modern gang with some old Foundry Street Violence guys and a more traditional gang with some Chinese pirates, mostly from Eureka, with a few odd pieces from Foundry and Copplestone that might work their way in, if I want some that are semi-westernized in outfit and equipment.

Well, at DundraCon, Aaron said the ninjas were in and asked when I was pulling the trigger and wanted a least a month to paint the ninjas. I said "Okay, lets do it in a month." Then we backed off a bit and set it for two months. I got home and the immediate problem was where in all my storage the Chinese pirates had gotten off to. Last weekend I confirmed they were most definitely not on or near the shelf where I best remembered them being, but tonight I located them and took the starting picture. Fortunately they are primed and based from earlier efforts, so I should be able to get right to it.  Not exactly the most photogenic background, those are some of the boxes I was digging through.

So my plan is to get these guys done up, finish off the remaining partially assembled 4Ground Japanese house,  find the docks pieces or make some, and if there is time, scratchbuild a junk for my boats collection.  With some of the other accumulated Asian scenery, this will make a picturesque table. I'd like to do two table setups, one for a village and one for a dockyard.

Mid-April is the target.

If I stick with the traditional ones, I think the woman or maybe the guy in white primer will be the Protagonist and the guy with the two big maces the Bruiser. If I do include the Copplestone Chinese Bandit Chiefs third from left and way over at the right end of the back row, they are likely to be the Protagonist and Bruiser. Will probably work up both lists and see which I like better.